AD WATCH: MAD Creative Lab founder's most/least favourite ads

AD WATCH features marketing industry figures providing their opinions on what they think is some of the most inspiring and disappointing work they've seen. As long as it's not their own! 

In this edition:

Charles Wong

Founder

MAD Creative Lab

HOT: Cheetos

I was originally planning to write about AI and advertising for “hot” and then song and dance jingles as “not”, but then I remembered Cheetos’ superb Super Bowl serenade.

This is a masterclass in modern advertising and celebrity endorsement. Combining the star power of acting husband and wife combo Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher (who apparently vowed they’d never work together), Cheetos (yay, PepsiCo!) has managed to charm them into an anything-but-cheesy performance in the snack brand’s latest Super Bowl work.

Rapper Shaggy made a cameo, reprising his hit It Wasn’t Me in the 2000s for the fun spot. The spot – also called “It Wasn’t Me” – sees Kunis repeatedly deny eating Kutcher’s Cheetos’ while Shaggy croons around the house to try to defuse the drama. This is packaged good advertising at its best. A ton of product consumption, pack shots galore that drive the narrative and the orange fingerprints and crumbs mean it could only be Cheetos.

Kudos to Goodby Silverstein & Partners and two-time Academy-Award nominated director Bryan Buckley.

NOT: Uber Eats

I rarely get bored watching ads, but this one makes me feel like I’m having an anxiety attack.

I’m not really sure who they’re trying to appeal to here. Is it Gen Xers who actually might remember Wayne’s World and who are being asked to use Uber Eats? This sucks for a multitude of reasons, but for me the most glaring one has to be the irony of the movie tie-in being an aged Wayne and Garth, forever young and stupid and earnest, shilling for a company like Uber. Not cool. What is weird (meta-irony?) is that they are doing ads, as they mocked product placement in their movie.

It wouldn’t be as bad if they hadn’t roped in Cardi B. She annoys the absolute crap out of me. But the thing I hate most is that their whole pitch is the weird make-up and overarching feeling that they’re just phoning it in for the money.
They’re not worthy.
They’re not worthy.

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