Can't top this.

Today's post is one hundred eighty degrees from the red hot rant published on Tuesday. Think of it as the rhetorical bookend to close out this holiday-shortened week.

I was completely unaware of this Halo Top campaign until it was forwarded to me by my friend and colleague, the great Jean Robaire.

We have a habit of tossing internet oddities back and forth via our smartphones. Most are sophomoric, some are puerile, and none merit more than a minute's thought.

But last week, he sent me a compilation video clip of a campaign done for Halo Top Ice Cream.

The work deserves mention on several counts.

It smartly carves out a unique positioning for the brand. One that stands out on its own. And is easily understood in an elevator pitch.

Halo Top, it's ice cream for adults.

If you've read this blog anytime in the last ten years you know what little regard I have for planners and strategerists. They pump out such hooey. And with such prodigiousness, it's often hard to stomach. I once had the audacity to question a planner's work (funny how they have no problem questioning ours) only to be met with...

"Well not every strategy can be as brilliant and singleminded as Got Milk, you know."

"Why not?" I replied. 

Followed quickly by a summoning from the folks in HR.

But I digress. Sincere kudos to the team, and the client, for bravely going where no ice cream has gone before. And committing to the, dare I say it, disruption.

Even more impressive, was how the creative team took this positioning and, pardon the strained pun, milked it for all it was worth.



So dark.
So negative.
So deliciously nihilistic.

If ever there was a campaign that I wish I had in my portfolio this would be it.

Mind you, I've written material as brutally honest, deadpan and fatalistic as this before. But truth be told I've never managed to squeeze it past middle management.

Topping it all off, another strained pun, is the pitch perfect execution of the pitch perfect script of the pitch perfect positioning. Each story is told efficiently in 3-4 set ups. No fancy camera angles. No special effects. No quick cuts.

It is, as my friend Claudia would say, good straightforward muscular advertising.

If I were to fault anyone here, it would be the media department. This campaign broke two months ago. I have never seen or heard of it. If I had my druthers, and by now it should be apparent I never do, I would have run 3 of the commercials throughout the Super Bowl.

And the next day, millions of men, depressed by the end of the football season, would be parked in their barcaloungers scarfing up the Halo Top by the pint load.

The incumbent weight gain would be worthy grist for the mill for next phase of the campaign.