Can you tell a funny story about concrete in 10 seconds?
Radio is a difficult medium for which to write ad copy. (Trust me, I have tried.) You have no visuals to fall back on. All you have are words and sound to create a story in the theater of the listener’s mind.
Quikrete is known for its fast-setting concrete. Imagine trying to tell a fun story about that in a :10 radio ad.
Well, they did it. The brand’s “Long Story Short” campaign from Fitzgerald & CO takes well-known stories and distills them to a few seconds in ways that are utterly ridiculous, and then caps it off with a tough-sounding guy with an East Coast accent barking, “Long story short. Quikrete. Fast setting concrete,” as a sack of Quikrete slams to the floor in the background.
The ads are hilarious (depending on your perspective) or borderline offensive (depending on your perspective). The Donner Party, Hitler, teen pregnancy, skin cancer, and the 2016 US Presidential election all make appearances.
Unfortunately, I can’t find the whole campaign in one place but here are some links where you can hear various spots.
- From the Radio Mercury Awards
- From the Communication Arts website
- A few more from the site of one of the creatives behind the campaign
- And a few more from another of the creatives behind the campaign
“Long Story Short” won Best Campaign at the Radio Mercury Awards and a Bronze Clio Award, among others. The ads work because they feature recurring production elements and also bring a differentiating product attribute to life in a compelling way. Plus, they’re memorable and funny.
There isn’t much in the ads about the emotional payoff a consumer will experience as a result of using Quikrete – you have to co-create that – but there is certainly an emotional connection to the ads themselves, which broke through in a medium where breakthrough is not easy.
Writer, Graphic Designer and lettering artist. SABR Baseball author.
4 年Once I hired a cement contractor. My uncle worked for a bank who used them and recommended them highly. A man in his fifties arrived at my house with two younger men. He dragged on a huge cigar. “These are my two helpers, ‘Half-dead’ and ‘Completely Dead’ he told me in Italian. They did the most beautiful work even making control joints in perfect spots.Decades later, long after I sold that house and moved on, I happened to be passing by the house so I got out to check the cement work. It was still perfect.