Rory Sutherland: How a dancing Seal shows the product v marketing imbalance

I’ve enjoyed nerding out over the Super Bowl ads this week as America’s top brands bet big on eye-wateringly expensive spots. I think Mountain Dew/Taika Waititi’s bizarre, nonsensical and utterly attention-grabbing ‘Kiss From A Lime’ ad starring 90s icon Seal might just be my favourite. It’s very, very clever, creating a cultural connection between old farts like me who remember the song on the wireless and Gen Z’ers who have grown up on a diet of comical dancing animals and 90s nostalgia on TikTok. 

This brings me on to product vs marketing. Would I buy Mountain Dew over another citrus-flavoured soft drink based on the product alone? Probably not. Would I be so inclined after having the image of Seal transformed into an actual seal? Possibly.

When products succeed, we forget the extent to which marketing was actually instrumental or decisive in their success. 

Here’s an example - Steve Jobs was not a technologist. He was a pitch man. He was a brilliant salesman. He was a fantastic marketer.

The tricky thing is that nobody ever says they bought a product because of the great marketing. We post-rationalise our decision and say we bought it because of the great product. But we probably thought it was a great product in the first place because of the marketing.

Of course a little luck and timing can make all the difference too, but I think we need to persuade people to ‘Be Less Boring’. After all, if you're thinking about blowing $8m on a Super Bowl ad, do you really want to piss your money up against the wall with something vanilla?