October 31st is the one day of the year that kids get the chance to dress up in their favorite costumes, carve pumpkins, trick-or-treat, and most importantly eat excessive amounts of sugar. This Halloween season, Crest and Oral-B have teamed up to make a commercial that portrays a child’s greatest nightmare- a Halloween without candy. This innovative and hilarious commercial titled, “Halloween Treats Gone Wrong,” is an unofficial experiment that captures how kids act when they find out healthy treats are replacing candy. This playful scare-tactic is one that parents are sure to appreciate as they attempt to find ways to motivate kids to brush and floss this Halloween.
Companies consider many different appeals when creating advertisements to grab the attention of current and future consumers. Appeals are often used to influence consumers to purchase a product as well as speaking to their interests. One appeal that is used often, and in this particular advertisement, is humor. If applied correctly, humor can be extremely successful in marketing a brand. Humor is used in this commercial through the use of children and their innocence and tendency to be blunt regarding their own opinions. The appeal to humor is effective at gaining and retaining the attention of audiences because humor results in better recall. Crest and Oral-B do a good job of effectively keeping their audiences engaged in their commercial while marketing their brands at a time of the year when you would least expect it. By turning this campaign into a positive and laughable viewing experience, Oral-B and Crest have kept themselves relevant during Halloween and have shown that they too can relate to what parents everywhere are thinking.
By establishing humor in their commercial, Crest and Oral-B have possibly widened their potential customer bases by creating a memorable narrative to leave with audiences. This emotional link that Crest and Oral-B created with their audiences increases the intent for consumers to purchase their products for themselves and their children. Some appeals to humor are not as successful as the Crest and Oral-B campaign have been. While this commercial is being shared not only on television but also on social networking sites, other marketing attempts have not been as lucrative. If the humor is not received well by the audience the ad can backfire and create a negative image surrounding the brand.
Have you seen any other examples of brands using the holiday season to promote their products? Do you think the use of humor in this ad was successful? What are some examples of humor used in ads that have resulted in you purchasing their product(s)?
-Aaron Love, Kara Zimmerman, Rachel Clay, Rebecca Hobbs
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