Category: Advertising

I am all too familiar with the encroaching wave of utter exhaustion that overtakes you during the trek home after school. One day, my haggard self was on the way to catch yet another bus transfer when I spotted a huge billboard at the bus loop in Lonsdale Quay. It was a bright blue ad for Halls Refresh, a product that promises to rescue me from my three o’clock slump. I was temporarily snapped out of my lethargic state, and I’m positive I wasn’t the only one: the choice to display the advertisement at a major hub where weary citizens–Halls Refresh’s target market–cross paths everyday was no coincidence.

The cough drop is currently in the mature stage of the product life cycle. There are many competitors and substitutes, and sales and demand have reached their peak and are beginning to level off. How can market share be increased for a company in this position? Halls’ answer was to find a new use for its existing product.

In my experience, Halls cough drops have been kind of regarded as candies for quite some time (if I recall correctly, Halls has been placed by the cashiers alongside other candy and chewing gum in grocery and convenience stores for as long as I can remember), but the product was just never explicitly marketed as such.  Just as a classmate mentioned, the repositioning of Halls aims to capture a whole new segment of consumers who like to use cough drops in the absence of a sore throat.

While this strategy has the potential to be highly successful, Halls Refresh’s bold repositioning statement of “It’s not a cough drop” worries me slightly. Halls, practically a genericized trademark much like Coke and Kleenex,  has been inextricably linked to cough drops–and rightfully so, as it’s what the brand is originally known for. So by declaring that Halls isn’t a cough drop any longer, conflicting signals are sent, which results in a discrepancy between this new image of Halls and what the Halls name has always stood for. I am sure the folks at Halls had already anticipated this concern. By following through with Halls Refresh anyway, the company braved possible risks and costs, demonstrating faith in the strength of the Halls brand.

I remember our class discussion about “thinking outside the box” when it comes to the demographics segmentation base, with the NFL’s high-profile partnership with the American Cancer Society during National Breast Cancer Awareness month as an example. Upon learning of this campaign, I felt deeply appreciative of such efforts. It seemed unconventional, effective and sincere. The presence of pink in the masculine sport was apparent yet unobtrusive. Thoughtfully engineered, “A Crucial Catch” showed all signs of a marketing success.

But was it genuine? Marketing is no stranger to “ethically ambiguous” territory, so naturally, what came to my mind was corporations being socially responsible for the sake of appearing socially responsible. This may not be the perfect analogy, but this situation reminds me of the fact that we utter “sorry” so often that the word becomes devoid of any honest meaning: there is definitely something amiss when I catch myself apologizing after I drop all my books as a result of an accidental shoulder-check from a stranger. I therefore get the sense that firms and organizations are jumping on the charitable bandwagon instead of taking action out of the goodness of their hearts. To corporate bigwigs, is this “just another marketing scheme”? Now don’t get me wrong, I am not undermining companies who actually undertake initiatives with the best intentions; on the contrary, I applaud them. But what ultimately distresses me is that it’s getting progressively difficult to tell the difference between what is true and what is false.

Marketing isn’t just the selling of products and services; ideas, philosophies, thoughts, opinions and concepts also manage to fall under its expansive radar.

Like most girls, Barbie was a favourite toy of mine while I was growing up. An aspect of the Barbie doll I found likeable was how seamlessly she bounced from career to career: from a veterinarian to astronaut, chef to presidential candidate. She made it all look so easy! Now that I am older, I have realised the significance of Barbie’s impressive résumé–and it seems like Mattel has, too.

In early 2010, they launched their “I Can Be…” campaign, allowing girls across the globe to vote for the next career Barbie should tackle (news anchor and computer engineer came out on top). Mattel recently expanded this inspirational campaign with a new commercial, tapping into the huge segment of women who can fondly remember the days of playing with Barbie, and thus easily identify with its message. Barbie is a prime example of a company making good use of its brand equity to promote a worthy social cause, which in this case is female empowerment. While it is primarily a reminder to girls of their true potential–that they “can be anything”–it also wouldn’t hurt to sell a couple more Barbies.

When school’s out and summer’s in, I inadvertently find myself hoping to catch a glimpse of Playland’s annual ad campaign. The advertisements first caught my eye a couple of summers back: while it was the playful colours that piqued my interest, it was the campaign’s effective simplicity that I found charming. Playland’s ads rely primarily on witty images that transcend words. Using the power of humour (plush toys vomiting stuffing) and familiarity (quintessential amusement park food) to their advantage, Playland has created a winning formula that inspires nostalgia for carnivalesque experiences people relate to. The ads have a way of capturing the precipitous feeling of screaming your throat dry, of your heart reverberating against your chest, of your breath getting caught in your throat. Indeed, outside of an amusement park context, such feelings should be the opposite of fun, bringing to mind society’s perverse behaviour of paying to get scared for entertainment. Luckily for Playland, on carnival grounds, all bets are off.

We are inundated with marketing nearly everywhere we turn. The oversaturation of advertisements in particular has rendered us desensitised, so much that we are in need of something shocking to capture our waning attention. Stemming from the Czech Republic, Freedom for Animals takes the grotesque route to get noticed. (True, shocking ads have been so overdone to the point of becoming passé, but you’ve got to admit it–they never fail to turn heads.) Similar to other areas, cosmetic testing on animals has long been a subject of great debate. Freedom for Animals prefers to get right to the point.

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