In the beginning of March, I attended the lecture Nancy Hill gave on advertising.
She opened her presentation by addressing the 4 key pillars of the organization. These pillars include leadership, community, advocacy, and guidance. I found this foundation for American Advertising agencies intriguing. I always thought advertising’s soul purpose was to sell/promote a product or idea. I never considered advertising as being deeper than that.
Beginning with the 1984 Macintosh computer ad, which changed the face of advertising, Ms. Hill showed brilliant advertising campaigns that exemplified at least one of the four pillars. One of her examples was the most recent Old Spice campaign.
I personally love the hilarious commercials starring the Old Spice man. With tag lines such as “the man your man could smell like,” the ads provide the same ridiculous antics found in films such as “Anchorman” which many young adults such as myself enjoy. Ms. Hill allowed me to see that Old Spice is not necessarily targeting men, but their girlfriends or wives as well.
Old Spice took this campaign to another level by hosting live question and answer sessions between the Old Spice man and his fans and utilizing all forms of social media. This campaign, on top of recapturing a large market share for the company, certainly demonstrated the “community” aspect of advertising.
By setting up an online environment where individuals can discuss a common interest and be engaged by such an interest, a community is established. I never imagined that such silly advertisements could do more than just manipulate the target market to purchase the product.
A better example would be the HBO campaign that consisted of cubes centrally located in designated cities. Such cubes depicted different aspects of a story. Depending on how one walked around the cube, different aspects of the story were revealed. Viewers were encouraged to go to the cube’s website and continue rearranging the story.
I thought this campaign was brilliant and fun! It engaged viewers in an intriguing manner and didn’t outright proclaim “watch HBO.”
Ms. Hill’s presentation opened my eyes to the positive, community building nature of advertising. I initially ruled out advertising as a possible major but am not so certain if I should anymore.
Here is one of my favorite commercials:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE[/youtube]
