Famous advertising campaigns. The best advertising campaigns in history. You need to know heroes by sight
History knows a lot of examples when ideas that seem crazy at first glance turn consciousness around and change the world. As a rule, at first they are not taken seriously and even meet with aggression from others. Just six hundred years ago we didn’t know any America. Two hundred years ago, people were afraid to be photographed because a mystical device allegedly took their souls! And just a hundred years ago we didn’t even suspect that we would soon reach the Moon. There are similar examples in the history of marketing too. We will talk about especially brilliant ideas in this article, because they changed our world forever.
How much-how much?
We are all accustomed to the fact that each product has a specific price. Elementary, it’s written on the price tag! But it wasn't always like this. Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the seller visually determined the solvency of each buyer and bargained with him. The history of the modern price tag began in the USA. A modest country boy, Frank Woolworth, got a job as a sales assistant in a small store. But he was so shy that he was afraid to invite customers and bargain with them, and once he even fainted from fear! Of course, this did not stimulate sales in any way, and the guy was threatened with dismissal. Then he came up with a brilliant idea. And the revenue of one single day suddenly became equal to a week’s revenue! What did he do? Before the next opening of the store, Frank hung all the goods on the walls and attached a piece of paper to each of them indicating the minimum price - these were the first price tags. And in order to attract buyers from the street, he designed a display window - he laid out the goods that were sitting in the warehouse on the table with a sign “Everything for five cents.” They say that Frank even hid behind the counter out of fear! All discounted items were sold out (at the stated price, of course) within a few hours. This was a revolutionary approach for that time, because for the first time, goods lay freely on the counter, they could be inspected and touched, but moreover, each had its own price and there was no need for bargaining. In addition, later it was in Frank Woolworth’s chain (the first self-service supermarkets, by the way) that the cash registers acquired glass partitions, the display cases were beautifully decorated and brightly lit, and the floor was polished to a shine, which later began to be used in other stores.
More sex!
Today we see erotic subtext in almost every second advertisement, but once upon a time it was not there! The woman was to blame for everything, as often happens. At the beginning of the last century, the advertising industry (as in almost all industries) was dominated by men, including in creative positions. Therefore, the advertising was appropriate, with a masculine character. Everything changed in 1911, when a woman headed the editorial department of the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson (New York, USA). Her name was Helen Lansdowne. Her most famous project is considered to be an advertisement for Woodbury soap - it was the first to use female sexual attractiveness. The campaign also had a very successful slogan: “Skin You Love to Touch.” The advertisement showed a beautiful young girl and a young man kissing her neck. It was a provocative campaign, bordering on obscenity, in what was then still a fairly conservative America. The attractive picture was backed by a list of rules for skin care with Woodbury soap and the promise of a free copy in exchange for a coupon. This marketing ploy turned out to be useful in increasing sales - they grew more than 10 times! In addition, this soap is still produced and sold successfully. And almost every modern advertisement, in addition to the product/service itself, shows us some charming beauty.
Yesterday
Why do people keep buying iPhones? Iphone 3, 4, 5, finally model X? Others are perplexed why a new, only slightly improved smartphone is needed if the previous one is still “of sober mind and sound memory”? The answer is simple - this behavior is imposed on the consumer. This strategy is called “Sloanism.” It appeared in the 20s of the last century and today is one of the most popular. Alfred P. Sloan was the president of General Motors, which released new car models every season with minor differences from previous ones. To artificially increase demand, large advertising campaigns were carried out, making owners of new products feel exceptional. But in fact, they were simply led to believe that the race for the latest models is an indispensable attribute of a successful, self-sufficient person. And they forced it. And Sloanism, a marketing strategy named after its creator Alfred P. Sloan, is still in active use today: you probably regularly see advertising banners shouting “New!”, “Latest Model!” and the like.
A minute of advertising
At the end of the 20s of the last century, another popular marketing strategy appeared, called “product placement” - a technique of hidden advertising, the essence of which is that the props of films, games, television shows, etc. . has a real commercial analogue. This technique is regularly used by major brands today, but the very first was the manufacturer of canned spinach Spinach Can (1929). A jar with the logo of this company constantly flashed in the cartoon about Popeye the sailor, who received incredible strength by consuming spinach. According to statistics, spinach consumption in the United States has increased by 30%. This is perhaps one of the best marketing moves in history! The classic use of product placement in cinema is the James Bond saga. She breaks all records for mentioning various brands. For example, in episode 20, the viewer is shown more than 20 brands over 133 minutes! One of the best marketing ideas is truly effective, and the numbers prove it: the BMW concern “lit up” in the 17th episode of the Bond movie “GoldenEye” and received orders for more than $200 million, and sales of Jack Daniels whiskey increased 5 times after the episodic “ roles" in the film "Basic Instinct".
Competitors? No, we haven't heard
What can stop you if you are making a one-of-a-kind and highly sought-after product? That's right - competitors! Therefore, they need to be excluded from the game as early as possible. This is exactly what the Walt Disney Company did in the 1930s, becoming for a long time practically the only creator of animated films. When there was an increased demand for a film camera that could produce color movies using red, blue and green, Walt Disney simply entered into a long-term contract with the Technicolor manufacturer. One of the terms of the cooperation was that Disney would become the only animation company to use the complex “three-color shooting” technology. Thus, Walt Disney killed two birds with one stone: he got rid of competitors and gained incredible fame.
You need to know heroes by sight
Advertising, advertising and more advertising. This is what all manufacturers want. Preferably more and for free. And someone succeeds. Let's look at the example of an interesting marketing move from the 1950s from Marlboro. Modern cigarettes are produced in packs called “flip tops” - they became almost a revolutionary component of the popularity of Marlboro. The previous type of packaging was too simple and any smoker could easily take out cigarettes without removing the entire pack from his pocket. But then no one saw exactly what kind of cigarettes he smoked! And the company needed the packaging to be shown as often as possible. Therefore, the advertising agency Leo Bernett suggested using a flip-up lid. This idea was later borrowed by other manufacturers, and today you will have to work hard to find cigarettes in different packaging.
