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From Insights to Big Ideas and Taglines.

An insight is fresh thinking about the audience, product, service, or in our case, a series of events or a festival. Insights guide the concept and unify the work and communication. 

CASE STUDIES

Agency: OMFGco

Product: NBC Universal's G4 network

Problem: Since its inception, NBC Universal's G4 network struggled to grow interest from advertisers, and their fan base was inconsistent at best. Their solution: transform their flailing network originally created for geeks and gamers into a channel for “The Modern Man.”

OMFGco's strategy and design work for Canvas Lands End

 

 

Product: Milk

Problem: The California Milk Processor Board needed to reverse plunging industry sales fast, or its members could literally have lost the farm. 

Analysis: 

“It is perhaps the most boring product imaginable. We have all tried it. Most of us already own some.  There is very little to say about it. Milk is not new. It is not improved. It is white. And so it was that  when the California Milk Processor Board first asked us to pitch their business in 1993, we were  shockingly ambivalent. A number of us simply thought the product was inherently too boring.”
 —Jeff Goodby of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Insight: “The only time I even think about milk is when I run out of it.”

The story behind the big idea:

Jon Steel and Carole Rankin were at a focus group when the clouds parted and a woman said, “The only time I even think about milk is when I run out of it.” Goodby scrawled “got milk?” on a poster board for a meeting and decided it might be a tagline. And Silverstein set it in that typeface that has by now been appropriated (“got ____?”) by lots of junk, donuts, wine and Jesus folks.”
—Jeff Goodby of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Result:  “Got Milk?” marketing campaign not only helped turn around milk sales but also changed the face of consumer marketing forever. — Jeff Manning 

 

Got Milk Ad

 

Product: Nike women’s running shoe

‘Insight’: women (always) think they are too busy, no time in their day, and therefore too busy to run / exercise.

‘Creative Concept / Theme’: Gone Running

Execution / media examples: Signs for your computer / door; videos; print advertising, etc.

Banner video ads. 

 

 

 

Problem / Creative Assignment: How can a shoe company stand for more than shoes? 

Insight: Nike makes shoes for athletes created by fellow athletes… not just for looks but performance.

The “Big Idea” is to talk to consumers athlete to athlete. (Big ideas are embodied or expressed by the tagline, for instance Nike’s “Just Do It”.)

Tagline: Just Do It. 

Client: Girl Effect, Nike Foundation — writer Jess Vacek

Media: video

Insight: People were no longer affected by images of starving children, they had seem too many images portraying children in crisis and needed a new way to both effect change and to reach the people who can help.

 

 

Product: A fancy Chrysler minivan

Audience: Moms; Writer: Ginger Robinson, Designer: Brad Simon

Insight: Why shouldn’t a minivan be the fanciest car on the road? Why can’t a minivan be a a luxury car? Why give up luxury just because you are now a mom (or dad)?

 

 

Client: Dodge Ram

Big Idea / Tagline: “So God Made a Farmer”

Media: Superbowl spot, 2013

Benefit? Ad raised $100,000 for Future Farmers of America.

Background: “So God Made a Farmer” was the name given to a speech given by the radio broadcaster Paul Harvey at a 1978 Future Farmers of America (FFA) convention. The speech was a derivative of a 1975 article written by Harvey in the Gadsden Times, which was itself similar to a 1940 definition of a dirt farmer published in The Farmer-Stockman. The speech was given as an extension of the Genesis creation narrative referring to God's actions on the 8th day of creation. Harvey described the characteristics of a farmer in each phrase, ending them with the recurring “So God Made a Farmer”.

The speech was used in a commercial by Dodge Ram during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLVII. The ad featured photographs of rural America set to a narration of a portion of Harvey’s speech. In a collaboration with the FFA, Dodge agreed to donate $100,000 for every 1,000,000 views that the YouTube video of the ad received up to $1,000,000. This goal was reached in less than five days. — Wikipedia

 

Client: Target Baby

Big Idea / Concept / Tagline: People are excited about the first baby born on New Year’s Eve. Let’s celebrate them all… “Happy New Year, Baby” 

Execution / Media: Share “the big news” via Facebook. Target advertising used social media. Take the info from social media and use giant refrigeration magnetic type… on a very large analog board. Out of home videos on billboards in Times Square.

Art Director: Max Erdenberger, Photographer: Katherine Ledner, Director(s): Everynone. 

