Back in September, our colleague Tim Nudd noted that Barton F. Graf’s first campaign for Bai Drinks made no sense.
But that was the whole point. The agency and its client continued along that line with its first Super Bowl ad, which aired last night as an extension of a campaign titled, “None of This Makes Sense.”
On a conceptual level, it has something in common with BBDO’s puppymonkeybaby. But in the case of the SB ad, the list of things that don’t belong together is limited to two: demographically confusing bros and Mitt Romney-style dancing horses, which parallel the client’s unbelievable healthy-and-delicious twosome.
Here’s a shorter variation on that theme, which went live a few days before the Super Bowl.
If you’ve yet to satiate your desire for absurdity, here’s a music video that may have been a Tim and Eric sketch in a previous life.
(El Guapo was a real band on Ian MacKaye’s label Dischord that’s now called Supersystem. We’ve never really listened to them.)
Was the campaign a surprise hit, as not-quite-predicted by our colleague David Gianatasio? We don’t really know!
We did enjoy the Twitter responses to the work, primarily because a lot of people don’t seem to know the difference between “sponsored posts” and spam.
It’s worth noting that Bai, like pretty much every other brand of food/drink claiming to be offer some sort of super health benefits, was accused of false advertising in a class action suit filed less than two years ago.
Credits
Brand: Bai
Chief Executive Officer/Founder: Ben Weiss
Chief Marketing Officer: Michael Simon
Chief Creative Officer: Chad Portas
Director, Marketing Deliveries: Sharon Chabot
Agency: Barton F. Graf
Chief Creative Officer/Founder: Gerry Graf
CEO: Barney Robinson
Chief Strategy Officer: Laura Janness
Executive Creative Director: Ian Reichenthal
Creative Director: Nick Kaplan
Creative Director: Amanda Clelland
Copywriter: Richard Langhorne
Art Director: Zack Madrigal
Head of Production: Josh Morse
Account Director: Jennifer Richardi
Business Affairs Director: Jennifer Pannent
Head of Project Management: Sara Kastner
Production Company: Arts and Sciences
Director: Matt Aselton
Executive Producer: Marc Marrie
Executive Producer: Mal Ward
Line Producer: Zoe Odlum
Editor: Dave Anderson
Asst: Chris Angel
Producer: Fanny Cruz
EP/Partner: Sila Soyer
VFX: Method
Executive Producer: Angela Lupo
Producer: Brad Wood
Mix: Heard City
Managing Director: Gloria Pitagorsky
Audio Engineer: Evan Mangiamele