The trick didn't work...or did it?
“Wearing silk stockings rather than nylon stockings is like choosing a horse over a car,” advertisers drummed up interest before the mass sale of nylon stockings began in 1939. And - lo and behold! Unripe stockings instantly conquered all American wardrobes. But Swedish fashionistas resisted for a long time and continued to wear silk. Until 1962. More precisely, until April 1, 1962. Nylon stockings were not bought in Sweden. We didn’t buy it – from the word “at all”. And then the manufacturers turned to local television. Someone came up with the crazy, brilliant idea that if you put colored nylon stockings (necessarily nylon!) on the TV screen, then the picture would be in color. The announcement was made on April 1, a day considered April Fool's Day in many countries. But, not sensing a catch, TV viewers began to buy colored nylon stockings. The focus didn't work. Broadcasts and films did not become color. Television brushed aside all the claims: “April 1st - I don’t trust anyone! It was a joke,” and the ladies had to wear purchased nylon stockings. So we got used to it.
Give me two!
Remember the Orbit commercials, in which the characters always put two pieces of gum in their mouths at once? Or some beauty brands that recommend shampooing twice? The simplest, but such a brilliant marketing move is to impose on the consumer a double “dose” of the product at once and thus increase sales. But who first came up with this? Alka-Seltzer is perhaps the most famous hangover remedy. And the PR agency Tinker Partners managed to quickly double its sales in the 1960s. The brilliant idea turned out to be incredibly simple: in the commercial, two effervescent tablets were thrown into a glass of water at once. This well-known marketing ploy is still successfully used by many companies.Byron Sharp Book chapter
Publishing house "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber"
Once upon a time, there lived in a small French village two girls, Georgiana and June. Their parents had a beautiful orchard with many lemon trees. One day the family decided that they would make lemonade. Over time, everyone became very skilled in producing this drink. Every summer, when the girls came to the village for vacation, they sold the family lemonade to friends and neighbors.
But the sisters grew up, got married and moved to live in a big city. It so happened that they settled in different parts of the metropolis and, sadly, rarely saw each other. But both did not change the family business, continuing to make and sell lemonade on their own.
Georgiana's husband owned a newspaper (and her sister June married a lawyer), and one day she decided to advertise her drink in his newspaper. the advertisement said, "Georgiana's Lemonade - True Lemon Flavor." And sales began to grow steadily - she even had to negotiate additional supplies of lemons. sales continued to increase in subsequent years, albeit slowly. Sometimes there were surges when some new store began selling her lemonade.
Meanwhile, June’s sales of lemonade also increased for some time, then froze at the same level for a long time, and then began to slowly decline. One Christmas, June started talking about this with Georgiana, and she advised her sister to advertise lemonade. June's ad carried an elegantly worded message: "June's Lemonade: Lemon Goodness."
Today the Georgiana brand is the largest in its market, its share is slightly more than 60%. It is sold in more stores, is popular, has many customers, and everyone says that this is the lemonade they prefer. Lemonade June is also not forgotten, it sells and makes a profit. Its relative market share is almost 40% and sales are no longer falling. The percentage of June's customers who say her lemonade tastes great is about the same as the percentage who prefer Georgiana's lemonade.
If you believe this story is believable, then you believe that advertising works; This makes sense since billions of dollars are spent on advertising for brands. Interestingly, this amounts to as much as 2% of global GDP each year. However, things are not always as simple and straightforward as with Georgiana and June; The real world is full of mysteries and contradictions. If you take the large brands with the largest advertising budgets, their sales rarely increase when an advertising campaign begins, just as they rarely fall when it ends. Most buyers say that advertising has no effect on them. Even advertising agencies are extremely reluctant to say that advertising leads to sales; they much prefer to talk about things like building brand equity, emotional commitment and added value. In contrast, opponents of advertising argue that it has powerful manipulative power. “Advertising is a hassle for both sociologists and financial directors: the former because they believe it works, and the latter because they believe it doesn’t work” (Bullmore J. Advertising and its audience: a game of two halves).
So what's going on? Who's right? What empirical evidence suggests that advertising stimulates sales? How does it really work? How can marketers use it? And how to measure the effect of advertising efforts? This chapter answers all the questions and presents a model of brand advertising that is consistent with what is known about brand purchasing behavior and the properties of memory. Changes in ideas about advertising are summarized in Table. 1.
Advances in neuroscience and psychology have recently advanced understanding of how memory and the brain work. Recent discoveries in these sciences have important implications for advertising, since advertising works by forming and recalling memories. We now know that much of our thinking and decision-making is unconscious and emotional. However, traditional advertising theories are based on the outdated idea that humans are rational (and sometimes emotionally driven) when making decisions and that everyone has near-perfect memory.
Before discussing the mechanism of action of advertising, let's see if there is evidence that advertising affects changes in sales (for example, gives a slight impulse to purchasing behavior). This is an assumption of marketing science and complements the above point of view. This has never been discussed before, yet it provides insight into how advertising works and why it is so difficult to reliably measure its impact on sales.
How do sales respond to brand advertising?
The purpose of brand advertising is to influence consumer purchasing behavior. And don't let anyone convince you that the goal is something else. Billions of dollars spent on advertising actually go towards building and protecting sales. Logically, this can only be achieved by influencing purchasing behavior, constantly increasing and restoring the likelihood of sales.
