Audi, Acura, Hyundai, Kia, Chevrolet, Lexus, Cadillac, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Suzuki, Honda (putatively with a "Ferris Bueller"- themed ad complete with Mathew Broderick) and Toyota are the automakers in the Super Bowl this year. Many have already shown bits and pieces of their creative, and some already have their ads on social video channels. Hyundai until now has been mum on its creative, saying that the ads will take a new direction less focused on establishing the brand's bona fides and more on entertaining. While in the past Hyundai has tended to hammer home messages about vehicle durability and reliability, and also (during the recession) programs like Hyundai Assurance, the automaker is doing more humorous creative this time. The two ads for the Veloster Turbo, as well as a brand advertisement right before kickoff, all use humor to get the message across. For the latter, a 60-second spot in the ad pod shoe-horned right before kickoff, the company is doing a slightly more offbeat approach than what it did in last year's game: feature real employees at its Montgomery, Ala. assembly plant for the Sonata sedan. This year the ad shows that facility and its people, but they are in an absurd elaboration of Hyundai's take on "If at first you don't succeed... ." In the ad, via Innocean Americas, a designer is struggling to solve a tricky design point on a Hyundai vehicle when his supervisor shows up at his cubicle. Instead of words of encouragement, the guy begins humming the theme from “Rocky.” Then other employees in the office take up the song, and then all of the people in the assembly plant start humming it as they build Sonatas. Soon everyone is singing the theme, marching out of the plant, into the offices and surrounding the guy, who after hearing the anthem says he'll give it another shot. One of the two in-game Veloster Turbo ads posits a race between a cheetah and the Veloster Turbo. It shows the car on a desert highway, sere mountains in the distance. Beside the car and its driver is a cheetah in a cage, and beside the cage, the cat's handler. As the car takes off down the road, the handler opens the door to the cage and the cat leaps after the car. The car is way too fast, so after a futile second or two chasing the car, the cat gives up, and turns to look at the trainer, growling. The latter's expression changes to one of consternation, then terror as the cat decides he's an easier meal target. As Hyundai's voiceover guy, actor Jeff Bridges extols the virtues of the car we see the handler run back and forth, chased hither and yon by the cat. The third spot is meant to tout the turbo Veloster's low-end torque in forward and reverse. A young man is driving with his much older colleague on a business trip as the older guy is telling the young man the secret to success, for the millionth time. But before he can tell the young driver that secret word, he has what looks to be a minor cardiovascular event or stroke (if such a thing can be minor). The young guy handles it by quickly throwing the car into reverse, then forward, then reverse again a few times until the old guy is shaken out of his -- whatever it is he's in. Humor is, of course, stock in trade for Super Bowl ads, and almost all of the automakers except (so far) for Cadillac are going for the funny bone to some extent. Kia, in a racetrack themed ad, is channeling male and female fantasies in an ad for the Optima sedan starring everyone from Mötley Crüe to mixed- martial arts star Chuck Liddell and a Victoria's Secret supermodel. Audi's Super Bowl ad offers a take on hip young party vampires at a cookout, and their friend arriving in an Audi with the drinks, a container of type-O blood. Unfortunately, the car's headlights are so strong, they evaporate the lot of them. And sibling VW is back with the “Star Wars” theme. Honda, rumor has it, is doing a "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"-themed ad starring -- yes -- Matthew Broderick, except grown up and playing hooky from work. Tim Calkins, professor of marketing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, tells Marketing Daily that while the automotive segment tends to change its Super Bowl creative themes every year (although there are exceptions), there will be a lot of thematic repeats. "I think this year what we will notice is how familiar the commercials are and how much continuity there is from one year to the next," he says. For the past seven years, Calkins has run a sort of ersatz focus group at Kellogg involving marketing students who watch the big game and evaluate the ads therein based on strategic criteria. They will do the same this year for Super Bowl XLVI. Calkins says the yearly confab judges ads based on positioning (where there's a benefit delivered by being in the Super Bowl); the strength of the link between creative and product; whether the ad has enough "amplification" to stay top of mind; and whether the ad is consistent with the brand. "We will see a lot of similar campaigns again: CareerBuilder with chimps, the Coca-Cola bears, goDaddy.com, Doritos. What's happening is the branding is difficult and when people get equity that works, they reinforce it," he says. "The risk profile is so high in the Super Bowl that when advertisers find a formula, they stick with it."
