Lickable Advertising

If you have a subscription to People, make sure you pay close attention to the advertisements in this week's issue. Welch's decided that simply explaining the taste of their grape juice is not enough for the typical magazine reader. So they put out a lickable advertisement. Apparently you peel off a little foil packet, unfold it, and lick the purple square. Is it me or is this just a little bit crazy?

I applaud the pioneering effort of it all because it'll definitely turn heads. (I won't lie...I'd be intrigued by the equivalent of this for beer). But this is like something you would see in the 80's. "Dude-remember those lickable purple stuff ads?" Today, we're living in an increasingly "germophobic" world...where little Billy in Kindergarten got in trouble because he was licking too much of his hand sanitizer that his parents insisted he use every 5 minutes. Magazines get passed around like wildfire...I'm not implying that this lickable ad will be dumbly licked more than once by different people (Although I'm sure it will definitely happen at least once...somewhere). But it will definitely bring up a grossness factor because people will think about that when they see it...even if you buy your own copy and it has a fool-proof way of showing whether it was used or not.

I'm sure the angle of this was to be unique and catch attention (obviously...I'm writing a blog post about it)...everyone is numb to the idea of smellable magazine advertisements by now. But taste is just not something you should literally appeal to in magazine ads. Besides...if you can capture the taste of your juice in a little foil packet between two pages that will be transported across the country, is it really that good?