Archive for the 'Campaigns' Category

In 1985 Coca-Cola launched New Coke to replace the original version, which had been losing market share to arch-rival Pepsi for some time.

The Coca-Cola Company’s research had showed consistently in blind taste tests that Pepsi was preferred over Coke because of its sweeter formulation and they came to the, completely logical, conclusion that if they were to reformulate the product to taste sweeter, the decline in market share would be stopped. They tried a number of new product formulas and eventually hit upon one that beat Pepsi hands down in those all-important taste tests.

On April 19 2005 the company let the media know that it would be making a major announcement on April 23 regarding its product, and Pepsi correctly guessed it would be a change in the formulation of its flagship product. Then director of Pepsico’s North American operations, Roger Enrico, gleefully took a full-page ad out ion the New York Times declaring they had won the cola wars. Neh neh ne-neh neh.

On April 23 Coke made the predicted announcement that they would be replacing old Coke with New Coke. Shares in the company went up. Then the consumer backlash started. Pesky people, those consumers. Within a few short weeks a vocal minority, who didn’t want the product they had grown up with to change, became, well, more vocal. And soon Coke headquarters was being flooded with hundreds and thousands of angry letters. Even Fidel Castro, a longtime Coke drinker, declared New Coke to be a sign of American capitalist decadence.

The protests from consumers and bottlers got too much for Coke and in July 1985 it announced its decision to revert to its original formulation, which eventually became known as Coke Classic. By the end of 1985 Coke Classic was outselling both New Coke and Pepsi. Sergio Zyman, head of marketing at Coke during that time (and still in the job when I was working there), later said: “Yes it infuriated the public, cost a ton of money and lasted only 77 days before we reintroduced Coca-Cola Classic. Still, New Coke was a success because it revitalized the brand and reattached the public to Coke.”

In other words, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s have taken a leaf out of Coke’s play book for their “Whopper Freak Out” campaign for Burger King. TV commercials and an 8-minute web film show what happens when customers in a Nevada Burger King are told that the Whopper is off the menu. The web film goes further, showing reactions from customers when, instead of being served the Whoppers they have ordered, they are given products from McDonald’s and Wendy’s.

Research from IAG Research, revealed in Ad Age today, indicate that the “Freakout” spots are among the most highly recalled ever, ever, EVER.

It’s a brilliant campaign.

I love the fact they used what happened to Coke in 1985 to create a whopper of an idea, demonstrating in the most entertaining way possible how BK customers really feel about their Whoppers (if you see what I mean).

Here’s the secret formula they used for the campaign:

Great insight derived from marketing history + big idea executed well + understanding of the media = holy grail.

How many marketers put a short film on YouTube every day in the hope that it’ll become the next viral phenomenon only to see it fall flat on its face? OK, so we don’t know the answer, but we bet it’s A LOT. We love that marketers are willing to take risks and try new platforms, but the fact that so few of them succeed means that most of them still don’t get it. The media is NOT the message. Just because YouTube is hot does it mean people care about a marketing message that is stuffed on it. The content has to be great and relevant to the adolscent boys who are watching.

A recent campaign for Diesel underwear got oodles of attention by creating a big audacious idea and seeing where it went. It seemed to have worked, with millions visiting the Diesel website, a lot of PR buzz and likely accolades at the Cannes ad festival.

Richard and I gave a talk in LA this week where we talked through the Punk Marketing Manifesto, peppered with lots of case studies and examples. Everyone seemed to have a good time. We laughed, we cried, we hugged. You get the picture. Anyway, the audience were mostly small business owners and people trying to promote their independent film (it was LA, after all) who have tiny budgets to spend, far smaller than many of the brands in our case studies. I think some of the people there thought we were going to teach them a low cost marketing technique as the answer to their prayers. Many of the examples we used where of big brands - BMW, Virgin and Burger King - and the temptation is to think the lessons don’t apply to the small guy. But we wanted the audience to understand it isn’t about the money. Even with the smallest budget, if you follow the principles outlined in the Manifesto you will be able to create marketing that breaks through and sells products. After all, one of the articles of the Manifesto is to outthink rather than outspend the competition.

