Please Kill The Mudds
- The Mudds are here:
Above is the new Commander campaign, featuring the Mudds.
Here is what I envisioned: A family made of mud, living in Mudville, using a (suitably muddy)Commander to get around because you can navigate Mudville….Only In A Jeep. They could close it with the Mudds coming out of a car wash, so we can get a clear shot of a clean Jeep.
That’s not what we get. From my point of view, here are some of the problems with this spot:
1. The Mudds aren’t muddy. They’re diseased. There’s goop on their faces, and a bit tracked through the house. But otherwise? No mud to be found. There’s apparently no mud, as well as no joy, in Mudville. If they’re the Mudds..make them muddy! This isn’t even bad TV-movie “muddy”. This is bad sit-com “muddy”.
2. They go through almost the whole spot without showing the faces…and thus without showing any mud. The chief problem here is I was so preoccupied with looking for mud I didn’t pay any attention to the Jeep (maybe because it didn’t have any mud on it!) At least if they had fully mudded faces it would’ve been ever-so-slightly better. I can’t help but think that the concept was watered down.
3. It’s good they introduced this before Halloween, because when they turned around, the effect was repulsive. I mean, they do not look well, and the image that sticks with me is the two parents turned around looking at me with their diseased faces. I’m thinking Night of the Living Dead here. Again, *that is the image I take away*. Now, if we were watching an advertisement for the Mudds TV show or movie, that’d be fine. But ostensibly we’re watching an ad for some type of vehicle. This makes it decidedly not fine.
It’s really utterly mindboggling how awful this is. Especially since it’s a Jeep ad! How do you screw up a Jeep ad so badly!? Jeep’s the one division that should be a no brainer to advertise. BBDO should have ‘Only in a Jeep’ tattooed to their foreheads (backwards, so they can look in a mirror and read it). If the advertising concept doesn’t advance that ideal, then forget it.
That’s what they should have done with this idea…forget it. � ]]>
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