More B Story Bingo
Time for round two of B Story Bingo. Again, it’s not actually bingo. I just like the alliteration. And calling some of these B stories might be a stretch, but you get the idea.
Here are some over-generalized B stories. Can you guess the movie?
A personal trainer retires in frustration after none of his athletes become stars.1
While on a campaign trip for a political candidate, two associates are forced to leave the house they are staying in because a bird pooped on a rock.2
On an errand to deliver his girlfriend’s old diary to her friend, a young political campaign staffer is kissed by said friend.3
A man tortures a legless man for information. The legless man spits in his captor’s face. The captor retaliates by threatening to rip a hole in his chest.4
Whiplash Warning
Normally a twist ending really ramps up the enjoyment of a story. But I’m not so sure that applies 100% of the time—especially in advertising.
The ad below broke me a little bit. Cinematic quality. Dark hues. People overcoming struggles. A big-name narrator. And one of the most well-known rappers on the track. Seems like a recipe for a great story. What could go wrong?
For pretty much anything other than potato chips5, this story is great. “We’re all made of different things,” he says. “Ridges that make us who we are. . . . We can let them defeat us, or we can embrace them.”
While you recover from the whiplash of trying to rectify how chips are supposed to infuse your DNA with the motivation to get out of prison and change your life, here’s a similar ad that uses the same kind of storytelling.
I know, I know. Telling a dramatic story about overcoming obstacles to sell beer seems no different than telling a dramatic story about overcoming obstacles to sell chips. But the beer ad hits, and I think it works for two main reasons.
You literally see the beer in the first shot. You know from the first second that it’s a beer ad. You’re not trying to figure out what the ad is selling the whole time. You can just enjoy the story.
In the world of ads for alcoholic drinks in general, this type of storytelling doesn’t feel out of place (don’t you dare “be the one to doubt” the hard work of the people who make Patrón). The industry has established this as valid, so we just tend to accept it. I don’t make the rules [shrug emoji].
For whatever reason, Americans have never thought of fried potato chips as a food for people who want to live a better life. So the Ruffles ad feels off because we’ve been trained to know what an ad for chips feels like. For further proof of this, read the comments on the Ruffles video. They’re great.
Ruffles should just “own their ridges” and accept that they are junk food. There’s nothing wrong with that. Chips are delicious, and I know they are bad for me. I don’t need a false narrative filling me with empty hope that my life is about to change for the better as I pour the remnants of an empty bag into my mouth.
Sentence of the Week
This week’s sentence comes from the eloquently written memoir by Tara Westover, Educated.
We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell.
― Tara Westover
Thanks for reading,
Braden
Hercules
Definitely, Maybe
The Ruffles ad is like when you watch The Sixth Sense and find out Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time, except instead of it making sense (you know, because you literally see him get shot in the opening scene), it feels like the ending is to a different story. Like if at the end you find out that the whole movie was just a dream Bruce Willis had after getting knocked out in a soccer game, and he wakes up on the field and runs back out to play. The end. All you can think is “What did I just watch?”