Humble. That’s for the other guy.
Marketing communications is about making bold moves and persuasive creative that builds brand value. Marcom is about shining a bright light on the one reason why the product or service in question matters.
For years, the best brand communicators deftly approached the problem with wit and charm. The worst offenders, on the other hand, just stood there and pounded their chests.
What about now? How has COVID-19 altered the messaging coming from brands large and small?
Let’s take a look…
Nike Hits Play
Is the new Nike spot as good or better than before? Is it new, different, or more relevant?
I feel like I’ve seen it about a thousand times before, but I am not a fan of the company behind The Swoosh, although I have long been a fan of the brand’s advertising.
My word of caution here: an over-reliance on consistency can lead to boring.
Let’s remember another example to help illustrate this point. Absolut absolutely nailed it with their long-running bottle campaign. The vodka brand produced thousands of iterations of their one big idea. But the well ran dry, as wells sometimes do.
In Other Shoe News…
Dove Soap’s New Creative Cleans Up
Ogilvy Canada rocked this spot.
Dove is also working their time-tested formula here, and not saying anything new, but the emotional impact is visceral.
Dove helps us feel good about our bodies (in its previous campaigns) and now the soap brand is helping us feel good about personal sacrifice.
In Nike’s case, we may miss sports and we may miss our routines, including exercise routines, but we persist. Somehow, it’s still all good.
Dove is showing us what this pandemic looks like for the frontline healthcare workers who don’t have time for anything but survival—their own and their patients’.
Dove moves people to care.
Dear Allstate, This Is Mayhem’s Mega Moment
I saw Thomas Wilson, CEO of Allstate on TV earlier today. He’s an advocate for higher pay, which helps to make him seem like a good guy. He’s also featured in a new Allstate commercial.
Given how consistency is a theme and a brand need, and given how we’re all in the spirit of giving right now, I want to give Allstate a gift. I want to endorse the use of Mayhem as the ideal spokesperson for this highly infested time.
This endorsement comes before any such spots are made or run, although I do imagine that the brand team and the agency are already asking how Mayhem can be deployed, right now, if at all.
Humor is not the first impulse when the nation is facing an obscene death toll that grows every day. Yet, in advertising, it’s good to zig where others zag, and I am confident that Mayhem’s creators are up to the task. Mayhem can make light of our extremely painful situation, with his patented humor intact, and help make us laugh. Suffering people need to laugh, just like people at a party want to laugh. We need joy, and I believe it’s a risk that’s well worth taking for Allstate.
