Start-Up Brand Jury and The Citizen Kane of Yogurt Commercials

When I started in advertising before the beginning of recorded history, I worked at a variety of agencies. And we always feared consumer feedback on our ads -- well, maybe that's a little too sweeping. Actually, what we feared was copy testing. McCollum-Spielman, and the dreaded ARS test.

We also feared client reaction to consumer letters. While I never worked on the brand Yoplait, I had friends that did, and they created one of the most remarkable pieces of advertising I ever saw, called "Nothing on the bottom." The ad was basically 30 seconds of seeing cute butts walk away from camera, dramatizing the dieting benefits of eating the yogurt, while simultaneously making the prestirred characteristic of Yoplait a benefit. For you see, many people [thought they] preferred the fruit on the bottom Dannon brand. But Yoplait was the yogurt with "Nothing on the bottom."

Nothing butt natural.

Nothing butt low fat.

Nothing on the bottom...

And that's the end of that!

Sadly, that was the end of that.

The story goes that the ad contained one baby's naked tuckus, and a handful of users were offended. They wrote, and the campaign, which I will editorialize and say was the Citizen Kane of yogurt advertising, was killed after one flight. Now, there were other reasons why the campaign died, notleast because Yoplait actually had a fruit on the bottom offering. Though it was a tiny fraction of their total sales But in my opinion sometimes you have to overlook this tiny fraction of a strategic misfire for copy genius. Cuz genius it was.

So what does this have to do with the start up Brand Jury? Well, nothing and everything. Because what brand jury is is a community of opinionated people and brands -- a community where consumers can sound off about ads, handing out kudos or raspberries. But wait, there's more! that same community gives viewers the opportunity to make their own ads -- using concepts that they consider better than the pro version submitted by the brand.

Here's their indisputably inventive Tech Crunch Elevator Pitch:

It's sort of twisted, eeh?

But regardless of that, I love this concept, because it creates what I feel will be a far better way to collect consumer feedback about brands. A mechanism not driven by bizarre testing methodologies, or write-in campaigns from Concerned Citizens for a Misguided Definition of Decency. Rather, people that care -- whether for positive or negative reasons -- can provide a host of comments about a concept, and truly enrich brand understanding as they solidify their own brand relationships.

Brand Jury is in private beta, and I am not in yet. But I'll be writing more when I am.

And if the creative people working on Yoplait are reading this, maybe that fine assy campaign can be resurrected. Because it was worthy of a yogurt Clio!

In the meantime, enjoy this funny bit of Yoplait-inspired UGC:

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.