This commercial is for the Norwegian potato chip company KIMs. It’s one of my all-time favourites because I find it extremely funny. The protagonist is putting the chips he just bought in a plastic bag and he makes sure to check the receipt before he takes the bag without looking at it. When he comes home he asks his friend if something has happened in the game he’s watching and he says no. Then he discovers that he had grabbed the wrong bag in the store because it was full of vegetables. The bag belonged to the gay couple that were packing their bag next to the protagonist in the store. After that, he tells his friend that he got the wrong bag. The reaction of his friend as well as the gay couple is priceless! The ad ends by saying without KIMs, there is no satisfaction.
This ad is targeting men between 18-45 years old that loves to watch sport on TV with their friends on the weekend. In Norway, it’s very common to gather to watch English Premier League soccer and/or the Norwegian Tippeligaen soccer on the weekend. Unlike the NHL, normal league games in soccer doesn’t ofter occur in the middle of the week. Norway has a small population, but this ad targets people in urban areas more than rural areas where they don’t have they same access to stores on Sundays (because stores are closed in Norway on Sundays except for a few places). On the other hand, this as doesn’t try to target people with very healthy lifestyles, such as the homosexuals featured in the ad. They have succeeded to create a very silly and false, but funny image of homosexuals and they are the the two that makes this ad different from other ads for similar products I have seen before. This ad is between 5 to 8 years old.
How do you think humour helps to make consumers feel more attached to a brand? Do you think the image they portrayed of homosexuals would ever be perceived as offensive?
The market share for KIMs potato chips went up around the same time as this ad was released. KIMs focused a lot on humour compared to its main competitor, Maarud. I’m not saying that the funny ads are the reason why KIMs did better than Maarud in this time period; however, there might be a connection. Not many people reacted to how the homosexuals were portrayed, but I know this was around the same time when the TV show “Homsepatruljen”, which is the Norwegian version of Queer Eye, was very popular in Norway, so that can be a reason why it wasn’t seen as more controversial at that time; on the other hand, I think people would react more if a similar ad was released in Norway today.