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'Balance' Act at mun2
February 19, 2007
By Nancy Ayala
Irreverent strategies are the bomb for mun2's new image campaign, "Check your balance," created by Miami Beach-based Hispanic advertising agency la comunidad.
The bilingual youth cable network started to roll out three television spots on Feb. 19 on mun2 as well as other NBC Universal-owned stations such as Sci Fi and the USA Network. Other cable networks and satellite providers are also on tap for the on-air media mix.
In one mun2 spot, a Latino teen dreams he is president of the United States but faces pending threats from weapons of mass destruction, to wit he must bomb a rogue nation. To a military advisor, he says, "Let's check the satellite." In an instant, the screen flashes to a sole penguin floating on a piece of ice. (Read: global warming alert) The trigger-happy student dreamer says, "This looks very dangerous. Pass me the red button."
Basically, said mun2 creative director Ricardo de Montreuil, "It's an exaggeration of what's going on in Iraq." While the execution is very light, much like the other two new spots, the ideas zero in on subjects that are "touchy with Latinos in the U.S.," de Montreuil said. The audience demo is 15- to 25-year-olds.
The concept plays heavily with the idea that young Latinos must balance a life between two worlds: They speak Spanish, but they are U.S. born and raised, and per the network, the music-tinged original programming has been specifically created for their bicultural viewing tastes.
Another spot depicts a typical TV game-show scenario that focuses on three contestants guessing where well-known foreign cities are located: Rio de Janeiro, answers one clueless young Latino contestant, can be found near Kansas.
The concept behind the spot, said de Montreuil, is that Americans are known for their dismal understanding of geography. He compares watching mun2 to learning about two countries, as in Latinos who live between the mainstream American world and a Latino culture that may need to be "balanced out."
While some of the spots may seem stereotypical, such as the teen who dreamed he was president seen clipping a hedge by the end of the commercial, de Montreuil has an answer for naysayers.
"We're taking the rights because we're Latin," said de Montreuil, adding that everyone who works at mun2 is Latino. "We're taking the right to make fun of ourselves. I think it will make a lot of noise on TV and the Internet in a way that no other brands have done before."
The rebranded network will actively play with the idea of "Is your American dream becoming too gringo?" in all areas of the new image campaign. Print, out-of-home and more cross-promotional work will follow March 19, as well as a Web site component to complement the campaign on holamun2.com.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a longer version to the story currently found in select issues of Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek.]
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