"Beefscapes" - Is It Safe Yet?

Back in January the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) lost their collective minds and replaced the long running (and successful) "Beef It's What's For Dinner" campaign for a nut-so idea that people might be persuaded to eat...Pebble Beach?

I swear, PETA couldn't have thought of a better campaign.  "OK, let's see....hmmmm.  Got it!  Let's disguise various cuts of meat to make them look like mountains or beaches!  Yeah, that's it...then NOBODY will know it's really M-E-A-T." 

We thought it was a lousy campaign and wrote about it in "BEEF - It's Freaky!" last January.

Here we are eleven months later and what do I hear on the local radio station?  Well, it wasn't Sam Elliot but it WAS a voice over complete with the "old" music and the famous tag line, "Beef, It's What's For Dinner".

Might there be hope?  Might it be safe once again to open up magazines and not see disturbing images of my food modeled to look like Mt. St. Helen?

We can only hope sanity has returned to Colorado otherwise we're likely to see the next big idea, "Is it Beef or is it a Rutabaga?"

The message here is sometimes "creative" can get weird and so far off the mark we're left wondering what the heck the "message" is.  Sometimes "out of the box" ideas work and can cause new interest in an old product or service.  In this case, nah... we figured the NCBA had gone wacko for some agency to talk them into this mess.   Be careful out there.

Now for a test...which of the two images on this page is beef and which is really Big Sur.  Tough huh?  (time it ticking...tick, tick, tick...) OK...I'll tell you.. the bottom is the actual beach at Big Sur - courtesy of the Chamber of Commerce.

Michael P. Libbie - Insight Advertising, Marketing & Communications...somebody stop the madness...