In honor the 30th anniversary of when we first hung our shingle, we have been revisiting some fond memories over the past few months. However, since our founding in 1989, there have been plenty of stories of brands who have bottomed out. We explore some of our favorite stories from the past 30 years of brands dusting off the dirt and getting back on their feet in this series, the Dirty 30, a three-decade retrospective of redemption.
So far we’ve traveled to Valdez to witness the Exxon oil spill, discussed the troubled origins of Jack Box, and reviewed the family squabbles of Carl Hardee Sr and Carl Hardee Jr. This week, buckle up because we’re going on a ride with Firestone.
At the height of the SUV boom at the turn of the new millennium, Firestone and Ford found themselves at odds over a series of disastrous events. Ford’s flagship SUV, the Explorer, came equipped with Firestone tires off the lot. However, both brands made headlines as the top-heavy SUV found had a tendency to roll over when it would get a flat tire.
That’s when the blame game began. One side said that the Firestone tires had a tendency to separate at the tread. The other side said that Ford ignored important data and the Explorer’s design added danger to what should be a routine problem that many drivers have experienced: a tire blowing out.
Firestone even insinuated that the problem in part laid with the consumers performing insufficient maintenance by not checking tire pressure and maintaining proper inflation. That led Ford and consumers to push back, saying that it was unreasonable for them to perform such fastidious monitoring.
All this culminated in Firestone accepting some fault, but only to a limited extent. As reported by the New York Times during the height of the crisis, “Wall Street analysts…say the Firestone tack of trying to shift the responsibility onto Ford increases consumer skepticism about Ford management and the Explorer, but it will probably do little to restore confidence in its tire brand.”
Eventually, Firestone reached a $41.5 million dollar settlement that required them to cooperate with an investigation to discover what Ford knew about the problems. In 2001, Firestone launched a campaign called “Making it Right,” in which the CEO addressed consumers and their concerns in a television spot.
Another spot followed in which Mario and Michael Andretti, racecar drivers and spokesmen for the tire brand, expressed confidence in the brand (if they trust it on the track then it must be safe on the road!) and stressed the importance of proper tire maintenance. As a tie-in, Firestone dealerships gave away free tire gauges to customers.
Passive aggressive? Perhaps, but in the ensuing months after the recall the brand serviced 2,000 customers per month and original equipment sales begin to pick back up in the next quarter following the campaign.
Firestone refrained from advertising until 2004, when they launched a lifestyle advertising campaign with the soundtrack of their classic song, “Where the Rubber Meets the Road,” that harkens back to the 1970s…back when the FTC found that the company’s ads had falsely implied that its tires were “safe under all conditions of use.”
But like any quality rubber, Firestone keeps bouncing back. After a $510 million loss in 200 and a $1.7 billion loss in 2001, the tire company posted a $83 million profit in 2003. Despite some of the unsightly squabbling, the company made things right with their customers and set more rigid oversight and quality control standards, leading them to get back in the fast lane.
Each brand is unique and every brand is bound to run into some turbulence. How they handle it is what separates the greats from the also-rans. As we said last week, being proactive, responsive and forthright is easier said than done, but you can get a lot of miles out of it.
Stay tuned for the next installment of the Dirty 30, and check out our previous Dirty 30s:
In honor the 30th anniversary of when we first hung our shingle, we have been revisiting some fond memories over the past few months. However, since our founding in 1989, there have been plenty of stories of brands who have bottomed out. We explore some of our favorite stories from the past 30 years of brands dusting off the dirt and getting back on their feet in this series, the Dirty 30, a three-decade retrospective of redemption.
After revisiting Exxon’s disaster in Valdez, then exploring the troubled origins of Jack Box, we bite into another burger bungle in this week’s Dirty 30 with the troubled family relationship of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.
Jason Marker was at the helm of KFC during its wildly successful campaign featuring a Colonel Sanders spokesperson played by a rotating cast of comedic actors. After that success, Marker left to accept the position of CEO at CKE, the holding company for Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. Marker explained that, as his first marketing initiative as CEO, he wanted to transition away from the erotic burger ads that had preceded him. He was determined to transition CKE’s marketing efforts from targeting young, thirsty guys to young, hungry people.
