Episode VI, Return of the Intern
Posted by Dustin Britt on July 7, 2010
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When I started this internship at the beginning of the month, I was given some assigned reading. The first book on the list was Zag by Marty Neumeier. If I had to narrow this book down to one line, it would be, "When everyone else zigs, zag." Neumeier does a great job at explaining how companies too often align themselves with other companies, which will lead consumers to think of these other brands rather than their own.
Being an Advertising major, I'm applying this concept to a recent advertising campaign for motor oil that grabbed my attention. Motor oil giant Quaker State launched a new ad campaign featuring a short, simple tagline: "Real. Durable. Oil." Initially, when I sat down to write this post, I could not for the life of me remember what motor oil company this ad campaign was for, or even the second and third words in the slogan! So how in the world did I forget that easy phrase and the motor oil brand that it represented? Three words: "Real. Comfortable. Jeans." The Quaker State ad did nothing for me except reinforce the old Wrangler Jeans ads featuring Brett Favre playing pickup football. I couldn't find the Quaker State commercial, but I did find the tagline in an online ad.
Am I the only one who reads the Quaker State tagline and thinks Wranglers?
So it's obvious that a motor oil brand needs to differentiate themselves from their direct competitors in the car maintenance industry. To me, though, it doesn't end there. I believe that if you proclaim your brand's message through advertising, you can't allow people like myself to think of ANY other brand except yours, whether it's a competitor or not. You don't want your motor oil ad dollars going toward me having denim on my mind. Instead, you have to do what Neumeier says: "Be different. No, REALLY DIFFERENT."
Alana Dy
Alvin Diec
Becky O'Mara
Blake Howard
Craig Johnson
Jason Orme
John Bowles
Staci Janik
2 Comments
"A friend of mine was a music theory major and the study of chord progression practically robbed him of his ability to simply appreciate music. Instead of enjoying it, he constantly found himself disassembling it in his mind.
In studying the advertising industry do you find that you're developing an "immunity" to the social and emotional manipulations that advertising tries to achieve?"
- John
"Good post. I've always wondered about those two ads' similarity. My assumption has always been that two different ad agencies stumbled upon the idea nearly simultaneously, and neither wanted to abandon it. Whatever the case, your musings on the subject got me thinking: Is it possible that Quaker State deliberately created a tagline so similar to Wrangler's for the purpose of hoping to cash in on whatever folksy, down-home feeling that Wrangler had already created? In other words, Quaker State's ad requires the viewers/readers to think and absorb and react with less effort because their mind has already done so in response to Wrangler's? In that way, they're riding the coattails, so to speak, because Wrangler has already paved the mental highway for them. This is completely contrary, of course, to the "be different" mantra. But I wonder if there's any legitimacy to it. Your thoughts?"
- Mike