Brent Smart didn’t think families portrayed in advertisements were very realistic.

“The point of view we had was that families in ads don’t look very real,” Smart said. “They’re a little bit too white, a little bit too middle class and they’re a bit too f*cking boring.”

Smart, CEO of the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi New York, spoke at the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on Wednesday as a part of the Eric Mower Advertising Forum speaker series.

Smart, the New Zealander known by his moniker, “Smarty,” called his presentation Wednesday “An Unfair Share of Culture,” which refers to when ads and brands monopolize a large amount of the cultural conversation. Saatchi & Saatchi has done work for notable brands including General Mills, Toyota and Samsonite.

As CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, Smart himself created an ad that occupied an “unfair share of culture:” the Cheerios ads that starred a biracial child named Gracie and her family.

After casting a biracial child in the commercial’s lead role, the end result was an ad that was featured on The View, Good Morning America, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and all throughout the news cycle both for its positive and groundbreaking portrayal of a biracial family, but also for the vitriol of racist backlash the ad received.

Eventually, YouTube had to remove comments from the video.

A second Gracie ad ended up being ranked third in USA Today’s ranking of Super Bowl commercials. As a result, Cheerios dominated 80 percent of the cultural conversation despite the company only having 12 percent of the market share.

Smart pointed to “The Interview,” the controversial film starring James Franco and Seth Rogan, a teaser trailer for the new Star Wars movie and the widely popular train safety ad, Dumb Ways to Die, as cultural movements that took up an unfair share of culture.

“I believe an unfair share of culture is today’s best competitive edge you can have,” said Smart. “You can’t buy attention, you can’t buy shares and you can’t buy your way into culture.”

Smart said that two times in his career an advertisement he’s created has taken up an unfair share of culture. Aside from the Cheerios ad, the other time this happened was an advertisement for Yellow Pages in 2008, when he still worked in New Zealand.

The ad involved an immersive experience that documented the building of a treehouse restaurant only using the companies and resources found in Yellow Pages. The result was similar to that of the Cheerios ad. The restaurant was mentioned on over 10,000 blogs, including Kanye West’s blog, and sold out for the entire summer in four minutes.

Creating these ads that not only reflect the culture, but also aim to impact it and shape it, said Smart, comes down to storytelling and creativity.

Said Smart: “Getting into culture gives your brand an unfair share and that’s the most powerful thing you can do in the market today.”

Published on January 29, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Rachel: rsandler@syr.edu