This idea is abhorrent to many of those involved in the creation of advertising. The reason for their rejection is that they associate the impact on changes in sales with a certain type of advertising (like “Sales start this Thursday” and “Crazy discounts - now and only now!”). This type of advertising increases sales, whereas brand advertising may have only a very modest visible effect (or no effect at all) on sales figures. This observation leads to the assumption that advertising does something other than influence purchases. And therefore, in order to justify the costs of this article, marketers refer to concepts such as brand equity, commitment and loyalty, and often try to create more fog. As a result, financial top managers, as well as general directors, especially if they are firm realists, immediately suspect that the money allocated for advertising is going to waste.
There is overwhelming empirical evidence that brand advertising does generate sales. True, the influence of advertising on sales trends is very difficult to record. The reasons for this are not yet fully understood. Ignorance means that some people who study the impact of advertising on sales (such as econometric model consultants and academic researchers) get their calculations wrong.
There are two reasons why the impact of advertising on changes in sales levels is so difficult to discern in weekly and monthly sales data (that is, sales never spike in response to the launch or increase of advertising, and likewise never spike when advertising weakens). The real effect is often overlooked for the following reasons.
Accordingly, statistical models of changes in advertising spending and changes in total sales show some relationship. But if we look deeper and divide consumers into those exposed to advertising and those who were not, we see the previously hidden true effect of advertising on changing sales levels. The value of data at the individual level is presented in Fig. 1, and this data shows that despite declining sales (due to competitive pressure), the brand's advertising did generate sales among consumers who saw it.
Rice. 1. Households purchasing brand, $/1000 households
When other random influences on sales are tightly controlled, the advertising effect appears larger, as expected; Another thing is that it is very difficult to do this with aggregated data, which makes it incredibly difficult to detect the effect of viewing advertising on changes in sales levels.
Advertising promotes sales even when the numbers do not change - is it easy to accept this truth if it contradicts common sense? when sales figures do increase, it still sends the wrong signal about the true impact of advertising. The movement of sales indicators within a weekly or monthly period does not give an idea of how advertising affects them - this is only the tip of the iceberg, and it itself is hidden, and we cannot judge what part of it is the visible top.
This is not always the case; in some cases the effect is immediate. An example would be an advertisement that notifies the audience of a time-limited event, such as “Thursday is the last day of the sale!” . But advertising generally affects people who won't buy the product for a few weeks, so the impact is aimed at future sales. Thus, the effect of advertising is distributed over weekly sales in such a thin layer that any changes in its intensity do not lead to visible changes in the sales trajectory. Author Broadbent offers a very precise analogy for this case: “Brand sales are the altitude at which an airplane flies. Advertising expenditure is the engine of this airplane: while the engine is running, everything is fine, but once it stalls, the decline will eventually begin.”
Advertising and price promotions promote sales in different ways
We know that for all brands, even the largest ones, the customer base consists mainly of inactive (occasional) consumers. Most Coca-Cola brand followers purchase this drink once or twice a year. At the other end of the consumer spectrum are consumers who choose Coca-Cola from morning to evening every day. Let's think about how the purchasing behavior of a person who drinks Coca-Cola several times a day will change after watching an advertisement from this company. That's right, it won't change at all. So who is the brand advertising addressed to? To the millions of people who buy Coca-Cola on occasion, and to those who have hardly ever thought about this drink and who buy it occasionally. Such consumers may forget that cola even exists and not make their one-time purchases. This is why well-known established brands need to advertise: to retain their consumers (despite the massive advertising of competitors) and provide themselves with opportunities for growth. Coca-Cola advertising tries to capture some of our attention and remind us that it is a drink of joy, that we used to drink it and liked it: that is, they mainly remind us of what we already know. By doing this, the brand is trying to increase our (very low) likelihood of buying Coca-Cola tomorrow. If the ad works, the likelihood of us buying that brand tomorrow will go from almost negligible (say, one chance in 300) to less than negligible (say, two chances in 300). This change in probability is so insignificant that we hardly notice it, which is why most people believe that advertising does not affect them. Its influence is simply too subtle. But if everyone who saw one Coca-Cola ad increased their propensity to buy that drink from one chance in 300 to two in 300, Coca-Cola sales among that group of consumers would double! Thus, even advertising that does not try to convince anyone of anything or give new reasons for buying can have an impressive effect on sales - without causing people to change their opinion about the brand, and even without them even realizing it.
This explains why established brands invest heavily in advertising. The larger the brand, the more money it has to spend on advertising, even if it is older and well known to everyone. This explains the statement of most people that they do not believe in the influence of advertising. In addition, we now understand why the effect of advertising on sales is very different from the effect of price promotion. Simply put, price promotions have an immediate impact on weekly sales, while the effects of advertising are spread thinly over future periods. Of course, such changes in advertising weight are difficult to see, and much more difficult to measure correctly.
Any marketing intervention, if it achieves its goal, works to increase the likelihood of purchasing the product. Successful advertising attracts the attention of many consumers and influences them; it reaches consumers of all types, not just those who are already easy to attract (for example, active regular buyers of a brand who immediately notice its advertising because their memory structures associated with the brand are better developed and are not inclined to filter out these messages). In particular, successful advertising attracts millions of consumers who have a very low likelihood of making a purchase in the next week or month. If a brand advertisement attracts them, if it is remembered, if it refreshes, strengthens or forms connections in their memory that increase the likelihood of noticing the brand, or if it comes to mind when they find themselves in a purchasing situation (that is, it increases the visibility of the brand and its mental availability), then advertising will somewhat strengthen their predisposition to purchase the brand. This is the effect that advertising has on sales. However, most of these additional purchases will not be reflected in the current week's sales figures because hardly any potential consumers will buy the brand that week. They just don't buy as often, even with their newly heightened purchasing propensity. Of course, most of these purchases will never happen, because before the consumer decides to choose a product from this category, the advertising (or some other marketing activity) of competitors will be bombarded with it and will negate the effect of your advertising. But this does not mean that there was no influence from advertising at all; a slight impulse that strengthens the predisposition to purchase, at least a little, protected the brand’s sales from the marketing efforts of a competitor. As a result, instead of your competitor's advertising winning him additional sales, it will simply return your brand to the position it was before.