To kick it off these rebranding efforts, CKE created a commercial that not only took a number of humorous shots at the brand’s previous marketing efforts, but also consolidated the two brands into one. Using a familiar tack, much in the same way as the reinvented Colonel Sanders, Carl Hardee Sr. played the brand’s patriarch returned after a 15-year hiatus to take the company back from his party boi son, Carl Hardee Jr. Dad banished the company’s sex-sells mentality so they could get back what made people fall in love with them in the first place: well-made food with great ingredients and a healthy side of pride.
However, just a year later, the two brands are diverging to a degree unseen since Carl’s Jr. purchased the Nashville-based Hardee’s to form CKE. During the co-branded year of togetherness, research found that the Western chain of Carl’s Jr. had a core customer base that favored the restaurant’s bold, in-your-face flavors for a late night snack, leading to the brand’s new “Big Taste You Can Feel” campaign.
At the same time, Hardee’s, based in the Southeast and South, did a significant amount more of breakfast business than their left-coast counterpart and realized their core customer base valued authenticity, as seen in their new “Tastes like America” campaign.
It remains to be seen if this divide-and-conquer strategy will provide the boost that CKE is searching for in the hyper competitive better-burger market, but at least everyone can agree that bikinis and burgers no longer mix.
The thing about a brand crisis is that each one is different. While so much has changed over the past 30 years that Geile/Leon has been around, there is also so much that has remained the same. Being forthright, proactive and responsive to customers’ needs is a timeless art, but with information traveling so much more rapidly and consumers being more informed than ever, effective crisis management is now more important than ever.
Stay tuned for the next installment of the Dirty 30, and check out our previous Dirty 30s:
In honor of the 30th anniversary of when we first hung our shingle, we have been revisiting some fond memories over the past few months. However, since our founding in 1989, there have been plenty of stories of brands who have bottomed out. We explore some of our favorite stories from the past 30 years of brands dusting off the dirt and getting back on their feet in this series, the Dirty 30, a three-decade retrospective of redemption.
After kicking off the series last week with Exxon’s disaster in Valdez, we take a look at the thinking man’s fast food clown and the crisis that created him.
In January of 1993, Jack in the Box suffered the first and worst of what many fast-food chains have suffered since: an E coli outbreak. In a rash of cases that affected hundreds, undercooked burgers caused an existential crisis for the chain. While Jack in the Box did take on the medical expenses of the victims and run an extensive PR campaign taking responsibility and vowing to provide improved oversight, customers were rightfully wary to return to the chain. Despite Jack in the Box’s ensuing advertising campaigns offering steep discounts, sales decreased by 24% between 1992 and 1995.
In order to alter the fate of the franchise, newly hired agency TBWA Chiat/Day went Jack to the future. The iconic clown head was originally the franchise’s mascot during their early days, famously featured in the drive thru with speaker and microphone inside so drivers would place your order directly with Jack. However, in an effort to differentiate themselves from a certain family-focused fast food chain with an arguably much more iconic clown and golden arches, a Jack in the Box advertisement in 1980 literally blew up the clown head with the company’s leadership declaring the restaurant to be a more mature burger destination.
In 1995, over a decade after they blew up their mascot, creative director Rick Sittig envisioned the return of Jack Box. The deposed mascot made his return, this time with a suit and a mission. In a television spot that featured Jack declaring a new era, He punctuated his promise for change by throwing a bomb into the boardroom, literally blowing up the company’s leadership. This reversal of fortune helped provide a metaphor for ridding the company of those who the public viewed as responsible for the outbreak (even though none of the company’s leadership were harmed or even fired in the rebranding).
The new, irreverent Jack Box was a huge hit, a relatable character became the change agent that their customers desired. Jack had such a resonance with fast food fans that he remained at the forefront of the chain’s marketing efforts for nearly three decades. The chain reaped immediate benefits from the branding shift, bouncing back from a $63 million loss in 1995 to net earnings of $20 million in 1996. Per-store sales rose by 7.2% and customer visits grew by 7.7% thanks to the clown-face of the franchise.
The thing about a brand crisis is that each one is different. While so much has changed over the past 30 years that Geile/Leon has been around, there is also so much that has remained the same. Being forthright, proactive and responsive to customers’ needs is a timeless art, but with information traveling so much more rapidly and consumers being more informed than ever, effective crisis management is now more important than ever.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of when we first hung our shingle, we have been revisiting some fond memories over the past few months. However, since our founding in 1989, there have been plenty of stories of brands who have bottomed out. We explore some of our favorite stories from the past 30 years of brands dusting off the dirt and getting back on their feet in this series, the Dirty 30, a three-decade retrospective of redemption.
