Thomas Riggs – Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns

Автор: Thomas Riggs
Название книги: Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Бизнес
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

Trying to expound on any large body of advertising work is always dangerous. Since Cro-
Magnon man scratched an image onto a cave wall for others to see, the business of mass
communication has been evolving. Advertising is a fluid, ever-changing craft. I hesitate to
label it as art only because doing so tends to raise howls of indignation from those in the
field of so-called serious art—playwrights, filmmakers, musicians, painters, sculptors, and
such. I could build a strong case, however, that any well-conceived, beautifully executed ad,
in any medium, differs from traditional art in only one sense: its purpose, either directly or
indirectly, is to evoke a mercantile response. Regular art has merely to evoke an emotional
response so that, by comparison, it gets off easy.
For the purposes of this encyclopedia, let us say that advertising falls closer to fashion.
Like fashion, it is an art form with decidedly commercial ends. As with fashion, there are
trendy, fleeting styles of advertising that come on strong, cause a stir, and then fade away
with the next hot ‘‘ad couture.’’ And there are sturdy classics, ads that wear well with age and
that look fine and still touch people after 10, 20, or even 30 or more years. These are
creations that rest upon timeless human emotions or truths rather than on a passing
currency. An ad headlined ‘‘Lemon’’ and featuring, say, a new Lexus would be no less
compelling today than it was for Volkswagen 40 years ago.
In any given year we see ads of both kinds—splashy, contemporary messages of the
moment (such as iPod’s ‘‘Silhouette’’ campaign and countless print ads flaunting jagged,
beat-up typefaces) and durable works that rest on less ephemeral trends (such as John
Hancock’s ‘‘Insurance for the Unexpected’’). Is one form ‘‘better’’ than the other? Not
inherently. Both work or fail for other reasons, for their freshness, relevance, involvement of
the viewer, execution, or memorability.
Like Hollywood, advertising is often criticized for shaping, if not lowering, cultural
and social standards. The usual response from studio executives is that they merely reflect,
not cause, what is already happening in our collective midst. Consider Clark Gable’s 1934
appearance sans undershirt in It Happened One Night, which reputedly prompted the sales
of men’s undershirts to drop by 75 percent. (Hollywood made up for this later, in 1951,
when Marlon Brando appeared in a T-shirt and jeans in the film A Streetcar Named Desire
and the sales of T-shirts spiked to new heights.) Did Gable cause this to happen, or was he
reflecting changes then under way? Was he initiating a trend or following one? The truth is
usually somewhere in between.
The same can be said of much modern-day advertising, although here we have to be
careful. In marketing today the pickup of information and trends is so fast that advertising
may be creeping ever closer to being a cause of change. In an era in which people are wired
together and in which ‘‘cool hunters’’ track buying patterns among young people, a
budding local fad or an emerging trend can be sniffed out in its infancy and catapulted
into the national consciousness, sometimes with startling speed. Indeed, many marketers
pride themselves on lightning turnarounds from the time a new movement is spotted to its
appearance in their advertising, thus making them appear to be at the forefront of the evershifting
edge of change. Thus, in increasing instances contemporary advertising involves a
good deal more than the passive reflection of trends. At the very least, to borrow a term from
Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book The Tipping Point, marketers vastly accelerate the ‘‘contagiousness’’
of an idea or social phenomenon. Whether it is merely a new set of words (‘‘Got
[blank]?’’), a social shift like the emphasis on fitness, or an emerging technology like text
messaging, advertising, probably even more so than Hollywood, can and often does play the
role of an accelerator, if not an out-and-out instigator, of cultural change.
One reason for the growing potency of advertising, besides the ever-improving
accuracy and penetration of research, is its sheer ubiquity. To some extent this has resulted
from the splintering and proliferation of the media. Not long ago advertising was primarily
limited to the big five: television, radio, print, outdoor, and direct mail. In 1984 one study
revealed that in a single day the average American was exposed to 560 commercial
messages via these five media. Of these messages 76 were noticed, and of these 12 could
be recalled 24 hours later. Of the 12 that could be recalled, 3 were remembered negatively.
This meant that only 9 messages, or 1.6 percent, were recalled in a positive sense, which is
a pretty dismal figure. Today, however, cable and satellite networks offer hundreds of
television channels. Added to this is the cyberworld of websites, pop-up ads, E-mail spam,
blogs, podcasts, and text messaging on cell phones, in addition to the ‘‘ambient’’ advertising
that appears on such things as shopping carts, store shelves, the handles of gas pumps,
banana peels, and even urinals. It has become virtually impossible to elude the grasp of
advertising, and in general such increased pervasiveness has translated into increased
persuasiveness.
