This is due in part to how heavily populated it is by creative people who need to pay their rent. But the nature of the work is inherently odd. Respected ad agencies are paid by individuals or companies to “talk them up,” as it were.
Remember back in middle school when you told Alex to tell Jessie how cool you were because you LIKED liked Jessie? Or maybe you pretended to be “going with” Alex to see if Jessie would suddenly find you interesting? It’s a lot like that, but more complicated.
Advertising Relies on a Deep Understanding of Psychology
And then using that psychology to generate interest. This has made for some pretty interesting stories.
Sunkist
Picture it. A smoggy morning in Minneapolis in 1902. A young man with a ripped t-shirt is downing some orange juice and getting ready to go pump iron at the gym.
Okay. So before you go racing down to the comments section to skewer us for inaccuracies of the anachronistic nature (and perhaps question your own psychological need to do so), the above paragraph was intentional.
You probably caught the obvious mistakes. But did you include orange juice as one of those? Because orange juice wasn’t really around in 1902. And certainly not in Minnesota. Of course, oranges had juice. And both California and Florida were producing them. But nobody had given much thought to extracting that juice.
By 1907, the production of oranges had increased beyond the demand for them. Most Americans didn’t know much about citrus fruits. So the California Fruit Growers Exchange (CFGE) hired the Lord & Thomas ad agency in 1907 to try to pump up demand for them.
The problem was, the CFGE consisted of about 2,000 independent farmers, each with their own brand of oranges. So how could they do this?
Enter Albert Lasker - a.k.a. the original Don Draper (though hopefully not so lascivious). Lasker was able to get the farmers to understand strength in numbers. He got them to unify all their brands under one brand. It would be the first perishable food product to be advertised. They named the brand Sunkist; a name that delivered strong on the warm fuzzies. Who wouldn't want something that was sun-kissed?
But he knew that wouldn’t be enough. Americans were just too unfamiliar with oranges. Sun-kissed or otherwise. So what could be done with the excess of oranges? Lasker realized that it took a lot of oranges to make a glass of juice. That was the key.
So the campaign set out to teach consumers how to squeeze juice from oranges by educating them on different kinds of juicers for that purpose. By creating this new use for oranges, the fruit’s consumption in the United States sky-rocketed from an average of half an orange to 2-3 oranges per day.
In essence, orange juice was created by advertising.
Formula E Racing
This ad is interesting for a couple of reasons.
First, it serves as both an ad for Formula E Racing, as well as a breed of public service announcement promoting electric cars to lessen the impact of climate change… specifically on cheetahs.
The ad shows a race between a cheetah and a Formula E car. But unlike the Michael Phelps race with a computer generated shark, this was actually a real race. It took place on
We’re not quite sure how they pulled it off, but they did. And no cheetah was hurt in the making of this ad. Here’s how it went down.
Both the Formula E race car and the cheetah can reach speeds of 62 miles/hour in 3 seconds. So at the beginning of the race, the cheetah takes the lead. Which is pretty impressive. But since the electric car has a top speed of 139mph compared to the cheetah’s maximum of 70mph, the race car eventually won.
Of course Formula E created this ad to promote its division of electric car racing. But the end game was to also bring attention to the effects of climate change and the danger it poses to the natural habitat of cheetahs and other wildlife. So there’s that.
Red Bull
Understanding of psychology has lead to some success stories in advertising. But, just as with the human brain, there have been misfires as well.
Take Red Bull, for instance. You’ve seen the commercials. Red Bull gives you wings. Catchy, even infectious, tagline. But hold up. If you look carefully, you’ll see that Red Bull actually gives you “Wiings.”
What are wiings? Simply put, they’re the result of Red Bull getting sued in 2014 for not only stating that their energy drink will give you actual wings, but they also claimed that the drink could improve your concentration and reaction speed. Neither of which it does.
So several consumers brought a case against the company, regretfully stating that they showed no signs of improved intellectual or physical abilities - the ability to fly notwithstanding.
The damage? Red Bull agreed to pay out a maximum of $13 million — including $10 to every US consumer who had purchased the drink since 2002. Nevertheless, they’re still going strong.
Perfect example of taking broken wiings and learning to fly again.
Toyota Altis
If you live in the United States, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of the Toyota Altis. (Our version is essentially the Corolla.) But if you were in Malaysia back in 2002, you might have noticed a dearth of the zippy little Toyota’s advertising. It vanished. That’s because Malaysian officials pulled the plug on any advertising featuring Brad Pitt.
Now, using attractive people in advertising is nothing new. It taps into that psychological desire to also be attractive. (And driving an Altis will make you look like Brad Pitt.)
But the Malaysian government found it an “insult to Asians” and was concerned about the effect Pitt’s good looks would have on the self-esteem of Malaysian men. "Why must we use their faces in our advertisements?” asked Zainuddin Maidin, the deputy information minister at the time. “Aren't our own people handsome enough?”
It was definitely an oversight. While the self-esteem of men in the United States is routinely assaulted by Brad Pitt’s good looks, they’re used to it. But Toyota should have considered using an Asian Brad Pitt instead.
Of course, the fact that Malaysia has some of the world's toughest censorship laws might have played into the decision. Television and film are strictly vetted by government officials. Kissing is often cut from films and TV programs. And forget about swearing. It’s viewed as a direct attack on Malaysian family values.
Imagine the reaction to an ad with Brad Pitt kissing a swearing woman who’s just stubbed her toe.
Advanced Medical Institute (AMI)
In its day, the AMI was no stranger to controversy. The Australian medical clinic thrived on it. Experienced ad people know that negative attention is rarely better than no attention. But for the AMI, negative attention was ALWAYS better.
AMI dealt primarily with men’s erectile issues. And their advertising was often the subject of complaint. Their billboards and bench advertisements were considered tasteless and offensive to many. But there was one particular erectile-dysfunction spot they created which garnered 220 complaints. And this is in a country that started as a penal (no pun intended) colony.
The commercial shows a wife using her husband's erection as a step stool to get something out of the cupboard. And yes, there were probably a great many people who found it amusing. (We reserve comment on our opinion.)
But it wasn’t just this commercial that created buzz around AMI. It was the way they used psychology in advertising as a dangerous weapon. They laid claims behind which there was no science. Furthermore, they engaged in unconscionable conduct and used unfair contract terms in treating men for sexual dysfunction. Clients were warned of the dangers of stroke, prostate cancer and “penis shrinkage” if they failed to have treatment.
When the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) got wind of this, a long-running court battle began. They stated, “It is immoral to seek to harness the fears and anxieties of men suffering from ED [erectile dysfunction] or PE [premature ejaculation] for the purpose of selling medical treatments.” They were right.
We won’t elaborate on the very drawn-out battle that ensued. Suffice it to say, AMI is no longer around. And now the ad sits happily on YouTube as one of the funniest advertisements ever.
All of which brings us back to our original point. Advertising is a weird industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment