Overcoming Advertising Depression
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During economic downturns, history has proved again and again that while most companies cut back, it is the smart ones that advertise. More sales have been rung up by companies that out-advertised their competitors. Consumers don’t go away during tough times, they merely become more selective in their choices. If the advertising presence for a company that consumers have come to rely on has simply vanished, what message are they sending their customers? While your competitors are reducing their advertising budget, augmenting yours will increase your reach over your customers and theirs.
Here are a few examples of how increased advertising budgets during the Great Depression helped companies weather stormy times:
In the late 1920s there were two dominant players in the packaged cereal market – Kellogg and Post. While Post cut its advertising expenditure, Kellogg doubled theirs, aggressively going after the radio market to advertise its new product, Rice Krispies. The end result: Kellogg’s sales rose more than 30% over the next few years, allowing it to dominate the market until this day.
Aggressive advertising turned the tide for Camel cigarettes whose top position began to slip in the 1930s in favor of Lucky Strike and Chesterfield. Aggressive advertising made the difference for Camel when they smoked the competition and regained the top spot in 1935.
Proctor and Gamble is a great example of how innovation and increased expenditure not only helped the company sail their way through the Great Depression, but changed the entire medium as well. Using radio, P&G’s president, Richard Deupree, (who believed people continued to purchase household products such as soap), decided to create serial programming that did not focus on products, but were clearly sponsored by them. This was the start of daytime Soap Operas.
During the 1930s, Chrysler zoomed past Ford as the country’s number two automaker with the introduction- and heavy advertising- of its new value brand, Plymouth. This new introduction was one of the only successful car brands during the Great Depression.
- Published in Advertising, Strategic Marketing, West Palm Beach Advertising Agencies
From America With Love
Globalization pushes American brands into virtually every corner of the globe – McDonalds, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Nike, Starbucks, Disney, and Ford to name a few. Here at home, all of us can identify with these brands and as they are part of our culture. Advertising slogans and jingles used to promote these brands inevitably become ingrained inside of our heads and as much a part of our culture as the brands themselves. We all know the exact connotations of Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, I Wish I Were an Oscar Meyer Weiner, and the Energizer Bunny. But what happens when a brand is shipped across the seas to a foreign land and the advertising message gets lost in the translation? The following is a very funny list of blunders whose messages literally didn’t make it to their intended markets. Read on and enjoy:
1. Pepsi’s slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi generation” translated in Taiwan to “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.”
2. The Coca Cola company used Chinese characters to spell out the sounds Co Ca Co La. The characters in Chinese translated to “Bite the wax tadpole.”
3. Perdue’s chicken slogan, “it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” appeared on billboards across Mexico in Spanish as “it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.”
4. Parker Pen’s slogan “it won’t stain your pocket and embarrass you” came out as “it won’t stain your pocket and get you pregnant” in Spanish.
5. Chevrolet launched its Nova brand in Latin America but sadly the name in Spanish translates to “it won’t go.”
6. Clairol introduced a curling iron into Germany they named “Mist Stick,” to find that “mist” is slang for manure.
7. Coors used its slogan, “Turn it loose” in Spain, where it translated into “Suffer from diarrhea.”
- Published in Funny Advertisements, Strategic Marketing
