THIS & THAT #27

THE SUN NEVER SETS
ON THE BRITISH EMPIRE

 “The Sun Is Setting on Honda’s Summerbration Sales Event,” were the words emanating from a television commercial this Sunday, September 3, 2017. Those same words headlined a two-page, full-color advertisement that has been appearing in national magazines. In 2016, the Honda spent 1.38 billion U.S. dollars on advertising in U.S. media.

The American Honda Motor Co., Inc. out of Torrance, California looked to the Magnani advertising group, who is big on slogans promising “Creative that connects, compels and converts.” Their webpage goes further promising that ”Our creative strategies are as distinctive as our clients and the customers they need to connect with. Our researched-based THINK-PLAN-ACT-INTERACT process ensures creative is founded on a solid understanding of who your audience is, and how best we can engage them.”

Putting the Zing

In Advertizing

Every advertising agency tries to create a raison d'être, and Magnani boasts that “Our agile team of 35 accomplished creative and account professionals ensures your creative shines and is on strategy the first time.”

All creative houses such as Magnani, look to first ensnare their potential clients, and then hold on to those clients by stimulating sales and profits with catchy advertising campaigns. In times of last-minute panic and the client is overly anxious, sometime advertising agencies sit their entire creative staff around a table, and threaten them with forced retirement if they can’t come up with usable campaign slogan for their top clients.

We Gather Together

That gathering may include the senior account executive, a junior account executive or two, the copy chief, numerous copywriters, art directors, and anyone else with an ounce of creativity left in their system from too many such “creative” get togethers.

When I worked in Detroit for the advertising agency handling, or at times, mishandling the Oldsmobile account, we had too many such meetings. If it were centered on a massive full line promotion, you’d hear the standard, inane event names bandied about. “Oldsmobile’s Sellathon,” or its “Sellabration,” or “Saleabration,” or even “Sale Into Summer with Oldsmobile.”

Remember, sitting around an elongated table were perhaps twelve ad men (no women allowed in 1963), with a combined hourly salary of more than $201.60. They were semi-passionately trying to come up with a winning name for a sales campaign for the deadly summer season, before the shiny, new, 1964 Oldsmobile arrived.

They tried even harder as lunchtime approached, to no avail.

There’s Even More Narishkeyt

Another sales event took place after the annual, independent comparative testing of makes in several categories including speed, acceleration, mileage, and braking. Although some of the 1964 models did decently against their competition, Oldsmobile had difficulty with their model's braking ability.

If you sat long enough around a “creative” table without any viable suggestions, contributions tended to become just words tossed out to fill the void, and allow all participants to go to their cubicles (or closets) and create on their own.

I had scribbled enough meaningless phrases on the Oldsmobile’s weak braking abilities while listening to those of our team, that I finally interrupted the magical flow of ideas, with my own favorite. Since the Oldsmobile had finished last in the competition, and in one instant had failed the test completely, I blurted out my suggested headline, “There’s no stopping an Oldsmobile.”

The account executives that would have to face their counterparts at Oldsmobile in Lansing with our ideas were aghast, but the rest of us smiled, and the meeting soon ended.


A Change in the
Weather or Not

Advertising success, like life itself, depends on timing, and there are occasions when you lose control of a situation. Such is the case with the American Cruise Lines four-color, full-page advertisement on page twenty-one of the September 18^th issue of TIME magazine. The ad was created and inserted long before the destructive weather hit the South, contradicting the ad's headline  “The Historic South, Smooth Water, Southern Charm.” A large photograph shows calm waters from Florida, through Georgia, and into South Carolina. When I called American Cruise Lines, a charming Southern Belle said they would be running as usual, as soon as they check the conditions of their docks.