Music Television, that is. Not the unpalatable programming that’s taken over the once-revolutionary video channel like a cancer and rendered it virtually unrecognizable to Generation X. But I guess it’s a pipe dream of mine now that the network has officially dropped “Music Television” from the logo.
the new MTV logo and the original 1981 design
Seriously, people. “Jersey Shore” is more riveting than watching artists’ visual interpretations of songs, good and bad? Sure, there’s You Tube for all that now, but it lacks the personalization that Martha Quinn and the other veejays possessed. Yes, I may be living in the past, but it rocked the Casbah.
So what exactly does the “M” represent now? Mystery meat, school cafeteria style. Hand me a barf bag, like totally.
Read about the MTV logo story here. And let’s keep hope alive that maybe someday music videos will find their way back into pop culture.
It’s been a common belief in advertising that if you really want to grab an audience’s attention, a baby or puppy works like magic. That may very well be true, but there’s another approach that always catches my eye—I’ll call it “human-nature.”
When I was a kid leafing through my mom’s issues of Vogue, I remember seeing a remarkable series of watch ads that featured hands painted as exotic animals—a swan, zebra, flamingo, giraffe—wearing the status timepieces. While I don’t recall the brand (I think it was Omega), I’ve never forgotten the amazing artistry that showcased the products. I recently learned it was the work of Italian painter Guido Daniele.
Another great example of humans as nature is this Toyota Prius TV commercial.
I think it’s brilliant. And it’s not just because I’m totally enthralled with my daughter’s class plays of Mother Goose rhymes and tales of the seasons. This concept took the ordinary car commercial template and made it truly unique and memorable.
Heck, even less elaborate applications, like this Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich spot
make me stop and watch. It’s the natural creativity that gets me.
The celebrity endorsement. I understand why it exists (to help increase brand awareness, promote effectiveness of a product/service and drive sales). Most of the time, however, it’s a hard pill for me to swallow-that is, knowing how much money and freebies are shelled out to “It” entertainers, sports figures, politicians, media personalities and even (gag) reality “stars” to tout a product or service that they (a.) likely don’t know much about and/or (b.) probably wouldn’t use if they weren’t being heftily compensated to do so.
The even bigger issue (now, more than ever) seems to be the risk factor involved for companies, given the frequency of pop culture figures getting into hot water (Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant) or being controversial (Madonna, Kanye West). A key factor with celebrity endorsements is credibility. And if your spokesperson has lost it, your brand may inevitably get lumped in there, too.
Madonna was paid $5 million by Pepsi-Cola to appear in a 1989 commercial that would feature the world premiere of “Like a Prayer”. The tone that the commercial sought to convey sharply contrasted with the music video. Pepsi execs quickly yanked the advertisement after only two airings in an attempt to dissociate themselves from the controversy Madonna had created with the video.
According to industry data, more than 20 percent of all TV commercials feature a celebrity,often carrying over into radio, print, billboard and web advertising. Theory has it that these famous names can help brands maintain a high profile status, or shift or reinforce positioning. Those with news to share need more than just high visibility. That’s where relevant celebrity values and credibility come into play.
Clearly there is no “golden celebrity guarantee.” Who would’ve thought such charming, likable and successful figures like Tiger, Michael Phelps, and (I couldn’t possibly leave out) OJ could fall from grace. And yet they do. And will continue to do so.
So what’s a company who wants some added star power for their brand to do? I think you can’t go wrong with community involvement and philanthropy. Giving back to the very people that support your brand is a win-win all around.
Now for some Did You Know? Info:
Celebrities have been sought after as advertising pitchmen since the late 1800s, when English actress Lillie Langtree endorsed Pears’ soap and explorer Admiral Peary appeared in an Eastman Kodak ad. Some early (and more conservative) celebrity endorsements included President McKinley for Waterman pens; Ernest Hemingway for Ballantine Ale; Eleanor Roosevelt for Zenith hearing aids and Nancy Reagan for Crest toothpaste.
How effective this catch-phrase was for our parent s in getting us to eat our vegetables, clean our room, or go to bed at a decent hour is debatable. But when it comes to motivating us to try a product or service, and it’s delivered by a trusted source with relevant reasons, it packs a different punch.
Statistics show that up to 45% of most businesses/brands are chosen based on the recommendations of others. Like many advertising ideas, that’s nothing new. A trip in the way-back machine shows this Faberge Organic Shampoo commercial with a memorable hook that supports the very notion from the data.
This spot also illustrates what is called referral lead generation-recognizing the sales potential available through a “warm market” including customers, vendors or other businesses that have an established association with your business or have purchased your products or services, and had a good experience.