Imagine two people who were exposed to a Coca-Cola advertisement and then their propensity to buy a bottle of the drink the next day increased from 1 in 300 to 2 in 300. This means that they will now buy Coca-Cola every 150 days instead of just once. in 300 days, as before. Thus, these additional purchases are postponed for quite a long time. This is the meaning of the statement that the impact of advertising on sales is distributed in a thin layer over a long period of time.
The reach achieved through price incentives looks completely different - it is very limited, since it is biased towards more active regular buyers of the brand. In addition, the impact of price incentives on sales levels is not dispersed over time. Promotion at points of sale only affects those who buy a product from the category during the week of the corresponding promotion. Consequently, the full effect of price promotion on sales levels is reflected in weekly sales figures. This is why price promotion clearly shows its effect; sales increase when promotions begin and decrease when promotions end. You can probably count on a longer-lasting effect if the purchase and use of a brand purchased at a promotion increases its visibility. But the facts are inexorable: the long-term effect of price stimulation is minimal. Advertising influences the likelihood of purchase by influencing memory, and memories tend to be retained. Moreover, discounts affect purchasing behavior, because we all love better deals. If we see that one of the brands we notice and use is on sale, the chance that we will choose it over other brands in our shopping range immediately increases. However, immediately after this, the probability of making purchases will immediately return to its original level. So price promotions only work when they work.
This is good news for those looking to measure the effect of a price promotion on sales (the full effect on sales changes can be seen and measured by weekly sales figures), but sad news for those looking for ways to measure how sales will change under influence of advertising. This means that you should not conflate the effectiveness of advertising and price promotion in the same econometric model in an attempt to quantify their relative impact on changes in sales.
But there is more good news - the sales response to advertising can be seen even if the market is stable and there is no change in the level of total sales of the advertised brand. This requires so-called single-source data: information collected periodically at the level of the same individuals about what each individual bought and what advertising they were exposed to over a period of time. The benefits of this information can be explained by imagining a direct marketer assessing the effect of a direct mail advertising campaign on a sample of households in Chicago. Will he use national sales data? No. What about sales data in Chicago? Not either. It will study the purchasing patterns of the households to which it sends its promotional materials. Nobody expects that changes in purchasing behavior will occur in households that did not receive advertising, right? And, in order to accurately calculate the impact of advertising on actual purchasing behavior, he will want to compare sales to these households after exposure to the reference level of advertising and the history of previous sales to these households or with sales to similar households to which the advertising was not intentionally directed. Single-source data allows you to apply the same logical approach to assessing the impact of television, print and other types of advertising.
40 years of single-source data analysis has produced robust empirical evidence that advertising drives sales among those reached by it (and that some advertisements are head and shoulders above others). These results have been consistently observed across a wide range of brands, product categories, countries and data sets. This is good news for those advertised. And for advertisers looking to measure the sales impact of their announcements to determine which creative approaches and media strategies work better than others.
In a review of the results obtained from analyzing data from one source on advertising that effectively influences sales, Jones J. Is advertising still salesmanship? notes:
We will not go into a detailed study of the results of a single-source study on the impact of advertising on changes in sales levels. It is better to summarize the important conclusions, confirmed by the results of using other reliable methods, such as, say, experiments.
Creatively written copy, even if it doesn't try to persuade, can still be very effective in influencing sales.
A media strategy with broader reach is particularly effective; Range of reach is more important than frequency. Continuous advertising is more effective than flash advertising followed by long periods of advertising silence because the former prevents the destruction of memory structures.
All of these findings are entirely consistent with the negative binomial distribution of customer brand ratings (see Chapter 4). And especially with the idea that it is important to appeal to all categories of buyers and provide advertising with a continuous time range (do not take long breaks). Advertising works by reaching the masses and giving them a subtle nudge to buy. And for the most part it is invisible to us; It happens that some advertising creates a reaction like “We must buy this,” but even such an intention only slightly fuels our predisposition to purchase, since we often forget about this intention or are distracted by something. This should serve as a reminder that advertising works by influencing memory.
What is not noticed (and not processed) will not have an effect
An advertisement cannot remain in memory unless it is comprehended; memory structures will not generate sales unless they are associated with the brand being advertised. The bulk of ad impressions do not overcome these two barriers, which means money is wasted. But it's even worse if these ads evoke competing brands in consumers' minds. Viewers notice and correctly associate less than 20% of television advertising with a brand (that is, more than 80% of advertising is wasted). This is terrifying. This is so alarming that you can already imagine large corporations setting up special task forces, perhaps within the marketing department, to eradicate this problem. The task forces are tasked with conducting scientific research, developing principles and guidelines, and honing advertising planning and evaluation techniques that will ensure that all brand advertising successfully overcomes the above-mentioned barriers to reaching target audiences. However, the reality is that most organizations sometimes do not evaluate the effectiveness of advertising at all, no one will ever pay a price for this, and no one will be given the responsibility to fix this problem. It turns out that no serious research has been carried out in the area of advertising losses and no attempts have been made to improve the situation. Apparently, everything would be different if we were talking about material losses or defects in the product.
It's true that advertising can work even if we don't pay much attention to it. We are endowed with the ability to notice certain things almost on a subconscious level; for example, when talking with someone in a crowded society, we will still hear, despite the background noise, if they call us. But just because part of our brain is constantly monitoring our environment doesn't mean that background information is allowed to intrude into our long-term memory. It would be better if advertising could generate more conscious attention and processing of incoming information.
