Innovative Campaigns

Monday Lecture - Innovative Campaigns

The Past

• All-American, wholesome advertising
• Classic, Traditional
• Set up of generic visual codes

INNOVATION

Began in 1959 with the VW Beetle 'Think Small' campaign, which followed in the early '60's with their 'Lemon' campaign.

• The 'Think Small' campaign series was revolutionary within advertising and was voted the No. 1 advertisement of all time. 
• The follow-up 'Lemon' campaign was equally innovative and used irony in a new way within advertising; resulting in the phrase 'Lemon' still frequently being used today.
• These advertisements marked the beginning of postmodernist advertising. 

Following in VW's footsteps, Levi's released their equally postmodern 'Launderette' advertisement in 1985. This advertisement became hugely famous and influential, as has been used for copy-cat trailers many times. The original advert below feature Nick Kamen, a model, musician and songwriter; this marked the start of a trend within Levi advertisements of including attractive and famous men, most commonly models.

The Guiness Surfer advert from 1998 is another example of really creative and innovative advertising, and has also been recently named No. 1 advert of all time. It features their famous tag line 'good things come to those who wait' which has planted the fact that you have to wait 1 minute and 28 seconds for a Guiness to be poured firmly into our minds.

The Honda Cog (2003) advert is, again, a great example; following their tag line 'The Power of Dreams', the Honda team created an incredible piece of commercial film which took a staggering 6 months to film and, when it was finally completed, was filmed live in just 2 takes. The advert uses real car parts and no CGI. 

Sony Bravia advertising is another great example, this advert in particular (which is named 'bouncy balls' and was released in 2005) challenges original marketing methods, making it incredibly postmodern, due to the fact that the advert in fact includes no product placement or reference throughout. Instead, this advert simply sells an idea, a statement, that displays 'colour' in a new way to the audience. This, in turn, represents the brands position at the time at the forefront of new television technology, especially regarding colour, clarity and the HD revolution. The entire idea is summarised in the tag line 'colour like no other'.

Not only did this become a world famous advertisement, the music (Heartbeat - Jose Gonzalez) also became the most downloaded and listened too commercial track of all time. 
This simple, straight forward idea creates an evoking and emotional connection.

Sony's most recent advert is equally innovative and unique, showing their passion for this style of advertising (4K Detail - 2013)

The Present

Digital advertising allows for new, even more innovative ways to advertise and connect with consumers. An example of this could be the Skittles 'touch the rainbow, taste the rainbow' campaign. This advertising campaign created a whole new way to interact with the audience using pre-existing technologies, making it innovative, yet very inexpensive. This method gained Skittles a 78% increase in sales.