Does Creepy Sell?
Saturday, January 20th, 2007
Per my previous post, the whole Orville Redenbacher night-of-the-living-dead thing is just way too freaky. Every time I see the damn spot I get even more creeped out. And apparently a lot of people feel the same way.
Do creepy characters hawking food really entice anyone to buy? Is that why are there so many of them pushing edibles? I vividly remember my initial heebie-jeebies reaction to the Burger King campaign a few years ago (especially that spot where he’s in bed with that guy). However, I have to admit that after hearing my teenage daughter and friends talk about the spots, it became apparent that my reaction was irrelevant — they liked and related to the creepy crowned head. And fittingly so, teens were who BK was after.
As much as I dislike the King, BK has had sales increases (ten straight quarters of positive comparable sales growth according to the Nov 06 10Q). I prefer to credit subservient chicken or Chicken Sandwich World Championship between TC and Spicy. But who knows….
YET who the hell are they trying to connect to with the resurrected Orville? Not teens — they don’t care who Orville is/was. He’s not funny/sarcastic/flip/offbeat. And teens don’t do the bulk of the grocery shopping. Moms do. So, it will be interesting to see how Moms react to dead-man talking and if this effort (which cost a fortune) has any [positive] impact on sales. I highly doubt it.
But why did Crispin take this approach? Are they convinced that creepy sells? There are certainly a lot of examples out there. In my research on creepy spokespeople, I ran across this post “The Top 10 Creepiest Fast Food Mascots” which rated the Burger King as the #1 creepiest. Hummmmm??? That was Crispin too.