People's consciousness filters out a significant part of advertising messages. The difficulty is to overcome the information scanning mechanisms operating in the brain and strike a spark of an emotional reaction to accept the meaning of the advertisement, like “I will pay attention to this.” This means that the primary task of advertising agencies is to generate outstanding creative ideas that will be noticed by the viewer and encourage him to replay them in his memory again and again. The advertised brand should become the center of this mental work of the viewer. The mental work itself should evoke associations associated with the brand. This is a difficult task, and this is why most advertising efforts fall short. And this also explains why the latest discoveries in the field of neuroscience and psychology are so important for us: we must understand how attention and memory work.
It is now known that only a very small part of our consciousness, if not none at all, can be characterized as the work of pure reason. Emotions are the main source of human motivation, and they significantly influence attention, memory and behavior. It's no surprise that advertising appeals so strongly to the senses. For example, emotions are clearly visible in advertising when the audience sheds a tear when watching a video about scientific research in the field of cancer, or laughs with the characters in a video about beer, or experiences shock, horror, and then relief when they talk about insurance on the screen. People watch movies, listen to music, and read books mainly to experience emotional experiences. They like it when advertising gives such reasons, then they notice it and pay more attention to it.
It's all about memory
Apart from the very small amount of advertising that requires direct response from the recipient (including contextual search), it, in principle, should work through memory. This is an undeniable statement, although quite often marketers and academics forget what a significant role memory plays; but instead believe that advertising works by making persuasive arguments or creating emotions towards the brand.
Memory is the link between advertising and mental choice. Even a regularly purchased product (for example, margarine) is purchased on average no more than eight times a year, and a specific brand is usually chosen once or twice a year. Many months may pass between viewing an advertisement and the moment when the viewer finds himself in a purchasing situation and has the opportunity to spontaneously remember the brand (perhaps under the influence of the advertisement). To influence people's behavior, advertising must work with their memory.
Building Brand Visibility
Advertising works primarily by refreshing and, from time to time, shaping memory structures. These structures increase the chances that the brand will be remembered and/or noticed in a purchasing situation, which in turn increases the chance of purchasing the brand. Brand-related memory structures include the idea of what task the brand performs, what it looks like, where it is available, when and where it is consumed, who consumes and with whom. Memories are associations with cue stimuli that can lead to thoughts about a brand. They can also give consumers the idea to take the brand out of the refrigerator and cook it for lunch.
Convince consumers
Some advertisements generate purchase intent by eliciting a reaction such as “I have to buy this” or “I wonder if this is really worth trying/checking out.” Other announcements aimed at convincing are very dry and appeal exclusively to reason. They are found, for example, in text advertisements, in directories, in new product offers, in newspapers and advertising brochures. Directory advertising, like text ads, is informative, terse, and organized according to the interests of its audience. For example, an advert saying “Plumber X guarantees he will be there for you on the same day” probably has all the “persuasion” you need if your boiler explodes at home. However, to persuade consumers to purchase a new product, consumers must be informed what is being offered. Excitement about something new creates a window of opportunity: novelty always excites the emotions, and this is enough for an advertisement (with information that appeals to reason) to be noticed.
However, persuasive arguments are more effective if they clearly appeal to the senses. Compare the following two advertising appeals.
Goodyear tires grip the road well and reduce the braking distance of your car.
Today, your child's life may depend on good brakes. Goodyear tires reduce your vehicle's stopping distance and keep your loved ones safe.
Persuasive advertising works less often than we think based on advertising texts and models. In addition, advertising, which has a strong impact on sales, does not need to convince. We conducted a series of studies in the UK of different forms of advertising: ordinary people, professionals from advertising agencies and students evaluated television commercials and advertising in magazines. Only 40-50% of ratings indicated that the advertisement was suggestive or stated that the advertised brand was different or better, or that it offered useful information. We assume that in these cases there is no simple basis on which these advertisements could successfully convince anyone of anything. Other researchers have also noted that most advertisements contain very little verbal or visual information about the brand being advertised.
Actually, the mechanism of persuasion does not explain why the vast majority of advertisements are given at all. Many brands are already successful. They can't say anything the market doesn't already know; something that their competitor couldn't say, or something that would be meaningful to their customers. However, we tend to assume that persuasive advertising should have a greater effect on sales. Although this is not true. Memory structures, even if they do not create buying intent, still cause sales. Decades of research show that most purchases tend to be made by those who had no intention of purchasing anything at all. Intentions are also, in a certain sense, memories, and like memories, they can also be reproduced with distortions, and therefore have weak motivating power. The same can be said about brand preference or attitude towards a brand. Some advertisements evoke reactions like “that’s good” or “that’s good for me.” I repeat: it is generally accepted that such persuasive advertising should be more effective in generating sales. Advertising-induced brand attitudes, as in the above examples, are usually very weak in motivating behavior. This is partly because consumers rarely think about it when making purchases, but also because all people have a large number of brands that they like (and choose).
So it is completely wrong to conclude that advertising that influences intentions or attitudes towards a brand works better. This fact undermines the validity of most academic research in this area, which has derived rules for advertising effectiveness by examining how consumer exposure to advertising influences stated intentions. (Often such studies are conducted in laboratory conditions that are far from reality, when the intervals between exposure to advertising and statements of intent do not correspond to real ones, and the respondent’s attention is deliberately focused on the proposed set of statements.) Similarly, in many cases, preliminary testing of advertising (studying respondents’ reaction to advertising ) based on a criterion such as intentions or a shift in intentions, is biased because it is biased towards specific types of advertising content and very often leads to erroneous conclusions about the effectiveness of a particular commercial on sales.
Many companies are trapped in the intention/preference paradigm. They instruct their advertising agencies in this vein and evaluate the effect based on this model (sometimes without giving a report). Accordingly, their advertising is replete with convincing arguments (often about completely insignificant benefits), and viewers reject them, misinterpret or ignore them. Moreover, the advertisements of such companies do not refresh or create proper mental structures, since the management demands that the advertisements emphasize the selling message. Such advertising fails to convey brand identity to consumers in a consistent manner. Accordingly, one advertising campaign after another is released, and everyone is so different in style, appearance and everything else, as if they belong to different brands.
