While there’s some question about whether Ted Williams’ sudden fame has been good for him, it looks like it was at least good for Kraft in the short term.
YouTubeYouTube
reports that a new Kraft Macaroni & Cheese commercial voiced by Williams got 901,000 views this month, a huge jump over the usual number of views for other Kraft videos on the site.
Williams’s rise to fame has been dizzyingly quick. A video of Williams on the Columbus Dispatch’s website earlier this month went viral the day after it was shot. By January 5, the video had received more than 5 million views, thanks to the Reddit community, which took up the cause of the homeless man with the golden voice. By January 6, Kraft announced that Williams would do a voiceover for a Macaroni & Cheese spot. On January 12, at the urging of Dr. Phil, Williams decided to enter rehab.
Though Kraft clearly got attention for featuring Williams in the commercial, Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based branding expert says this is a short-term gain for Kraft and agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky that will not do much for the brand. “It’s clearly another one of those opportunistic stunts by creatively bankrupt agencies who jump on any trend they think can take them to the top of a TwitterTwitter trend,” says Frankel, who adds that the use of a celebrity in an ad ties the brand to that celeb’s foibles. Says Frankel: “Witness O.J. Simpson, Tiger Woods, Anita Bryant, Kobe Bryant — most celebrities are prone to failings, taking their endorsements along with them.”
Here are YouTube’s numbers:
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