Fat Pat points the way for Ask.com
Ask.com’s campaign promoting its new search engine technology to rival Google will reach UK screens later this month, following this week’s launch in the US. So why has it chosen to use the lazy, weight watcher from Little Britain, Fat Pat to promote the site?
The ad uses Fat Pat (Joanne Condon) as the nagging voice asking random questions in a small child’s ear. The sizeable woman, known as the most picked upon member of ‘Fat Fighters’ run by Marjorie Dawes, the over weight fattist leader of the club, is an unlikely face of an international ad campaign.
In the ad the small boy is in school as her questions run through his head. She drapes over the boy like a protective parent, and perhaps this is meant to give a feeling of reassurance to children and parents that it is ok to ask silly questions, however bizarre. And Ask.com is there to help.
Cesar Mascaraque, the Ask European managing director, says that the campaign is aiming to build on the "warmth and trust" the brand has enjoyed in the past. So with its last campaign, created by Fallon, not quite hitting the spot, the brand needs to make this ad its most successful ever, as competing with gargantuan Google is becoming increasingly difficult. The campaign was developed by Hanft Raboy & Partners in New York for owner Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, which acquired Ask in 2005 and is determined to make it the leading search site.
I think that using an unthreatening and mothering character is a good way to show Ask.com as an alternative to Google, and accessible to all. The old brand character, Jeeves, which featured originally when Ask was launched as Askjeeves.com in 1996 was a rather pompous English butler and perhaps did little to encourage brand loyalty. Fat Pat’s size and relation to Little Britain, which is a big hit in the US, is bound to attract viewers’ attention.
6 out of 10
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