Dancing Raisins Stay on Top of List of Favorite Commercials, Survey Says
Those soulful, animated dancing raisins have been taking their bows for the California raisin industry for about 2 1/2 years, but television viewers apparently still love them.
The California raisin commercials led Video Storyboard Tests Inc.’s annual list of most popular ad campaigns in 1988 for the second consecutive year.
The campaigns for Pepsi and Diet Pepsi, including a four-part ad starring singer Michael Jackson and an ad with actor Michael J. Fox trying to avoid a watchdog blocking the way to the soda machine, placed second.
Ads for McDonald’s restaurants ranked third. McDonald’s spent an estimated $386 million airing its ads, compared to $6.8 million for California raisins and $106.4 million for Pepsi, the second biggest spender in the top 10.
Dave Vadehra, president of the research firm, said Thursday that there were no clear creative breakthroughs and a heavy reliance on safe standbys such as children and dogs in television advertising last year.
He blamed the lack of breakthroughs on merger mania that has seen huge advertisers get swallowed up in takeover deals and advertising agencies consolidate in the wake of a massive restructuring within that business.
“Nobody is taking any risks. Everybody is trying to play it safe,” Vadehra said.
Richard Karp, director of creative services at Grey Advertising, agreed that mergers unsettled the ad business last year, distracting some advertisers while some ad agency people “focused less on work than on their security.”
In a telephone interview from Los Angeles where he is judging entries in an ad awards show, Karp said he has found, “There were a lot of safe hits and not a lot of home runs last year.”
Video Storyboards compiled its 11th annual ranking of television commercials based on responses from 24,000 people who were interviewed mostly at shopping malls and were asked to name the most outstanding television commercial they have seen in the past four weeks.
The California Raisin Advisory Board scored an instant success in the fall of 1986 with its commercials that use clay models of raisins that appear to dance and sing to “Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
The ads helped boost raisin sales, which had been lagging, and created a market for licensed products ranging from raisin shirts to a raisin board game.
Robert Phinney of the California Raisin Board said sales of products licensed to use the raisin characters amounted to $500 million last year, just short of the industry’s $600 million in sales of the real thing.
Depicted as Entertainers
In 1988, the board aired a commercial featuring an animated Ray Charles singing with the raisins. New ads are planned for this fall.
Phinney said the raisin ads remain popular because the characters are depicted as entertainers rather than pitchmen. “We have been very conscious of not making them salesmen,” he said.
Vadehra said the California raisin industry also got credit from some consumers for ads others did using the raisin characters.
He said some consumers thought ads for Post Raisin Bran cereal and Hardee’s fast-food restaurants, which each have been licensed to use the characters in their ads, were commercials for California raisins.
Ranked fourth behind the California raisins, Pepsi and McDonald’s campaigns was Bud Light beer. Vadehra said consumers cited ads featuring the Bud Light spokesdog Spuds MacKenzie three times as often as the ads that show amazing things that can happen when you simply order a “light” beer.
In fifth place were ads for Isuzu cars and light trucks featuring the fictional pitchman Joe Isuzu, another campaign introduced in 1986 and steadily gaining popularity.
Wine Cooler, Carpet Ads Out
Miller Lite beer ads ranked sixth, followed by Coca-Cola soft drinks, Stroh’s beer ads featuring Alex the dog, Wendy’s fast-food restaurants and Levi’s jeans.
Ads by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the industry’s volunteer anti-drug campaign, placed 11th.
Falling out of the top 10 campaigns were ads for Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers and Du Pont Stainmaster carpets.
TV’S MOST POPULAR COMMERCIALS, 1988
‘88 ’87 Est. Spending Rank Rank Brand Agency in Millions 1 1 California raisins Foote, Cone & Belding $6.8 2 3 Pepsi/Diet Pepsi BBDO 106.4 3 5 McDonald’s Leo Burnett 385.9 4 2 Bud Light DDB/Needham 57.4 5 8 Isuzu Della Femina, 30.0 McNamee WCRS 6 4 Miller Lite Back Spielvogel Bates 64.5 7 7 Coca-Cola McCann-Erickson 68.0 8 -- Stroh’s Lowe Marschalk 18.0 9 12 Wendy’s Backer Spielvogel Bates 83.5 10 13 Levi’s Foote, Cone & Belding 37.4 11 18 Partnership for a Several agencies 82.5 Drug-Free America 12 -- AT&T; NW Ayer, Ogilvy & Mather 216.1 13 -- Johnson’s Baby Lintas 10.0 Shampoo 14 -- Huggies Ogilvy & Mather 22.7 15 6 Bartles & Jaymes Crawford/Wu Films 26.2 16 -- 7-Up Leo Burnett 38.5 17 9 DuPont Stainmaster BBDO 29.0 18 11 Jell-O Young & Rubicam 30.0 19 -- Nike Wieden & Kennedy 16.7 20 -- Michelin DDB/Needham 11.8 Source: Video Storyboard and Arbitron
