Product design in the hands of creatives? Hilarity ensues

In a previous post I wrote about how agencies should keep their eye on the ball and realize that everything they do should be geared towards developing great ideas that grow the client’s business.

The post stemmed from a quote about that more or less said “if the product isn’t good enough, we should help the client in creating a better product” – which I thought was bogus.

Well, looking through Publilog.com (a good Spanish language blog on advertising, by the way), I came across a very entertaining case study for BGH Microwaves in Argentina:

Faced with a request from a client to make an ad for a boring product with no differentiation, the creatives at Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi took it upon themselves to first “improve” the product, and then produce some very kitschy-licious ads!And yes, at first view this would seem to contradict my earlier post, because the agency got involved in product development. But remember…it’s ok to do it as long as this is done in service of facilitating those great creative ideas. Most of the time that’s not going to happen, and you should think carefully if it’s worth your while. But this time it did, and I think the result is fantastic. Enjoy!

Below is the “case video” (skip the translation if you understand Spanish!)

[Updated Dec 4: now with the video in English]

The video above ends with the first ad in the campaign, below are the other two.

The lyrics of the songs are hilarious. One of them talks of “I’m going to cook quiche au fromage, which is just a fancy French word for cheese pie”, and the other “Riiiice Pilaf! Hallelujah, what is pilaf? I don’t know”. You can tell they had a blast making these.

So, what is the lesson here? If you’re going to get mired in the muck of supply chain, product design or whatever else is an extension of your role as a creative agency, try to make sure it all comes back and shows in the work. If it does, everybody wins.

Hope you enjoyed the case above. What do you think? And what IS rice pilaf, anyway?