I stumbled across a very unique use of social media and advertising this morning (on Twitter, incidentally). Jell-O, as some of you know, has launched a relatively creepy advertising campaign centered on "Pudding Face". (Evidently, Pudding Face is an abnormally large, mostly freaky looking smile someone gets after enjoying a scrumptious Jell-O Pudding). However, despite the creep factor, Jell-O has managed to pull off their integrated campaign on the web and on a giant billboard in NYC. And this time, they've succeeded in making it more humorous than scary.
On their website, they display a feed of Tweets featuring a happy face ":)" or frowny face ":(". They then compare the happiness of the country to the "frowniness". Whenever less the 51% of the country is happy, they give away free pudding - in the hope of getting people back to their original Pudding Face elation. The same concept is now applied to their new billboard in NYC - a percentage of smiley faces is compared to frowny faces (based on the Tweets they display online), while a giant face in the middle switches between smiling and frowning, depending on the mood of the country. It's an interesting idea - new, unique, and funny. Makes people stop in their tracks or double take just to understand what they're seeing, which makes the advertising powerful. Check out the website here: Jell-O Pudding Face and read about the billboard here: Adweek: Jell-O Pudding's NYC Billboard is Powered by Twitter.
Despite the original creep factor, I have got to hand it to ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (not surprisingly, since they're one of the best in the business). It's fresh. It's alluring. It's amusing. And, it effectively passes on the message that Jell-O Pudding makes you happy. It also shows that the people at Jell-O believe their message enough to give their product away for free - all in the efforts to prove to you that Jell-O Pudding has the power to give you Pudding Face. Now let's all go out for some pudding...
