Sometimes we look at creative and wonder if the agency or in-house talent really thought it through in terms of its target audience.
In some cases, it seems there’s a kind of lazy reliance on what’s been tried before: We know this works, so we’ll do it that way – and no one checks to see if the elements work the way they’re supposed to.
Recently we came across three such efforts that left us wondering whether the marketer was in touch with its market and in control of the meaning of its campaign.
Tommy Hilfiger
Tommy Hilfiger, for example. The current TV campaign refers viewers not to local retailers, as one might imagine, but to Hilfiger’s Web site Tommy.com – a site so complicated that we were unable to download its home page at our desk.
Hilfiger – more a stylist than a designer – was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public in a brilliant marketing campaign created by the legendary Jerry Della Femina. While subsequent campaigns were, like Hilfiger’s fashions themselves, Calvin Klein/Abercrombie & Fitch wannabes, marketing’s given Hilfiger the brand recognition he has today.
This campaign is a good case in point. Through music and montage, the spots try to equate Hilfiger fashion with symbols of all-American ideals of masculinity and femininity. There are two ads, one for the boys and one for the girls.
The male ads juxtapose preppy models sporting Hilfiger clothes while posing in echoes of shots of Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider” and George Reeves in “Superman.” Clips are included in the montage. The soundtrack features a rock song, the least incomprehensible lyric of which is, “What’s that man?”
Fonda is a curious image to use to evoke classic all-American manhood, being an anti-establishment figure in general, and anti the sorts of things Hilfiger is trying to stand for in particular. As for Superman, he is hardly “all-American.” If memory serves, he’s an immigrant, technically illegal, a refugee seeking asylum after his native planet, Krypton, exploded.
The female spot is even more out of kilter. Typical shots of all-American femininity are cut with models sporting Hilfiger fashion. In addition to the odd touch of the European-born Audrey Hepburn, the soundtrack plays “American Woman.”
Now, “American Woman” is both misogynistic and anti-American, as the current cover of the old Guess Who hit by Lenny Kravitz amply demonstrates. And in live performance, the original singer, Burton Cummings, goes way over the top to push those points.
This goes beyond co-opting anti-establishment music to peddle commercial goods. As far as we know, people wear designer clothing to be more attractive. This ad says, wear these clothes and some singer will wail at you, “American woman, stay away from me.”
Tommy Hilfiger’s fourth quarter profits dropped 25%. According to a May 26 article in The New York Times, investors tied the loss to Hilfiger’s expansion into women’s wear. As they ask in “The X-Files,” Coincidence? We think not.
Quepasa.com
What bothers us about Quepasa.com’s mail campaign is also an off note. Quepasa.com is an affinity ISP for the Latino market. It’s been running a branding campaign in key Hispanic markets. Unlike beauty, branding is not its own reward: Quepasa needed people to sign up. So it turned to direct response.
With lists provided by LatinPak, Quepasa dropped 1.7 million CD-ROMs. The campaign does its America Online model one better: It offers free Internet access, with no monthly fees.
Quepasa is bilingual. Users can select Spanish or English versions. The mail piece is bilingual as well.
So far so good. While response and retention rates were not available at press time, that Quepasa intends to continue campaigning with LatinPak might suggest the results were not shabby.
Although the Latino market is categorized as a niche, it’s actually quite large and heterogeneous, with few truly universal characteristics. But one is that it is made up of those who identify with Spanish-speaking culture. So we found it odd that in Quepasa’s piece, the English version is always printed before the Spanish one, contrary to the order favored by most campaigns in this market.
Matchbox Twenty
We generally like CDs as a DR medium. They’re effective, yet underused. So it had to happen: a CD promotion that irritated us.
Matchbox Twenty’s new album, “Mad Season by Matchbox Twenty,” not only includes the usual links to the band’s Web site, but also such “online features” as Winamp, Spinner and “500 Free Hours of AOL.”
Yep. The ultimate owner of Matchbox Twenty’s label, Atlantic Records, is Time Warner, which is in the throes of merging with AOL.
Simply put, software to download and play music passes the relevancy test for a value-added proposition; software to access ISPs does not.
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