As the nation’s jewelers gear up for Valentine’s Day, Tiffany is encouraging even lovers with empty pockets to join the action, expanding its What Makes Love True website to include a new photo gallery. It allows couples to upload photos via computer or an iPhone app. And the chain is also hosting photo booths in its New York flagship, two London locations, and in its Ginza store in Tokyo, which will reward couples with a 4 x 6 print. The site expansion also includes a gallery of images shot by Scott Schuman of “The Sartorialist” and photo-blogger Garance Doré, who are also a couple. Users can tint their photos in black and white, peach, or Tiffany Blue, and include their own caption. The company says it plans to update the site throughout the day. Tiffany says the expansion is due to the positive response people have had to the whatmakeslovetrue.com site, launched back in June. The launch included an original short film, “Will you marry me?” by actor/filmmaker Edward Burns, as well as an exclusive version of singer-songwriter Josh Radin’s arrangement of the classic hit, “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything,” and links to more romantic songs and movies (many set in New York) via iTunes. And a map feature allows users to tag (with a heart, of course) any spot in New York City that they think is especially romantic. “Adding personal portraits to the images of the many couples we’ve interviewed is a natural progression,” Tiffany CMO Caroline Naggiar says in its release. Tiffany is feeling some pressure, after reporting a relatively disappointing holiday period. "After achieving very strong and better-than-expected sales and earnings growth in the first three quarters of 2011, sales weakened markedly in the United States and Europe during the holiday season, reflecting restrained spending by consumers for fine jewelry,” its CEO Michael J. Kowalski said in a recent statement. And while some observers are predicting a happier Valentine’s Day (IBISWorld is forecasting a 5% increase in overall spending related to the Feb. 14 holiday), Jewelers of America is going with a more subdued estimate, expecting jewelry sales, which came in at about $69 billion in 2011, to grow between 3.5 and 4% this year. “V-day is the second-biggest calendar event for specialty jewelers,” explains a spokesperson for Jewelers of America, “with the holiday selling period bringing about 30% of specialty jeweler sales, and Valentine’s Day sales only about 8% of their yearly sales, or 13% if you include January purchases, which may relate to the upcoming event.”
Sara Lee’s Ball Park brand is looking to appeal to the women who buy food for the men in their lives by affectionately ribbing the guys’ quirky behavior. The tagline for Ball Park’s new campaign -- its first from Publicis Seattle, which became the brand’s agency of record in June 2011 -- says it all: “Men. Easier Fed Than Understood.” The campaign portrays humorous “guy time” moments, while also showcasing Ball Park’s expanded lines of franks. In addition to its classic franks, those lines now include Angus, 100% beef, turkey and “better for you” franks, each of which offers many varieties (such as “lite,” lower-fat, fat- free, bun-size, jumbo and deli-style). The emphasis is on the products’ being “not just hearty and flavorful, but easy to prepare and fun to eat,” says Aaron Alt, the brand’s general manager. The campaign spans TV, print, digital, social media, in-store activations and public relations. The brand’s site and Facebook page (which currently has about 138,000 “likes”) have also been relaunched. Both are featuring coupons, special offers and links to the brand’s YouTube area to view its TV spots. The revamped site includes links to nutritional information for each of the many franks varieties, and as of Feb. 2, will also include easy, guy-friendly recipes; “guy- proof” grilling tips; a product locator (where Ball Park products can be purchased at retail); and an area with a “Guy Food Finder”/Ball Park’s history. The campaign kicked off this week with a 30-second TV spot featuring Ball Park Angus Beef Franks. The spot plays on Ball Park’s baseball heritage (it was launched in 1957 in response to a request from the owner of the Detroit Tigers baseball team) in the context of a contemporary “guy moment”: Men standing around a grill during a backyard party, engaging in one- upsmanship about baseball statistics while grilling and eating the Angus franks. (After one guy says he’s “99.9% positive” about an old baseball stat, another replies: “So you don’t know.”) “Backyard barbecues, stats and tasty, easy-to-eat food are what guys love. They’re just part of our natural DNA,” observes Jason Sullivan, SVP group director at Publicis Seattle. Other TV ads will be rolled out over the next few months.
Consumer avoidance is as important to automobile manufacturers and marketers as loyalty. If you can figure out why people are running away, you can figure out how to get them back, right? Yes -- especially if avoidance is being fueled by left-brain parameters like experience of ownership, reviews, ratings, features, price and the like. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people are running away for a reason that, because it is so insidious, strikes terror in the hearts of auto marketers everywhere: consumer perception based on "conventional wisdom" about vehicle quality and durability. Forty percent of new- vehicle buyers who avoided a particular model due to quality or reliability concerns say they based their opinions on common knowledge rather than personal experience, reviews, ratings or recommendations, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Avoider Study. The study is based on responses from approximately 24,045 owners who registered a new vehicle in May last year. Among buyers who avoid a particular model because of perceived quality and reliability, 43% say their avoidance was because “the brand’s vehicles, in general, are known to have poor quality/reliability.” Thirty-eight percent based their avoidance on ratings and reviews, while only 14% said they based their decision on prior ownership of the model. Jon Osborn, research director at J.D. Power and Associates, argues that if you are an automaker who had a quality problem in the past (that created a generation of naysayers). you can't just let your cars do the talking now. “For some brands, namely those that have created marked improvements in their quality and reliability in recent years, it’s even more vital to tell their improvement story, rather than just waiting for perceptions to change over time,” he said, in a statement. In good news for domestics, the percentage of buyers who avoided import models because of their origin has increased to 14% —the highest level since the inception of the study in 2003 -- while the percentage of buyers who avoided domestic models due to their origin has declined to 6%, a historical low. “The decline in avoidance of U.S. models due to their origin reflects a buy-American sentiment that surfaced as the economic recession led to domestic job losses and adversely affected major U.S. institutions such as the Detroit Big Three,” said Osborn. “In addition, the quality, dependability and appeal of domestic models have improved during the past several years, as well, and this may also be a cause for declining avoidance.” While perception about quality and reliability is driving avoidance, it is no longer the main driver of purchase. Gas mileage has leapfrogged reliability, the deal and exterior styling, which were the most influential purchase reasons in 2010, the 12-month period covered by the firm's last Avoider study. While gas mileage and environmental impact certainly are the big drivers for Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf and Toyota Prius, consideration is is not uniform across the nameplates. Image is a prominent reason for purchase of Volt, while buyers cite low maintenance costs for the Leaf and reliability for the Prius, per J.D. Power. Among buyers who avoided the Volt, purchase price was the most- cited reason, while the most prominent avoidance reason for the Leaf and Prius is exterior styling. For the Volt and Leaf, a notable proportion of buyers cited the models’ small size as an avoidance reason. For the Prius, performance is a prominent reason for avoidance.
While the race for Olympic endorsers is already well underway, Procter & Gamble just got a big leg up, introducing 11 hopefuls in new advertising for its Pantene hair care brand. In the U.S., TV and print ads will rely heavily on swimmer Natalie Coughlin, an 11-time Olympic medalist. P&G says she is the first American female athlete to win six medals in one Olympic Games, and is two gold medals away from becoming the most decorated female U.S. Olympian, which means the media will be following her progress closely leading up to the games. The group will be featured in the brand’s first global marketing campaign to support the upcoming Olympic Games in London. The gold-drenched ads, shot by Alexi Lubomirski, underscore Pantene’s commitment to the idea that “healthy is the new beautiful.” Headlined “I trust Pantene to make my hair look great so I can concentrate on training,” the campaign is the first time the brand has ever used athletes. (Actresses Liv Tyler and Eva Mendes continue to represent the product as well.) The effort breaks in June, and a spokesperson for P&G says the TV spots will air in Olympics programming on NBC in late July- mid August. The campaign was created by Grey New York. Among the athletes are six Olympic gold medalists, including Brazilian Jaqueline Carvalho (volleyball); Argentina’s Gisela Dulko (tennis); China’s Wu Minxia (diving), and Russia’s Evgeniya Kanaeva (rhythmic gymnastics). P&G’s anchor campaign for the Olympics continues to be its “Thank You, Mom” effort. Separately, Procter & Gamble posted sharply lower quarterly results, partly due to rising commodity costs and restructuring. Sales of its hair care products fared poorly, decreasing by mid-single digits in developed regions. The entire U.S. shampoo industry is weaker, as well, with SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago-based market research firm, reporting that sales in the 52-week period ending Dec. 25 are up less than 1%, while dollar sales are up 3.6%.
"Glee" actress and singer Lea Michele will appear in Candie's, "Only at Kohl's" Spring 2012 multi-media marketing campaign. Best known for her role as Rachel Berry on the Golden Globe Award winning TV series, Michele will star in the fashion brand’s national print, online, outdoor and in-store marketing campaign. Iconix Brand Group’s Candie's is sold exclusively at Kohl's Department Stores nationwide and Kohls.com. The campaign titled, "Hangin' At Home" features the actress in the kitchen, lounging by the pool and being playful in her bedroom. The creative gives consumers a behind-the-scenes look at Michele’s everyday life at home. "Everyone is obsessed with 'Glee,' especially Lea Michele and so are we,” said Dari Marder, chief marketing officer, New York-based Iconix Brand Group, in a release. The multi-media campaign will debut in March issues of fashion and lifestyle magazines including Seventeen, Teen Vogue and Cosmopolitan, as well as online, outdoor and in Kohl's marketing vehicles. Teen Vogue is promoting a behind-the-scenes sneak peak at the campaign on its Twitter feed and Candie’s and Michele are also tweeting about the relationship. The actress will resonate with Kohl’s young shoppers, said Julie Gardner, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Kohl’s, in a release. "Lea Michele is a recognizable star and relevant in today's pop culture,” she adds. The campaign creative was developed by Iconix in-house marketing team and photographed at a private residence in Beverly Hills, Calif. by fashion photographer Yu Tsai. Michele joins the list of famous Candie's spokespeople including "High School Musical" actress Vanessa Hudgens, Britney Spears, Hillary Duff, Jenny McCarthy, the Dixie Chicks and Fergie. Spears was the face of Candie's for two consecutive years before the Hudgens ads debuted last March."Britney Spears is definitely my favorite past Candie's girl, her campaigns were gorgeous,” said Michele in a release.
John Hancock Financial has been running a marketing marathon of its own, with the company entering its 27th year as a principal sponsor of the Boston Marathon. The company's Twitter site @jhboston26 will continue to provide tweets about the 2012 Boston Marathon and related activities to followers and marathon enthusiasts. The site, which launched two years ago, has followers that include Olympians, elite marathoners, and coaches as well as fans of the sport. Content will continue to include tweets on John Hancock's partnership with the Boston Athletic Association, the John Hancock Elite Athlete Program, Non-Profit and Employee Running and Fundraising Programs, and Marathon community initiatives. "From sharing news about how the fastest marathon runners in the world are preparing for the Boston Marathon to letting followers know what makes this event so special to non-profit community runners, we hope our feed adds to the unique appeal of the world's preeminent and oldest marathon,” said Rob Friedman, head of sports and event marketing at John Hancock, in a release. John Hancock provides “substantial financial support” to ensure the ongoing success of the race. Each year, John Hancock recruits and sponsors a world-class, elite athlete field for the race and has provided nearly $14 million in prize and bonus awards. Company employees volunteer to help with marathon-related tasks and also participate in the race to raise money for local charities. In 2011, more than a thousand John Hancock-0sponsored non-profit runners, including 100 John Hancock and Manulife employees, raised $5.3 million for 90 local charities and Habitat for Humanity-Canada. During race week, John Hancock provides resources for local school initiatives and provides a wide range of financial support and services to the towns and cities along the marathon route. The company also sponsors the John Hancock Sports & Fitness Expo that draws 200 exhibitors and 80,000 visitors. The direct and indirect economic value to the community of the Boston Marathon weekend in 2011 was calculated at $132.2 million, according to Greater Boston Convention & Visitor Bureau.
Polar bears. They're just like us. They occasionally lose their footing on ice. Find out how this bear landed on his belly in today's Super Bowl edition of "Out to Launch."
Within the digital media ecosystem we’re hearing more and more about two things -- data and social. In a world of both, the key idea is targeting. We now have the ability to find very narrow sub-segments of the population for our ads. For example, we can target 20-year-old males who watch "Breaking Bad" and also love to order Domino’s Pizza with ads on Facebook. We can also use data to find consumers who appear to be actively shopping for a muscle car or a loan. For traditional marketers, this sounds like heaven. Since I began working in media more than 20 years ago, we’ve been talking about audience composition, MRI indices, demographic breakdowns and targeted ratings points -- all in an effort to help us find the right audience as efficiently as we can with our ads. In our brave new digital world, we have all but eliminated the problem of waste, and it’s the buzz of the industry. We no longer have to worry about which half of our media dollars are wasted because none of them are when you properly utilize data to profile and find your ideal customers. Or do we? Something that seems to get lost amid all of this incredible technology is the fact that targeting is not a business goal. In fact, it isn’t even a marketing goal. Being as targeted as possible is important, but only if it serves a higher, measurable objective. Too often, we are measuring our campaigns against variables that may or may not correlate to the success of our business. Put simply, I would rather have wasted half of my media if I knew my ads had an impact than have a campaign with zero waste that no one notices. I hope at this point we can all agree that banner ads are low impact at best. They are small; they are generally silent and usually live in extremely easy-to-ignore places on the pages our customers are reading. In short, they don’t do much. And there aren’t a lot of researchers out there who will tell you otherwise. (Trust me, I’ve asked.) The cold reality is that there is no amount of targeting that can make up for the fact that most consumers are blind to most of the ads they see online. The goal of your media investment is always to deliver something for your brand or business. If the goal is traffic to your Web site, then click volume and cost-per- click are good metrics for you. But if your goal is to increase the number of customers who buy your products on your Web site, optimizing your campaign to deliver a low CPC or a high volume of clicks might actually hurt your campaign instead of helping it. Consider this: many consumers -- including some who are your most valuable customers -- may never click an ad for the rest of their lives. Does it really make sense to optimize your media campaign in order to stop reaching this audience? By optimizing on clicks you might actually stop reaching your most important customers. Yes -- we can measure post-impression actions (consumers who see an ad, then come to your site and make a purchase), but is that the metric we should be optimizing against? If targeting works, it might actually make more sense to make post-impression action rate your primary metric. But that is assuming that banners have an impact on the consumers who see them -- an assumption that we know simply isn’t true. Which brings us back to the targeting discussion. If banner impressions don’t have a big impact on the non-clickers, and most consumers never click the banners they see, how can being targeted with our banner campaigns really deliver better results? And how do we effectively measure what we’re doing in digital if we’re not basing results on response rates? The answer is surprisingly simple; Impact. The digital media industry needs to take advantage of the tools that are available in order to do a much better job of measuring the impact of our ads on the consumers who see them. When we do that, we will begin spending a lot more of our dollars on digital video and a lot less on targeted banners and social ads. Video ads, for all who see them, have an impact that is greater than any banner ever could have; and certainly more than a thumbnail image and some text. If you don’t have the means in place to measure the impact of an impression on your business goals, then how can you possibly justify buying any media on a cost-per-impression basis? In the early ‘90s, banners and clicks were an interim solution for measuring a new media type that did not have the capability of soliciting an emotional response from a consumer when it was created (no video). We’re way past that now. The ability for digital to deliver so much more than a direct response is finally mature, and the smartest marketers are jumping in, knowing full well they aren’t as targeted as they could be with banners or social ads. But the choice to have some amount of waste in order to ensure your ads are noticed is an easy one to make. What will you choose?