It is somewhat comical that companies that have adopted this model of how advertising works will, from time to time, produce something that is called “image advertising” or “knowledge advertising”, but do not expect any increase in sales. But of course, one should expect that such advertising will generate sales - after all, that is the purpose of advertising.
To summarize what has been said, I note that advertising works mainly by appealing to memory; it also happens to form memory structures and create brand preference or purchase intention. Advertising supports and builds brand visibility through creative solutions. Brands don't have to worry about whether they have a compelling message; even when it is there, it still needs to be woven into the fabric of associations and cues associated with the brand, its visibility and long-term significance.
Marketers need to understand what memory structures their brand has already built in the minds of consumers. They must use these structures and do whatever is necessary to ensure that the advertising they create speaks to them. They then need to do research and determine what other memory structures might be useful for their brand (for example, factors that contribute to purchases from the category the brand belongs to), and then work on building those structures. For decades, leading brands have done an excellent job of building proper memory structures. A great example is Coca-Cola. Many years ago, in the United States, Coca-Cola was sold in pharmacies, and therefore it was associated with teenagers visiting these outlets on hot summer days.
Today the drink is associated with many different memories: the beach and Coca-Cola; nightclubs and Coca-Cola; pizza and Coca-Cola; parties and Coca-Cola; going to a cafe and Coca-Cola (Australian advertising for Coca-Cola - original long black); branded bottle, bright red color, gracefully curved white ribbon, etc. These memories increase the likelihood that Coca-Cola will come to mind in a given situation; These memories make it easier for people to notice the drink in a store and internalize the brand's advertising.
How else can advertising work?
As discussed, advertising works in two main ways: through persuasion (changing consumer opinions) and through visibility (triggering and shaping memories). There are other mechanisms, but they are more subtle and often secondary to visibility and/or persuasion. these secondary mechanisms include bonding, status signals, and priming.
Creating a connection
When a company spends money on advertising, it means it has a strong financial position and/or has quality products (this is especially important in the service industry). A striking example is advertising of corporate values. This is why companies go to enormous expense to attract A-list celebrities to their advertising; That's why they sponsor major events, say the Olympic Games. Some consumers decide, perhaps subconsciously, that the advertiser is not so stupid as to spend a lot of money without being confident in his product and without planning to establish himself in the market for a long time and seriously. In addition, consumer experience suggests that actively promoted products and services are usually of good quality.
Economists support this expense, arguing that the amount of money spent on advertising is often more important in terms of its commercial impact than the advertising itself. This does not mean that advertising has no economic function or that those who see it are irrational thinkers. Rather, viewers respond to cues that are implicit rather than those explicitly stated in the advertising message.
Economist John Kay argues that most people are skeptical about the veracity of advertising and that they automatically ignore advertising claims about product quality that cannot be objectively assessed. In this state of affairs, Kay argues (somewhat exaggerating), the only thing that advertising can convey to consumers is the quality and quantity of the advertising itself.
Status signals
When we use certain brands, we show others, and even ourselves, what kind of people we are. Advertising provides the opportunity to send these kinds of signals. Only a few people drive Mercedes-Benz cars, but everyone knows that they are very expensive cars. This is what advertising says, and this means that people who have a Mercedes signal to others about their high income by driving a car of this brand. But they would not be able to send such signals if the general public did not know what Mercedes cars look like and how expensive they are.
However, marketers often overestimate the effect of status signals. Some product categories are not very loaded with symbolic meaning, and consumers think that the presence of a certain brand will change the opinion of their acquaintances about them. Moreover, the symbolic character of brands derives more from their use, observation and word of mouth than from advertising.
The takeaway from this is not that a brand will benefit enormously from advertising that makes it look cool. It makes much more sense to understand that symbolic brands and even very expensive luxury brands often need active advertising support. Luxury watch advertising doesn't just appeal to billionaires, partly because most people aren't billionaires, and partly because most people who buy luxury watches aren't billionaires.
Priming
It is a well-known psychological phenomenon that people prefer objects and brands that they have seen more often. This is the “meeting” effect. as recent studies have shown, it can arise as a result of advertising contact, when consumers themselves are unlikely to realize that such contact has taken place. Research has also shown that recent exposure to associative cues can increase the likelihood of making a purchase. For example, students returning to campus after Halloween festivities favored orange-colored brands. Or, when customers were shown numerous pictures of dogs, they were more likely to choose Puma among athletic shoe brands (since people associate dogs with cats, i.e., pumas). This extraordinary effect is poorly documented outside of experimental settings, so it is unclear how strong it is in real-world settings. It is also not entirely clear how the cue stimuli of competitors interact and whether it is possible that they cancel each other. It is likely that the exposure (priming) effect is simply a salience effect. This is further evidence that advertising can influence sales even without energetic appeals.
Effective advertising
- Reach all buyers of your product category.
- Avoid long breaks in advertising.
- Get consumers to notice you.
- Create clear associations with the brand - distinctive brand assets indirectly advertise it; It is absolutely necessary to mention the brand name (verbally and/or visually); It is important to show what the product looks like and how it is used.
- Create memory structures that increase the likelihood that the consumer will remember the brand and notice it more quickly.
- If there is any truly convincing information, provide it, but provided that it does not interfere with achieving the above goals.
The lack of visible sales response to advertising has been documented by the most astute marketers for decades. In addition, this phenomenon has received due documentary support in academic studies on changes in advertising weight (Hu et al. An analysis of real world TV advertising tests: a resent update; Lodish et al. How TV advertising works: a metaanalysis of 389 real world split cable TV advertising experiments), as well as advertising elasticity (Tellis G. Generalizations about advertising effectiveness in markets). These studies gave rise to the widespread belief that advertising has almost no effect on sales - and this is a misunderstanding.
