The Daily Cardinal - Commerce
Issue: 3/2/05

The art of launching an ad campaign
By Becky Salmela

The cartoon alarm clock goes off and a man wakes, immediately reaching for his cell phone. For 30 seconds we see him from morning to night constantly chatting on his phone with his faithful dog by his side.

Maybe the importance of this little dog has never crossed your mind, yet it represents the key to Einstein PCS' latest advertising campaign. He was created to demonstrate how Einstein hopes consumers will see their contract cell phone service.

"One of the things Einstein is all about is being very simple," explained Howard Cosgrove, senior vice president of communications for Lindsay, Stone and Briggs, one of the leading advertising agencies in Madison. "They would never come up with a plan that was half a page of fine print-which times you could call, which hours applied to which rates, how many minutes of one kind, how many minutes of a different kind. They wouldn't be all about simple."

For Einstein, simple is smart. So when the company decided to emphasize their contract phone service, they consulted Lindsay, Stone & Briggs, who had assisted with their previous pre-paid phone service ad campaign featuring "Freedom Joe." That campaign lasted four years, and illustrated how customers could be "free from contracts."

"The plan that they came up with perfectly fit that brand-one rate, call anytime. That's pretty simple," Cosgrove said. "So we ask, 'how do we illustrate that so we stay with the simplicity of the Einstein brand?'"

A dog was chosen, Cosgrove explained, because dogs are simple and live simple lives. Einstein began their Simple is Smart campaign last summer with TV commercials. "They bark, they sniff, they wag [their] tail," the dog's owner said. "Simple. Uncomplicated. Which is also why I like Einstein."

With the theme of simplicity represented by a dog, Einstein developed other marketing, like signs and printed advertising, to promote their message and sell their product.

An ad campaign allows manufacturers to reach their customers in a variety of ways. Advertisers might combine TV commercials with billboards for one product and use a magazine spread with radio spots for another.

"A good ad campaign is one that resonates with the audience, one that reaches the consumer at the right time and at the right place when they're in the most receptive mood," said Michelle Nelson, professor of advertising and public relations in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

To find the appropriate audience and message, most ads start with research. Demographic and media research is combined to determine which lifestyles are most receptive to a manufacturer's product and the best way to reach them, Nelson said. This becomes the target profile.

Research helps to find out who the customer is, but also what the customer wants and what the customer thinks about a manufacturer, according to Sandy Weisberger, media director of The Hiebing Group, an advertising agency in Madison.

"You find out what do people think of you, their perceptions of your strengths and weaknesses because they could think you're weak in something but you're really not and maybe that's why they're not buying your product," he said. "Maybe they don't know that you have the product available in both yellow and green."

This information is combined with the target profile to make a strategy. Then the creative team brainstorms and comes up with the ideas for the ads, Nelson said. After final approval from the ad agency and the manufacturer, a focus group may be used to make sure the ads will be effective before they are put on air or printed.

Sounds easy, right? Yet people are exposed to hundreds of ads everyday, making the likelihood of remembering just one unlikely.

"With people watching less TV and with technology like TiVo, people just aren't watching ads the way they were 50 years ago when TV first came out," Nelson said. "So now, for example, companies like Red Bull or Starbucks use relatively little advertising compared to other promotional or product placement or other kinds of techniques to reach people."

Marketers have come to rely less and less on traditional advertising outlets, like TV, and incorporate other techniques to reach consumers. Advertisers may sponsor a sporting or music event now instead of buying only commercials, Cosgrove said. The Internet has started to play a role in how products might be advertised, and is often integrated into a campaign.

The most difficult aspect of advertising is finding an innovative element that will resonate with the audience and attract their attention.

"You really have to do the research that gets at the emotional benefits of your product or your brand," Cosgrove said. "You have to understand what people's relationship with the brand is."

With demographic and psychological research, advertisers can pinpoint the customers who will buy their products. It's as simple as pie. Or maybe simple like a little dog.