Product: Baby Bel Cheese
Concept: 20-something corporate girl approaches strangers on the street offering them cheese.
Baby Bel cheese seems like a fine cheese product, but one has to wonder what they were thinking with this commercial. The spot begins with our star, a young woman in corporate-y attire that we’ll call Cheese Girl introducing some kind of video experiment where she would be “proving” that Baby Bel Cheese is great on the go.
First Cheese Girl is seen approaching another woman and offering her cheese. Walking alongside her, she speaks to the cheese-eating woman as if she were a handicapped child – we’re walking, we’re eating… Cheese Girl next approaches a pair of ladies and does the walk ‘n cheese routine, but this time stops short and the other two ladies continue walking. At this point Cheese Girl seems sad – noting “and you guys just keep on walkin'” what was Cheese Girl thinking at this point? Did she think her new cheese eating comrades were her friends? The whole point of the ad is to show how you can eat and run, why would Cheese Girl suddenly be offended at the product working as intended?
The most baffling part of the commercial is the end, as the third stranger doesn’t even want cheese or anything to do with Cheese Girl. Having already failed to get him to try Baby Bel Cheese, Cheese Girl proceeds to attempt a high five with a balding businessman. He walks right by her, and feeling shunned, she sheepishly blurts out “awesome”. What was she expecting there? She was hocking cheese on the sidewalk to absolute strangers – and he refused the cheese. Was she upset he refused the cheese and wanted to stick it to him with some kind of high five trickery? What did she think happened in their exchange that would warrant a high five? I mean the guy 100% ignored her pitch for cheese, the whole entire point of her sidewalk project.
Perhaps being unable to get the businessman to eat her cheese made her finally give up on the documentary or whatever she introduced to begin the commercial, and she decided to mock her own project. It’s really unclear.
