Question

As you've read or learned through other marketing classes, there are different methods used in advertising to drive awareness or influence behavior - humor, fear, sex, community, nostalgia, and creating an emotional connection.  There are several companies that do it very well, but also some that do a really bad job.  

For example, when Dos Equis came up with the idea for the most interesting man alive, they almost passed on the chosen actor to go with somebody younger. But how could the most interesting man alive have done all of these interesting things if he was so young? The campaign was a huge success using humor to build awareness around a brand that wasn't well known, and has brought it into the realm of competing with Corona which was one of the only mainstream Mexican beers in the market.   

Another great example is American Express creating Small Business Saturday. This campaign helps boost the communities people live in by driving sales at small businesses after Black Friday. While it is primarily still promoted through AmEx, they've expanded it with celebrity endorsements like Lin Manuel Miranda in an attempt to create a new unofficial 'holiday'.

There are also several bad ad campaigns. McDonald's once ran a campaign that would show one of their products with the tagline 'I'd hit it.' Either they didn't fully research their use of slang terms, or thought they could change it to a play on words. But the campaign was not well received, and while it probably didn't stop people from eating at McDonald's, it did give them some negative press.

For this discussion, think about an ad campaign that you think is done really well whether it was inspiring or funny and complete the items below:  

Q1. Post the ad picture

Q2. Why the company used it

Q3. What the meaning was or what it was promoting

Q4. Why you think it's a good representation of the brand or successfully heightened awareness or influenced behavior.

Q5. Do the same thing above for a campaign that was bad and explain what was wrong with it and what impact, if any, it had on the company. Both parts of this assignment must be completed to receive full credit.

You can choose campaigns from your own experience or if you're unfamiliar with campaigns, AdAge and other sites online have compilations for you to choose from.

Answer 1

1. Advertisement Picture:

2. Reason for using it:

Nike's line was tailored for marathon runners almost exclusively? Then a fitness craze arrived— and people in the marketing department of Nike knew they needed to use it to outperform their principal rival, Reebok. (Reebok sold more shoes than Nike at the time). And so Nike produced the "Just Do It" campaign in the late 1980s.

3. Meaning of the promotion:

"Just do it." was short and simple, yet it encapsulated everything that people felt when exercising–and today people still feel this feeling. Wouldn't you like to sprint five miles? Just do it. Just do it. Don't you want to walk up four stair flights? Just do it. Just do it. This is a motto that everyone can relate to: the desire to get beyond our limits.

4. Why was it a good representation of the brand?

In 1988, the revenues of Nike were 800 million dollars; by 1998 the sales of Nike were more than 9.2 billion dollars. The Nike "Just Do It" campaign started in 1988, featuring pro and amateur athletes speaking about their successes and the feelings they felt when exercising. A clip of 80-year-old Marathon Walt Stack, which showed how he is going about 17 miles a morning, was among the first television commercials in the campaign. Stories like Walt's elicit the viewers ' immediate emotional reaction and lead them to wonder, "If these athletes can, why can't they?”

The slogan "Just Do It" was so successful that people started messaging Nike with personal stories of "just doing" whether they avoided an impasse or took a healthy style of living.