I've always had an appreciation for the history of logos. One is created and recognized, then societal pressures or eager marketers come in and attempt to modernize things, sometimes succeeding, and sometimes failing. Considering my recent post on Tropicana, I thought I'd share a new post up at Neatorama -- they've gone through and shared how different logos have morphed over the years.
Above, you can check out the Morton Salt girl. I picked her for this post because it confused me the most. Here you have a little tyke in 1914, with an umbrella so large that it pretty much dwarfs her as she stands there in her to-the-knee frock. But then, she gets older and skinnier, with her hemline rising until it's so flipping high that if you saw the 1968 girl from a different angle, you'd know what her underwear would look like. Does someone say: "Hey, that dress is too long!"?
But Morton aside, you can check out everything from the morphing Aunt Jemima, to a company's notions on what a modern Betty Crocker would look like. Heck, you can even see what the Gerber baby grew into!
Hollywood has endorsed products for decades: cigarettes, perfume, hair color, facial products, and now wine. According to Wine Enthusiast west coast editor Steve Heimoff, everyone from Paris Hilton to Wayne Gretzky and Brett Favre are hawking their own wine brands. (Hilton's Prosecco comes in three fruit flavors, no less.)
I'll admit I am sometimes sucked in by celebrity brands. As Eli Portnoy, a branding strategist interviewed in a New York Times article about celebrity endorsements, said, we're just a gullible generation who likes to live vicariously through the beautiful people. (It's not just this generation, of course: my five-year-old daughter can spot a Hannah Montana product from 20 feet away, and she'll pick Barbie toothpaste over SpongeBob SquarePants toothpaste regardless of flavor.)
A beautiful celebrity can sell me anti-aging cream, but when it comes to wine, I'm strictly a what's-in-the-bottle girl. I don't care whose picture is on the label or who is being paid big bucks to move it off the shelves, if it's a good wine at a good price. Generally, the more money put into the making of the wine and the less put into marketing, the better for my palate and pocketbook.
Yet Nielson reports that the celebrity wine market is growing, with Phoenix and Los Angeles leading the celeb-obsessed masses. It's true that wine-buying can be a confusing and intimidating process, and if you don't know exactly what you're looking for and you see Brett Favre's sweet mug on the bottle it might make a better adventure than an unknown brand.
Are you more or less likely to buy a bottle of celebrity wine, and why?
After a long, hard workout, women just want to settle down to a nice refreshing salad and a glass of vodka. That's the scene that one vodka manufacturer in Russia is trying to sell to the upwardly mobile ladies of the country. The vodka, which comes in lime, vanilla, almond and original flavors, is being heavily marketed to women, in an attempt to convince them that they deserve a vodka designed especially for them.
This is concerning Russian doctors, as alcoholism is rampant in Russian. There are 2.5 million registered alcoholics in the country, but experts estimate that the real number of alcoholics in that country is closer to 10 percent of the nation's population. So far, sales of the Ladies Vodka have been brisk, but what does that mean for the health of that country's women? I guess when it comes to sales and marketing, the bottom line is always more important than the health line.
I admit that I did not think it was possible for the King, the strangely masked man of Burger King TV commercial fame, to get any creepier. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Burger King is promoting Sneak King, an inexpensive and ad-laden Xbox 360 game that features - you guessed it - the King. Instead of standing around and fraternizing with attractive women, he hides, creeps and sneaks around the virtual world in which he lives, jumping out from behind objects to force burgers on unsuspecting people. The image of being stalked by the King (as seen in the above trailer) is enough to make you sleep with the lights on just to be on the safe side.
The only reason to buy the game ($3.99 at Burger King) is (a) if you just shelled out for an Xbox 360, don't have the budget for better games and are really desperate to play it or (b) you have some crazy fantasy about being the King, which who the player controls in the game. If you're buying it for the first reason, that's somewhat understandable. If it's the second...
As hard as it is to believe, the New Year is almost upon us and with that new year comes a new forecast of product trends from the consumer research group Mintel International. It looks like sustainability isn't going to be as hot an issue as the local food movement would like it to be - not yet, anyway. It will still gain ground with mainstream consumers, but by and large the focus is not yet on production. People are more focused on personal wellness, getting more specific than last year's general interest in "superfoods." Mintel predicts that Amazonian foods - including açaí and other rainforest botanicals that promise over-the-top health benefits - will really hit the mainstream through companies that are known for healthy products, like Odwalla. Other trends that they are forecasting for food processing and sales include an increased targeting of baby boomers and teens; revitalizing interest in traditional, quality (not on-the-go) breakfast foods; more web-based marketing, including more contests and giveaways; and a simplification of marketing slogans and packaging.
