[Anonymous]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/business/media/15adco.html?ref=business
Angry Ads Seek to Channel Consumer Outrage
The
mad men of Madison Avenue are really mad these days, creating a spate
of angry advertising campaigns that seek to channel the outrage,
frustration and fear felt by consumers hit hard by what some are
calling the Great Recession.The campaigns take an outspoken,
provocative tone that is unusual for mainstream marketing messages,
which typically try to avoid aggrieved attitudes for fear of alienating
audiences. The change reflects the significant shift in sentiment as
the public reacts to the wrenching and, at times, frightening financial
events of the last year.“We’re turning up the volume in relation to
what our customers are feeling,” said Jeffrey W. Hayzlett, chief
marketing officer at the Eastman Kodak Company, which is running ads
for a new line of printers and inkjet cartridges that rant about a “$5
billion stain” on the economy caused by “overpaying” for other brands
of inkjet printer ink.“It’s a departure for us,” Mr. Hayzlett
acknowledged, given the “touchy-feely” image the Kodak brand has long
had, but “it’s right for today’s times.”

Other brands trying to
echo consumer anger include Post Shredded Wheat cereal, which declares
in new ads that “Progress is overrated” and “Innovation is not your
friend.” JetBlue Airways revels in the discomfort of chief executives
forced off corporate jets by greeting them with a sardonic “Welcome
aboard.”Miller High Life is being sold by a blue-collar character who
delights in removing the beer from hoity-toity bars, restaurants and
stores that he believes are shortchanging shoppers. And Harley-Davidson
deplores “the stink of greed and billion-dollar bankruptcies” in a
campaign that carries a rallying cry defiant enough to be unprintable
in a family newspaper. “It felt like something that needed to be said,”
said Jim Nelson, chief creative officer at Carmichael Lynch in
Minneapolis, the Interpublic Group agency that creates ads for
Harley-Davidson.The idea is to respond to “this climate of fear and
worry and ‘What’s going to happen?’ ” Mr. Nelson said, with a campaign
that will “strike an emotional chord.”“That unconventional, rebellious
tone, that ‘I’m going to live my life no matter what,’ is something a
lot of people could relate to,” he added.

Indeed,
Harley-Davidson has increased its market share since the campaign began
in May 2008, Mr. Nelson said, and there have been “thousands and
thousands of comments” praising the ads.Kodak, Mr. Hayzlett said, is
also pleased with the results of its angry ads, which are being created
by Deutsch in New York, another Interpublic Group agency. Sales are
“exceeding expectations” for printers and ink cartridges, he said.The
campaigns represent the intensification of a trend that began last
spring, when the economy started to show signs of stress.
Harley-Davidson was among the first marketers to try telling consumers
it, too, was angry about how things were going.“You need to walk in the
shoes of the average consumers today,” said Marc Brownstein, president
and chief executive at the Brownstein Group advertising agency in
Philadelphia. “They’re a little beat up and their wallets are lighter,
and the people they trusted stole from them.”Marketers “have got to
rebuild that trust,” said Mr. Brownstein, who blogs about the agency
business for the trade publication Advertising Age, by being “brutally
honest” in their ads.

“Candor is in,” he advised.
Post
Shredded Wheat, sold by the Post Foods division of Ralcorp Holdings,
tries being candid in a campaign centered on a make-believe boss named
Frank Druffel who wonders, “Has progress taken us to a better place?”
and concludes, “I’d say it’s taken us for a ride. (Probably in a
carbon-coughing oil guzzler.)” The point is to present the brand,
unchanged since 1892, as the cereal that “put the ‘no’ in innovation.”

The
tone reflects a belief now widespread among “fed-up” consumers that “as
the world gets more complicated, the more trouble we get ourselves in,”
said Tim Piper, creative director at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in
New York, the WPP agency that creates campaigns for Post cereals.The
boss character is supposed to be “a speaker for the truth,” Mr. Piper
said, “who could say what no one else is saying.”That tack is also
being taken by JetBlue Airways in its “Welcome bigwigs” campaign,
created by JWT in New York. “Looks like the days of padded paychecks,
fancy drapes and private jets are over,” one ad declares. “But hey,
there is a bright side” — flying on JetBlue, with amenities like “comfy
leather seats” that can assuage the sting of losing private plane
privileges.The JetBlue ads “poked at the guys bringing down the
economy,” said Wayne Best, executive creative director at JWT, also
owned by WPP, but were not intended to cross into fury or
mean-spiritedness.In the words of Fiona Morrisson, director for
advertising and brand at JetBlue, “We weren’t looking for
Versailles.”“Offering a hand to the beleaguered C.E.O.’s, telling them
it’s not so bad in the real world, brought the idea to life in a
tongue-in-cheek way people could relate to,” she said.

In other
words, there may be a limit to how incensed a large corporation can get
in an ad.“People are disaffected and disillusioned,” said Marc E.
Babej, president of Reason Inc. in New York, a brand and corporate
strategy consulting company, and siding with them can help advertisers
“grab a bit of attention.”“But I would be careful as a marketer about
playing with the notions of ‘We understand you’ or ‘We’re on your
side,’ ” Mr. Babej said, “because there’s some risk of it harming you
if it’s not really relevant to your product.”Or as Mr. Brownstein of
the Brownstein Group put it, “You can’t anger people into buying your
brand.”

In which category might anger be appropriate? Perhaps
for one of the ground zeroes of the economy, financial services. A
campaign for the Bessemer Trust Company, which helps the wealthy manage
their money, carries this frank headline: “Why should you believe
anything we say?”“Rarely in history have so many been so violated by so
few,” the text begins. “We understand. We’re as angry as you are,
because the actions of those few have cast a pall of doubt and
suspicion over everyone even remotely related to the financial
industry.”

The ad addresses consumers as if “they are basically
frozen in place,” said Orson Munn, chief executive at Munn Rabôt in New
York, the Bessemer Trust agency. “You have to speak with them in a way
that shocks them out of being frozen.”“It’s a very fine line, because
if we go too far it’ll push the brand over the edge,” he said. “But you
have to feel a little uncomfortable with advertising for it to work.”

[Author]

May 29, 2009 at 12:26 PM