Spicy Meatball
Alka-Seltzer1969
Spicy Meatball is a 1969 60-second television commercial for Alka-Seltzer, created by Doyle Dane Bernbach, New York.
The line
Mamma mia, that's a spicy meatball!
Why it works
A commercial inside a commercial: an actor shooting a spot for fictional "Magadini's" meatballs blows take after take — "Mamma mia, that's a spicy meatball!" — eating so many meatballs that only Alka-Seltzer can save take fifty-nine. Debuting in 1969 at the height of DDB's creative revolution, it is studied as advertising's first great act of self-parody: it acknowledged that viewers knew ads were artifice, and made that knowledge the joke. It is also a canonical cautionary tale — the catchphrase became immortal while sales initially dipped, because audiences remembered the fake meatball brand as readily as the antacid. Craft and commerce, the case reminds every strategy class, are not the same thing.
Techniques
- Humour Parodies advertising itself, as an actor shooting a meatball commercial fluffs his line take after take while eating ever more meatballs.
- Storytelling The botched shoot escalates until only the antacid can save the fifty-ninth take.
Sources · 2
Updated
