Toilet Training
Quilters , produced
by J.J. Sedelmaier Productions Inc. for Quilted Northern Tissue.
Quilters would have
you believe that bathroom tissue is more than trash in the making. Produced by
J.J. Sedelmaier, who adapted the Japanimation-style Speed Racer to sell a new
Volkswagen, it uses a reliable formula to good effect. It draws on the
familiar--in this case, the film How to Make an American Quilt --and
renders it different. Needless to say, success, in such cases, hinges on the ad
maker's ability to manipulate that fine line between the familiar and the
clichéd: It's all in the adaptation.
Released in 1995, How to
Make an American Quilt drew a largely female audience. Some of the film's
leitmotifs--tradition as clarifier and stabilizer, a strong community of
women--resurface in this spot, which promotes Quilted Northern Tissue. The
animation soft, the music folksy, we are introduced to the "Quilted Northern
Quilters," a group of women creating handmade paper. It's an engaging image, if
an unlikely one. And though it isn't clear why the women use knitting needles
to quilt, the explicitly artificial setting makes the sale. Animation, which
lets mice sing and lions be kings, saves the spot from ridiculing its own
message.
It's the first day for the
quilting group's newest entrant, but her integration is seamless, the bonding
instant. The older women in the group--peas in a pod but for a
multi-culti-mandated difference of skin color--are quick to reassure the
novice. "Don't worry, doll," says the black woman. "Just keep quilting."
Because that, adds the white one, is what makes the sheets "so absorbent." Fie
on those of you who think quilted bathroom tissue is all about aesthetics: It's
utility , stupid. Quilters is a model exercise in branding, that
Holy Grail of our times. Be it of dubious value, the extra element--"quilting"
in this case--is designed to convince the consumer that paying more gets them
more. The spot plays to a couple of postindustrial truisms: that proof of human
workmanship qualifies as more; and that more is better. (Your alternative,
Quilters reminds you, the music slowing to an ominous clank, is one of
"those flat-as-a-pancake sheets made down the street.") And it plays to the
germ pathology that sustains the market for anti-bacteriants and
investigative-report segments titled "Does Your Housecleaning Agent
Really Protect Your Infant From the Salmonella That Will Turn His
Insides Into an Oozing Green Swamp? Think Again ." Quilted Northern is
quilted to create "thousands of places for moisture to go," we're told, the
animation now reminiscent of 1950s spots that showed how a pill absorbed
stomach acid. "And all that absorbency leaves you feeling cle-ean."
It's time for the happy
ending: "Nice job, dear." And for the final pitch: the brand name and a gentle
reminder that Quilted Northern is "quilted to absorb." The more effective
because it is so simple, Quilters ends up confirming what the burgeoning
market would deny: Less is, in fact, more.
--Robert
Shrum