Likewise, sales numbers don't collapse overnight if advertising stops, which is half the reason marketers have such a hard time protecting their budgets from attempts to cut them.
Advertising with a very strong novelty effect is typical for categories where buyers show little interest in the product until they begin active, targeted searches, such as mortgages, insurance, furniture, computers, cars. In these categories, customers usually do not notice most advertising until they are ready, but on the eve of a purchase they are much more receptive. For this reason, advertising in these product categories shows immediate impact. It could just as well be argued that advertising in these categories has a weaker long-term effect (little effect on customers who are not ready to make a purchase). However, even here, from time to time, it sweeps away the barriers of indifference and influences those who are not yet ready to buy. You can't judge the effectiveness of an ad in terms of influencing sales by how much it has increased in a given week - the effect extends well into the future when the "processed" customers finally get around to purchasing a product in that category. Such advertising may be particularly effective in increasing sales, but will have no greater impact on weekly numbers than average. This, in particular, applies to funny advertising that catches the attention of non-customers; for example, Apple's "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" commercial or HSBC's "different perspectives" commercial.
Of course, other people are exposed to competitors' advertising and other influences, so Coca-Cola's advertising, while powerful, may still have no effect on shifts in overall sales.
The effect of price promotion is easy to notice because changes in consumers’ predisposition to purchase are quite significant, because we spend a lot of money per client, while advertising spends very little per person, so its effect is expressed in a slight nudge to the consumer under the elbow to purchase the brand.
Of course, some memories created by advertising can last a very long time. The brightness will fade, but they themselves will not evaporate; they are always easy to refresh. You can’t forget that the two golden arches symbolize McDonald’s, Google is a search engine, etc.
Some authors, especially in the UK, believe that it is possible to equate persuasion with the effectiveness of advertising in influencing sales. This creates confusion and leads to the belief that only persuasive advertising can generate sales.
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Energy drink Red Bull
When the drink was introduced to the wider market, its main competitors were Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Everyone had the same concept: they toned and stimulated.
Then Dietrich Mateschitz took a risky step: he artificially increased the price by 2 times compared to competitors, reduced the volume of containers shaped like a battery, and began placing cans in stores not in the beverage departments, but in any others.
Taxi Mike
A striking example of incredibly simple and effective marketing is the promotion of the Canadian taxi Mike. Instead of publishing brochures about himself, Mike publishes real guides to cafes, bars and other establishments of the city. That is, to all those entertainment places that Mike will help you get to.
HBO television channel
HBO's marketing campaign for Game of Thrones Season 3 was thoughtful, consistent, and ambitious. The main theme of the new season was the large shadow of a dragon, which caught people's eyes over and over again. First on the covers of magazines, then on the pages of newspapers, it was even projected onto buildings, creating a sense of the reality of what was happening. Thus, it was simply impossible not to think about the dragon and not wait for the release of the new season.
Marlboro cigarettes
The whole point was that consumers took cigarettes out of soft packs without taking them out of their pockets, which means that others did not see the brand. Unacceptable disgrace!
Flip tops - that's what the current cigarette packs are called - had to be taken out, but new ones always attract attention.
Manufacturer of furniture and home goods IKEA
The curved paths along which you have to walk around the entire store were invented for a reason. Walking through them in this way, you see each product at least 3 times, and from different sides. Subconsciously, this increases your desire to buy the product, even if you didn’t need it in the first place.
Harley-Davidson motorcycles
The manufacturer of the most famous bikes in the world has held 1st place in the number of “branded” tattoos for decades. It all started with Harley announcing impressive discounts on bikes for those who come to buy a motorcycle with a tattoo of their logo.
Medicine Alka-Seltzer
Pampers diapers
Leading chemist-technologist at Procter & Gamble, Victor Mills, who helped his daughter care for her children, had to repeatedly pull out wet diapers from under his own grandchildren, wash and dry them. Of course, he didn’t like the process, and he wanted to somehow make his life easier. Then the idea of a disposable “diaper” came to mind. After several experiments with different materials, Mills developed a new product for P&G, which they began to produce under the Pampers brand, which became a household name.
Snickers chocolate bar
In Russia, the first Snickers chocolate bars appeared in 1992 as a snack replacing a full lunch. For a long time, the former Soviet consumer could not get used to the fact that he could eat chocolate for lunch instead of soup, and bought Snickers as a “sweet for tea.” After the BBDO Moscow agency took over the creative servicing of the brand, Snickers was already identified as a delicacy for teenagers, who for the most part love sweets and do not like soup.
Starbucks coffee shop
Not long ago, Seattle’s best, a coffee chain competing with Starbucks, appeared in the United States. She began to position herself as a “non-Starbucks”, doing everything the opposite: not the same coffee, not the same furniture, not the same music, not the same atmosphere, not the same service. The coffee shop attracted those customers who somehow did not like Starbucks.
And the Starbucks chain did an incredibly simple thing: it simply bought a competitor that was interfering with it. And this is a completely expected move. But after the purchase, Starbucks did not close the coffee shops. Rather, on the contrary, he began to make everything in it even more different from Starbucks, intensifying the competition between these two brands even more.
As a result, people who liked Starbucks would go to Starbucks and take money to its cash register. And those who didn’t like this coffee shop went to Seattle’s best - and also took money to the cash register... Starbucks. In this way, the company not only coped with the flow of part of its customer audience to a competitor, but also captured an additional audience of Starbucks haters, which it would never have received otherwise.
Branding is both exciting and intimidating. The idea of creating a new company, with a new identity, from scratch is dizzying, but at the same time, many small companies and startups are doomed to fail. You continue your business undaunted, but subconsciously understand that one day your business may begin to fall apart. But I will encourage you: just because your company has begun to lose momentum or decline, does not mean that you are doomed to failure. In fact, the business world is full of stories of leaders who took over dying companies and brought them back onto the path to success. All it takes is a little insight, a willingness to adapt, and total dedication to your company.
