Pound Directly Into Brain
Tuesday, November 21st, 2006
The first time I saw the spot, my reaction was: why the hell is that woman rubbing a glue stick on her head? Is this some wacky viral prank? It just seemed too bizarre to be real.
I had absolutely no idea what it was for. All I knew was that you “apply directly to the forehead.” The ad created in-house by HeadOn has production values so hideous they seem intentionally campy. (They’re not.) The horrible graphic background. The way the volume fades in and out on the VO. The big, yellow-arrow (as if you didn’t know where the forehead was on the human body). And above all, the very image of this chick rubbing goop back and forth across her head. It’s mesmerizing in its cheesiness and like nothing else on television right now.
From Wikipedia:
In many ways, the commercial is revolutionizing television commercials as a whole, as it introduces a postmodern element to advertising. With a slogan looping three times, and no clear explanation of what the product is, or what the product does, the commercial creates an intrigue and notoriety that many commercial companies are seeking.
But the commercials annoy the hell out of people. Yet they managed to get a lot of buzz going. How about a file to make your own HeadOn ringtone just so you can really irrate all those other people in that boring meeting. Plus they sure did spark parodies that served to increase brand exposure even more.
Strangely enough the second round campaign, which launced in September addressed viewer annoyance head on. Now they have people on their commercials that talk about how MUCH they hate HeadOn commercials, but how much they like the product.
Smart strategy. In many ways (although I hate to admit it because they are so cheesy) the campaign is pure genius. Slate said it well in their review:
With this one 10-second spot, the makers of HeadOn have torn down all the pretenses that have gummed up the advertising industry for years. Production values? Persuasion? Emotion? Humor (of the intentional kind)? These are stalwarts of the old, outmoded advertising paradigm. The new, head-on (or HeadOn) approach holds that advertising is about blunt force.
I suspect most advertisers avoid the broken-record technique out of fear that it will annoy people. Which it does. But so what? Maybe a small percentage of us will snootily refrain from buying HeadOn—as an act of protest against an ad we find irritating—but this is a small price to pay when millions of other folks are now familiar with HeadOn, curious about it, and unlikely ever to forget its name. The repetition method serves no purpose for a well-established brand (”Coca-Cola: Pour it down your esophagus. Coca-Cola: Pour it down your esophagus”), but for a new product fighting to get noticed, it makes a lot of sense.
In the end, after seeing the spot several times, my curiosity got the better of me and while at a local Walgreens one night picking up a perscription I picked up the HeadOn package and read it. AND..because I suffer from headaches routinely, I bought it. (Their sinister plan worked on me.) And you know what, it works….IF you catch the headache really early. Otherwise you just feel this strange cooling sensation…directly on your forehead.