First we take a trip back to the first year of G/L’s existence, 1989, which also happens to be the same year of one of the biggest crisis management snafus in history.
Exactly 30 years ago, a series of low reactions exacerbated one of the most famous man-made natural disasters in history, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It all began when an intoxicated ship captain was too sloshed to keep the oil tanker from running aground, piercing his vessel’s hull and dumping oil into the ocean just off the Alaskan coastline. Exxon’s slow-moving response to the crisis only made things worse, making them seem indifferent and aloof.
In the most successful responses to corporate disasters, brands own the fault, apologize, and outline steps they will take to rectify the situation and change the culture that allowed it to happen in the first place.
However, Exxon remained silent for days while the public saw images of wildlife dying and pristine coastlines tainted from the spill. Exxon’s CEO at the time declined to visit the site of the disaster, rather delegating low-level officials to the scene. Nobody from Exxon disseminated any information to the press, forcing reporters to visit Valdez, Alaska to obtain any information on Exxon’s efforts stem the spill, which were slow and insufficient.
After 10 days of contradictory and misleading statements, Exxon did finally run an ad across newspapers nationwide (keep in mind, this was 30 years ago) that did nothing to address any of the public’s concerns or accept responsibility for the disaster.
There is no easy fix for a tragedy of this magnitude, but the mishandling of the fallout from the incident only exacerbated an already terrible situation.
The thing about a brand crisis is that each one is different. While so much has changed over the past 30 years that Geile/Leon has been around, there is also so much that has remained the same. Being forthright, proactive and responsive to customers’ needs is a timeless art, but with information traveling so much more rapidly and consumers being more informed than ever, effective crisis management is now more important than ever.
Stay tuned for the next week’s installment of the Dirty 30, Jack Comes Back to Save His Company.
Since I first decided I wanted to work in video production, finding my creative voice has been a journey. I’ve worked on many projects and created a lot of different content that has pushed my ideas in varying directions, but never have I worked in such a place as this where I was surrounded by such incredible creativity that helped me find that voice.
As a student, you quickly come to realize that while you may learn a lot in your classes, there is nothing better than real-world experience. In previous years, I had worked jobs and internships at places on Mizzou’s campus doing video and other creative work. But while I did that, I was watching many of my classmates go off around the country to find internships in the industry outside of the university. This is what I wanted for myself. I loved creating work on campus, but I wanted something bigger. Thus began a series of emails with Tim Leon.
I spent about two-and-a-half months at Geile /Leon getting to do exactly what I love – creating video content. But I’ve done this at other jobs before, so why was this one so different? For starters, this internship was tailored specifically to my skillset. Not only did I get to use my creativity every day to create content, but I also was involved in the planning and design of the new G/L Video Content Studios, which was an opportunity of a lifetime for any college student.
Another reason G/L is different was that they trusted me with real tasks and responsibilities, and none of those had anything to do with getting coffee. They asked me to work on actual client work with real deadlines and real rounds of feedback. I got to participate on calls with clients and had questions directed to me in meetings. Making a video just to release it doesn’t cut it here, so every detail and every decision matters in making the very best work that you possibly can for the client.
At G/L I was pushed not just to create content, but to create my best content. As if that weren’t enough, what’s most important to me is the creative growth I experienced during this internship. In a short time, my skills grew immensely, and my understanding of making good content opened up to a whole new realm of ideas and possibilities. The creative team here shared their ideas and talents with me daily and overall it made me into a more experienced videographer. If nothing else, my time spent here was invaluable and included lessons I could have never learned whilst sitting in a classroom.
The Scripp’s Spelling Bee is a long-running annual tournament that pits the nation’s best elementary school spellers against each other in a tension-filled contest to crown the champion speller. Or at least that was what it was designed to do. In this year’s tournament, somehow eight students all tied for first place… and that’s not even the worst part.
One participant managed to circumvent the system and buy his
way in without actually earning a spot. For the second year in a row. The
student’s parents blamed Scripps Spelling Bee for a lack of oversight while
spelling bee officials blamed the parents and school for a lack of supervision.
His parents said they knew their son hadn’t won the school bee. They claimed, however, that he sent the application on his own, and they merely paid fees and made travel arrangements with no suspicion of any wrongdoing whatsoever. When contacted by the Palm Beach Post, his father told the reporter, “We are busy. We have three kids. We have a job. Unless we have a letter from the school, unless I have to take him somewhere or pick him up, we are not that involved.”