Well yesterday I read in AdRants about a great example of a small, inexpensive marketing campaign that is exactly that. It is based on a strong-singleminded idea and is brilliantly executed. Created by Boathouse Group, an agency from Waltham MA, the “We’ll Show You Everything” campaign is for the Clay car dealerships in Norwood, MA. Dear to out own hear it features a car salesman stripping down to his undererwear as he explains that, unlike other car dealerships, Clay shows customers the naked truth about the costs associated with the car they might be buying. He explains the 7 tricks the other guys use to bamboozle you.

The four films in the series were artfully directed by Gregory Roman of Magic Box Films in South Easton, MA, and star an actor called Raymond Bokhour, who is very convincing as an overweight, likable and sincere car salesman. According to Gregory the four films were released on YouTube on April 1 and will soon be on cable TV. On the dealership website (dontgettaken.com) you can dress the character to cover up his unsavory body.

The campaign is a great example of low cost Punk Marketing and follows the principles of the Manifesto to a tee, especially number 6 (Expose Yourself) and number 7 (Make Enemies - in this case the enemy is the lies used in car selling). We applaud you Boathouse, Magic Box Films and Mr. Bokhour. But please don’t take off those shorts.

The Super Bowl represents the last watercooler moment for TV advertising. With the splintering of the media into a million different pieces across the airwaves, online, in games (video, that is) and everywhere else that will sell space to marketers, the Bowl is still a place where millions of young guys gather around their 70 inch plasmas and LCDs to share an entertainment experience. And advertisers know they have a chance to reach this precious demographic with gold old-fashioned TV commercials. Who can say TV advertsing is dead when an advertiser like Anheuser-Busch spends $25 million on Super Bowl commercials? Right? Right…?

And the agencies had better come up with the goods to prove that they can still woo the consumers with their fare.

Over the last 10 or 15 years the big lumbering agencies have become specialists in creating big lumbering TV-centric campaigns and are smarting from the blasphemy spoken by many with data to back it up that commercials are no longer reaching the people they need to reach, and those that they do reach, fast forward through them on TiVo or their cable operators own brand of DVR.

The Super Bowl is the agencies’ chance to prove that TV advertising can be great, that sponsored online search, branded entertainment, viral marketing and the like are no more than flashes in the pan and will crawol back from whence they came before too long.

But even this one last great advertising showcase - the Super Bowl - shows the case for TV comercials is far from proven. The advertising on display in the multiple breaks is not uninimously great. In fact, for the most part, the fare served up for the 41st Bowl was pretty damned poor given what’s at stake.

For one, there was an unhealthy a celebration of violence as a mode of humor. Not just slapstick, although there was plenty of that too, but people hitting each other or fighting or committing mass suicide. Isn’t the Super Bowl supposed to be a family show? I mean wasn’t that the problem with Janet Jackson’s nipple popping out a couple of years ago? But I guess violence is OK for young kids to see (my son is three and I had to turn the TV off when the ads came on) and to model their behavior on. Nice example Mad Ave.

And then there were the “consumer-generated ads” from Chevy, Doritos and the NFL. The Chevy one had a bunch of guys in the street taking their clothes of because they couldn’t resist the new Chevy car SUV hybrid thing in vile orange. It was lame. The Doritos one had a guy driving a car and a girl passerby smacking their heads because they were (a)distraced by Doritos, and (b)nerds. Lame AND violent. The NFL one was a great concept about the end of the season, poorly executed by the ad agency (and shot by commercial director legend Joe Pytca). But the idea actually came from an ad guy, Gino Bona, who works in a New England ad agency (Garrand Marketing Communications), just not from one working at Doritos agency of record, Omnicom Group’s Goodby Silverstein and Partners. Goodby must have hated having to produce an ad wriiten by a guy from another agency. Maybe that’s why they screwed it up. But, the point is, it ain’t really consumer-geberated if the consumer works in advertising. Right?

There was some great work, demonstating a good strategy and a big creative idea well-executed (and that, after all, is all advertising can hope to be), notably from E*trade, Revlon, Emerald Nuts and Toyota. They each showed that TV advertsing can still be a powerful way of getting a point about a product across.

But my award for the best commercials of the Bowl goes to Coca-Cola for two excellent ads from the “Welcome to the Coke Side of Life” campaign, created by Wieden and Kennedy. Coca-Cola has not been known for great ads in the past few years, producing a bunch of vapid, happy, slappy, crappy commercials that offended no-one and appealed to exactly the same number, but it really seems to have turned the corner with this work and I tip my caps to the marketer and its agency. W+K remain one of the great agencies around, developing stellar work consistently across their clients.