Will Gillingham

Listen to “I Am A Mouth” here: Link

“I Am A Mouth” is a radio ad that focuses on Tropicana, a brand that is best known for its orange juice and other juice products. The brand is owned by PepsiCo, a multinational food and beverage conglomerate, but Tropicana Brands Group, as a subsidiary, strives to “…provide a drinking experience that delights the senses, nourishes the body, and reimagines the future of juice.”

The “I Am A Mouth” radio ad is a forty-second advertisement from the point of view of a mouth. To evoke an emotional response, the ad is presented from an absurd perspective through the anthropomorphization of a part of the body that everyone has.

The “mouth” speaking during the ad asserts that “it’s time to stop putting things in our bodies we cannot pronounce.” And continues this thread by presenting an analogous situation relating our bodies to nightclubs. We wouldn’t want to let a “roided-up juice head getting in and causing problems,” we’re told. “We want a no-nonsense guy – someone everyone can get along with, and that is what Tropicana is. No preservatives, and never from concentrate.”

The objectives of this ad campaign are to inform customers about the absence of preservatives and artificial ingredients in Tropicana’s juice and to position Tropicana as a suitable alternative for customers who want to avoid artificial ingredients. The ad is timeless. There was no time-specific call to action.

The target market for the ad is likely to be more health-conscious individuals and families who care about reducing the number of artificial preservatives and ingredients they consume. The same consumers who shop for organic and natural products. The target market would also likely be the household’s primary grocery purchaser. I’m imagining a group of individuals aged 25 to 40 who may have kids, lead active lifestyles, and have enough income to shop for premium brands in stores.

The only call to action I heard during the ad was indirect and was presented as more of an opinion, from which we can infer a call to action. From the “mouth’s” perspective, the no-nonsense guy (free of preservatives and artificial ingredients) is the person we want in our nightclubs (bodies). The “mouth” tells us that Tropicana is the no-nonsense guy in the juice market. Thus, indirectly, the “mouth” wants us to purchase Tropicana because if you care about putting natural ingredients into your body, then Tropicana juice is the right product.

If purchased, consumers can worry less about the ingredients entering their bodies and whether the Tropicana juice they are drinking contains non-natural ingredients.