Baer Performance Marketing – Green Bay, WI

Super Bowl advertising…the savior of football haters everywhere…

Let’s face it, many Americans don’t enjoy football, and a large portion of those that do have no desire to watch it once the team they root for is eliminated from contention. So why, every year, is such a large audience tuning into the Super Bowl?

Well, it has a lot to do with the frogs ribbiting the names of beer companies and monkeys dressed as businessmen.

Super Bowl ad space is outrageously expensive. NBC has sold all of the commercial time for Super Bowl XLVI at an average of $3.5 million per 30 second spot. This is because it’s quite literally the only time of year viewers don’t use the commercials as bathroom breaks or to load up on snacks.

A classic example of Super Bowl advertising at its best is the “Whassup?” commercial for Budweiser. The hugely viral and ubiquitous campaign will probably be permanently linked to the Budweiser brand. In fact,  if you close your eyes and concentrate hard enough, you’ll probably still be able to hear the ridiculous “Whassssuuup?” phone conversations from the commercial in your head.

The campaign was inspired by a short film produced by Charles Stone (the first actor featured in the commercial) and aired in the early 2000s. The ads featured a group of men sitting around, watching sports and drinking Budweiser while calling their friends. The extent of their phone conversations was “Whasssssuup?” repeated over and over humorously. Overall, audiences found it to be amusing and likeable (at least the first few times they saw it), and the saying “Whassup?” caught on so widely it seemed as if every teen or twenty-something was using it regularly in conversation.

As the campaign’s popularity grew, Internet parodies integrating pop culture icons like the Teletubbies and South Park characters also began to pop up.

However, ad campaigns based on humor always end up irritating a certain amount of viewers (typically individuals that don’t fall within the target market). A survey by Ad Track reported 61 percent of individuals who were 65+ disliked the “Whassup?” Budweiser commercials. Many of the survey participants said they didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand the ads.  However, it is doubtful Budweiser had any intention of reaching the 65+ market (a market already set in their beer drinking ways).

Budweiser’s “Whassup?” ad campaign won awards all over the globe and was acclaimed as a breakthrough in attention-getting, word-of-mouth marketing communications. However, despite the fact that millions of people were buzzing around and repeating “Whassup?” to their friends, the company’s market share dropped 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points and sales fell 8.3 percent. How could this be? Well, it’s because everyone was excited and talking about a great piece of entertainment as opposed to advocating a special brand of beer. In the end, it didn’t matter that 20 million people were talking about Budweiser’s creative ad campaign. If your target market isn’t advocating your product or services, innovative marketing will not translate into sales.

When you hear the name General Electric, it is likely the company’s long-running slogan “We Bring Good Things to Life” is also brought to mind. The tagline was introduced in 1970 and was integrated into all aspects of GE’s marketing including the company’s ads, collateral, service trucks, and packaging. Not only did this advertising promote GE’s products and services, but the ads were also created with the intent to launch the company’s new image which emphasized how GE improved people’s lives.

In the early 1970s, consumer research indicated that while GE was viewed as a dependable company by the American public, the “typical” GE consumer was perceived to be unsophisticated, low-income, and older. And because of this, GE was struggling to find brand commitment. GE decided that in order to move forward and gain product loyalty, they would have to completely update their brand. This required the development of single message that would be translatable across GE’s various product lines and services. And “We Bring Good Things to Life” (with the help of a $100 million advertising budget) accomplished this for the company.

Nevertheless, that is not to say there weren’t hurdles along the way. At the time GE launched their “We Bring Good Things to Life” ad campaign and rebrand, the company was also heavily involved in the nuclear weapons business. And in an effort to reveal the company’s behavioral contradictions, grassroots groups targeted the company’s medical division. Their campaign included messaging that pointed out that GE was simultaneously polluting earth with radioactive waste from their nuclear weapons production and producing medical systems developed to help diagnose and treat the sick, including individuals poisoned by toxic contaminations.

However, the Cold War ended, and despite the company’s PR dilemma, GE’s “We Bring Good Things to Life” ad campaign proved to be incredibly successful. By the 1990s, research showed consumers saw GE as more approachable, energetic, and progressive than ever before, and its customer base had become much younger and more affluent. The ad campaign lasted for 24 years and was the longest running corporate ad campaign in history.

[FACT: The coffee pot featured in the ad above was recalled after it caused several house fires from a faulty thermostat.]

1968 can reasonably be described as year filled with change and progress…a year mentioned in many contexts throughout history books. Humphrey was defeated by Nixon, Janis Joplin was topping the charts,  Apollo 8 orbited the moon, and the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. And while Billie Jean King hadn’t yet defeated Bobby Riggs, women did score at least one “victory” that year — their very own brand of cigarette!

In 1968, Phillip Morris made decided to capitalize on the feminist movement.  Their sassy, attitude-filled Virginia Slims campaign targeted, seduced, and recruited women to wrap their lips around their new “feminine” cigarette. And while the slogan included what many view to be a demeaning term for women, and the product itself significantly shortened the life of its users, Virginia Slims ended the monopoly those “chauvinistic pigs” had on lung and throat cancer.

