Took my daughters to see the new Shrek movie today, which was entertaining BTW, but before the movie began we had to sit through several commercials. One of the ads was the new Dawn dish-washing commercial that shows how Dawn soap is helping clean the oil off animals affected by the Gulf oil spill. To me personally this type of ad is sickening. For P&G to profit from this environmental disaster makes me want to do the exact opposite of what their commercial intended. I don’t want to buy Dawn soaps. Not because their product helps animals, not because they donate $1 from each bottle, but because they’re trying to tug at peoples emotions by using a terrible disaster. Show some animals in distress covered with oil, say you’re donating a $1 and then they pocket twice that much in profits.
Now I know I’m probably stretching it and they’re not profiting that much, but in my opinion the ad could have been much better. I also know that I’m not their normal ad viewer since I always read deeper into and analyze an ad more than most people. In my opinion they don’t need to show the animals in distress covered with oil. Show the oil spill, narrate the fact that it’s hurting and killing wildlife and they’ve sent thousands of bottles to help clean up the animals and then explain how every bottle sold will get a dollar sent to help with the clean-up. To me this would have much more impact. But instead, they make families sit through their commercial… kids getting upset because of the poor animals and then all the herd mentality people thinking they’ve done their part to help out by buying a bottle of Dawn soap. If people only knew how much more they could do by donating directly to a group or organization that’s helping with the clean-up. Here’s a few groups and orgs that you can donate to.
I don’t want to post the entire ad here, but you can check out this Reuters report below that shows part of it along with some thoughts on the ad.
What are your thoughts? Smart advertising, bad advertising? Does it make you want to buy Dawn soap or does it piss you off and make you want to buy a P&G competitors product? My opinion… advertising FAIL.
Hi, I'm Steve... an eCommerce merchant that writes about eCommerce, advertising, marketing, blogging, design, social media, seo, tech and other randomness.
Although not the same situation as you describe, it reminds me that my wife and I donate to several animal sanctuaries so we receive newsletters and donation requests from many such organizations. Some of them, like Best Friends, show photos of happy animals. We open these, read, and donate. If we feel that the envelope will contain photos of suffering or mistreated animals, we just can’t open them. They’re too painful to see. I think that newsletters and donation requests would get better responses if they would explain (rescue animals that are lost or mistreated) and show photos only of the great results they obtain…happy and healthy animals.
Bill