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The inner Doughboy | page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
I asked the spokesman if he could at least describe to me what he considered to be Ronald's true nature. "We're on background, right?" he said. "Because I'd be more comfortable doing this on a background basis." When I assured him we were, there was a long pause. "OK," the spokesman finally said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "He is kids' fun magical friend." Like tiny children babbling happily to their dolls, the brand-builders have constructed entire worlds around their cherished characters. In this vast delusional matrix, no detail is overlooked. Spokescharacters have friends, enemies, weaponry, magic lozenges and other paraphernalia. And they inhabit specific ecological niches: Just as the Green Giant can never leave his valley, Froot Loops' Toucan Sam can never leave his animated jungle. And as for Lucky the Leprechaun leaving the forest -- forget about it. I've already asked Mark Delahanty, director of leprechaun equity at General Mills, and the answer is definitely no. "You won't find him in a kid's kitchen, sitting down eating breakfast," he told me. "Look for Lucky to always be in a fairy-tale type setting." Why? I wondered. "Because he's a leprechaun," Delahanty barked. "He lives in the forest. That's where you'll see him. That's where you'll find him." One can't help but be impressed by the sheer level of thought that has gone into the construction of these characters' inner worlds. The strategy, as we say in ad-land, goes very far down the funnel. It's a little disconcerting to discover, after reading marketing documents from Kellogg's, that Snap! Crackle! and Pop! -- the Rice Krispies elves -- have more richly developed inner lives than several of my own friends. From elf dossiers, we learn that Snap! is the oldest and the wisest, "the leader and problem solver" of the bunch. Pop! is the "irrepressible child ... usually the one who pulls gags and gets the 'last word‚ in the form of a pun.'" Crackle! is that perennially misunderstood "middle child ... [who's] never quite sure of himself, but tries to keep order between the other two.'" (Crackle! won't be appearing in commercials for a few months, while he sorts out some issues.) The M&M characters, after months of therapy at Altschul's spokescharacter infirmary, have also emerged as fully integrated characters, with their own proprietary bundles of qualms and neuroses. "Five years ago, when we started our process, the M&M characters were just a mnemonic device," Altschul told me. "Recognition was a mile wide and half an inch deep. Everyone knew who they were. And nobody much cared." Altschul, along with M&M/Mars' advertising agency, BBDO New York, went immediately to work. "When we're trying to tell stories, we look for sources of conflict," a BBDO account director told me. "In the case of the M&Ms, there were three deep pools of potential conflict. One is that they're a duo, with clashing personalities. So there's a certain amount of conflict between them. No. 2, they're small. They're 2-and-a-half-feet tall, slightly clumsy, hard-shelled characters trying to maneuver in a world of humans. No. 3, they are candy-covered chocolates in constant danger of being eaten. Out of these sources of conflict, we have written and produced over 60 spots. And there isn't a dud in the lot." When it came to the development of the M&Ms' individual personalities, the parent company got a bit queasy. "You can imagine that M&M/Mars, being much like lots of other packaged goods companies, does not think of its flagship brand as dopey, or small-minded, or conniving," Altschul chuckles. But Altschul, along with BBDO creative directors Susan Credle and Steve Rutter, were bent on changing that. They immediately set about transforming each M&M from a "generic icon" to a contingent, selfish individual. "The red M&M -- he's the calculating one," Altschul explains. "A little bit small-minded, a little ambitious and a little full of himself. Yellow is goodhearted, but a bit slow on the uptake. Blue is a little closer to a Woody Allen in terms of attitude. A little more wry, a little more understated. Occasionally a bit sarcastic." Altschul stresses that selling this psychodrama to the parent company was no easy task. They had always envisioned the M&Ms as amiable, nonthreatening, helpless, happy, sunshine-spreading. Now, here they were, turning out to be hostile, provocative, spiteful, accusatory, unreasonable, willful. "We don't focus on pleasing the brand managers," Altschul shrugs. "It's easy enough to create characters that would warm the heart of a brand manager. Just create a little shill in tennis shoes who spouts his brand strategy on the air, and doesn't get paid residuals. That's not what we're focused on. We are focused on the emotional connection with the consumer."
Part 2: Mr. Peanut's inner strength, and why heads rolled when Ronald McDonald (briefly) became a barfly.
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