A referral, however, is more than word of mouth. While it may begin as that, a referral goes further to encourage customers to participate in the sales process. Some different ways to growreferrals and save ad dollars:
Permission-based emails to get the word out
A Refer-a-Friend link for information to be easily forwarded to others
An e-Newsletter to help you stay top of mind
Audio/video testimonials to increase credibility and trust
Affiliate web links for added exposure with reciprocal referral partnerships
Now, some companies consider the celebrity endorsement the ultimate referral . To me, it’s “faux real,” but I’ll save that for my next post-”Are you buying it?”
In this age of ultra-micro-breweries and one-off craft beers, I’m proud to admit that my favorite beer is the one I grew up drinking, Genesee Beer.
Brewed right here in Rochester (“Our one brewery makes it best!”) Genny hasn’t always been my beer of choice, but a few years ago I tried it again on a whim and discovered that not only was it better than I remembered, it was better than the beers I was routinely paying three times as much for. Now I have friends who can be quite snobbish about their beers, always going on about the aromatic hoppiness of Albanian-moss stout or the creamy butternut head of a quadruple-dark porter, the kind of folks who won’t drink anything brewed in this hemisphere, but for pure drinking pleasure, I go for a Genny.
Honestly though, it might be the ads.
I grew up with ads just like these and today when I see one, I want a beer. But it’s got to be a Genny. Nostalgia over taste? Who cares, as long as it’s cold and it comes with one of these classic ads.
A few weeks back, some pals here at Dixon Schwabl and I stopped by the “store” at the Genesee Brewery to pick up some fashionable t-shirts and memorabilia. While the store didn’t have much (really, Genesee, you need to work on that), to get to the store we had to walk through a part of the corporate offices. Hanging on those walls were the original art for those ads I grew up admiring.
Think of it. Illustration art, old advertisements, local history and Genny beer, all in one spot. It was my own version of the Louvre. Check out the reverential look on my awe-struck face.
I came as close as I probably ever will to grabbing a painting off the wall and running for the door. If they let me back in the building, (“Sir, please, back away from the art work or we’ll have to taser you again”) I’ll bring a quality camera and snap a shot of the originally “Jenny” mock-ups. Till then – if you are over 21 – check out the Genesee Beer site for yourself. And the next time you’re at your favorite drinking establishment, order up a Genny and see what you’ve been missing.
PS – anyone with art heist experience, please contact me off-line with references.
Recently I picked up a copy of Starting in Life by Nathaniel C. Fowler, Jr., a career handbook published in 1906 and republished by The Lyons Press in 2003. In it the author offers thoughtful insights into thirty different careers, from physician to department store clerk, stenographer to steam railroad employee. And since N. C. Fowler, Jr. was hip to the cutting edge of his day, there’s a section entitled The Advertising Man. I thought the book would be great for a laugh, with insights so out of date to be hilarious. Turns out N.C. Fowler Jr. could see the future and his insights are still creepy accurate – as long as you can overlook his male-centric prose.
“The successful advertisement to-day, the one that brings business, is a work not only of art but of literature, even of the upper grade of art and of a high class of literary quality.”
“…the advertisement which pays is the one that brings the business…This advertisement is undoubtedly prepared by a man or woman of strong mental capacity, with some mastery of the principles of art and literature, one who would have been a success as a writer had he or she taken up literature instead of advertising.”
“Many of the greatest artists, some even of our portrait painters, to-day work for advertisers.”
“The expert writer of advertising, with a record of success back of him, is, or could be, a literary man.”
“Not a few of our famous authors are quietly preparing advertising matter that they may receive a greater remuneration for their services than they can always obtain from the literary editor.”
“Any one who has a fair command of language, by the aid of a dictionary can properly describe things if he is given unlimited space for the description; but the advertisement writer must say all that is necessary to say in the fewest possible words. He must describe a thing so that the reader will wish to see it.”
“The advertisement writer, like the doctor, to be successful must know how to feel the public pulse and to keep within hearing of the beatings of the public heart.”
“In short, advertising offers much to the competent, something to those of some ability, and nothing to the incompetent.”
Last week, the BBC revealed its newest logo for 2010’s season of Doctor Who.
Aside from the “Holy-Lens-Flare-Batman” factor, I’m kind of feeling this. Actually, I all but ignore the stacked type on the left because I’m in love with the treatment of the initials “DW” forming the shape of the TARDIS.
(For those who are scratching their heads and wondering “Doctor.. what?”; the TARDIS is a time machine in the form of a Police Call Box, used by the title character of the Doctor to gallivant through space and time.)
It’s much bigger on the inside.