What is lost in the blame game, however, is a lack of
understanding about why we strive for academic achievement in the first place.
Between this snafu and the recent headline-grabbing, celebrity-laden college
admission scandal, whatever happened to the idea of education as a tool for
lifelong success?
The value of academic achievement, all the way from
elementary school through higher education institutions, is found in obtaining
knowledge and mastering skills. Not just framing a certificate or diploma to
hang on the wall, but also utilizing your achievements to become successful in
all of your future endeavors.
The more difficult the journey, the more rewarding it will
be when you finally reach the summit. A diploma may get you in the door, but
the invaluable skills that you have gained on the way to obtaining that diploma
are what set you up to achieve your life goals. And that is the lesson that
seems to have been lost in these recent incidents.
At the heart of these sentiments is what helps foster true
success for institutes of higher learning. It is not an appeal to those
searching for a shortcut or a transactional relationship. Instead, higher
learning is an appeal to a lifelong hunger for knowledge, a quest for
self-improvement and an aspiration to become something better, leaving the world
a better place than it was before you entered it.
It can be tempting, especially in such a
fast-moving society, to seek out the path of least resistance. However, if
there is anything we have learned recently, it is that the ability that results
from a good education is a far more important predictor of long-term success. It
may take more time and hard work, but the reward is definitely worth it.
Throughout 30 years, massive changes are inevitable for every industry, and advertising is no exception. New research, changing demographics and media landscapes and more have made the best practices of old almost unrecognizable from the best practices of today. But through it all, there are concrete and essential truths that have never changed about this industry. Here’s just a few…
Good Creative Wins
While the mediums and the platforms have drastically changed over the years and continue to evolve every day, good creative has always been what matters. From print ads in the 80s to social media ads today, the most important component of success has been and always will be good creative. Agencies that have continuously invested in big thinkers and talented designers and writers are the ones that have survived year after year. At the end of the day, no matter how good your execution and targeting, it’s the idea that matters most.
Relationships Matter
Maintaining strong relationships with our clients, vendors and partners has been paramount to our success as an agency. Printing and hand-delivering production pieces in the old days helped us form great relationships with everyone we did business with then, and that continues now with digital transfers, conference calls, working lunches and emails. Forming those strong bonds have made an immeasurable difference during tough times and bumps in the road. The power of good relationships can’t be overstated.
It has to mean something
Our motto at Geile/Leon is “Make It Mean Something.” At advertising’s core, this is what our work is about. David Ogilvy once said: “It’s not creative if it doesn’t sell.” Playing off of David Ogilvy’s words, when your message and your advertising means something to your target audience, it’s going to sell and it’s going to make a difference. The greatest strength that advertisers can have is empathy – if you can put yourself in another person’s shoes and understand what kind of message will truly mean something to them, you’re going to produce impactful and brilliant work.
You have to love what you do
Advertising is not a business for the thin-skinned or weak-willed. If you don’t love what you do, the crazy schedules and client requests will quickly become overwhelming. But if you’re like us, you just may find yourself enjoying this rollercoaster that we call a career. No matter how things change over the next 30 years, the quality of your work will depend on how much you love doing it and how much passion you bring to the workplace. As long as you’re passionate, and maybe just a little bit crazy, you’re going to have a place in advertising.
Think about it: Doesn’t it make sense to make an effort to educate media similarly to the way you’d educate a prospective customer?
Industry trade shows offer the opportunity for companies to demo their latest and greatest products and personally interact with thousands of customers and prospective customers. However, they are a major investment in terms of time and resources, so you definitely want to take full advantage of any reasonable chance to promote your business.
We often see companies miss a very good opportunity that costs them very little extra in terms of time and money: They forget about media opportunities. Some do consider media, but they put time and money into a very minimal effort and just a small piece of the puzzle such as assemble product information in a document, call it a press release and assume that media will understand and appreciate its significance.
I get it…with the logistics of producing, shipping and assembling the booth, equipment and handouts, booking flights and hotel rooms, scheduling work shifts and meeting with clients, there often isn’t much time left to think about media. Having worked dozens of industry trade shows on behalf of clients, I can guarantee that having a trade show media relations strategy definitely pays off.
