April 10, 2007

More on Louie, Boston Pizza’s Spokes Squatch

Last week, I posted an article here on Cryptomundo regarding Boston Pizza’s new ad campaign featuring Louie, a Bigfoot/Sasquatch type creature.

Here is another article regarding this Spokes Squatch, along with one of the commercials featuring Louie.

Bigfoot barker for Boston Pizza

Why Richmond-based chain chose a sasquatch as its front man

He’s tall, dark and hungry — and he has joined the zoo that advertisers are building in your brain.

He’s Louie, a meatball-loving sasquatch Boston Pizza International has just hired as its spokesthing.

The seven-foot-tall moptop is the star of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign the Richmond-based chain has launched across Canada.

The use of animal advertisers, which began with the snake Satan hired in the Garden of Eden, has lasted too long to be a mere trend. But one thing’s for sure: Consumers can expect the parade of spokesbeasties to get longer and longer.

“Animals can be provocative. They can be very powerful communicators,” says Tim Silk, a professor at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business. “People are genuinely interested in animals and are, perhaps, even hard-wired to pay attention to their behaviour.”

Animals also have the big advantage of being able to ace a criminal-record check.

Human spokespersons not only cost buckets of money — they damage a brand when they screw up in their personal lives, experts say.

William Shatner’s integrity as a spokesman is as spotless as the Aflac duck’s — that’s part of his enduring appeal for advertisers and consumers. But imagine the fallout if he were found in a car with a white powder said to be Romulan laundry soap and two hookers dressed as Klingon transvestites.

“Celebrities can blow up in your face, especially if they wind up with criminal records,” says Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University.

“A cartoon character is something you have a lot more control over.”

When a company settles on a spokescreature, consumers will have to learn to live with it for a while.

It takes repeated exposure to consistent messages for a consumer to forge a lasting association between a product and an animal, Silk says.

“Confusion or interference can occur if people have difficulty creating an association between an animal and a message,” Silk says.

“Because you’re competing for a finite amount of association strength, it becomes difficult.”

One of the biggest challenges in the advertising world is to cut through the “clutter” of competing messages, Meredith says.

It has been estimated an average person commuting to work in a city is exposed to 3,000 to 5,000 advertising messages a day, he says.

“People develop defence mechanisms that screen out a lot of that stuff,” he says.

“How do I get through to you? How do I make you notice me?”

Boston Pizza, which has previously used comedian Howie Mandel and actor John Ratzenberger as spokesmen, decided a sasquatch was the answer.

There was a slight challenge, however, for the pizza chain and DDB Canada, its advertising agency.

Companies ranging from Kokanee beer to Cingular Wireless have already enlisted bigfeet as mascots.

Daryl Gardiner, associate creative director in DDB Canada’s Vancouver office and the brains behind Louie, says earlier sasquatches have been portrayed as elusive and mysterious.

Louie, he says, is different: He speaks, has rough-hewn charm and his character will develop as the advertising effort progresses.

He’s disarming enough he won’t polarize viewers into those who love him and those who can’t stand him — as often happens with celebrity spokespersons, Gardiner says.

DDB considered two other spokescharacters for Boston Pizza — a robot and a fictional athlete –but abandoned both of those concepts in favour of a legendary critter who is, psychologically, a blank slate.

“People assume he knows nothing about the world around him,” Gardiner says.

“For Boston Pizza, that becomes a good device to convey a lot of tactical information in an entertaining way.”

Boston Pizza launched Louie in print and television spots last month. Joanne Forrester, the company’s vice-president of marketing, says the Louie campaign will cost $14 million to $17 million.

B.C.’s John DeSantis, a six-foot 11-inch actor whose resume includes a stint as Lurch in television’s The New Addams Family, was cast as Louie.

Whether Louie, who looks like a Wookie-Neanderthal cross, can spark a rush to Boston Pizza’s 272 Canadian locations remains to be seen.

UBC’s Silk says the public often perceives advertisers as calculating, highly methodical machines that know how to choose spokescreatures that will push consumers’ buttons.

“That’s not always the case. A lot of these decisions are made fairly quickly and they don’t necessarily have a lot of forethought,” he says.

“An idea may be good, but it may not be executed well, and all we see in public is the execution.”Paul Luke
The Vancouver Province

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