Cheers and Jeers

Somewhere, a lumberjack is crying. Or is he rolling up his big red buffalo-plaid sleeves, picking up his ax and scratching his head underneath his trapper hat?I can relate to the scratching part. "Cheer Factory," the holiday TV and online ads from the Gap, leave me cheering for the mute button. Initially, they're sort of visually interestin -- we've never seen such a collection of puffer-vested, hoodied, waffle-knitted, earflapped, skinny-jeaned and high-heel-booted cheerleaders jumping around and chanting in unison before. That said, this is a campaign that should definitely be seen and not heard.The print is great. I love the human peace sign, and nothing is cuter than a bunch of Gap babies in miniature trapper hats (with bunny ears). But the TV stuff exists in a weird limbo, somewhere between real and fake, with Adirondack-chalet style meeting CGI. I kept wanting the cheer squad to spell out something letter by letter with their bodies, or fall into an elaborate Busby Berkeley number, with the whole troupe turning into a giant scarf or a reindeer. (There is a snowflake in the print that's quite beautiful.) They never quite get there, though the choreography isn't the problem.These kids are obviously first-class gymnasts and dancers, and the movements are nicely executed, although one of the TV spots ends with a thud that sounds painful. (A woman jumps on a guy who's sailing across the floor and tries to ride him like a skateboard. She goes splat, like someone from America's Funniest Home Videos for overlayered models.) But again, what I don't get is a) are the ads supposed to make fun of cringe-worthy cheers, or b) do the creators think these lame rhymes are actually fresh and clever?"Cook, cook, that turkey!/And pray it's not like jerky!" That rhyme was considered so outstanding that it's repeated in more than one cheer.Which reminds me. This is hardly the first ad campaign to use cheerleaders. Hillside Farms has a stake in the territory. And at least with "Go meat!" we know it's a joke (and an original and funny one, to boot).Gap took a hiatus from holiday TV ads last year. And this new work, the first from Crispin Porter + Bogusky (which created the clever "Modelquins" campaign for Old Navy), would seem like a timely return, thanks to the sudden popularity of Glee, the Fox musical that features chorus geeks who emote their hearts out.More than Glee, however, it reminds me of the Saturday Night Live skits from the 1990s with Craig and Arianna (Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri) as the Spartans, an outcast cheer squad kept away from games but famous for their "herkie jumps" and given to dazzlingly inappropriate cheers like, "Butt, butt, butt, butt/Butt, butt, butt, butt UGLY!/You're butt ugly!"Arianna even had a holiday cheer involving a hooker with no teeth who killed her husband "with a Christmas wreath."So, I guess I'm programmed for inappropriate cheers. But the Gap ones are not funny enough to be send-ups and not clever enough to energize an audience. They just feel sort of derivative of every "Christmakwanzakah" campaign that's been around for the past five years.My sympathy goes out to the Gap for having to fight a boycott by the American Family Association, a Christian group that's offended by lines like, "Go Christmas, go Hanukkah, go Kwanzaa, go solstice." While I don't agree with anything they're complaining about (I'm all for supporting the solstice), I do agree with the AFA spokesperson when he said, "What they did was almost make a joke of it."I understand that the high-energy movement and sound in white space hark back to any number of great Gap ads past, like the stellar "Khaki Swing." Surprising and exuberant, that spot featured classic big-band music and khaki-clad dancers reviving a great old American art form, the swing dance. At the same time, it showed how Gap clothing democratized the fashion industry.By contrast, this new stuff doesn't really stand for anything except getting the Paul Bunyon-esque seasonal merchandise on the backs of the dancers. It's more of a single execution than a campaign, even if it includes a Web site where you can send personalized cheers and get a 20-percent-off coupon (though it wasn't working when I tried). Along with the print, there are also events involving a touring cheering and drumming squad, as well as a Facebook presence.At this point in its existence as a brand, Gap should stand for something more, both in its retail offerings and its ads, than lurching from season to season with one-offs. Still, I'm pretty sure that no matter what, the buffalo-plaid trapper hat will fly.

Brand Marketing

Cheers and Jeers

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert