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:
Raisin Bran cereal

The Promotions:

The Pitch:
Say nothing, hear nothing, just nod when people talk to you – that’s how William Keith Kellogg succeeded in business.

Continuity in commercials is a rare thing. Oh, sure, if a particular spokesperson goes over well, they’ll be brought back for more and more ads. But actually having a storyline run through a series of commercials is enough of a novelty, these “Johnson” ads really stand out.

The core pitch isn’t that strong – I don’t think “makes a really loud sound when you chew it” is something most people look for in a cereal. But by stretching their joke out into an ongoing story, they succeed in a different way, by linking Raisin Bran with wish fulfillment for corporate wage slaves.

If you watch the first ad in isolation, you won’t necessarily think that Raisin Bran induced deafness saved Johnson’s job – just because you don’t hear your boss say “You’re fired” doesn’t mean you’re not still fired, right? But as the story continues, we see that, no, as long as the boss can’t communicate the sacking, not with the crunch-crunch of cereal drowning them out, then the sacking can’t happen, and Johnson remains. Then we see how Johnson’s oblivious reactions while chawing on Raisin Bran win over the boss’s boss, and Johnson just keeps failing upwards. All while apparently doing nothing at the office but eat cereal all day.

It feels like something out of Office Space, the dream of being the biggest slacker in the office and being rewarded for it rather than punished. People might not care how loud their cereal is, but once you associate it with living that dream, you’ll have some customers hooked.