Evian's "Live Young" campaign has just released a new commercial. It has babies on roller skates, doing tricks to "Rapper's Delight," which is played from a cassette tape and being piped out of a nearby boombox. The Evian water babies may count as a semi-original idea, but the strangeness of the commercial is getting it mixed reviews.
The Evian water babies are reminiscent of the 1996 "Dancing Baby". This new generation includes better animation and a merging of actual footage (real baby faces) with computer graphic imaging for their bodies and, of course, skates.
When I first saw the Evian water baby commercial I found myself amused at the unexpectedness of it all - the strangely realistic baby faces, the tricks like jumping over a row of prone babies and grinding down a banister, and the choice of music - obviously the song and cassette tape are targeting a specific population - Rapper's Delight was slightly before my time, and cassette tapes were scarce by the time I was in college.
The mix of themes in the commercial is interesting. The Evian water babies bob their heads to the rhythm of the rap song, but are clad only in white onesies. Why aren't they dressed in 1990's baby hip-hop gear? Who knows. In the end, I am slightly confused as well as slightly amused by the Evian water baby commercial. The babies don't strike me as reason to go out and drink Evian water, but they are certainly generating buzz. In the end, I think it has to be chalked up as a good call, though an odd one, for the marketing people over at Evian.
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