I’m a sucker for funny or amusing commercials. And let’s face it, who isn’t? Honestly, I think a line that can invoke a chuckle or two is infinitely more enjoyable than any other advertising technique that can be employed. The simple reason being, if I’m watching them on TV or scanning them in a newspaper, at least I feel I’m no longer wasting my time watching these ads because there is comedic value to be gotten.
So I recently saw the Old Spice commercial The Man Your Man Could Smell Like along with two of its sequels and I loved it! I thought it was absolute hilarity, and I would suggest everyone to check it out if you haven’t already.
Naturally, I drew a mental comparison between Old Spice and its number one competitor, Axe. The first, most striking difference was this commercial’s distinct lack of women. Indeed, if Procter & Gamble aimed to target the straight adolescent male audience, perhaps using a topless male bodybuilder wasn’t the best idea. I kid of course; what should instead be noted is that Old Spice veered away from sex appeal as their main campaign strategy, and instead evoked the feeling of envy. Two interesting ways to sell [essentially] the same product.
The next point worth noting is that where Axe happens to aggravate the female population with its womanizing and sexist images of young girls demeaning themselves by clawing and fighting their way to a man wearing fragrances, Old Spice actually appeals to the ladies with this stunningly built half-naked gentleman. Not only that, but the tagline “The man your man could smell like” speaks directly to the women. I can already imagine the girl thinking “Boy, I sure want my man to smell like the man my man could smell like!” and subsequently pressure him into buying the product. The man, of course, is thinking “Boy, I sure want to smell like THE man her man could smell like!” You get the picture. You could say that Old Spice has effectively doubled their target audience compared to Axe, by including the other half of the world. Not to shabby, for the same 30 seconds of airtime!
Reading ellingdahlen’s blog about generic store brands such as Superstore’s No Name and Shoppers’ Life Brand brought to my attention an interesting point about such manufacturers. They are able to substantially reduce marketing administrative costs by piggybacking on products which they specifically imitate. To illustrate, say we visit Superstore and see Orville Redenbacher’s microwavable popcorn. Immediately to its left on the same shelf is none other than No Name’s own microwavable popcorn. Undoubtedly, No Name strategically placed their product there to attract customers’ attention – as ellingdahlen mentioned, it can very effectively target customers who are consciously saving money on groceries. We will probably never see an ad for No Name’s popcorn, but we may see Orville Redenbacher ads all the time on the television.
The generic brands’ strategy goes like this: Let these major players spend as much money as they want pushing their products and luring customers to the stores. Once there, the generic brands intercept with their lower priced products to hook in these unsuspecting customers to the right shelf. A simple matter of drawing attention via price tags. The keystone in this approach is No Name’s willingness to slash the price and offer an essentially identical product for a fraction of the money. But does that mean they are thinning profit margins with a move like that? Not necessarily, as they substantially reduced their costs from not having to advertise as heavily (they feed off the big companies’ advertisements).
The gambit, consequently, is to sacrifice marketing for the budget appeal, then compensating by free-riding on their competition’s marketing. Now, I’m not in a position to analyze how effective this is, but at the very least I would say it’s an exceptionally artful use of resources (and I’m not referring to their own!)
Waiting at the bus stop on Oak and Broadway the other day, I encountered a peculiar advertisement which some of you may have already seen. It was a plain, text-only ad and it went something like this:
Still a Virgin?
For help, call 1-888-743-4335
(An image of the poster can be found here.)
Note the bold, red highlight! Now my first impression was that this advertisement was for that of a prostitution service, so I paid the ad no further heed. But wait a second, I thought, that can’t be right! From my [limited] understanding of Canadian prostitution law, surely this public communication of sexual services, albeit implied, breaches multiple levels of legislation. Certainly this suggestivity could not possibly have been too subtle, especially for those uptight stooges at the Advertising Standards Bureau? I scanned for clarification in the form of small print, anything to shed some light on this twisted but completely welcome humour. Nothing.
At this point, allow me to assure you that I positively have no interest in prostitution whatsoever, and had no intention to hire an escort. But damn, did that ad stick in my mind. Eventually I went home and Googled it, found out that it’s a movie called The Virginity Hit – but that’s not the point. The point is, this overly simple text poster was able to not only harness my attention, but pique my interest in something in which I had no interest. Sounds paradoxical, sure, but that’s basically what they did. Hell, I might even go watch it now that I’ve seen the trailers for it.
Now that’s advertising.