I don't know how many of you folks out there have noticed that it isn't just the perfume makers who are using those scented ads in magazines. Pepsi did the same when it released its Black Cherry / Vanilla flavored Diet Pepsi Jazz. Scratch and sniff ads have been around for awhile but for dog food? Pedigree tried them at supermarkets and pet stores. Have you walked into a bakery and smelled that warm and comforting aroma of just baked bread? My local bakery has an electronic dispenser that sprays an artificial baking scent into the store every few minutes. Mars has been scenting its M&M World retail stores with a chocolate smell to make the experience more enveloping. Verizon recently did the same in its stores with the release of LG Chocolate phones. Do you remember smellavision from old TV cartoons? Well it's here. ScentAndrea has an 8,000 scent dispensing, flat panel screen monitor available in stores like Kroger's and Wal-mart to help make sales.
Scent is the most powerful of the human senses, and the most primitive. This is something I first learned when I was studying psychology in college. The right scent can trigger deep and long forgotten emotions and bring up feelings of every type. Marketers have known about this for a long time, which is why scent is starting to play a bigger role in many products advertising budgets. The best part about it from the sales perspective is that smell can help nudge you in a certain emotional direction without the person even noticing it. Sort of like a nasal version of Vulcan mind control. To boldly go, where no one has smelled before. Keep your eye's out... Uh, nose, for a lot more scent marketed advertising to come.
Well, it's not just in the UK, and it's not just Disney, either. While Disney might be the biggest player in the fruit-branding game with a partnership with 15 large growers across the country via Indianapolis-based produce distributor Imagination Farms LLC, other cartoon characters are making their way into the garden. Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants will leave his pineapple under the sea and appear on spinach. Dora the Explorer will be hawking oranges. Warner Bros. has partnered with Ready Pac produce for Tweety Bird grapes and Tasmanian Devil apples.
At least the entertainment companies are being more responsible with their gross marketing by trying to sell fruits and vegetables to kids rather than French fries.
Smirnoff is the latest company to join in the viral marketing trend, putting a video on YouTube to gain interest in their newest product. Since we all enjoyed the Folgers ad so much, it seemed only natural to put up new Smirnoff ad. The ad is a music video featuring the "New England gangsters" known as "Prep Unit" - in other words, three white guys rapping about Cape Cod, the Hamptons and Harvard while playing croquet and tennis. The ad promotes Smirnoff's new malt iced tea beverage, Smirnoff Raw Tea, which is in limited release on the East Coast at the moment (but can also befoundonline). It's a funny ad, but as far as raps about food go, nothing can beat the SNL Lazy Sunday cupcake rap.
The fact that kids are bombarded with food advertisements every day hardly seems newsworthy. Nevertheless, ABC News recently ran a story about online food advertising and "advergames" that target children. The latter are online games designed to keep kids looking at advertising material for far longer than the timespan of a commercial. A study cited by ABC found that 85 percent of food brands that advertise to kids via television now have online advertising components. Cool-2B-Real (now Zip4Tweens, right) is a kid-oriented site from the National Cattleman's Beef Association. There you can play a game of hangman with answers like "Hamburgers" and "Steaks."
CBS just announced that the network's new advertising strategy will be egg-centric. And by this, I mean that they are going to have their slogans and logos printed onto 35 million eggs. The campaign will begin this September. The slogans will be printed onto the eggs by a company called EggFusion, which currently specializes in marking eggs for freshness and origin, but has more recently been promoting eggs as a great marketing tool.
The real problem with this campaign is the puns that will be coming our way. The egg-cellent marketing people have come up with the following slogans for the eggs:
CBS Mondays: Leave the Yolks to Us CSI: Crack the Case on CBS The Amazing Race: Scramble to Win on CBS How I Met Your Mother: Find Your Chick on CBS
No word on how long the eggstremely eggscruciating ads will be out there, but no doubt any increase in sales will only egg them on. Might want to consider heading to the farmers' market for your supply instead.
Coca-Cola is hoping that the UK release of Coke Zero, nicknamed "Bloke Coke" because it targets a young, male audience, will help reverse a decline in the sales of carbonated beverages in the country. When Coke Zero was launched in Australia with a similar marketing strategy, total sales skyrocketed 19% in only two months. Its marketing campaign, which included a fake blog and other tricks that were decried by media watchdogs, worked well and didn't seem to put consumers off, meaning that Coke actually has its strategy down well for selling Coke Zero.
Coke Zero is, if you haven't had it, a calorie-free soda that is meant to taste more like regular Coke and fill a gap in the marketplace left by Diet Coke, which some perceive as a girly product.
