Ads that really, really work
John Fanning on the latest tome documenting Britain’s most proven advertising campaigns

The IPA’s Effectiveness Awards are now over a quarter of a century old and have become a major asset of the marketing communication business in the UK. There have been many changes since the launch of the awards in 1980 not the least of which is the discrete dropping of the term ‘advertising’ from the title to reflect the media-neutral, integrated times we now live in.

MODEL RETAILER: The original supermodel Twiggy was hired by Marks & Spencer to front its TV, print and outdoor campaign. M&S had up to then resisted media campaigns, but through the use of effective advertising was able to highlight the group’s root and branch investment, from product ranges to retail design to customer service. The IPA Effectiveness Awards are open to agencies worldwide.

We are all ‘inclusive’ now; or words to that effect. Of the 22 winners included here only eight come from the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) category which was once the mainstay of the business, most of the papers make manful efforts to prove their media neutral credentials and quite a few use some internet-based initiative as part of their strategy.

In spite of all this newoof* at the heart of most of the award winners is a good old-fashioned dirty great big advertising idea which originated in some good, old-fashioned, dirty great big traditional advertising agency.

The top winner was the ‘Your M&S’ campaign for Marks & Spencer by RKCR/Y&R, which has been credited with turning round the fortunes of a great British institution under severe threat in 2004, when declining sales and negative press coverage resulted in a hostile takeover bid.

The M&S campaign received lavish praise from cynical hacks to hard-boiled investment analysts, not to mention the public, who made over 18 million extra customer visits and prompted a virtual doubling of the share price.

Among the other winners to catch the eye were campaigns for VW Golf and Felix. The Felix campaign by DDB, launched by Nestle Purina in 1989, was based on the insight that cat owners were more interested in their pets as mischievous demanding personalities than the cat food ingredients.

From around a five per cent market share when the campaign began Felix’s brand share rose to over 25 per cent and was challenging the brand leader by 1999. Masterfoods then made a product improvement to Whiskas which lifted share, Felix ‘wobbled’, transferred funds into short-term promotions and lost share, before reverting to the original theme campaign and promptly regained market share and is now once again challenging Whiskas.

The VW campaign, again by DDB, has been running for over 30 years based on the theme of ‘reliability’ resulting in many classic TV commercials, often mirroring social changes in Britain but always rooted in the same proposition. The latest campaign is a prime example of an integrated approach, including a sophisticated direct mail brochure, a Golf icons film season following the careers of film stars for 30 years and an online GTI configurator, allowing people to play with the design of their potential car prior to purchase.

Two other campaigns worth crediting were for teacher recruitment and Unilever’s Romanian detergent called Dero. Training & Development Agency for Schools had the task of persuading graduates to become teachers against a background of less respect for the profession and comparatively low pay.

Dero’s ‘99 Stains’ campaign by BBH has particular relevance to our own market because it involved tapping into ‘dormant local equity’ at a time when the prevailing view was that multinational brands were superior.

An interesting innovation in this year’s book is a series of essays commenting on aspects of the awards and the future of the marketing communications business. Two of the essays are best practice guides and should be carefully examined by anyone thinking of entering such a competition.

The other three will also repay careful study and space prevents me commenting on them in any detail but two points deserve a mention. The first has been there since the start but has been studiously avoided; the contribution of the product or service itself to campaign success.

Too often awards are given to new or improved products or services where it is all too obvious that the ‘new’ or ‘improved’ element was going to increase sales regardless of the quality of the communications. Now that that little cat is out of the bag it will be interesting to see how it develops.

The second issue is more complicated but involves the current issue de jour; is integrated communications merely ‘an optimised approach to message distribution’ or must it take into account the increasing ability of consumers to exert control over communications channels and therefore the need for closer co-operation with them in the co-creation of content?

It would probably be churlish to point out that there is nothing really all that new here; so I will desist.

*Newoof: Defined as a tendency to excessive and unnecessary use of new terminology for the advancement of the writer/speaker rather than any coherent addition to an argument/strategy. Rhymes with ‘Yoof’, aptly enough.

John Fanning is executive chairman of McConnells Advertising