Influential reporters, editors, publishers, bloggers, advertising representatives and analysts all attend these trade shows. They appreciate the time and effort you take to help them learn aspects of the industry that are important to their audiences. You may or may not get immediate media coverage, but the payoff can go far beyond the walls and the timeframe of the show.
As media become more aware of you, and you hear about upcoming topics to be covered, you’re building good relationships and becoming well positioned for future coverage. You have to have an organized approach, though, and work the show. There is a lot of competition for media time.
How We Do It
We find out which media is attending and reach out to targeted individuals ahead of time. Then we explain why a meeting is worthwhile and we coordinate appointments. Of course, we make certain that the person they are meeting is prepared with key messages and a media kit that has news and relevant materials.
We run interference if the company spokesperson is tied up with a customer. We track people down if there are miscommunications or if there are individuals who have not responded. Most importantly, after the meetings we follow up to ensure that no opportunities slip away.
Don’t let media walk right by your booth on their way to hear some other company’s product news. As you go over your planning checklist for your next big show, ask yourself if you are maximizing your potential for getting media coverage.
If not, let’s talk about it. Fill out the form below and we can set up a conversation.
There are many things you can do to generate leads among your prospective customers. With Geile/Leon’s 30 years of experience, we’ve compiled a list of the tried and true tactics that have been helpful to our B2B clients in the past.
1. Develop personas
The best place to start in developing a successful lead generation campaign is to know your customers. While this “tip” is now an obvious place to start, it isn’t always practiced by marketers. The reason? B2B organizations target multiple verticals. Marketers may have a high level view of the purchasing deciders in these industries, but to influence them, a more comprehensive understanding is needed. We recommend developing personas for the decision-makers in each of your important verticals. Personas should include not only the typical baseline info such as demographics, but should include information that relates to how they find information, their pain points, their personal motivations and goals, etc.
Building personas shouldn’t be difficult. Start by interviewing your top sales people – after all, they are a wealth of information (and most like to talk). From there, use that information to visualize and direct your content to that specific person, instead of a nameless audience.
When creating a content strategy, you first need to start at determining what your key performance indicators and goals are. Think about your personas and their pain points, then list the value your organization can offer. Next, decide on the content you can provide and how you will promote it. How and where do you want to reach these individuals? Decipher where in the sales funnel is content being developed for.
This information will be reflected in your content strategy, but also closely relates to your personas. How and where do you want to reach these individuals? Decipher where in the sales funnel is content being developed for. A good starting point is asking your sales people how content can help support them while they work their prospects.
A common recommendation is to offer white papers, e-books and webinars to get prospects into the sales funnel (the Awareness stage). As the prospect shows more interest (Consideration), maybe case studies and demo videos are the way to go. And finally, when it looks like they are about to take action (Preference), then product info and competitive comparisons are needed. You can track all this through Lead Scoring if you are using marketing automation.
Leverage your website to attract potential customers by showing them that you are the industry thought leader through the use of blogs. Create valuable content that answers questions your buyers are asking to build up trust with them.
Blogging begins by conducting keyword research so that your blogs are showing up when your customers search those keywords. This is called SEO, or search engine optimization. Doing so will get your blog in front of more relevant potential customers, making it more likely that a visitor to your site will convert into a customer. More on this later.
Lastly, your team members with the most knowledge of the subject matter should be blogging. If they don’t have time to do so, consider a Content Download Day. The process starts with discussions between the marketing staff and product management to identify hot topics and assign SMEs (subject matter experts). The SMEs are then sent a ‘Content Development Planning Document’ which has several high-level questions to help them isolate the most important information. This document acts as a guide for a more robust conversation.
SMEs and staff from our agency (account executives, writers) then attend a recorded session, and from it, we are able to write content that is on-point with no or very little final revisions. Overall, this is a streamlined approach that minimizes the time SMEs have to dedicate while delivering quality content for marketing to use.
4. Be sure your blog is optimized
In order for your blogging strategy to work, though, you must insure that your website is optimized in a way that encourages users to convert into customers or clients. This can be achieved by:
Keep your content up-to-date and accurate
Strategically placing CTAs throughout your website to encourage these users to proceed down your sales funnel
Utilize forms to capture data about your visitors, which will then become your list of leads
Analyze performance and optimize for more success
5. Publish other relevant educational content
In addition to blogging, you should be offering other forms of content aside from blogging. This could include brochures, whitepapers, ebooks, infographics, videos, etc. Generate leads by asking for the users contact information before providing them with the content they’d like to view. You can focus the content on how to deal with industry-specific pain points.
