Marketing impacts all of our lives, whether we want it to or not.
Words like: personal brand, megabrand, influencer, and growth hacking have become commonplace in our time. And we are still surrounded by all the older marketing techniques as well: billboards, TV/print/podcast advertising, direct sales, banner ads, word of mouth advertising, and on and on and on.
I formally studied marketing in the previous millennia and have informally continued to study and use the subject matter since then. To me, marketing is a chronic disease. It’s always there. Maybe it’s not in the forefront of what I’m doing at the time, but eventually marketing appears. Like humans, marketing is constantly changing. Documenting those changes and some of the best and worst marketing campaigns in history make up the Marketing Hall Of Fame.
The Best Summer Drink For People With No Taste Buds!!
Large parts of America are going to be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit during this holiday weekend. What better time to think about buying a refreshing summer drink.
Unfortunately in marketing, sometimes you have to work with less-than-ideal products.
David Ogilvy is a marketing GIANT. He and his agency have been responsible for many historic ad campaigns that have shaped the world.
And then there’s this advertisement.
I especially enjoy the serving suggestions… “Serve it with a dash of Worcestershire Sauce”.
No thanks, I’m good. I’ll stick to lemonade and beer for my summer refreshments.
Where’s The Funny?
During a recent gathering of young children aged 7 to 13, a Jack-n-the-Box commercial made the group laugh out loud. I believe the youth call it LOL.
As a card carrying member of Generation X, funny hamburger commercials take me to one very specific advertisement.
Thanks to the power of YouTube, I showed the commercial to this group of soon-to-be hamburger purchasers and waited for their hysterical laughter.
And then the strangest thing happened… nothing.
No laughter, no grunting, just silence. I played the commercial a second time to make sure everyone could see and hear it clearly, and the result was the same. Silence.
I asked them to rate “Where’s the beef?” on a funny commercial scale, 1 to 10, with 10 being the funniest and the consensus was a solid 2.
This cut straight through my GenX heart. I remember watching that commercial when I was their age and laughing hysterically. Even now, when I watch it, it’s not very funny, it’s fairly ageist, and obviously the commercial doesn’t stand the test of time.
But standing the test of time is not the goal of a commercial. The top goal for any advertising campaign if to capture the zeitgeist of the culture. This commercial did that in 1984.
In fact, no Marketing Hall Of Fame would be complete without this search for beef.