3 advertising examples that used puns in April 2024

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In this Breakdown, we're looking at ✨ puns ✨ - playing with words (or, in this case, visuals.) The essayist and occasional punster Charles Lamb saw puns as a means to fellowship - they invite and require people to “get it”. So let’s see if this batch of work has got it.

1. Cruz-ing down the street in my ‘64

We’re starting off easy.

This is a pun for everyone.

The ad focuses on a man rolling down the street atop a keg of Cruzcampo, greeting passersby as he goes. “My Way” (not Frank Sinatra’s) plays in Spanish as he circus-walks his way down the beautiful but cobbled streets of Seville. And yet he never falters, lazily, gracefully cruising. He drops the keg odd, and takes a drink of a freshly poured pint.

So the ‘pun chain’ (not a real thing) goes something like…

Cruzcampo → Cruz → cruise → “to move in a relaxed way” → “the relaxed spontaneity of life in Seville that is most desirable”* → Cruzcampo

*HEINEKEN UK’s Cruzcampo® senior brand manager, Chris Buckwell.

Back in early 2023, Spanish lagers were growing 73% YoY, and accounted for 1 in every 5 pints sold in the British on-trade. Cruzcampo has been the fastest growing lager in the UK for a year now, latching onto that category growth and the fact that it is *slightly* more affordable than a lot of the competition. But this campaign is a brand move first and foremost, focusing on provenance as most beer brands do. With a nice, accessible, fellowship-creating pun.

It’s a striking ad, lands a clear brand message, and it has a punny endline. No notes, just a slight tilt of a half-full pint glass.

2. Don’t get your knickers in a twist

Some “super-premium beer” to tickle your fancy.

Another beer campaign! What can we say, there’s a Bank Holiday coming up after all.

This series of OOH (and some further-reaching design work into digital and social) features 1664 Blanc, a kind-of sort-of spin-off of Kronenbourg. It’s a wheat beer with a twist of citrus. So we gleefully accept another simple pun.

Twist → Twist

The visual element of this pun is fun, but slightly off-kilter. The “twist” is largely interpreted as “make it a bit weird”. So the posters reimagine the bottle with dripping paint and smoke. A social post asks audiences to pin a moustache on a dog. It’s all a little confused compared to the clear message from Cruzcampo, and I think the pun is what’s wrong here.

If Charles Lamb is right, and puns are invitations of fellowship, I’m not sure these ads are sending out the invites. What are we supposed to “get” here? For one thing, unless you really really stare at the bottle, it’s not apparent that the real twist is that there’s a bit of citrus flavouring in this beer. So all the visual twists seem… unnecessary? The art direction is undeniably pretty and eye catching, so they’re clearly doing their job. Given the beer’s launch at London Design Week, there’s clearly a theme going on there. But the word “twist” I think has somehow scuppered this work.

3. These high-fours just seem really awkward to be honest

Like, do you bump thumbs?

Domino’s are launching a new £4 lunch meal deal, and the campaign has people high-fouring all over the place. I’m going to park the ‘digital’ and ‘manual’ logistics of a high-four for a moment, but I’m still not best pleased about it.

In these two ads, protagonists who have bagged a new lunch deal go about high-fouring (rather than high-fiving) people on the street or in their office. Really simple stuff.

Now this isn’t really a pun I suppose. But it works like a pun.

Everyone returns the high-four, despite knowing it’s super weird. They are invited to take part because our protagonists offer it so confidently. There is a kind of fellowship being displayed. We all “get” what a high-four is, despite never doing one ourselves, from our own previous experiences and from the context in which it is presented. That’s a pun to me.

I don’t want to extrapolate into a bigger meta thing going on here, but the fact remains that a Domino’s meal deal is weird, especially to take into an office. There needs to be some kind of fellowship going on, some social proof that this is ok and an accepted behaviour. The surprised look on the characters’ faces when they receive a “high four” plays into this challenge, as we are almost taken along with them into murmuring, “Huh, that was weird. But I guess it makes sense, they did just get a Domino’s meal deal for £4”.

The MD at Domino’s said,

We're looking to steal our competitors' lunch. There's considerable headroom for us to grow during the day, and the £4 lunch menu gives consumers what they have been asking for; a freshly made, piping hot lunch, at a competitive price.

But if stealing your competitors’ lunch was as easy as just giving people what they ask for, then our entire industry could shut up shop.

This product launch needed something stickier. Breaking people out of habits is hard work. Domino’s have done some brilliantly distinctive work recently (and there’s still a yodel or two in this campaign), and I think the “pun” in this campaign is part of that. Introduce something weird but “gettable”, make it make sense for your consumers, and let them do some of the mental gymnastics to justify it.

I really like this campaign. It’s fun and memorable and intelligent and creative and novel(?). On the other hand, I have eaten one of the wraps that you can get in this meal deal on a slightly depressed hungover Sunday. I like those less.