It also has produced increased annoyance, however. Advertising has long been labeled
the uninvited guest in our homes, offices, and cars. It arrives unbeckoned, usually
interrupting some form of entertainment or search for information, insinuates itself into
the recipient’s mind with its hand out, and then goes away momentarily, only to resurface
and repeat the cycle within a few minutes. As people feel more and more victimized by the
omnipresence of advertising, their shell of resistance against it hardens. This is nothing
new, but as advertising grows more and more ubiquitous, the shell grows more and more
impenetrable. It is a vicious cycle. Just as industrialized nations spew noxious greenhouse
gasses into the atmosphere in record amounts, so marketers spew vast clouds of often
obnoxious advertising.
At least some of the advertising in this encyclopedia demonstrates there is a silver
lining to these dark clouds. There is an increasing appreciation for the one tactic that has
proven consistently adept at penetrating the shell of resistance. This is creativity. More
specifically, it is advertising that defies traditional approaches in some way and that is fresh
and interesting enough and, ironically, enough unlike advertising to slip past the resistance
against it. Thus, brands like adidas, Nike, Burger King, FedEx, IKEA, Altoids,
Volkswagen, and BMW Mini have consistently wielded the leverage of strong creativity
in their branding. Without undertaking a detailed and difficult discussion of the many
facets and hurdles of producing truly original advertising today, suffice it to say that there
is an encouraging awareness of its growing importance and, in turn, of its implementation.
This results not so much from curiosity or desire but more from coldhearted necessity.
Ordinary advertising can no longer easily be justified by the dollars thrown at it. Bland
advertising is being seen for what it is, a rotten business investment. To quote one of the
more visionary creative deans of the industry, Jeff Goodby of Goodby, Silverstein &
Partners, ‘‘The best thing to have happened in advertising in the last 20 years is without a
single doubt happening right now. This business, which for the most part has always
tolerated creativity as a kind of goateed necessary evil, is now about to turn the joystick
over to the creative force, big-time. It has no choice.’’ This is good news not only for those
in the business who endure the usually uphill battle of selling atypical work to clients and
management but also to the vast public at the receiving end.
This brings us to another phenomenon, without which any discussion of the contemporary
advertising landscape is incomplete, namely, the one new technology out of
several that is most rapidly changing the ground rules. It is called, disarmingly enough,
TiVo, a product that uses DVR, or digital video recording, technology. The TiVo black
box already allows approximately 9 percent of U.S. television viewers merrily to fastforward
past all the uninvited advertising. Estimates are that by 2010 its penetration will
reach one of every three households, which places an even greater premium and burden on
creativity in advertising. As more viewers are armed with a simple button that can eradicate
advertising, the advertising must become so entertaining that the viewer wants to watch it
and makes a conscious decision to do so. Advertising must become so visually alluring that
it compels a fast-forwarder to hit the brakes and view it, which is no small order.
Of course, another antidote to DVR technology is to embed advertising within the
programming itself. This will likely move well beyond product placement, the technique
that is used today, to the point that in a sitcom, for instance, an actor will not only swig on
a Bud but the Bud will somehow become an integral part of the story line. Some
screenwriters may well rebel at this, but others may happily pocket the increased residuals
that would flow from such artful intertwining of commerce and scripting. Likewise, in
printed media there may be an increasing use of advertorials, in which the lines between
news about and advertising for new products become progressively fuzzier. Subliminal
advertising in the twenty-first century may take this approach. Whereas the much
maligned, though in fact rarely practiced, form of subliminal advertising in the 1950s
supposedly relied on subconscious flashes of messages so fleetingly fast that the viewer was
unaware of them, this new iteration is so subtle that it does not look or smell like
advertising at all. It is woven into the entertainment in such a way that it is TiVo-proof.
But certainly the arena in which advertising and content will become the most homogenized
is on the Web. While it is not possible to have a crystal ball that shows all of the twists
and turns that are bound to take place over even the next few years, one thing is certain: the
role of advertising on the Web will grow exponentially.We should expect the proliferation of
cooperative websites like MySpace.com, on which two, three, or more advertisers join forces
to allow consumers to do everything from conduct personal business and send E-mail, to
share photos, play games, and post blogs that revolve around a communal topic. Think of
adidas and Penn, for instance, on a tennis-centric site. In addition, television programming
will make increasing use of the Web by allowing viewers to ‘‘split-watch’’ both, with
commentary and ads on the Web related to what is happening simultaneously on the
television screen. We should expect that virtually any television program will be available
for instant downloading gratis, with one small string attached: the downloader must agree to
accept certain commercials along with it.
BMW revealed the power of exciting minifilms with their products-in-action epics on
the Web. Burger King allowed Web surfers to let a willing, kinky chicken do their bidding.
And countless other brands have dabbled in experiential, if experimental, forms of
‘‘webvertising.’’ This will surely continue to evolve into far more interactive, and far more
widely watched, fare as technology ramps up connection speeds, hard drives become
insatiable, wireless connections become universal, and computer displays, TVs, cell
phones, PDAs, and iPods continue to converge. But all of the convergence in the world
will mean little commercially unless the content of the ad messages also continues to evolve
in terms of entertainment and freshness.