You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Denny’s restaurants

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
Isn’t Nannerpuss so cute and joyful? … Yeah, we hate him too.

Some commercials have an odd relationship with the jingles, mascots, and other attention grabbing gimmicks the medium is known for. They see themselves as above that sort of thing … or at least want viewers to see them as above that sort of thing.

Why do we need some animated mascot to sell our product? What we make is so obviously great, presenting it to viewers plain is all the sales pitch we need. Anything else is just a distraction.

An admirable sentiment, but the thing is, those mascots and jingles and gimmicks are used so much because they work. They really do grab viewers’ attention better than just showing a picture of what you have to sell and telling people what it is.

So, on occasion, you’ll get ads like this that try to have their cake and eat it too. They’ll create a weird, colorful, attention grabbing mascot like Nannerpuss here. Then, once that’s drawn in the eyeballs, they shove ol’ Nannerpuss aside and say, no, that’s not what we’re about. Mascots like that are stupid and annoying, and we’re not gonna inflict one on you. I mean, yeah, we just did, but only to make a point that that’s sort of thing we don’t do!