Microsite.com

What a difference a year makes.

In March 2007, Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, unveiled its first campaign called “Lovemarks” for its new client JC Penney. The TV spots projected a powerful, emotional imagery of the retailer. Even though I have no idea how the ads related to any selling proposition, they were creatively brilliant.

Eight months later, the agency raised the emotional bar with “Aviator.” A commercial about a little red-haired girl building a rocket ship to visit the North Pole, set to the John Lennon song “Real Love.”

The postings on YouTube heaped impressive praise on the effort: “Love this commercial”… “this is totally inspiring..!! great!”… “Puts a lump in my throat. The little girl looks a lot like my daughter a few years ago. The John Lennon song was a perfect match.” (More on the YouTube comments in a minute.)

Flash forward one year.

On July 18, JC Penney kicked off its back-to-school season with an integrated marketing campaign showing teens how they can (quoting from the press release) ““get that look’ with an array of exciting new Juniors and Young Men’s lifestyle brands that deliver style and quality at a smart price… The campaign includes everything from ads to online games and text messaging to engage teens in bringing their own sense of style to life.”

Following on the heels of “Lovemarks” and “Aviator,” I could only imagine how creative the agency could get targeting teens and pushing the boundaries of the online world.

Um. Apparently, the agency couldn’t imagine it quite the same the way I was hoping they would.

In a world of PS3, Web 2.0, and Heath Ledger’s Joker, the creatives at Saatchi & Saatchi decided to base the entire back-to-school concept on the 1980s classic high school anti-authority movie, “The Breakfast Club.” (The press release says the movie is making a resurgence among today’s teens.) Actually, I’m a bit inaccurate when I say the concept was based on the movie. The concept duplicates the movie -- step by exact step.

Except, that is, the agency left out all those pesky rebellious parts, and replaced them with squeaky-clean, corporate-approved characters and actions.

That doesn’t surprise me, of course. I realize there’s gambling in the casino.

I am surprise at what seems to be a complete lack of any original thinking -- from copying the movie without any interesting interpretational twists to the Microsite-by-numbers online effort.

The first 5 seconds of the TV spot says it all. Watch it here.

Just imagine how that creative brainstorming session must have gone: “OK, how does the movie open? Great, let’s copy that. And those cars. Make sure we get those exact cars. You know those iconic dancing clips when they’re all high? Well, nix the getting high part, but copy those dance steps. Yeah. Kids will identify with that. And when they throw away their clothes at the end of the movie? Well, don’t do that. But copy everything else.”

I would have expected a lot more emotional depth and originality from the folks who created “Aviator.”

The Microsite at jcpbrands.com/getthatlook/ features characters mimicking those from the movie, except of course, anything relating to the movie’s rebellious core. No dandruff on the table. Instead, we get the Allison character dancing on a table to a cover of Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” And we, the viewer, get to choose her outfit, then zap Target-like logos in order to keep her rocking and win the obligatory desktop wallpaper and ring tones (standard text message rates apply).

You just know they took out the Microsite erector set and plugged in all the standard items.

Sweepstakes. Check.
Send to a friend. Check.
Save items to a wish list. Check.
Downloadable wallpaper, ring tones, emoticons. Check. Oops, forgot the emoticons. I guess it didn’t come in the box.
Simple-to-play (and make) video-game knockoff. Check. (Pac-Mac? Really?)
Link to iTunes. Check. Hey, for a mere $6, you too can own 6 covers of the same song.

Maybe I don’t get it. I am but a forty-something who actually enjoyed reliving – and sometimes still quote – the lines and scenes from “The Breakfast Club.”

So how about the target audience? Well, here are the typical quotes from YouTube where the ad is posted:

“this is horrible.”

“i just lost all faith in humanity”

“Fucking worst commercial I have ever seen by far. Best part about this is when it ended.”

“They made ‘Bender’ look like a fag in this commercial, you now what they made every Breakfast Club character look like fags. Not to mention they ruined a perfectly good theme song.”

The quotes go on.

My guess is the campaign and the Microsite will not.