Below are some examples of brands on how this can be done:
LEGO
LEGO has always been a top-notch brand. But in the 1990s, the brand tried to reinvent itself for a new era by creating entirely new lines for specialty bricks. In theory, this was a good idea and companies needed to change, but unfortunately the new products didn't resonate with kids and LEGO began losing hundreds of millions of dollars in the early 2000s. What could they do? The company decided to go back to basics, promoting the original line of LEGO bricks, catering to children's imaginations, and even expanding its media presence with video games and films. Today the brand's reach is greater than ever.
VW Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle was a successful seller in the 1970s, selling more than 15 million models, but its popularity was short-lived. Only a few years later, the Beetle left the market and remained in obscurity for several decades. It was only after the revival of “retro” fashion trends and subsequent nostalgia that Volkswagen decided to modernize the model for a new audience. By combining the charm of the old model with new performance, the company was able to revive Beetle sales.
Starbucks
The caffeine chain brand did not always occupy such a strong position in the market. The company was founded in 1971 in Seattle as a local coffee bean retailer. After years of modest sales and reach, with no clear promise of benefiting from long-term expansion, a rebranding and franchising campaign has brought coffee shops to cities across the country.
Apple
This story can be called the best brand comeback of all time. Although Apple experienced success in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the growing popularity of the Apple II and Apple III computers, due to creative differences Steve Jobs was forced to leave the company in the mid-1980s and the brand began to gradually fade into oblivion. That all changed with Jobs' return in 1997, when he led a massive rebranding of the company that transformed Apple into a minimalist, futuristic tech giant.
Conclusions:
- If something isn't working, change it. This should be obvious, but many entrepreneurs miss this point. There are no compromises here. Change is necessary for continued growth.
- Differentiation is the key. Many companies are leaving because they are no longer different from other brands in the market. If you can differentiate yourself, with a new brand or a new target audience, you can breathe new life into your company.
- Challenge the norm. Most of the brands above were able to gain new life because they made unconventional decisions, or because they challenged conventional logic. Don't be afraid to go against the norm as you reinvent your business.
Entrepreneurship is full of mistakes, challenges and periods of hard work, but these brands have proven that failure does not mean failure. Revitalize your business with creativity, persistence and dedication.
Today's most popular brands were once unknown startups. They were able to achieve success with the help of a successful idea and correctly selected images. Let's look at advertising campaigns that have become known throughout the world due to their high performance and impact on the advertising business as a whole. These examples have already become classics, many of them are reflected in textbooks for advertisers and marketers.
Pepsi generation
How to promote a new company to the market if you have an incredibly strong competitor, and the products you produce are almost identical? It's simple: highlight yours and focus on it. This is exactly what Pepsi did. Losing in competition with, which was a more conservative and established company, Pepsi decided to promote their product exclusively as a youth drink. In 1964, under the slogan “Live brighter, you are in the Pepsi generation,” beautiful, young and reckless heroes showed how those “who think young” look and have fun.
Afterwards, such people as Michael Jackson, Brittney Spears and others appeared in advertising for the drink. It all started with those who were and remain the main consumers of artificial soda - teenagers. Advertising campaign The “Pepsi Generation” made it possible not only to make the brand one of the most expensive in the world, but also to revolutionize the idea of advertising. For the first time, the emphasis was shifted from the benefits of a particular product to accompanying values– beauty, fun, youth.
Ronald McDonald image
What clown knows 25 world languages? Which clown does half the world's inhabitants know? Which clown has his own charity?
We are, of course, talking about the famous Ronald McDonald. Since 1963, when people first saw this clown in Washington, Ronald McDonald has personified the most popular fast food in the world. Today, Ronald is the most recognizable clown, second only to Santa Claus among all fictional characters. It is Ronald McDonald who is responsible for all charitable activities of the McDonald's company; in 2003, he was given the position of "Chief Joy".
Marlboro Cowboy
In 1902, entrepreneur Philip Morris named his company after the street on which it was located - Marlboro. In the 20s, these cigarettes were positioned exclusively for women; advertising used the image of a femme fatale holding a cigarette. This went on for a long time, until in the 40s it came out, telling about the real dangers of cigarettes. Then in company Marlboro decided to add a filter to its cigarettes and radically change your positioning. As new advertising image a man was chosen.
Cowboy image was recognized as the most successful and has not left since then advertising campaignsMarlboro. This is an example of the fact that consistency and loyalty to an idea are sometimes better than change.
"Just do it!"
One of the most famous advertising slogans owned by Nike. It's an advertising campaign "Just do it!" made the Nike brand famous throughout the world. In the advertisement, the emphasis was placed on the emotional component - determination and courage were actively praised. were thoroughly imbued with the philosophy of winners, which was confirmed more than once by athletes who achieved victory wearing Nike shoes.
"The holiday is coming to us, the holiday is coming to us..."
She created her own advertising image. The company's marketers managed the impossible - to promote the invented image so deeply into the minds of consumers that it became part of world culture. We're talking about Santa Claus from Coca-Cola. Santa Claus in a short red sheepskin coat is an invention of advertisers Coca-Cola (A famous character previously wore a long brown fur coat).
As soon as Christmas time comes, adults and children wait for the red truck to sing and bring them the holiday spirit and a feeling of happiness.
"This is priceless. For everything else there is a Master Card"
At a time when everything is bought and sold, important human values remain, which are emphasized (“priceless”) for the Master Card brand.
The company, which is responsible for the materialization of the world, calls for appreciating all the most important things, making the short moments of life unforgettable: bringing joy to parents, seeing the smiles of loved ones, looking into the happy eyes of a child, and for everything else there is a Master Card.
The examples given show possible options for creating successful companies from scratch, using both classic and
