#2 Jurassic Crunch

Fighting for their lives against one of the most deadly creatures to ever roam this planet, two unfortunate men find themselves trapped in a kitchen. Their only hope for survival is to stealthily slip away and trap the beasts within the room. This is all well and good until one of them starts munching on some Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut.

As has already been noted, this advertisement uses Goldenberg et al’s (1999) extreme situation template to portray the irresistible deliciousness of the product. However it goes one step further in that the extreme situation used is a recreation of a scene from possibly one of the greatest movies ever made; Jurassic Park. Through the power of association, perceived aspects can be transferred between products in order to give new meaning to a particular product (Pratkanis, 2007). Kellogg’s have taken advantage of this principle by associating their product with the success and popularity of the Jurassic Park franchise in order to gain the same positivity with their product. As Mitchell (1986) demonstrated, attitudes towards brands can be determined by how the associated image (in Mitchell’s case this involved photographs) is perceived.

The association made between products and movies should come as no surprise. If you consider almost every movie you have ever seen, you can guarantee that products were strategically placed in order to attract audiences. Some aren’t even that subtle; consider I-Robot and the explicit reference Will Smith makes to his Converse All-Stars. Bressound and Lehu (2007) demonstrated that people who liked the film or particular director were able to recall more instances of product placement.

Product placement isn’t exactly what Kellogg’s have achieved here, but based on the above findings, they have managed to achieve the next best thing. Jurassic Park is one of the top 20 highest grossing movies of all time (which shows that people like it) and was directed by Mr. Spielberg himself. Although no explicit research has looked into this, it seems likely that had Kellogg’s chosen an awful film to recreate, the association would not be anywhere near as effective.

Check out this video to see just how similar the two scenes are:

Bressound, E., & Lehu, J. (2007). The product placement efficiency as a result of a relationship between a spectator and a movie. The 6^th International Conference on Research in Advertising, 1-9.

Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., & Solomon, S. (1999). The fundamental templates of quality ads. Marketing Science, 18(3), 333-351.

Mitchell. A. (1986). The effect of verbal and visual components of advertisements on brand attitudes and attitude toward the advertisement. Journal of Consumer Research, 13(1), 12-24.

Pratkanis, A. R. (2007). Social influence analysis: An index of tactics. The science of social influence: Advances and future progress, 17-82.

Jamie Hart