Seven of these episodes occurred in Other People's offices: Young & Rubicam, NY; DDB/Needham, Washington, DC;
McDonald & Little, Atlanta; LGFE, Boca Raton...
Army National Guard.
For years the Guard's Marketing Strategy was to pitch college
tuition benefits to soon-to-be high school graduates. But many of
them turned
up their noses at the Guard, which they considered to be a "bunch of
pencil-necked geeks."
Repositioning required a rather brutal
reconstruction of the brand image: Swamps, Apache Helicopters, War Games.
DDB/Needham's "Irresistible Force" campaign set all-time response and
recruitment records - the "Kiss Your Momma Goodbye" spread became
poster art and drew 75,000 replies in one
summer. Click here for the rest of the ad, and the
surprising upshot of our repositioning strategy.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
Time Warner Cable's Orlando
operation, CableVision of Central Florida, had a reputation for indifferent
service, spotty transmission, and incomprehensible rate promotions. Customer churn
was horrendous. As Creative Director of
Gouchenour & Associates, I pitched and won the account with "See it on CV." The idea was to
separate the programming from
the company brand. Promote the movies, sports, news and
pay-per-views. Give CableVision of Central Florida time to fix their operations.
In its first year, "See
it on CV" - in image TV, radio, newspaper, outdoor, DM, and
cross-channel promotion - reduced churn to a minimum, nearly doubled the
subscriber base, and gave customers a steady barrage of new and different
reasons to tune in tonight.
Click here for Intro Radio, and Intro TV.
Today Time Warner Cable is Bright House. People, however, still hum
my jingle.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
Carnival Cruise Lines had already written off the $40 million
Crystal Palace in the Bahamas. Carnival's
budget-conscious cruise customers simply could not afford the $340/night rack rates. The resort itself was
a gargantuan polychromatic oddity, but did offer a full array of
activities, sports, shops, restaurants, and meeting facilities.
When YPB, Orlando, was asked
to pitch the account, I visited the hotel and quickly realized that the
only people on earth who would enjoy a stay there would be type A+
personality workaholics who simply didn't have time to take a normal vacation anywhere.
My "Work Work Play Play"
positioned the Palace as the best place to jam two weeks of fun in the
sun into four days, or to run a four-day Business Meeting!
You might enjoy the radio.
We increased occupancy from 59% to 85% in three months,
sufficient to enable Carnival to unload the white elephant to a consortium
of Type A+ German investors - at a modest profit.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
Dice.com, the leading IT job board,
ran ads in technical magazines such as Dr. Dobbs to drive programmers and code-techies to the site. In July 1998, Jeff Dickey-Chasins,
the Marketing Director in Des Moines, called to ask what tech-mags I'd recommend in Florida.
I proposed that we use radio to reach IT pros on their way to and from work -
tempt them with the juicier jobs available locally or elsewhere.
After a brief test, we rolled out "Click the Dice" in
spot and network radio, followed by cable TV and some print.
In 18 months site traffic rose from 125M HPH a week to 1.5MM. Dice's Sales Department
in Des Moines banked the media dollars before the spots ran by pre-selling recruiter subscriptions.
Revenues rose from $14 to $40 million. In the IT category,
Dice was second only to Monster, which outspent us 20:1.
Details.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
Eastern Airlines was, perhaps, the
most disliked major airline in America. Service was surly. Flights were
usually late. Baggage often disappeared. The friction between
Stamford, CT management, Miami operations, and the unions was
palpable.
Astronaut Frank Borman was
brought on to solve the problem. He asked Young &
Rubicam, NY, creators of "The Wings of Man" campaign, what to
do. Eastern's billings (about $35MM) paid a lot of salaries. The
entire Creative Department was mobilized. I was a copy cub in a
small office at 285 Madison Avenue.
I sent in a memo.
What if the advertising could persuade
all of Eastern's employees - from baggage handlers, to flight attendants to ticket
agents - to behave as professionally as the pilots? Pilots earn their
wings. We are "The Wings of Man." Logically: "We Have to Earn Our Wings Every Day."
That became Eastern's new
themeline. I wrote six Frank Borman TV spots and a dozen or so ads.
For the next three years, the 40,000 employees in 104 markets actually responded to the invertising
marketing strategy.
