Friday, Aug 29, 2008
Pillsbury is hardly the only company striving to protect its mascot from physical indignity. Perhaps you weren't aware of the fact that the O in SpaghettiOs is a personified character, with his own little complex of joys, sorrows and anxieties. His name is Theo, and he is different from you and me. "In the case of Theo, SpaghettiOs has made it clear that nothing can pass through his open area," explains Postlewaite. "It's a little bit weird, because he's just an O. He has feet and red tennis shoes. He jumps around. He sings. He rides a skateboard ... But never, at any time, will something move through the middle of his person."
Renegade learned of this constraint only recently, when the group presented storyboards that included such an occurrence. "They said, 'No, no, no, we don't want that to happen. That can't ever happen." It seems that in focus groups, young children reacted negatively to the notion of Theo's playful disembowelment. "So, now we know," Postlewaite says. "Nothing can ever pass through his middle. Apparently that's gross or scary for kids."
Postlewaite and her crew are currently scratching their heads over an upcoming spot, in which our hollowed-out hero is slated to don a long red cape. "This is now a bit of a sensitive subject," she muses. "Should the cape reveal his ... open area? If so, how much should be revealed?" Postlewaite reflects a moment. "We don't want to do anything that would compromise good taste," she says.
The urge to protect spokescharacters from humiliation may also mean keeping them out of situations that are socially problematic. For those icons whose guidelines require them to present the product with smiles and gesturing limbs, there is a constant danger of being perceived as a salesman, as opposed to a winsome, trusted friend. The guidelines for these characters, therefore, tend to dwell at some length on the fact that the character never shows up where he is not wanted; that he doesn't press himself on others; that he proffers the product in the spirit not of hucksterism, but of joyous friendship.
"We call him 'the enticer,' or 'the converter,'" confides Anh Nguyen of General Mills. "He's not a salesman who tries to sell you the product. He's more like your best friend. A friend who interacts with you to convince you to try the product." Nguyen is speaking of the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee. "We have a few words we use here to describe him," she says. "Those words are 'irresistible,' 'friendly,' 'playful,' 'optimistic' and 'universally loved by all.' He's not overbearing. He's not intrusive ... He just wants you to know that the product tastes great, and that it has honey in it."
"Our target, as you may know, is Heavy Salty Snackers," says Nancy Anderson of Foote, Cone & Belding, an account supervisor on Planters Peanuts. "They're a little skeptical, a little leery. What does that mean? It means not forcing Mr. Peanut down their throats. He can't talk at them, or force the product on them ... He can't be a shill of a shell." Instead, she says, the agency tries to show Mr. Peanut in different trendy venues -- "like a disco concert, or a '60s reunion" -- garbed not in bell bottoms or love beads, but as his inevitable, indelible, strangely aristocratic peanut self. "That way, he's not perceived as trying too hard," she says eagerly. "He's someone who doesn't change to adapt to the situation. He's comfortable just being himself. And he's viewed as fitting in as himself." Anderson is growing excited. "He's a part of the group without forcing himself on the people around him," she says.
Dignity was also a concern for the animators at Wildbrain, who last year were assigned the daunting task of coming up with an animated representation of Colonel Sanders. The challenge was to contemporize the character without compromising his identity as the company's distinguished founder. "It was an interesting process," says Robin Steele, director of the project. "We all had such reverence for this character. We thought of him as an eclectic Southern gentleman." But to draw in that hip younger crowd, they felt they had to mix things up a bit.
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