 

Giant Babies in Times Square:

 

 

Insights, Big Ideas AND typography’s role in advertising and branding

This post explores the role typography plays in persuasive communication. So far we have focused on experimental typography and personal messages. How does the work in this post connect to personal typographic experiments? How is typography emploued in the advertising and branding messages and storytelling below? Take some time to evaluate these branding and campaign ideas? Are there connections that might be helpful to you and your project?

This post looks at campaigns by Apple, Go Forth | Levis,  Nike, Starbucks, and PICA: TBA as reference for our integrated campaign project… What do you think about them? What type of response to these ads hope to ellicit? Do you find them successful? 

Consider the ads’ messages and storytelling, the writing, the verbal and visual voice, the target audience, the varied or similar approaches and strategies employed by the writer and art director teams.

Levi’s Go Forth campaign by w+k.

Problem: Levi’s lost there way, they were creating ads with little story telling, creating somewhat random ads of kids dancing to pop songs and doing Jackass stunts.

Insight: Levi’s is a heritage brand — it was founded in 1853. Contrary to an advertising campaign suggesting that Levi Strauss sold his first jeans to gold miners during the California Gold Rush (which peaked in 1849), the manufacturing of denim overalls only began in the 1870s. The company then created their first pair of Levis 501 Jeans in the 1890s, a style that went on to become the world's best selling item of clothing. Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s, but sales were largely confined to the working people of the western United States, such as cowboys, lumberjacks, and railroad workers.

Big Idea: Empower young people (young people had just helped elect President Obama) — cast them as pioneers who have ideas and can lead the country. The creative idea borrows a recording attributed to the American poet Walt Whitman’s (1819–1892) reading Leaves of Grass (recorded 1890). Tagline: Go Forth

 

CASE STUDY

Client: Nike Women
Strategy / Tagline: Women athletes speaking to women athletes. Just Do It. 
Concept: “Training is the opposite of hoping.”
Execution: Experimental type using sports tape to create and present the copy.

Nike. Writer Jess Vacek

Nike. Writer Jess Vacek

 

CASE STUDY
Client: Starbucks
Brief / Strategy: Reminds people that Starbucks’ original expertise is in coffee.

Writer Jess Vacek. Art Director Brad Trost.

 

CASE STUDY
Client: NIKEiD. Customize shoes and accessories for YOUR team at nike.com. Design your own shoes and accessories, including bags and backpacks, on NIKEiD. Browse by sport, style or color. Products are ready in 4 weeks and ordered online. 

Brief / Strategy: Remind high school students they can use ID to create products / apparrel with their school colors.

Writer: Jess Vacek. Art Director: Brad Trost

CASE STUDY
Client: Apple
Problem: At this time people did not take Apple Macs seriously.
Strategy: Apple wanted to be seen as viable competition with Microsoft
Visual Execution / Typography: This simple clean, idea driven advertising, excellent examples of the big idea, “NY school of advertising.”

 

 

Writer Jess Vacek

Insights. Big Ideas.

Design, marketing, and advertising is used to launch new brands, new companies, or organizations. Design, marketing, and advertising helps solve business “problems” including misconceptions about a particular brand or product. Design, marketing, and advertising is used to adjust audience perceptions and help shift the image of company or brand in the market place. Design, marketing, and advertising is also employed to help brands that are being being crowded out in a particular field, or help inform audiences learn about an improved product or service.

Process: identify a problem; develop a creative brief based on an insight; develop a creative big idea; develop a manifesto (and tagline as needed) that explains what the company or organization stands for; then, execute.

 

NIKE case study

Problem: How can a show company stand for something more than shoes?

Insight: Nike makes shoes for athletes created by fellow athletes, not just for looks, shoes that make you run faster… enhancing and supporting performance…

Big Idea: Talk to consumers athlete to athlete, inspire and encourage!

Nike tagline: “Just Do It”

Here are expressions / executions for this big idea:

 

 

OLD SPICE case study

Problem: Its your Dad’s (or Grandfather’s) deodorant. Axe was killling it, winning over young men. Old Spice has “old” in its name.

Insight: Old isn't always bad, old men can also mean experience.

Big Idea: Let’s position old spice as a wise older brother and beat Axe at its own game.

Tagline: Various. Not as important when you are making hilarious ads that area all about the product.

 

 

P&G Case Study

Problem: P&G products don't help athletes perform better. What is their role in sponsoring the Olympics?

Insight: Olympians don't care much about TP and Laundry Detergent, but their parents do.

Big Idea: Let’s not take credit for helping the Olympic Athletes get where they are. Let’s thank the moms who use our products for their role in raising an Olympic athlete.

Tagline: Proud Sponsor of Moms

Media: “My Mom Always Said” P&G Pinterest Board.