McVities Want You to Eat Adorable Animals

I’ve been struggling to come up with a good reason for why I’m not a fan of the McVities ads by Grey going around – the ones where the biscuits are imagined as cute animals and then get eaten.

Although writing that down, that’s a pretty good reason right there.

Obviously the campaign is intended to be a bit facetious, a bit silly. While I haven’t seen the brief created for that campaign, I doubt the objective listed was “reduce the fluffy kitten population”.

Even so, I’m just not sure what the thought process was behind it.

Perhaps it’s just considered to be part of building the brand. But it’s not that much of a good feelings campaign, it’s more tongue in cheek, more child-like.

Perhaps it’s to demonstrate the variety of products that McVities make. But the biscuits are hardly the stars of the ad. They may be centre stage but the attention is on the animals, save for the last second. That might be enough but I don’t think it really sends the right message.

That’s my issue with it in the end. It’s a product-centric ad where you hardly see the product.

(Although one argument I can make in its favour is that it’s clearly going to have some aim at kids, who have a different mentality and a different value set when it comes to asking for products. Perhaps in the end it’s just a kids’ ad that happens to be designed to appeal to adults a bit as well.)

On an unrelated note, I really think they should play more on the name McVities. Everyone knows that they make biscuits, but I always think it’s funny that McVities makes you make a crunching motion with your mouth. Just a thought.