Here in Canada, the dairy farmers' association had been promoting the buying of cheese and cooking with cheese, running a series of TV commercials which I had talked about previously on my blog. The most memorable part from the commercial series, the crotchety granny screaming "Can't get your kids to leave
home? Stop cooking with cheese!" (MP3 sound file, 114K, Warning! VERY LOUD), had already gone viral, as evidenced
by these two fan-videos on youtube. But, alas, it looks like the Screaming Cheese Lady's days are numbered.
According to an article in Saturday's Globe and Mail newspaper, Canada's dairy farmers have halted their "Stop cooking with cheese" advertising campaign after a wave of complaints about their latest TV ad:
Canada's dairy farmers have killed their controversial "Stop Cooking with Cheese" campaign, saying the latest TV spot crossed the limits of good taste.
Cossette Communication Group Inc., the agency responsible for the work, must now compete against other agencies for a chance to retain the account.
"We track everything we hear from the consumer. And sometimes you cross a line that maybe you should not," said Nathalie Noël, director of marketing for the Dairy Farmers of Canada.
The marketing association will not go ahead with a planned spring rollout of the campaign. Instead it is looking for an agency that can take cheese marketing in a new direction.
The initial campaign used crude reverse psychology to convince parents that the best way to get their adult children to move away from home is to not cook with cheese. Each commercial features a grumpy old lady who screams: "Stop Cooking with Cheese!"
In the latest ad -- titled "Protection" -- parents sit down with their daughter's boyfriend to convince him that their daughter isn't good enough for him.
"How can I put this nicely? She's cheap," the father says. The daughter retorts: "I hate you."
Then the pitch-granny chimes in: "Can't stop your daughter's boyfriend coming over? Stop cooking with cheese. Don't melt gouda on his vegetables -- he'll never dump her."
Ms. Noël said she didn't expect the backlash that came both from consumers and dairy farmers, who saw the last ad as mean-spirited and anti-family.
...
Nancy Vonk, creative director at Ogilvy and Mather in Toronto, said she winced when she saw the ad for the first time.
"It was really mean-spirited," she said. "I'm a big fan of dark comedy but that just crossed the line. . . . I felt so bad for the girl in the spot."
She said the reverse psychology approach -- trying to sell more cheese by telling people not to buy it -- was a bold attempt to do something different, but didn't work in practice.
"The whole shtick with the old lady yelling at you to stop cooking with cheese. It's like: 'Shut up. Get out of my face.' "
Here's a link to the ad discussed in the article. The first time I saw it, I kinda went "What the...??" and didn't think it was terribly funny. Anyway, I expect someone's head over at Cossette Communications is gonna roll over this one.
They've already taken down www.cantgetyourkidstoleavehome.com :-) ...
who is the screaming cheese lady? really. who is she literally in real life...what's her name? anyone know?
Posted by: Dixiedixie | December 30, 2007 at 08:02 PM