The slogan only got famous, however, in 2000 - 61 years after its creation - when the owner of Barter Books, a bookshop in Northumberland, found one of the original ads and framed it. The discovery ended up inspiring an add campaign that got the attention of the new generation, who fueled it by sharing it in social network sites and putting their own twist to it.
Nowadays, the famous slogan transcends its own original purpose and it's sold in mugs, towels, key rings, paintings and t-shirts. There is even a short film about it, directed by Temujin Doran , that has already been seen by more than a million people on YouTube. Therefore, it's not that hard to understand why Rover picked this approach for their Land Rover Defender campaign for South Africa.
Refering to casualties that I can imagine occuring quite frequently in the South African savana, this campaign brings back one more time the famous concept but, instead of keeping the "KEEP CALM..." part, as it's usually done, Rover opted to go with the "...CARRY ON" approach - which makes sense giving they're advertising for a car/truck that it's supposed to survive everything: poisonous darts, snake bites and language barriers.
They have, similarly to the original, a very simple and uniform design: all the ads have the new Defender on top, followed by the slogan and the Land Rover logo, all over a slightly rough blue background; they go straight to the point: Defender will, indeed, defend you from all this and you'll manage to "carry on" your journey.
It really is a good, clear campaign - and I'm not just saying that because I used the same concept for the Creative Writing assignment. Because of the assignment I am saying that this is a concept that has been used quite often: on one hand, it can be good, since it's already viral, which means people will like it and adhere to it and the campaign will have full effectiveness; on the other hand, this is such a well known design and slogan that it may come out as non-creative, as a copy of what as been done a hundred times before, which would have the exact opposite effect: people would just dismiss it as one more "KEEP CALM..." add.
I quite like it, though. I'm not planning on buying a car that would help me go through the African savanas but, if I was basing my decision in advertisement campaigns only, the Defender would win that race.
Sources
Ana Nascimento
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