This is the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor Who logo since the show’s premiere in 1963 and celebrates the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor. Doctor Who is unique in the fact that the title character has remained the same, despite eleven different actors playing him. The show handles the changes in talent by having the Doctor “regenerate” instead of die. And in honor of the release of the newest regeneration of the branding associated with the show, I thought it’s be fun to take a trip back through time ourselves.
The following is going to be a test of endurance for those designers out there who cringe at the idea of a brand constantly changing its look every few years. Or those who suffer when a design reeks of the trends from the era in which it was created. But when the show/brand in question is one of the longest running television shows in the world (the longest running science fiction program, period); I guess it’s hard to argue with success.
Check out the history of Doctor Who logos, the good, the bad and the ugly… after the cut.
One of my favorite advertising movies of all time also happens to be one my favorite movies, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream Home. It came out in 1948, it stars Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and the scene-stealing Melvyn Douglas, and if you like your comedies with a lot of snappy dialog and real-world situations all screw-balled up, this is the film for you.
The plot centers, obviously, on the dream house (“The Old Hackett Place”) that Jim Blandings, his lovely wife, and about 100 sub-contractors are trying to renovate. It’s all good fizzy-fun, but the parts I like best are the ones that show Jim hard at work at an NY ad agency, trying to come up with a tagline for the WHAM-brand ham. It’s a troublesome account that has destroyed the careers of everyone it touches. Throughout the film – which spans almost a year – we watch Jim struggle with the tag, doing all the classic things we think copywriters do when they are brainstorming – lounging on the couch, tossing papers around the room, pacing, rambling, snapping his fingers as he runs across the room to jot an idea only to cross it out and add it to the piles of crumpled paper that have missed the trashcan. His faithful secretary is also there, offering suggestions as good (or bad) as Jim’s, but mostly she’s a stenographer.* I wonder if it was this movie and these scenes that shaped the way we think about the ad business in the first place.
The deadline is fast approaching and Jim, is out of ideas, resigned to the fact that the WHAM account has destroyed another copywriter.** Then, out of nowhere, the Blandings’ maid, Gussie (played by the legendary Louise Beavers), comes up with a brilliant tagline idea, saving Jim’s career and sparking a new ad campaign that features Gussie herself! Ta-da!
In reality, the tagline stinks and the campaign is dull, but if we can believe everything else that happens in the movie – and we do – we can believe this.
So, if you’ve never seen the film, track it down, and if you have, find a copy of the novel of the same name by Eric Hodgins – it’s a fun read, even if it lacks the WHAM plotline.
Now here’s where I should insert a clip from the film that shows Jim at work, but I couldn’t find any. Instead, here’s the lovely Myrna Loy as Mrs. Blandings, meeting with painters as she described the colors she wants used in her dream home.
*After high school, I dated a bright, spunky woman who was going to college to learn how to teach shorthand. That shows technology has changed everything and that I am an old, old man.
**Okay, in the film Jim is an account executive, but that’s movies for you. He’s a copywriter.
Every morning I post an old advertisement on the fridge in the kitchen here at Dixon Schwabl. The ads range from the turn of the last century up through the 1970s, for all sorts of products and services. Here’s today’s ad:
I post these ads for three reasons. First, as a former history teacher, I think it’s important to know your roots – it gives you perspective and helps prevent hubris. I’m sure the guy (and I’m sure it was a guy) who came up with the ad above felt it was just about the finest ad ever created…sortta like how I felt about that direct mail piece I wrote yesterday.
I also post them since you never know what idea it may spark. For example, as I taped up the above ad (found on the inside back cover of the January 18, 1965 Sports Illustrated), I considered how I could apply the man vs. shark concept to the reasons campaign I’m working on for a financial investment firm and/or the radio spots I have to write for a local dental care chain. The idea didn’t go anywhere, but I enjoyed envisioning the end results.
Finally, I like to post the ads because they’re just fun. A man wrestling a sluggish, docile, bottom-feeding, tiny-mouthed nurse shark, then heading to the bar to drink off the shakes? What’s not to love?
Maybe it was all the media coverage of the Woodstock anniversary, but last night I had my own flashback to the Sixties. I wasn’t at Woodstock – I was 11 then and if I was going to run off to see a show it would have been Louis Prima at the Copa Room in Vegas. My Sixties flashback was a commercial for G.I. Joe.
Ah, exactly as I remembered.
Some of my favorite childhood memories are of the hours I spent with my best pal Rick, blowing up G. I. Joes with cherry bombs and concocting gasoline-based explosions (for realistic battle scenes) in the woods behind my house. Today all kids have to do to make something explode is push some button on their game consuls. They don’t know the simple pleasures (and singed eyebrows, third degree burns and ringing eardrums) that we enjoyed in our simpler times.
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