Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookie Ad
I’ve been staring at this ad for two days trying to figure out if I like it or I don’t.
I love the image on the right. I think it’s clever and pretty.
I don’t like the break in the middle of the page (it appears to be a corner?) because it distracts the text.
I find the usage of “bold” and “light” superfluous in the copy but most of all my nagging is over one word:
“soulmates”
I’m trying to decide if I’m being too tough or if, my initial reaction that it’s just a cookie and the melodrama of the word soulmate is reaching a little high.
I get what the writer is trying to say. I don’t necessarily mind the attributing of human qualities to inanimate objects, which is often death, but can be done well.
But my initial reaction was there are other ways to say what the image is conveying than the use of the word “soulmates”–”together forever,” “a perfect match,” “inseparable,” “love,” “perfection,” “perfect” etc.
To be honest I kind of scoffed at the use of the word when I first read it, even though I love the image on the right.
While searching for a picture of the ad, I found another take on it, one that not only takes the writer to task for making “soul mates” into “soulmates” but also claims the ad is racist compared to other ads that define chocolate as “the devil:”
Is the primary intent selling cookies or white supremacy?
…
When studying the racist idea of chocolate over white you clearly see it defined as a devil
When it is white over black it uses captions that are definitively described as Angel’s food. In the case of the ad with the white male image and the black female image it clearly reads soulmates.
Even the written grammar “soul mates” in the Pepperidge farm ad becomes a conjunction and is now one word thus you have soulmates. Angel’s food and Soulmates both quantify as a relative meaning. The further you go into this mindset the more disturbing this behavior gets (pathological).
Comedian and Writer Warren Hutcherson used to have a great bit on how is father could find racism in foods at the grocery store (green olives are in clear jars, black olives are in cans; white Frosted Flakes are “great” but black Cocoa Puffs make you go cuckoo, etc.)
After reading this guy’s take on the Milano advertising, ironically enough my reaction was the same as the first time I saw the word “soulmates.”
“Dude, it’s just a cookie”
Technorati Tags: Pepperidge Farms, Milano, cookies, racism, copywriting, Warren Hutcherson, reading too much into things