Eastern won back a lot of disgruntled customers. My line
was Y&R's highest recalled theme of the entire decade.
But eventually the old Management
v. Union battles were rejoined. EAL's cost per passenger mile rose to the highest in the airline industry.
Price wars eventually finished off the company. Eastern died in 1982. I
suppose I wrote the
epitaph.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
Coca Cola was concerned with the
rapid growth of PepsiCo's Mountain Dew and sought to cover the brand with a similar
citrus-flavored soda. Conventional wisdom dictated a
similar "Yahoo/Country/Hillbilly" image.
I had moved from Y&RNY to McDonald &
Little, Atlanta, which had been invited to pitch the new account. I did something
writers don't do. I read Mountain Dew's Nielsen's and SAMI reports.
I noticed that Mountain Dew got 10% of its
sales from gas station vending machines - 10 times the industry average.
Why?
Three focus groups revealed that
kids loved the low carbonation and high sugar & caffeine content. They
could guzzle a bottle in one gulp. Image meant nothing.
After 700
names & 65 campaigns McDonald & Little won the account with my strategy;
someone at Coke came up with the name Mello Yello; it debuted as "The
World's Fastest Soft Drink," and quickly gained a 5% share of
market. Mello Yello was Coca Cola's most successful new brand since Tab.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
National Dynamics Speed Tapes had run
the same :30 on network radio for nine years. "You can learn Spanish, French, German, Italian or
Japanese in only 20 Minutes a Day." The spot pulled 2,000 calls a week
and converted 22%.
Direct Response Radio guru
Jim McAlister asked me to try to beat that control copy. After several fruitless
attempts, I ran a Brand Resistance Survey among a dozen telemarketers.
What do people say when they first learn the price? The
most common excuse for not buying was "I had a hard time in high
school Spanish memorizing all those rules. I guess this wouldn't work
for me."
To take the "I can't
memorize" objection off the table I
created a campaign of :30 Spanish Lessons. Each spot demonstrated how
easy it is to learn a useful phrase, such as S-O-C-K-S.
The first week,
calls increased to 5,000 and conversion jumped up to 28%. In the next
three years McAlister sold $35 million worth of Speed Tapes. I
talked to him quite often, but I never met him face-to-face.
Come to think of it, I've never met you, either.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
Aetna, the 500 Voluntary Hospitals
of America, and 40,000 affiliated doctors proposed a joint venture PPO in the mid-1980s.
PPOs were relatively new at the time. The idea was to offer corporate benefits administrators a better deal than
Blue Cross.
Unfortunately, insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors are natural
enemies. The three players couldn't agree on anything and were about to
pull the plug on the $1.5MM introductory ad campaign.
The Boca Raton office of Lord, Geller, Federico, Einstein (then the agency of record for IBM) was,
nevertheless, asked to pitch
the account. LGFE called me. I suggested that the advertising had to persuade the partners to bury their
hatchets and work together.
"Choose Your Partners Well" featured famous examples of cooperation, like the Wright Brothers and the
1980 US Olympic Hockey Team. The customer became, of course, the fourth
"partner." Click the pic for the Intro :30 TV.
Partner's National Health Plans debuted
at a $15MM level (someone had misplaced a decimal point!) and the
account moved to LGFE/NY. Aetna divested its share in the late 1990's
to gain government approval for another HMO venture. I understand the
brand collects about $2.5BB in annual premiums these days. I doubt anyone at the
company realizes how close they came to an early termination.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
Pulte's Woodstone Condominiums in Alexandria, VA had languished
for months in the Sunday Real Estate Section of the Washington Post.
The corporate ads showed floor plans and prices - right next to competitive ads for bigger units at the same price,
or similar units at lower prices.
Ace Art Director John Wine and I suggested that we should get out of the Real Estate section and run against Next Week's Shoppers
in the Entertainment, Sports, even Automotive sections. Add those extra 100 emotional calories this week - before they checked
out the competition. The ad above, and two others, sold out
the remaining 90 units at Woodstone in about six weeks. Pulte's Senior VP Marketing was not impressed.
"These are not real estate ads. They cannot work." I don't know if he gave those 90 customers their money back.
Back to Ten Case Histories.
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