The below three marketing campaigns have impacted their respective companies not only with massively increased profits but the invaluable brand recognition that has made them household names we know them as today. Clever marketing can skyrocket a brand and even create a industry around your product - (see De Beers below).
Marketers know how to tap into the collective consciousness and read the human psyche to ascertain the emotive reasons for buying, rather than functional. It's rare you'll see advertising that will actually list a products functions these days. Most adverts try to make you feel a certain way and relate that to their product. If you feel good watching a razor advert and that brand crosses your eye at the supermarket, you will subconsciously feel drawn towards it.
Hats off to the evil genius of advertising!
1. NIKE - JUST DO IT!
Nike used to make trainers for marathon runners only. They recognised a fitness trend early and their marketing department thought of a slogan in the late 80's to try to surpass their closest competitors, Reebok. JUST DO IT!
Nike sales went up from $800m in 1988 to $9.2b by 1998. The slogan was short, snappy and entirely relatable. No-one really enjoys excising when they start doing it so the JUST DO IT! campaign tapped into what people were thinking. Want to start running but can't be bothered? JUST DO IT! Want to push yourself and go to the gym? JUST DO IT!
A simple message that people understood propelled Nike to the forefront of fitness gear and they have been enjoying the number one spot ever since. Kudos.
MARLBORO - THE MARLBORO MAN
Selling a highly addictive drug is probably a dream product to marketers but having a cigarette smoker choose your particular brand is more difficult. Marlboro began running Marlboro Man ads in the fifties and they wanted to advertise the lifestyle of the consumer, not the product.
Do you want to live free like a cowboy? Do you want to be a real man? Do you want to do you own thing? This is what the Marlboro Man represented. He was the epitome of masculinity and he allowed Marlboro cigarettes to fit into the lifestyle of the consumer and allow the consumer to have the illusion that that particular cigarette made him like a cowboy.
DE BEERS - A DIAMOND IS FOREVER
Previous to the famous De Beers slogan, engagements rings were not seen as a luxury item and didn't cost too much money. They were sometimes ruby's or semi-precious stones as a symbol of a betrothed couple.
De Beers changed the game. They thought that instead of promoting their product into the existing jewelry marketplace, they would create a whole new industry around diamonds. Now, even if a women knows the history of the marketing of diamond engagement rings, they will still demand one. That is how ingrained the marketing has become.
As soon as you walk out of a jeweler with a diamond engagement ring, it devalues by 50%. There is an inflated price due to De Beers stockpiling the product to give false scarcity and they have conditioned every woman in the western world to believe that a man should spend at least one months salary on a diamond. If that isn't a stroke of evil genius marketing, I don't know what is!
Marketing can make a relatively inexpensive product seem luxurious and essential and De Beers carried this out masterfully.