“If I am a brand or I am a product, I’m really not going to go near the election. “This is really pretty incendiary stuff,” Iyengar said. Some think election-themed ads are too risky in such a polarized political environment, as brands could easily alienate Democrats or Republicans if they depict their product as somehow aligned with a certain party. The company declined to reveal specific sales figures or how much was spent on the campaign, other than to say there was an increase in sales and foot traffic at Boston-area locations in the weeks after the ads aired. When the ads ran in Massachusetts ahead of the state’s March 1 primary, people stopped Berkowitz on the street to ask if he was really making a run for the presidency, he said. The agency said the ads yielded the best consumer feedback of any Legal Sea Foods campaign. In all, Legal Sea Foods received about 300 calls and messages from consumers about the campaign-almost 75% of which were positive in nature, according to New York-based DeVito/Verdi ad agency, which made the commercials. The “rainbow trout” ad sparked criticism from a group that interpreted it as homophobic, and also earned praise from an LGBT publication that wanted to print it, Berkowitz said. He considers it a success, pointing to both positive and negative feedback from people across the political spectrum.
“Empathy with consumers over the penetration-or some would say pummeling-of political messages always makes people feel good about that brand because if you’re mocking it, it says you get me, ‘I feel your pain.’ If you can do it smartly with a smile and say, ‘we’re suffering along with you,’ or ‘we get you,’ that’s never a negative.”īerkowitz said he knew some people would be offended by the ad campaign, but his goal was to offer a clever reference to the presidential election while remaining politically ambiguous. “It doesn’t come without peril, but done well, the upside makes them relevant and clever and part of the conversation,” Hatch said. While consumer product ads mimicking political ads is not a new practice, Hatch said the fierce level of competition this election season has inspired more brands than usual to give their ads a political twist. “These are all themes that are playing out in a very visceral way on our political stage, but are looking to capture their share of that conversation to be relevant and cool and garner their part of the attention to this cultural phenomenon,” said Cary Hatch, CEO of the ad agency MDB Communications.
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