This is an update of an older blog post on advertising, cutting through the clutter, and creative tastelessnes for a topic I’m talking about in class this morning.
In advertising, a tension often exists between creativity and salesmanship. An ad may do a great job of grabbing people’s attention and generating talk, but if the ad doesn’t have a solid sales message, consumers will not remember the product or give serious thought to buying it. Advertisers also have to be continually asking themselves, “Does this ad help build the value of our brand?”
There have been a number of ads that have done a great job of grabbing the public’s attention. But have they done a good job of promoting the product? Have they build the value of the brand?
Consider Anheuser-Busch back in 2009. Their brand Bud Light (the most popular beer in the United States) was launching its Bud Light Lime beer in cans. (Previously it had only been available in bottles.) Anheuser-Busch promoted the launch with an online ad that had people talking about “getting it in the can” — as in a suburban housewife confessing, “I never thought I’d enjoy getting it in the can as much as I do.” The crude sex joke attracted a lot of talk and attention from the advertising press. But it’s not clear what the message did to promote the brand or increase sales.
Irish brewer Guinness, on the other hand, has been successful in grabbing attention, generating talk, and building it’s brand image with an ad that features a group of men playing wheelchair basketball in a gym. As the ad comes to an end, all but one of the men stand up and then join their one wheelchair-bound friend in a bar for a round of Guinness. The ad has all the standard elements of a beer ad – guys playing sports and then going out to drink beer together afterwards. But it ads the unexpected twist that gives it a huge dose of heart.
Back in 2011, Chrysler ran their Imported From Detroit ad featuring iconic Detroit hip hop artist Eminem. Featuring lots of strong pro-labor images, it promoted a new model car, trying to find a way to be something new and different.
Dr. Lester Spence, a professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University, argues in a blog post (no longer active) that the ad makes effective use a number of types of counterculture, anti-corporate material, including an “urban nationalist manifesto” of “ruin pornography” and a Diego Rivera mural that uses Marxist imagery. All this rebellious imagery is subverted to promote a mainstream, corporate product.
He concludes his post by saying:
“I suspect that this commercial will ALWAYS move me, as I am and will always be a Detroit patriot. But given my work both on hip-hop and on urban politics, I cannot ignore the narratives this POWERFUL commercial shunts aside.”