Why Sir David Wouldn’t Like This Tabasco Superbowl Advert
Sir David Ogilvy was a fine copywriter, although he once admitted that he had to work hard in order to create the correct response from his words.
He wrote: “Some copywriters, assuming that the reader will find the product as boring as they do, try to inveigle him into their ads with pictures of babies, beagles and bosoms. This is a mistake. A buyer of flexible pipe for offshore oil rigs is more interested in pipe than anything else in the world. So play it straight.”
In the Tabasco T.V. advert prepared for the American Super Bowl we see the beautiful Mexican Actress Martha Higareda resting in her swim suit on the beach. A close up reveals that the bikini’s motif is the Tabasco trade mark. Slowly she rises, walks into the beach house and using a lobster-claw scoops up some chilli dip from a bowl into which she has dropped a few specks of Tabasco.
But Martha doesn’t suggestively suck the dip from the claw before admiring herself in a full length mirror. Maybe this would be too risque for the Super Bowl aficionados? Perhaps they have forgotten that the fully clothed Jennifer Beals sans Tabasco was making eating lobster sexy as early as 1983 in the Paramount Film,’Flashdance‘.
At the end of the commercial Martha Higareda takes a peek into her bikini top and then beads you, the viewer, in an ‘I’m a naughty girl kind of way.’ Some people have noticed that her tan under the bra strap is just as dense as on the exposed parts of her body. Is this really naughty in this day and age? I don’t think so especially if you have a body like hers.
The Tabasco commercial is an arousing experience, but isn’t as sexy as Flashdance and it doesn’t persuade me to put this hot chilli product on my meals. I sometimes rerun the commercial just to take another peek at the incredible Martha Higareda, but isn’t the purpose of this commercial is to sell pepper sauce, rather than simply to add cyber-spice to my life.
The Tabasco Commercial is available for viewing here.
Jennifer Beals Enjoys Her Lobster
In The 1983 Classic ‘Flashdance’.
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