The Virginia Slims “You’ve come a long way, baby” ad campaign was very eye catching. Billboards, magazines, and television advertisements presented confident and slender female models dressed in the latest fashions while smoking a Virginia Slims cigarette. Many times the ads would also include a second image of a housewife from the turn of the century being punished by an authority figure like a police officer or husband for smoking. It was this imagery and their emotive “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” tagline that successfully tied the cigarette brand to the feminist movement. The smoking of a Virginia Slims cigarette had become an act of triumph over the traditional female role.

The Virginia Slims cigarette was portrayed as slender, dainty, and feminine. In reality, however, it may have been thinner, but beyond that, it was hardly remarkable. It was the advertising that sold women on the product.

Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s,  Virginia Slims took the cigarette industry by storm becoming the preferred cigarette of women in the United States. They had created a brand of cigarettes that had not only become a symbol within the women’s suffrage movement, but also made the habit of smoking trendy during a time when it was seen as a serious faux pas for women.

(The irony of the Women’s Tennis Association Tour being sponsored by Virginia Slims back in the day also needs to be mentioned and taken in while reading this blog post.)

Within the last 40 years, many other brands (also catering specifically to ladies) have been introduced. However, none have surpassed the popularity or brand recognition achieved by Philip Morris’ Virginia Slims. And to this day, the Virginia Slims brand continues to be symbol of self-confidence, freedom, and financial empowerment to women all over the world.

A casino’s single objective is to get its visitors to gamble their money away while playing games they have the statistical advantage in.  And while research has shown that only 13 percent of Las Vegas tourists say they are traveling to the city to gamble, 87 percent of tourists wind up gambling while they are there.

So, how does Las Vegas do it?

Well, it definitely starts with the most successful slogan ever developed by an American city. The “What Happens Here, Stays Here” ad campaign turned Las Vegas into one of the most identifiable brands in the United States – only falling behind Google in recognition.

There’s no harm in gambling and drinking when nobody will find out, right?

Las Vegas’ “What Happens Here, Stays Here” slogan effectively marked an end to the city’s ill-suited attempt to brand itself as a family-friendly destination and allowed Las Vegas to fully resurrect itself as “Sin City.”

Las Vegas’ ad campaign debuted in 2002, and within a couple years, the city was already seeing record amounts of tourism.

In the early 90s, Las Vegas put a considerable amount of effort into branding itself as a family destination, but the campaign fizzled when the MGM Grand’s Adventure Theme Park closed its doors in 2000. The “What Happens Here, Stays Here” campaign was used to announce that the city was going back to what it really was…an adult-oriented vacation destination.

At first, R&R Partners had a tough time selling their “What Happens Here, Stays Here” campaign to the city and found their ads rejected when they submitted them to the NFL to run in the Super Bowl. However, the campaign was given months of free publicity with announcement of the rejection of the “risqué” ads.

Since the early 2000s, the ad campaign has maintained its popularity and will continue to be a part of the upcoming brand marketing strategy for the Las Vegas tourism industry. The campaign was recently chosen to be the number one campaign in North America and will be inducted into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame.

So, why should your business have a slogan?

A meaningful, memorable slogan will:

• Capture a brand’s unique selling point and  provide consistency throughout ad campaigns

•  Act as a bridge between a business’ brand identity and its marketing tactics

• Get into the heads of potential clients like a catchy song and help them recognize your brand
• Be one of the most effective tools in your marketing tool box — once you charge it and let it go, it does the rest (provided you consistently promote your brand)

A great example of an effective slogan is Yellow Pages’ old slogan from their 1970s ad campaign “Let your fingers do the walking.” Their slogan was developed to send a message about how easy it was to use their print directory compared to wandering around the city, looking for a certain product, dentist,  accountant, etc. The slogan proved to be very successful for the corporation.

And while the classic slogan is “technically” still valid today…(people would still prefer to relax at home and search through the Yellow Pages phone book or website for what they need instead of walking around through blizzards or scorching sun), unfortunately, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other internet search engines are also letting our fingers do the walking.

Yellow Pages has an excellent history, with what many consider to be one of the best advertising campaigns ever developed by a business, but today’s digital world cares little for, nor recognizes a business’ “history”. Anyone under the age of thirty has been searching through the internet since they were in high school, and it is likely that these younger generations have absolutely no memory of the infamous Yellow Pages ad campaign that featured the slogan “let your fingers do the walking.” And unfortunately for Yellow Pages, many businesses are taking this into account and taking the portion of the marketing budget that had historically been allocated toward Yellow Pages and redirecting it toward website SEO.

So, what do you think the future is for Yellow Pages? How can they evolve to keep up with the digital age?

Click here to see the new face of the company and how they’ve most recently rebranded themselves.