How Kiwis Fell in Love with Banana-Flavoured Ads (and Didn't Notice)
I’ve been fixated on banana flavour recently. Not the fruit, but the exaggerated, overtly artificial version that shows up in milkshakes, lollies, and increasingly, campaigns. Which got me thinking: why is something so obviously fake, so effective at being memorable? It’s not nostalgia. It’s branding bravado.
Think about banana-flavoured anything. It's not subtle, it isn’t refined, but it refuses to be ignored. Sound familiar? That’s also how a lot of good marketing works. Loud, strange, unmissable. And when brands lean into something confidently bizarre—like Specsavers’ recent optometrist heist ad, or the world’s weirdest toothpaste campaign out of Japan—they get remembered.
We’ve been tricked into thinking sleek and minimal is always better. Maybe it’s time for marketing to get weirder again. Campaigns that taste like banana lollies. Too strong, too yellow, but impossible to forget. I asked a creative director about this. He rolled his eyes, then half an hour later sent me a reel of Crocs’ best-ever ads. We agreed: when brands stick their necks out, people notice.
New Zealand brands tend to play it safe. Clean landscapes, clean copy. But take a walk through TikTok or Twitch or even Waiheke in summer, and you’ll see everything people actually remember is a little bit off-centre. We need more ads that polarise, more work that doesn't look like everything else in the agency foyer. Less vanilla, more banana. Your competitors won’t see it coming.
Think about banana-flavoured anything. It's not subtle, it isn’t refined, but it refuses to be ignored. Sound familiar? That’s also how a lot of good marketing works. Loud, strange, unmissable. And when brands lean into something confidently bizarre—like Specsavers’ recent optometrist heist ad, or the world’s weirdest toothpaste campaign out of Japan—they get remembered.
We’ve been tricked into thinking sleek and minimal is always better. Maybe it’s time for marketing to get weirder again. Campaigns that taste like banana lollies. Too strong, too yellow, but impossible to forget. I asked a creative director about this. He rolled his eyes, then half an hour later sent me a reel of Crocs’ best-ever ads. We agreed: when brands stick their necks out, people notice.
New Zealand brands tend to play it safe. Clean landscapes, clean copy. But take a walk through TikTok or Twitch or even Waiheke in summer, and you’ll see everything people actually remember is a little bit off-centre. We need more ads that polarise, more work that doesn't look like everything else in the agency foyer. Less vanilla, more banana. Your competitors won’t see it coming.