Social media has effected how corporations behave. For example, the way it has cajoled (or in some cases coerced) big businesses into acting like nice people instead of faceless, corporate entities. What choice do they have? With everyone and their brother potential whistleblowers it is no longer feasible for corporations to maintain a façade. It’s too easy for the world to see inside. And if the inside of a company does not match its outsides (i.e. marketing image) this creates a level of conflict potentially ruinous to the firm.
Yet, big companies are reluctant to let go of old ideas. It’s not in their conservative natures. Especially when it comes to public relations. Transparency is uncomfortable. Businesses do not want to reveal their proprietary secrets –the Secret Sauce! Nor do they want internal debate and/or dysfunction made public, i.e. a bumbling CEO or battling board of directors.
While publicity and success go hand in hand, exposure makes everyone nervous. The word itself implies vulnerability, like ants under a magnifying glass. But once firms accept the two-way glass much good can come of it. For them and for the communities they reside in. For example, fast food marketers own up to their unhealthy menus and begin providing nutritious alternatives. Whether they want to or not. In reality, these good-for-you items have, in many cases, become highly profitable: a win-win for all parties.
Another example comes from corporate giant, Kraft Foods. Perhaps feeling internal and external pressures, some years ago the company began embracing social causes, in particular those aimed at reducing hunger. Now Kraft spends countless millions of dollars on behalf of Feed The World and other such organizations. McDonald’s wages campaigns against child obesity. As David Jones (Global CEO, Havas) points out in his recent book, “those that do the most good win.”
Indeed, “doing good” is now a corporate mantra. For obvious reasons, marketers are compelled to talk about their good deeds. While it does shroud altruism in a self-serving aura, so what? The deeds are getting done. Heightened social conscience of corporations is a good thing. A great thing! But it might not have occurred –certainly not as quickly- without the relentless “peer pressure” that social media brings to the equation.
Author’s Note: This post was taken from content I’d written earlier.
Altoids, circa 1997
I wrote the above copy for Altoids in 1997. A year or so before, Mark Faulkner (art director) and I created the “Curiously Strong Mints” campaign for Altoids. The two of us would run this creatively driven account for about 7 years, producing myriad posters, print, ambient and digital pieces.
The campaign exploded into popular culture. Sales boomed. Within a couple years, Altoids became the number one selling mint in North America. Later, in a parlay with Life Savers candy, Kraft sold the brand to Wrigley for over 1.5 billion dollars. Pretty sweet, especially for a confection that wallowed in obscurity for over a century.
Those ads were game changers: for the client, for the agency, and thankfully for yours truly. Mark and I (plus a growing and talented team) would go on to win tons of creative awards for our work, including, in 1997, the $100,000 Grand Kelly Award for best print campaign in North America. Which, fortuitously, brings us back to the above execution: “Makes Other Mints Feel Inadequate.”
Imagine my surprise discovering it in the latest issue of People magazine! Holy crap. After all these years and all that history, they’re rerunning our ad. The headline. The typography. The color scheme. Save for a different (and in my opinion) crappier looking tin, it’s the same exact ad.
I’m baaaaaack… as seen in People, May 2013
Big deal? Well, sort of. For whatever reasons, rerunning old advertising is unprecedented. Creative has a super short lifespan. Like cicadas, campaigns appear, create buzz, and then die. Precious few last longer than their first flight. Once gone, even the most successful ad campaigns stay that way. Yes, taglines or other assets get resurrected all the time. But never the ad itself.
Until this one.
What can I say? Of course I’m flattered. But seeing my ad after all these years is also discombobulating. Like running into your ex and her new beau. Altoids was and is so personal to me. I still remember pitching the above headline to my client. In fact, I recall telling them Altoids’ smart and cynical audience would appreciate a quirky word like “inadequate.” The subtle innuendo was highly intended. (As the brand grew, its widening audience would appreciate much sillier copy. But my favorite pieces always remained true to that “smart and cynical” core.)
So, having perhaps lost its way, is Altoids’ advertising returning to its base? Literally. Look, I don’t blame agency and client for rerunning our copy. There’s a whole new generation of “smart and cynical” out there. It’ll be new to them.
Special note: I discovered a website devoted entirely to Altoids advertising. In it, you’ll find “Inadequate” along with all the others, far as I can tell, pretty much in the order we produced them. I have no idea who hosts this site or why. Pretty cool, though.
Bleak Hyundai commercial (and others like it) advertises death of hope and little else…
April 26, 2013
God forgive me…for this commercial.
What’s more unsettling? That a car commercial for Hyundai makes a commercial extolling clean emissions by depicting a botched suicide or that it is only the latest car company to be attached to such grim fare? By now you’ve seen the spot. Likely only once. For who would want to watch it again?
More than advertising technology, it seems this morbid story is telling us something about ourselves. Something sad. Trying for adult wit -I suppose- what I take away from watching these films is no less than the death of hope. The undertow of despair is unavoidable. Regret permeates. In particular, in the Hyundai commercial, where a man, having survived an attempted suicide, forlornly walks back into his tidy suburban home, shoulders slumped, wearily accepting another day of existence. Maybe he is in a loveless marriage. Perhaps he has lost his job. Was he chronically depressed?