6. Improve user experience (UX) on your website
Say your potential customers are aware of your brand and have found your website. You won’t be able to convert these leads into sales without a properly designed website.
If leads feel like it takes too much time to find what they’re looking for on your website, they will leave. Be sure your site works as its own sales funnel, ushering users through towards the end goal. Strong journey orchestration like this helps to create a positive experience for the customer, ensuring they come back time and time again.
7. Utilize Your Email Lists
If you are with a large organization, you probably have a CRM fully integrated with your marketing efforts. But do they give you the proper level of reporting to track prospects through the customer journey?
If you are struggling with navigating a big CRM or using a less sophisticated program, we recommend a dedicated marketing automation platform. There many out there including HubSpot and SharpSpring. These will allow you to track every interaction with a prospect such as email clicks, site visits, social media interactions, etc., and assign lead scores for each activity. The higher the score, the further down the funnel the prospect is.
Another value with using marketing automation is the ability to set up triggers to see when prospects are interacting with content. In most systems, the prospects can be assigned a sales person and an email can be automatically sent to the sales person so he/she can decide to respond.
Also, it goes without saying, but be sure to follow up with your leads. According to the Harvard Business Review, when companies follow up with leads within one hour, they are seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation than those who wait longer.
8. Attend trade shows
Take your phone to your next trade show and make short videos. Record your product demos. Ask for customer testimonials. Interview a trade editor. All these make for nice small segment videos which can be promoted.
Another often overlooked aspect of Trade Shows is having a plan to engage the media. We offer clients a Trade Show PR program which consists of media outreach before, during and after the show. This has netted additional media coverage for our clients. These articles and then used in lead generation efforts. If interested in learning about this, please email our VP of PR, Mary at [email protected]
9.Incorporate Video Content For Better ROI
Whether your hiring an agency for a high quality production or doing one in-house, be sure to add videos to your content marketing plan. Adding a simple product video can increase sales by 80%, according to Dream Grow. Not only do videos show a great ROI, but they build trust between you and your customers.
The big question is whether to ask for user information before viewing the video. If the video is intended for top of the funnel awareness, don’t gate it. For videos used in the final steps of the purchasing decision, consider gating it if there is enough exclusive new information. Also, if you are using a marketing automation platform, and include video links in your emails, you will know who is viewing the video, which may eliminate the need to gate it.
Geile/Leon has just recently added in-house video production to our list of services. Check out this team in action with our work for our client Club Fitness.
10. Optimize for SEO
Although this technique was mentioned in the blog section, it’s important to utilize SEO strategies throughout your entire site. SEO is another reason why you should be creating personas too – you find out what keywords your target audience is searching for online. You want your content to be showing up on the first page of Google as close to the top as possible. Smart Insights reported that the first three positions on search engine results pages accounted for the majority of clicks.
Do you need help implementing one or more of these tactics? Let’s chat about how we can help.
You can tell a lot about the way people think by observing the people they admire and the traits they aspire to emulate. As advertisers, we think that applies to our work as well. As we celebrate our 30th year in business, we wanted to look back not just at our own business and successes through the years, but also at the business and successes of the industry as a whole. Working in advertising, every week you encounter something that makes you say something like “Damn… I wish I’d worked on that campaign,” or, “Damnit, that’s a great line, why didn’t I think of that.”
Accordingly, we asked around the office to see what kind of work from over the years still earned our employees’ admiration and praise. It’s a peek into the kind of thinking we have around here at G/L, and a look at the caliber of work we strive to create every single day. Here’s what a few of them had to say:
Anne-Marie Vaughn – Business Manager/Controller
Old Spice – The Man Your Man Could Smell
Like These ads are so entertaining I never get tired of them. I can only imagine how much fun it was for the people who concepted and produced them. I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall for those video shoots! They’ve also been extremely effective in driving sales for Old Spice. For me, this represents the epitome of what an ad campaign should be.
McDonald’s – McD.L.T. commercial featuring Jason Alexander (1985)
I remember seeing this commercial on TV like it was yesterday. There aren’t many ads from my childhood that I remember fondly— this may be the only one. I loved the singing and dancing, and the styling is as classic 80s as it gets. Can’t say I was ever into the McD.L.T.— they discontinued it before I cared much about keeping the hot side hot and the cool side cool. Plus the packaging was really bad for the environment. It’s fun to go back and watch Jason Alexander in this though.
