Marmite’s marketing over the last couple of years has centred around the idea of turning ‘Marmite haters’ into ‘Marmite lovers’ via hypnosis. Most of the ads on this theme have been mildly entertaining — we didn’t love them, or hate them, but we did feel they failed to capitalise on the inherently funny core idea of this campaign.
This ad is the exception. Marmite took the idea of subliminal messaging one step further. Comedy is all about surprise, and a jar of Marmite appearing in an ad for AA breakdown cover is nothing if not surprising.
It’s still not hilarious, but we applaud the originality of the idea. The ad does exactly what it’s meant to do in terms of messaging — we’re now craving Marmite on crumpets, and the comforting feeling of knowing we’d be covered if our car broke down.
