Pure Delicious

Product: Hershey's bars Summary: The perforated mini-bars of a Hershey's bar begin to swirl and melt into liquid chocolate as a warm female voiceover asks "What makes a Hershey's bar pure?" A drop of chocolate splashes into the liquid surface, then begins to reform, T-1000-style, into a young chocolate woman. The ad cuts to a wider shot as her feet leave the ground; she is on a swingset in a world made of chocolate, with an embossed chocolate sun and clouds and puffy chocolate trees. Chocolate butterflies and flowers appear as the girl kicks up her heels, letting her long, straight hair blow backwards in the (presumably chocolate) wind. "Pure simplicity," the voice intones. She leaps off the swing and dives back into the liquid ground, and the scene again reforms. Now she is driving in a chocolate convertible with a young chocolate man--don't get excited, they're still both clearly caucausian. "Pure happiness!" comments the voice. She throws her arms around him and they drive blissfully through the pastoral chocolate landscape, which swirls and reforms into Hershey's bars. "Pure, delicious chocolate. Pure Hershey's." Themes: maidenhood, Eden, opioid peptides See Also: madonna-whore complex, Germany, physical dependence There's two main ways to market something. The first is to appeal to the qualities of the thing itself, describing what makes it different and better than other, similar things. For obvious reasons, this is howlingly unpopular. The second, pioneered so successfully by McDonalds and Coca-Cola, is to create a web of pleasant associations for your product. Food ads are particularly open in terms of emotional appeals. Unlike a cell phone, car, or non-sex service, foods create unambiguous chemical changes in your body. Eating raises endorphins and blood sugar and generally makes you feel like a primate that's successfully fulfilling its essential biological functions. And because we are not merely biological, but also cultural, food carries additional positive meanings for ads to play upon. Food preparation and consumption are ritualized group activities, ranging from Thanksgiving to barbeques to the late lamented family dinner. Ads piggyback on our cultural senses of propriety and nostalgia to sell us not only food, but comfort, warmth, shelter, emotional closeness. Because food ads are so--if you'll indulge me--raw, they tend to distill into main types: Food As Family and Food As Sex. (recently I've seen several that I'd classify under Food As Pain, but more on that later.) After some deliberation, I think this Hershey's ad falls under food-as-sex, from a decidedly feminine point of view. (As you may be aware, women are the--pardon me again--biggest consumers of chocolate, and with the redoubtable exception of Yorkie Bars, most chocolate ads target women.) The first and second parts of the ad are complementary messages, the girl on the swing typifying sensualism and freedom, while the couple in the car (note the seatbelts) emphasize intimacy and emotional security. The tone is innocent, "pure"--nothing is dirty or wrong about eating this chocolate, and as in food-as-family ads, frisson takes a backseat to comfort. Let me take a page from Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth here and say that good ads promise to provide things that are lacking in the lives of their targeted consumers. This ad targets women, and promises them perpetual virginity, intimacy, security, simplicity, and happiness. It is not only an ad for a cheap chocolate-flavored candy: it is a diagnosis.