the big and long malice in Kraft’s “Let’s get zesty” ads

kraft released these ads for their salad dressing, Zesty Italian  where they took the meaning of “zesty” to another level. it got a lot of notice, many were complaints on what they were trying to do in the ad – selling salad dressing on the basis of a hunk removing his shirt while making the salad.

i don’t know if women will be encouraged to buy the Zesty Italian dressing based on seeing a hunk with great abs using it in a TV ad, but i thought they went too far, in fact there is obvious malice in the print ad version (above) of the TV ad. the TV was straightforward on using sex to sell salad dressing, but the print ad takes that to a higher level with using the body part covered by the picnic cloth in the print ad.

to make it more obvious, here is the print ad that emphasizes the emphasis made in the ad on the body part.

the tiny piece of picnic cloth strategically covering  what can’t be shown in the print ad is actually shaped to give an illusion of what is by implication not tiny under the piece of cloth. it appears they put a giant cucumber under the cloth, pointing to the left. that was obviously intentional. picnic cloths do not normally behave that way, like forming the shape of long and big cucumber, when placed on something. the rest of the picnic cloth are behaving naturally in the print ad, except that part.

i think that part of the picnic cloth was done digitally, a good photoshop effort. the shape is too perfect and the shadows on some red parts are unnaturally darker than the others and in most given the light source should not be darker than the others.

with the intentional art design, it is obvious the ad campaign is meant to use malice as a selling point for the salad dressing.

~~mindscape landmark~~

Kraft Salad Dressing Ad Gets Best Present Ever: A Slap From One Million Moms
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/kraft-salad-dressing-ad-gets-best-present-ever-slap-one-million-moms-150412