How Did This (Ad) Get Made?

I work in advertising and enjoy the process of writing, creating, and producing ads. Mine are primarily audio, but I’ve been part of creating, shooting, or watching video ads get made.

So I wonder …how did this ad get made? 

Seems charming enough. A young mother rocking her baby to sleep, or trying to keep her baby asleep. We’ve all been there. Long gone are the days of singing songs like “Rock-a-Bye Baby” or “Lullaby and Good Night.” I get that. I used to sing my kids to sleep every night and my go-to song was Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” because it’s one of the few songs where I know every word and it has a sort of nice message … two nerds singing, “I know I’m yours …I know you’re mine …and that’s for all time.” It always felt like it had some good lyrics even for a kid at bedtime. I love you for all time.

I sang “Rainbow Connection” because I could sing most of the notes (Jim Henson didn’t have range).

I share that because I love the premise of this commercial but the song choice, ahem, means someone at the ad agency or the client level recognizes the song but has really never listened to the lyrics. Somewhere there’s some ad copy writers in their late 20s laughing hysterically behind their laptop because their manager and the marketing people at Cherry Pepsi said, “oh, that’s cute …it’s got a baby …a young couple in love dealing with life (or lack of a life) after a new born baby enters the picture and for a brief moment, probably dead tired every moment of the day because they baby keeps them up at night, they remember a fun song they used to dance to at the club when they were dating, engaged, and before a baby entered the picture.”

It could’ve been any peppy, fun song. Perhaps Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” or LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It” if you want to be a little risque. If you just want something fun and “dancy” from 2003, they could’ve gone with Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love” or Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body.”  Heck, Beyonce actually had a song called “Baby Boy” from that same year. Each song is slightly “adult”, but works as something that might not be a traditional lullaby, but fun.

This commercial works if you don’t know anything else about Li’l Jon’s song “Get Low”.  In fact, in this commercial, the words, “to the windoooooooow! To the wall!” are about the only words in that song that would pass network censors and make this spot something they can air.

Because this is a family Blog (meaning people in my family read this) I won’t actually type the lyrics that come before or after the words, “to the window to the wall” but trust me when I say it has me scratching my head. How did this ad get made? Who is it for? How does it sell Cherry Pepsi? A mass produced product like Cherry Pepsi doesn’t need to be treated like Ozempic or a pharmaceutical ad, and this ad would work if it just picked another song.

I can see a Grandma and Grandpa in their 60s or 70s watching this commercial, seeing the baby, and Grandma calling Grandpa into the room, “oh, Charles …look at this ad …I love this ad. It reminds me of our grand baby and our son and his wife and, oh, isn’t it adorable.”

Because they don’t know this Li’l Jon song.

The best commercials think of everything. And this commercial thought of almost everything. Baby. Young couple. Endless chores (Dad doing dishes). Longing for nights out with friends and dancing. Tired. Hey …a caffeinated Cherry Pepsi beverage. Give me some of that. Oh, and finally …a fun throwback song that connects with someone who had fun nights out in 2003 and is probably 40ish. That would be the nostalgia. Maybe a song they danced to at their friend’s weddings.

If I had a think tank, in fact, I could probably find a half-dozen songs that incorporate a sound like, “shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhh” which is what, I’m guessing, reminded this Pepsi-drinking new-mom into remembering “Get Low”. 

“Get Low” doesn’t have a “shhhhh, shhhhh” sound. 

But not this song. This ad gets it about 95% right, but somewhere, someone is laughing and waiting every day to get called into the boss’s office and be asked, um, did you know what that song was about when you pitched it to Pepsi? Pepsi called and demanded we pull it immediately. 

Gulp. But for now, I’ll laugh, too, whenever I see it.