Marketing & Advertising
I watched “Sunday Morning” on CBS yesterday and was intrigued by two of the segments that were front and center pieces on marketing and advertisement.
The first piece highlighted Geico’s brilliant (certainly in hindsight) retention of the Martin agency to create three separate, segmented advertising campaigns for them. The Gecko, originally was invented as a comical way to get people to make sense out of an abstract acronym named company – GEICO. Through subsequent installments, the iconic lizard has come to embody the personality of the company, and promote the idea of personal touch and customer focus. A second campaign aimed at younger audience members, features refined cavemen who are appear affronted by the company. A third campaign, aimed at more senior audience members features celebrities such as Little Richard, who comically “translate” customer testimonials. The story went on to do a sidebar commentary on the Martin Agency, in Richmond, VA as the firm behind these three campaigns.
The Second story focused on the Seattle coffee market, as a leader in the growing national coffee house chain movement. In this story, a very tried and true product promotion was used. The blatant use of sex appeal to promote purchase of the product. This is really just the application of a tactic proven by a famous hot chicken wing franchise. It’s not new, but it still works – for at least some of the population, and for some types of business. I wonder if this works well really only in the food and beverage market? On some level, a desire is created – a sexual urge, but then there is a transference to another center of the brain as the customer tries to satisfy the craving by eating or drinking.
February 20, 2007 at 1:13 am
Its simple – sex is a drug.
There was an experiment conducted a while back, with young heterosexual men, where they would watch still images on a computer screen. The images consisted of various women, some more attractive than others. If they viewer wanted to delay a particular photograph from changing in the slide show he could rapidly press the space bar. Guess which photos got the most space bar presses? Right, the hotties.
But the interesting part of the experiment is that the scientists were monitoring brain activity while testing the subjects. What they discovered was that the brain activity was identical to young men using cocaine.
Try to explain that to your wife or significant other when you’re caught head swiveling. “But honey, I’m a drug addict.”