Barbara Lippert's Critique: A Real Eye-Opener

Remember that classic scene in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, in which Malcolm McDowell is tied down to a chair and forced to watch his own violence on a movie loop?The creepiest (and most painful) part was that his eyelids were clamped open, while a technician lubricated his bulging pupils with drops.The latest work for Sprite, the first from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami, is just like that, except for the eye clamp part. And the bulging pupils. And the guy. And the violence. But the drops—we have the drops!Let's say that if Kubrick had made selling the redesigned Sprite (with the resurrected lymon) his life's work, the result might look something like this clever and visually inventive subLYMONal campaign.An art director's dream, the 360-degree campaign is all about embedding the lymon, that '70s-ish hybrid, within four 30-second commercials and a cinema spot. Not only does the spot stand up to repeated viewings, but it also openly states, in the first frame, that it is "DVR ready." Those who rewind on their DVRs can then find buried clues that will allow them to "unlock" special content and prizes on the Web site. (Sublymonal.com was developed by AKQA, San Francisco.)"Welcome to 'SubLYMONal' advertising," a female voice in a robotic register announces in the spots. "For best results, do not blink."One spot opens with a guy lying on a table in a futuristic spa, his body and head wrapped in some sort of Saran. In place of the usual cucumber slices, his left eye is covered with a slice of lime, and his right sits underneath a slice of lemon. (Here's citrus in your eye!) A female technician rolls some odd looking machinery over his face: it's an elaborate hookup that dispenses drops from the redesigned Sprite can directly onto the guy's tongue. So tangy is it that the lemon pops right off his eye, revealing an open socket with a tiny mouth with teeth.Indeed, elements of Little Shop of Horrors, Max Headroom, Brazil and the The Manchurian Candidate abound, both in the overall stories and the flashes of sublimation. In the interruptions, much of the action involves watching lemon and lime (or lyme) brought together and smooshed (I believe that's the correct forensic term.)In a particularly clever dream-like sequence, a sumo wrestler, with acres of his capacious flesh painted green, runs in the forest, toward a collision with a similarly painted yellow sumo.Actually, a guy in a ruffled prom tuxedo circa 1988, who just happens to be sitting there, gets his head crushed between their citrus-colored chests.In another scenario, two original VW bugs from the 1960s, one yellow, one green, crash into each other. (Is this in itself a subliminal ad for the agency's VW "crash" commercial? To paraphrase Lily Tomlin on cynicism, no matter how subliminal you get, you can't keep up.)Ironically, within the whole urban legend of subliminal advertising, there was a time in the 1950s when it was believed that companies like, um, Coca-Cola ran images, invisible to the conscious eye, during the show at movie theaters, to spur sudden soda-lust.So this campaign takes the 1950s notion of subliminal advertising, combines it with some old Sprite brand genetics, and turns the whole thing on its head. And then rinses and lathers: as part of the effort, print ads will offer a "sublymononal cranial scrub" along with a packet of lymon shampoo. I'm not sure if the image of head washing translates into the concept of a delicious drink. But in terms of fun—and engagement—the campaign is a real eyeball opener, for sure.Barbara Lippert is an 'Adweek' columnist.

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Barbara Lippert's Critique: A Real Eye-Opener

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert