I was caught off-guard by the sheer simplicity and clarity of the message. With “Drive One”, Ford isn’t trying to inspire anybody. There is no intent to build brand image or brand associations. Poetry, this ain’t. No emotion is evoked by these two words.

I found it strangely refreshing. It is a direct order to the customer. The call to action isn’t embedded in the slogan, it is the slogan. It’s almost like they got tired of trying to be cool, just threw their hands up in their air and said, okay, people, just buy the friggin cars, k?? It cuts through the bullshit and gets to the point.

Is Ford onto something? Maybe advertisers should just have the brand message explicitly in their slogans. There are no lines to read between and no one gets confused.

What would some Gen Y brands say if they were this honest?

Activia

Danone’s use of Bifidus Regularis has caused some controversy, since Bifidus Regularis is nothing more than a made-up word to sound scientific.

Axe

Not too much work to draw this one up. Axe ads are explicit in more ways than one.

Hollister

Only people with 4% bodyfat and perfect facial symmetry wear Hollister. Since you’re wearing Hollister, that must mean you’re one of those people, right?
More thoughts on Hollister here.

I Am Not A Plastic Bag

Anya Hindmarch’s popular, eco-trendy “I Am Not A Plastic Bag” was really nothing more than pretentiousness in the form of a canvas sack.

Red Bull

Red Bull does give you wings…because it has a synergistic effect with alcohol.

Here’s to hoping Ford gets rewarded for their forthrightness.

Whenever this happens, I play the party pooper. I step in and pull back the curtain on “Evolution”, on Dove, on Unilever. I let everyone know that Unilever — Dove’s parent company — also is the home of Axe Body Spray. The same Axe Body Spray that portray beautiful women as thin, C-cupped, symetrically-faced and sex-starved.

Every Generation Y analyst loves to say how Gen Y is the generation that is marketing-savvy. Apparently, growing up exposed to mass media has somehow made us invulnerable to blatant marketing ploys.

But this is not the case. Just like any generation of consumers, we’ll still be wowed by great creatives, despite the fact that they are simply superficial marketing tactics.

Dove: Evolution

Axe Body Spray: Bow Chika Wow

Athletes don’t take me as seriously as Gatorade (or even its ugly cousin Powerade), but trust me when I say that I can give you that extra kick you need when you’re drinking when you need an all-night study session!

I have promotions/advertising reps that show up at cool nightlife spots to emphasize the thinly-veiled fact that I am a mixer/chaser remind my target demographic that my only function is to “temporarily increase alertness”.

Legal-aged youth of Generation Y, Red Bull is truly the Jagerbomb!

The spot depicts ladies being chatted up by pigs, who turn into men once they get a condom.

The Millennial in me says this makes absolutely zero sense. Almost every product in society uses some form of thinly-veiled sexual appeal. A Nestle spot currently running depicts a teen boy turning into an ice cream cone with peanuts, and then asking his girl friends to “watch out for the nuts” as they bite into him.

Of course, this all makes perfect sense, since we are hard-wired to look at attractive people. The longer we look, the more we listen to whatever it is they’re peddling. I like to watch Tic Tac commercials just because I find their model easy on the eyes, despite the fact that I have no affinity for Tic Tacs.

One of the most blatant sexual marketing ploys in recent memory involved Paris Hilton and Burger King. Undulating and pouting for the camera, in a leather bikini, while dancing along to throbbing music…she washes a large black SUV…and then eats a whopper.

Oh, the depth and symbolism of modern advertising.

The rejection of the Trojan ad likely has to do with the product itself, rather than the harmless spot. As a Generation Y consumer, this censorship is incredibly frustrating. Why are their Puritan morals being pushed into my media?

Apparently for these dinosaurs, it’s okay for everything else to be sexualized, except for sex itself. We can have half-naked women prancing around selling beer or Axe bodyspray, but having barnyard animals talking to women is apparently unacceptable. Talk about a tease.

Look at all the sexy people in the advertisement. You know, that could be you having fun with all the hotties, all you have to do is buy this drink. It’s that simple. Look how much fun you can have! Go ahead, have a good time, buy this drink, laugh with attractive people, buy this drink and enjoy the night. It all starts when you buy this drink!

You DO know that once you take a sip, you’ll be surrounded by models, right? This drink is going to make you feel great! It tastes great. It’ll make you look super popular and cool.

by the way, you could get sick if you have too much

So what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to have a great time like these gorgeous people?

These ads are targeted at baby boomers — why?! This is a demographic that is supposed to be watching their health, not knocking back root beers and eating burgers and onion rings. In fact, these people are probably the last people who will eat fast food for dinner, because they don’t have any rituals that line up with this. When you’re over 35, taking your wife/date out for fast food is a horrible insult. You don’t take your clients to fast food. No. You take your kids there.

This hurts me, because I actually like A&W. More so than McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s, which I personally find to be interchangeable.

They need to target a younger demographic. Gen Y. The power demographic. You know, the one that will displace baby boomers? And the one that actually spends time and money at fast food joints?

The fast food market has room for at least one more player, especially when you’ve got enough differentiation.

More A&W ads should be like this:

But no, I bet they’ll stick to marketing to a generation who they think could use a little more artery plaque.

The Sharper Image will be selling said steaks ($199 is the low-end). Apparently, these steaks are the essence of quality. Only 1% of American beef qualifies for the honor of being sold under the banner.

I’m tempted to say this will end up in the land where brand extensions go to die; but then again, Trump has peddled Trump Ice bottled water and Trump Vodka.