Honestly, it’s not the lack of sensitivity I question. The Hyundai film is quite sensitive. To a fault. By going for complete realism it achieves melancholy resembling an Ingmar Bergman film. And that’s the problem. We are left pondering the human condition. Not the nifty car.
I appreciate, sometimes even adore, dark humor in films and TV. But in advertising? Here it seems, well, just plain wrong. Ultimately, advertising should leave the viewer feeling something positive about what it’s selling. Emphasizing a negative about life is perfectly acceptable when the advertisement provides the solution. Dramatizing a fire to sell insurance for example. But in these spots the solution is unintended, bittersweet at best. Misguided to a fault.
Besides, aren’t cars supposed to bring joy and freedom to Everyman? Not so for these blokes. By choosing their automobiles for coffins these sad sacks have unwittingly made them symbols for all that has gone wrong in their lives.
I have to wonder: After coming up with the concept and its clever irony (forgiven) didn’t the copywriters then realize this deeper, sadder one? We think about our work, don’t we? If not the authors, the wise creative director or planner or account executive (let alone the client) is supposed to. Creative license like this is unacceptable.
I’m not saying death is off limits in a commercial. Or that it can’t be funny. Below is one of the most famous TV commercials of all time. It’s about a car. It’s about death. Yet, it handles both with life-affirming joy. Failing to kill oneself in a car because it has clean emissions does neither.
Flash mob?
Like most of you I spent this week considering the horrific events in Boston. We watched the 24/7 news feed. Talked to our co-workers. Lessoned our children. We took part in yet another big, heavy conversation. It’s a sick and sweet thing, observing our nation coming together over something terrible. Alas, it has become all too common.
Or has it?
In reality, these public displays of cowardly violence are fairly infrequent, at least compared to violence in general. At the Boston Marathon a bunch of people were maimed and three people died, including a child. Terrible yes. But this sort of thing happens almost every day in every big city in every country in the world. We barely even notice. Case in point, the day after the Boston tragedy Syria unloaded arsenal on vague revolutionary targets killing dozens of innocents. The story was on page four of my local paper.
What makes the ‘Boston Bombings’ so different? Was it the public stage? The parade of innocent bystanders? The media? Or was it the fact that it occurred in America, where senseless violence isn’t supposed to happen? (Tell that to the parents of Sandy Hook Elementary or moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado.)
Whatever the differences, a brazen act of terrorism has much in common with successful modern marketing, doesn’t it? Not to come off as insensitive, but wasn’t the ‘Boston Bombing’ basically event marketing with a viral component? A flash mob, literally and figuratively.
Marketing…
Terrorism…
The bombers knew the finish line of this iconic race would have countless spectators. With iPhones. That meant not only plenty of victims but even more survivors, who would film, post and Tweet.
The perpetrators are many bad things but they are not arbitrary. They know blowing up innocent people at a major sporting event creates epic, horrifying drama, the kind that trends on Twitter and clogs all other media: locally, nationally and globally.
The concept of killing innocent people is no longer enough. The vile act needs to be integrated with other pieces in order to go viral and give these merchants of evil the awareness they crave.
Too soon for a discussion like this? Perhaps. Or am I late? Consider another perspective from this VP of public relations: http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/op-ed-when-tragedy-strikes-silence-is-golden_b47174
Kmart and Draft FCB’s “shippy” commercial delivers boffo results along with controversy.
April 16, 2013
With nearly 9 million views as of this writing, K-Mart’s “Ship my Pants” commercial by Draft FCB is a hit. Conceptually, it’s a one trick pony, and a dirty one at that. The word ship gets punned with the word shit. Over and over again.
Still, by any definition the film has gone viral, its viewers increasing by the minute. Pretty special given how many (and I mean many) similar efforts by other advertisers drop then sink like stones. Clearly, a ship-ton of people watched the film. Judging the work by sheer numbers, it gets an “A.” How could it not?
Creatively speaking, I’m not so sure. Funny or not, is it good advertising for Kmart? Will any of those 9 million viewers actually relate to and/or respond to Kmart’s underlying message? Shipping out of stock pants to shoppers who are in the store seems like table stakes. Won’t the Gap do that?
Back to the concept. To quote an ambivalent fan commenting on a popular trade blog, the spot is “funnyish.” Typical smart-ass troll. But the “ish” is a deserved barb. We laugh when the first actor says, “I’ll ship my pants.” Then a bunch of other folks say it. By the time a small boy reads the line we’re grimacing. Punishment.
Another thing, a close variation of this ‘almost swearing’ concept has already been done (repeatedly) by Orbit Gum. Cleaning a dirty mouth.
This being the age of iteration, we tend to overlook such issues. Case in point the California Powerball campaign discussed HERE last week. Still, the Orbit work was literally the first thing I thought of when I saw the K-mart spot. I don’t want to be thinking about another campaign when viewing new creative.
This brings me to my last point. Insiders like myself are quick to judge (often harshly) the work of certain hot button accounts and, in particular advertising agencies. Draft FCB is at the top of this list. Which is unfair. The makers of this commercial don’t deserve negative scrutiny. They did interesting work, delivering impressive results. We should all be this shippy.
Update: Spot going on TV. http://adage.com/article/news/kmart-s-sophomoric-ship-pants-video-air-tv/240934/
The Happy Soul Industry
The Last Generation
