Repeat offenders

The advertising strategy for Totino's Pizza Rolls is kind of weird, right? They're basically portrayed as a product that kids are totally obsessed with. Yet would such a product need to advertise? And assuming their claims to be true and bearing in mind that I saw the following ad appearing on the evening news just tonight, you kind of wonder why parents would be excited to buy their kids some snack food that isn't especially healthy and on which they have a disturbing fixation.



Who thought this was a good idea?

Girl 1: "There's nothing we love more than listening to our favorite songs!"
Girl 2: [overlapping] "There's nothing we love more than listening to our favorite songs!"
Girl 1: "But our favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls!"
Girl 2: "But our favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls!"

And then we get one line of the most wimpy-sounding version of "Kids in America" ever, just for good measure.

This commercial is conceptual crib death. The idea never had any chance of not being annoying - I'm guessing if you asked most parents of pre-teens they would tell you that trying to talk to a kid who has music blasting in her headphones is one of the most aggravating experiences on earth. So what does Totino's do? They try to sell you their product by recreating an impossibly obnoxious experience. As if that weren't enough, there's the awful repetition, which only points up the fact that neither of the girls is listening to anything going on around them. I suppose kids could find this funny, but if your target market is middle schoolers then you really need to be selling to their parents. And this ad just seems like parent kryptonite.

In this vein, here are some potential future ad concepts for Totino's:

* Kids in the back seat of a car tell us that they love violating each other's personal space and saying "I'm not touching you!" but that their favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls.

* A four-year-old at the mall tells us how he loves to throw himself on the ground and scream if he doesn't get his way, but his favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls.

* A 14-year-old girl halfway out her bedroom window tells us how she loves to sneak out late at night to meet her older boyfriend for some third-base action, but her favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls.

* Through a telephone handset at the visitor's window, Lyle and Erik Menendez tell us that their favorite thing is eating Totino's Pizza Rolls.