Generation Y generally doesn’t fall for brand loyalty and celebrity endorsements. Everything in the ad below reeks of the 1980s. Then again, he’s not targeting us. But I’m also having a hard time picturing the kind of person who would go out and buy these premium priced steaks, just because a rich man with a bad haircut and a tv show tells you they’re good.

Source.

They’ve done a great job in breaking away from the typical insincere PSA (I’m looking at you, The More You Know). The ‘truth’ ads cut through the clutter and get your attention. I believe this because you know which campaign I’m referring to.

So we’ve got credible, attention-grabbing and a clear call to action. Looks like the ingredients to a home-run campaign…but are Gen Y smokers quitting?

Nope. The campaigns have the complete opposite effect. Smokers are aware of them, but absolutely hate them, making them dig their nails into their stances even deeper. The allure of smoking is rebellion, after all.

Nonsmokers, however, love the ads, saying things like:

Nonsmoker comment:
I think it’s about time someone took responsibility for the deadly addiction that kills so many people.

Smokers, on the other hand, were being put on the defensive. The message being put across was “Why can’t you see smoking is bad for you? Just stop! Are you a moron?”.

Smoker comment:
I can’t turn on the TV without those frickin’ stupid kids being in my face about smoking … they act like they are better people just because they don’t smoke.

Smoker comment:
These are the kind of ads where people try to get in your face about something I choose to do. It’s just annoying and makes me want to smoke more. It is really none of their business if I smoke or not.

Polarizing campaign, no doubt. There was a strong, unified reaction from smokers regarding these anti-smoking ads. They hated them and claimed that it would never change their behavior. On the other hand, we have nonsmokers who love the ad and can’t understand why more smokers aren’t being converted.

So is the campaign a failure?
It would be too hasty to say that the truth campaign is a failure. The MADD campaigns — also using fear-based appeals — are successful because they tell a story of a quick, sudden death (of yourself and others). Smoking is more of a long-term harm, so it’s harder to scare someone straight.

Another measure of success is whether the younger tail of Gen Y is influenced, planting “smoking cigarettes is bad” before they stand in the spotlight of peer pressure. Fortunately, there is some hope:

Smoker comment:
If I had seen messages like those at the time that I started smoking, I might have said, no–no thank you. I was in that situation when my friend offered it to me and I had every opportunity to say no, but when I was young I really didn’t see any example of that in the media against smoking.

Check out the campaign at the truth.

References:
Wolburg, Joyce M. “College students’ responses to antismoking messages: denial, defiance, and other boomerang effects.” Journal of Consumer Affairs 40.2 (Winter 2006): 294(30). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. University of Guelph. 19 May. 2007

That’s the message that I get whenever I see Fair Trade products for sale. The guilt-based appeal.

Fair Trade products are pushed at my university, and it seems to me no one but the hippies (sorry liberal arts students, lack of a better word) are buying them. I’ve met a few who were passionate about it and I think they failed to get my point of “it costs more money, I’m a poor student…the math isn’t hard”.

Incentive drives people to act, and more importantly, buy. Looking at it from the basest point of view, if I see two cups of coffee of similar quality, and one is a dollar more expensive than the other, guess which one I’m going to buy?

We’ve seen this when the girl scouts come around and ask you to buy their expensive cookies. This is entirely different because that is a one-off purchase, whereas Fair Trade is asking you to replace your entire purchase behavior reflex and buy more expensive products over cheaper, similar-quality goods. Is tugging at your heartstrings a little really enough to make consumers do that?

At the end of the day, I’m not convinced that consumers are responding to guilt-based appeals. Just because my heart aches doesn’t mean my wallet’s going to open. The starving-children commercials come out in full force at Christmas, and we easily rid ourselves of the induced guilt by simply changing the channel.

Let’s look at it alongside other common types of appeals.

• Guilt-based appeals: The main reason to buy is to get your conscience to shut up. Which is surprisingly easy, as “out of sight, out of mind”. This is why we change the channel or ignore the homeless guy asking for change.
• Fear-based appeals: These hang around a little longer, because they show a larger incentive to you. Think of MADD commercials and germ-killer products. If you don’t buy our product you will die!
• Sentimental appeals: Since we’re all hedonistic animals, this is an easy sell if there’s a direct emotional connection. Buy this Pepsi if you want to feel young again! Drive this Hummer and have people kneel in awe!
• Personal-benefit appeals: The easiest sell. Buy Tide because you want your clothes clean! Buy Robitussin to stop that pesky cough!

To paraphrase from Freakonomics …morality dictates how the world should be, economics dictates how it actually is.

They’ve been using bears to sell toilet paper since 2000. Can anyone explain the connection?

Bears are SCARY. Bears are ferocious creatures, are 8 feet tall, have giant claws and can outrun/outclimb you, so forget about going up into a tree, Tarzan. Your only chance is to have a gun, and I doubt you could bring yourself to shoot Winnie the Pooh, so let’s get real, you actually have no chance whatsoever.

But…wait a minute…bears have soft, thick fur — so they’re telling me it’s like wiping my behind with a 500 thread-count duvet. Teddy bears are cute. There’s also the care bears. And gummy bears! Maybe bears have gotten a bad rap!

The mother bear in the ad also dances around, and has a child with it. You know times are hard when you have to swipe pick-a-nick baskets for food, so it decides to get the best available toilet paper for its money, which happens to be Charmin.

Now I get it!