I was in movie theatre yesterday. During the commercials before the movie (Fading Gigolo, awesome movie btw!), I experienced a rare phenomenon. There was genuine positive audience reaction for one of the ads:
Whole audience bursted in laughter.
Yes, the ad is stupid, but that is the whole point.
Many times the stupid is enough.
For low-involvement FMCG products you seldom need a groundbreaking insight, complicated strategy or even grandiose big idea. Having funny characters and some Human League gets you far.
Chips Ahoy could fall into the trap of usual ad bullshit how eating chocolate cookies unleashes your potential and allows you to experience the world to the fullest. Or other similar crap that delusional brand managers and their equally clueless agencies come up with.
You eat chocolate cookies and you get fat.
That is the truth, so you have to switch the focus to the fact that eating things that make you fat is fun. Cookie characters singing British new wave are fun. People like fun. Make fun advertising. Advertising is no rocket science.
On top of all this the ad is already over seven years old but it felt completely timeless for me. This underlines also the point that too often brands change their direction too often.
Find effective way to communicate and stick with it.
For cookie brand, you cannot really get better than singing cookies cruising on cabriolet and getting eaten in the process.
Stand-Up Strategy 