I remember when this came out (in 2007), EVERYONE would quote it. I would see it all the time on MTV, and the people in my life that thought it was funny was definitely my demographic (young millennials who still love to eat candy). Now, eleven years later, I can still remember how Starburst ran a limited-time campaign of their berries and cream-flavored candy. Why? Because of a catchy commercial.
This award-winning campaign not only increased Snickers sales by 15.9% and grew market share in 56 of the 58 markets in which it ran, but it’s super catchy and I think it’s hilarious. Here’s a great opinion article on why Campaign Live thinks it was a success.
I mean, who doesn’t love these commercials? I challenge anyone to sit through them and not shed a tear. It’s no secret that eliciting emotion is a surefire way to ensure ad recall, and P&G identified a meaningful way to use emotion to make their brand bigger than the household cleaning products it’s known for.
After signing on as a sponsor for the Olympic games, P&G had to quickly develop an advertising strategy that would resonate amongst a global audience. They came to a realization that a common denominator for a majority of their brands was their primary audience: moms. Thus, “Thank You Mom” was born—a series of campaigns dating back to the 2010 Olympics that focus less on products, and more on the people who use them. Couple that with the storyline of an Olympic athlete and a mother’s love, and you have an instant winner in the hearts of consumers all over the world. The strategy is simple, the message is authentic and the creative is powerful. The result is advertising that has a lasting universal message the brand can truly be proud of—that seems like a pretty cool experience to be a part of!
The Absolut Bottle Campaign
Plain and simple, I think this was brilliant creative due, in large part, to its simplicity. True, the brand may have been blessed by sheer luck after the vodka caught Andy Warhol’s eye at Studio 54 in the 1980s. Specifically, the nondescript shape of the bottle. Warhol found it so mesmerizing, he designed an ad for it and the rest is history.
After the “Absolut Warhol” ad debuted, the brand launched the longest uninterrupted print ad campaign ever, featuring 1,500 separate ads showcasing the vodka bottle over a span of 25 years. Each ad was entirely unique, but followed a simple creative formula—”a bottle, two words and a little bit of wit.” This formula won big—before launching the campaign, Absolut had only 2.5% of the vodka market but, by its end, the brand had 50% of all imported vodka in the United States. As uninteresting as people find print nowadays, it’s fun to think about the time when print ads were, in some respects, work of art.
More film than commercial, this ad is the perfect marriage of medium, messaging, music and simple, strait-to-the-point emotion-stirring narrative. It not only snared my attention and inspired me as a college student, but has managed to firmly lodge itself in my mind even now – a full 8-years since I’ve watched it. The ad itself is meant to establish Chipotle as supporters of sustainable farming and to remove itself from the established association with large-scale factory farming. They present this message via a story which follows the journey of an adorable little farmer who’s animated world is reminiscent of Wallace & Gromit. The emotional impact arguably comes across even stronger thanks to the unique visual style and the ability of the filmmakers to illustrate the progression of simple farming’s evolution towards an out-of-control industrial scale and then innovating again on it’s march back to the values and morals we began with. This all occurs over the backdrop of a well-aged Willy Nelson singing his rendition of “The Scientist”, humming into our eager ear holes the relevant line of, “let’s bring things back to the start.”
Aside from being incredibly impactful and strong in terms of delivering its message, the strongest part of the ad is its ability to present itself as entertainment. Before attempting to directly sell its audience on anything we are first guided on a journey and made to feel something thanks to the meticulous and well-planned visuals. As a student in the Missouri State design program I most likely re-watched this ad and its behind the scenes dissection over a dozen times. The effort spent in planning, constructing and shooting this video is on a scale I didn’t believe was possible for an advertisement. I would have killed to have sat in for a day and watched as those tiny pics slowly, shot-by-shot, wobbled their way across a field or were squished into pink meat cubes.
Despite some of the more unfortunate issues Chipotle has had over the years since, I still think of it as the sustainable, grass-roots burrito thanks solely to that 2-minute video I watched almost a decade ago.
