May 10, 2007

Do Dips Instead

I was watching the tele yesterday and I found myself curiously amused about a commercial I had just watched. Imagine:

Open on a man and woman sitting on a bench with a grassy area behind them.
The man is eating a soft pretzel.
The woman is eating something unidentifiable out of an orange box.
Eventually, their silence is broken by the man who looks at his pretzel and is pissed off he doesn't have these "Dips" that she is eating.
He thows his soft pretzel to the side and eats one of her "Dips."
Cut to title card and tag which says "Try Dips instead."
There is a nice product shot and a soft pretzel faded in the background.

After the commercial was over I didn't really think much of it until it struck me, were Dips the anti-pretzel? Did all the research show Dips consumers eat soft pretzels but would rather be eating Dips? How large exactly is the soft pretzel eating community?

How did they sell this idea in the pitch? "Well, we really need to go after the 'soft-pretzeler.' Market research shows 89.23% of the potential Dips market is currently eating only soft pretzels. So what we are going to do is let those 'soft-pretzelers' know to put down the pretzel and try dips instead. This lead to our wonderful creative."

I had left this Dips/soft pretzel strangeness to rest assuming, yes of course all the research showed Dips consumers are currently eating soft pretzels and all the advertising needs to do is show them there is something out there was better to eat, Dips of course.

But then I decided to blog about them.

I did a brief search of youtube hoping someone had posted this strange pretzel eating population targeted commercial, but I couldn't find anything. I wasn't surprised. But I was surprised when I did a google search to have at least a picture to show you of these treats but I couldn't find those either. I kept getting special recipes for strawberry yummy dip or Spiderman fun dip, neither of which lead me any closer to answers regarding this strange product.

Maybe the soft pretzel eating community overthrew these Dips, which are invading upon their turf: Renaissance Festivals and ball parks. Perhaps, it was French's mustard. Dips and mustard, I don't think so.

In lieu of no Dips photography I give you:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

ponies.

Anonymous said...

http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/rob_and_big/series.jhtml

Rob and Big have a pony.

Farrah said...

I would name this pony carrot.