Aero skate video more pooey than original

After Snickers shamelessly stole a great idea from Spike Jonez and made it into a crap ad, Aero have joined the party and made an ad that actually reminds me of crap.

What is it with advertisers and skateboards lately? Don’t they know skating past its zenith in the 80s with Michael J Fox in Back to the Future? Yeah the Dogtown revival got some interest in the mainstream but that was 8 years ago.

Anyway, a bit of backstory first.

Last year a great video was released of Matt Beach skating through a bowl full of balloons. It’s an awesome video, you can see him gain confidence and start trying cooler tricks (or whatever the skate lingo is for it) as he realises he’s not going to come off. I like when he disappears into the bubbles and doesn’t come back up again after he stacks.

A really great video - so great that it inspired Aero’s new campaign for “Feel the Bubbles” - where a skater rides through brown balloons, much like the original video.

My problem with this ad is not so much that they ripped off the idea, but the fact that the brown balloons look very faecal. It’s a very fine line with chocolate advertising and this one really pushes the pooey angle. Look at all that poo fly out of the skate bowl! It’s following him everywhere.

They couldn’t have made the Aero look less inviting if they’d tried. I can’t think of anything I want less than a chocolate bar after viewing this ad. Again (as with the Snickers ad), who are they trying to target here? Skaters are all mad because they’ve stolen “their” ideas to sell chocolate, so they’re not the target audience. And again, skating is so niche that non-skaters wouldn’t even remember or notice this ad (except for the flying poo).

Couldn’t they at least have used this concept for the Mint Aero, where they could have used green balloons? Or maybe lent the concept to a laxative brand?

I think I’m going to leave snickers and aero to it and stick with skittles.

This post is tagged under: Marketing