Speaking of girly vs non-girly, Coke Zero was released with black cans and labels in Australia, but white in the US. Which is it in the UK?
Beef consumption is down in many consumer groups, with people saying 'I like beef, but I already eat too much.' According to the USDA, beef consumption has dropped by 14% over the past 20 years while, for example, chicken consumption has risen over 60%. These are worrying numbers to the beef industry, who are constantly seeking new ways to combat negative consumer perceptions about red meat and bolster sales.
Their newest strategy is to target the one group whose beef consumtion hasn't flagged: Hispanics. According to the beef council, "Hispanic shoppers spend 33 percent more on beef than non-Hispanics" - a statistic that is worth taking notice of. In an effort to maintain these sales, campaigns will be launched in states including California, Texas, Colorado and Minnesota that are aimed at promoting beef to Hispanic buyers. And just like they have a website marketed at teens, the beef industry is developing one that will be marketed towards an Hispanic audience to promote the nutritional and taste benefits of beef.
The Food and Drug Administration has a thing or two to say about the heart-healthy claims made by Mars' CocoaVia chocolate, launched last year. A letter to Mars' parent company Masterfoods USA from the FDA describes CocoaVia as "misbranded," due to what the FDA believes are conflicts between the antioxidant-rich chocolate's saturated fat content and its claim to be a heart healthy product, NutraIngredients-USA.com reported. Claims of health benefits make CocoaVia more drug than food, and would, in turn, require pre-market approval and a change in how the chocolate is marketed. The FDA also takes issue with the amounts of folic acid in some CocoaVia products, citing their recommendation of 1 mg per day. Masterfoods USA must now notify the FDA of how it plans to comply with the group's complaints, according NutraIngredients-USA.
The editors of BevNET, a beverage industry news and review site, launched their BevBlog a few weeks go. So far, the blog features commentary on beverage marketing, such as the redesigned Sprite can and the POM Tea line. Really, most of the posts focus on what the BevNET editors consider failed attempts and near misses in beverage advertising and packaging. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a fun read and I look forward to seeing what it turns into in the future.
In the world of food advertising, it sometimes seems like the ads go from bad to worse, though there will be the occasional good one thrown in to keep the audience - that would be us - on our toes. I heard about this billboard at AdJab and when I first saw it, I had to do a double take: it is a giant, fake Cadbury bar being ripped apart by fake people. The giant-sized candy may be fake, but it looks absolutely delicious and the enthusiasm of the little, artificial people is quite funny. The ad is definitely more compelling than a simply picture of the chocolate bar would be. The billboard is in Canada, but if I have to look at billboards while I'm driving, I don't think that I'd mind seeing one of these once in a while.
Hollywood has endorsed products for decades: cigarettes, perfume, hair color, facial products, and now wine. According to 
As hard as it is to believe, the New Year is almost upon us and with that new year comes a 
I don't know how many of you folks out there have noticed that it isn't just the perfume makers who are using those scented ads in magazines. Pepsi did the same when it released its Black Cherry / Vanilla flavored Diet Pepsi Jazz. Scratch and sniff ads have been around for awhile but for dog food? Pedigree tried them at supermarkets and pet stores. Have you walked into a bakery and smelled that warm and comforting aroma of just baked bread? My local bakery has an electronic dispenser that sprays an artificial baking scent into the store every few minutes. Mars has been scenting its M&M World retail stores with a chocolate smell to make the experience more enveloping. Verizon recently did the same in its stores with the release of LG Chocolate phones. Do you remember smellavision from old TV cartoons? Well it's here. ScentAndrea has an 8,000 scent dispensing, flat panel screen monitor available in stores like Kroger's and Wal-mart to help make sales. 
Earlier this summer, Nicole posted about 
The fact that kids are bombarded with food advertisements every day hardly seems newsworthy. Nevertheless, ABC News recently ran a 
CBS 
Coca-Cola is hoping that the UK release of Coke Zero, nicknamed "
Beef consumption is down in many consumer groups, with people saying 'I like beef, but I already eat too much.' According to the USDA, beef consumption has dropped by 14% over the past 20 years while, for example, chicken consumption has risen over 60%. These are worrying numbers to the beef industry, who are constantly seeking new ways to combat negative consumer perceptions about red meat and bolster sales. 
The Food and Drug Administration has a thing or two to say about the heart-healthy claims made by Mars' CocoaVia chocolate, launched last year. A letter to Mars' parent company Masterfoods USA from the FDA describes CocoaVia as "misbranded," due to what the FDA believes are conflicts between the antioxidant-rich chocolate's saturated fat content and its claim to be a heart healthy product, 
The editors of 
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