Don’t be a square
By Jude Bliss, 15/09/2011
An interesting new TV and print campaign for Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Squares launched recently.
It sees the brand tell ridiculous lies to attempt to sell said product such as “buy two bars get a free boat” and “actual size’ underneath an A1 sized poster of a bar. The tagline then reads “Its all lies, they’re not even square”.
Whilst clearly done tongue in cheek and looking to poke fun at the typical ‘small print’ and underhanded-ness of certain aspects of marketing, “It’s all lies” is a ballsy and unique positioning for an established brand such as Kellogg’s to take, especially in this current age of transparency and openness in communications and business.
Whilst everyone else zigs, Sqaures zag and show they aren’t afraid to go against the tide of transparency brought on by the rise of social media and subsequently consumer power seen over the last decade.
I read an article on the fastcompany website recently about how brands are increasingly taking on more human-like behaviours.
The article focuses around an increasing presence of more human-like traits such as honesty, openness and humour, but for me the more interesting aspect of a shift towards more human-brands comes from the mixing or layering of multiple messages.
Many brands focus all their communication on getting across one, singular pure and consistent message, and whilst this particular campaign doesn’t pretend to be anything but irreverent parody, I find communication that involves multiple messages much more engaging and fundamentally more human.
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