John Fanning gives his verdict on the IPA’s 22nd edition of Advertising Works
Having reviewed the IPA’s Advertising Works series for the last God knows how long, apologies for being a little late with the 22nd series which was published a few months ago. Now that our own Adfx awards are providing a similar service for Irish advertisers – with a base of over 130 case histories to date – we have more relevant local material but there is still much to gain from the British experience.
The most recent crop of case studies does not disappoint. There are some real gems here which will repay careful study. For me, the outstanding essay is for Specsavers and if ever I had to choose one case study to demonstrate the power of investing in advertising to grow, develop and sustain a highly successful business this is it.
From a standing start 30 years ago Specsavers is now a £1.8 billion company largely driven by advertising. The owners have invested £500 million in media since 1984 and – to coin a phrase – it has paid off spectacularly. Specsavers was started by a husband and wife pair of opticians who began by investing in a press campaign.
The ads explained the new concept of a retail chain of opticians under a unified brand name offering high street showrooms and clearly narked prices. Initially, advertising was mainly driven by new store openings. By 1994, Specsavers had mushroomed to 200 stores and embarked on a £4m – mainly comprising TV – ad campaign.
Customer friendly: It was 10 years after Specsavers was launched that the iconic ‘Should’ve Gone to Specsavers’ slogan emerged. The pitch began as a straight exhortation to visit the retailer but developed into a joke about poor eyesight and in the process broke the last taboo in optical advertising, like the short-sighted John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, pictured.
Ten years later they introduced the iconic ‘Should’ve Gone to Specsavers’ slogan which began as a straight exhortation to visit the retailer but developed into a joke about poor eyesight and in the process broke the last taboo in optical advertising.
What makes the case study interesting is not only the fact that investment in advertising was at the heart of overall business strategy but because management continued to push the category boundaries developing more and more creative ads.
Another interesting gold medal award was the entry for Foster’s Lager due to its insight development. Faced with the perennial problem of trying to understand what, apart from the obvious, preoccupies the minds of young male lager drinkers the famous Australian brand recruited barmen to eavesdrop on their conversations.
It resulted in the insight that beneath the swagger and banter they were often uncertain and anxious about more serious issues like careers, health and relationships; “laden with angst that they kept hidden from the world their superficially larky get-togethers were actually a coping mechanism”. I found this all too plausible but I felt that the resulting creative work fell into the all too common trap of wearing the brief too obviously on the sleeve. But like all the book’s case studies the authors conclusively prove a handsome payback: every £1 spent on ads generated £32 in sales revenue.
The case studies are grouped into eight themed sections with introductory overview essays which are well worth reading. The content section essay was particularly interesting with its provocative title: ‘Advertising ideas versus ideas worth advertising: is content the new weapon of choice?’ followed by a provocative quote.
It read: “Social media, the thing that killed everything, is now itself officially dead. It is survived by its twin brother, content.” The ‘content’ issue is nothing new, the Michelin Guide was developed as a promotion by the tyre company to encourage people to drive to out-of-the-way restaurants and wear down their tyre threads.
But content is firmly back on the agenda for reasons we are all familiar with; the need to provide more compelling brand messages and to break through the increasing clutter of the digital age. There are some good case studies under this heading. One relates to Mattessons Fridge Raiders, a food snack owned by Kerry Group.
It is one of the few FMCG brands featured and there are more health campaigns, from pancreatic cancer to depression to heart attacks than traditional grocery brand campaigns. Finally there’s a stirring few lines in Lorna Hawtin’s introduction about the importance of everyone sharing our case studies with marketers.
It reads: “These papers are stories – without stories it would be impossible to help young people to engage in the information that will be vital for their success – stories are a culture’s means of passing on the most valuable lessons and values from one generation to the next. The challenge therefore becomes to fill one’s head with as many of these brand archetypes and stories as possible giving yourself the richest palette from which to paint your own plot lines.” Nice one, Lorna.
John Fanning lectures on branding and marketing communications at the UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business. He chairs Bord Bia’s Brand Forum.