Similar to Chipotle, this video blurs the line between advertisement and entertainment. The dizzying display this Ad/Music Video accomplishes is incredibly impressive and manages to present a mundane product such as paper not only as kick-ass cool, but as a limitless implement for creativity. In the process of entertaining the audience they manage to position the brand as a force for innovation as well as conservation (All paper was recycled as well as the video’s proceeds going to Greenpeace).
Coming at it from the creative perspective, much like the Chipotle video, the process and problem solving behind this production is the hero. Working in design we enjoy solving visual problems and this video takes the cake in that department. This video required north of 2 years to plan and prepare all the moving pieces before even one second was filmed. And when all was said and done, it’s an incredibly entertaining, effective and impactful video.
To me, this takes the cake as one of the funniest, most original campaigns ever. In my opinion, the concept and delivery was ahead of its time because it was so over the top. I can still watch it to this day and laugh for hours.
This is a humorous campaign as well, but what I admired the most about it was the fact that it embraced the consumer mindset of wanting to skip over a pre-roll YouTube ad as quickly as possible and instead called the consumer out for it, “You can’t skip this Geico ad because it’s already over.” You think the ads over and instead you get a hilarious turn of unexpected events that started as a boring situation. Such a clever execution with true strategy catered to the platform. On a broader scale, Geico was able to take the most boring product/service in the world (insurance) and make it funny and engaging. It reshaped how other insurance companies approached marketing as well.
These preroll ads were creative and innovative — they were the first preroll ads that were specifically formatted for the medium! GEICO took something people really don’t like to watch and turned it into something that they not only didn’t skip but watched in its entirety! An amazing feat when it comes to preroll ads. In true GEICO fashion these ads were funny too — they used cheesy music, stocky visuals and boring messaging — but all of that combined with a simple live freeze frame resulted in hilarity! GEICO stayed true to their brand while reinventing preroll ads. They showed you don’t have to spend a lot of time to get your message and name out. 5 seconds was all they needed to be memorable — a great lesson for other brands!
Burger King – Flame-Grilled
This series of print ads turned some not-so-good data (more BK’s have burned down than any other fast food chains) into a positive message for the brand. The ads show actual Burger King restaurants on fire — a twisted, fun way to remind customers that their burgers are always flame-grilled. Who doesn’t love a company that can make light of themselves — consumers love transparency and Burger King delivered.
Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised that I’ve managed to work Taco Bell into the conversation once again, but what can I say? Advertising and branding is a delicate balance… on one side, brands tell consumers what their product is, and on the other, consumers tell brands what their product is. Often times, the best campaigns make full use of the latter, embracing an identity that consumers dictate. Such is the case with Taco Bell’s “Fourthmeal” campaign – a campaign that essentially said, “We are good drunk food.” Instead of trying to promote themselves as a place for a quick lunch or dinner a la McDonald’s and other fast food establishments, Taco Bell literally invented a new meal in the day, and came right celebrating the fact that people wanted to eat their cheesy, beefy deliciousness after a late night out and probably a few too many drinks. They extended their store hours, and set the scenes of their spots in late-night alcohol-infused scenarios. Today, even as many of my peers and I try to be more health-conscious during the day, the association of Taco Bell with late-night food cravings remains the same. “Fourthmeal” always felt like something I was doing anyways but never had a name for, and when Taco Bell named it for me, it simply stuck. Twelve years after the campaign’s airing, my friends and I still say “Fourthmeal” when getting late night food.
I loved this commercial so much when it first aired during the 2015 Super Bowl. The line “The people who drink our beer are people who like to drink beer” is brilliant. It says so much about a mindset, so simply. And much like the “Fourthmeal” campaign, it’s a great example of a brand embracing what they already are rather than trying to tap into every new market. I love all beers myself, and I can certainly be found “dissecting” local craft beers and snobbishly assessing them with friends from time to time – when I’m in that mood, no matter what Budweiser told me or made, they’d probably never get my attention. But I’ll be damned if there aren’t also many times that I simply want to have a good time, drink cold beers and let that be all there is to it… Call it the difference between having a drink and just having a damn beer. Like every other cliché, annoying, white millennial male who is desperate to appear interesting, I absolutely loved Anthony Bourdain and read many of his interviews. I often think back to an interview he gave a while ago in which he said, “But look, I like cold beer. And I like to have a good time. I don’t like to talk about beer, honestly. I don’t like to talk about wine. I like to drink beer.” This campaign did a magnificent job of owning that mood, instead of trying to change who Budweiser was in an attempt to capture a part of the growing craft beer market.
