With the economy apparently diving worldwide, they’re using old imagery in the UK to promote advertising.
The Guardian has more:
A campaign featuring famous press ads, including the Guinness Toucan and Volkswagen’s 1950s “Lemon” ad, is to launch this week to remind belt-tightening marketers of the power of national newspapers as an advertising medium.
The campaign, developed by the Newspaper Marketing Agency, will run in national newspapers up until the end of the year.
A total of six classic press ads will run using straplines adapted by the NMA to promote the newspaper advertising.
The ads include the instantly recognisable Guinness Toucan, Volkswagen’s “Lemon” from 1959, Haagen Dazs’s “Lose control” from 1991, and Honda’s 2004 “Banana” ad.
I seem to recall someone on this side of the pond a few years ago using iconic logos to promote advertising. Still a pretty good idea, though.
Interesting. But doesn’t the concept actually demonstrate the advertiser’s cluelessness about the current media landscape? Those iconic ads were effective when newspapers were being read, and were one of the only sources people turned to for information. If people aren’t reading newspapers, they won’t read your ads, no? Plus, people are growing increasingly desensitized to messages being pushed on them, versus digital where you tend to search for information. This campaign seems most effective at gaining the attention of folks like us who appreciate the sentimentality of old-school images. But most clients I see today could give a shit. They want responses – and lots of them – right now.
As a photographer it is amazing to notice how when things get tough and belts are tightened-the first thing most companies do is cut advertising, marketing and PR expenditure. You will notice however that a small percentage will smell the gravy and increase their advertising budget. There is less money out there in the consumer pool so they go after it more aggressively, but most importantly they are then a much stronger position when an upturn in the economy returns.