KEEP CALM AND MARKETING ON

Everyone knows, just by looking at the title, what I'm talking about. The story of the "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" sign starts in 1939, when England joined the allies in the fight against Germany in World War II. To reassure the population, the newly created Ministry of Information created motivational ads that should follow a uniform design pattern, in a sophisticated and elegant font, with the image of George VI's crown on top.

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

• http://adsoftheworld.com
• http://exame.abril.com.br

Ana Nascimento

You have publicity and then you have.. publicity

A month ago, a Turkish shampoo brand launched a commercial which arouse some criticism:

In this commercial, we can see an adaptation of one of Hitler’s speeches, in order to tell people how, to be a real man, one must use the Biomen shampoo. This way, Biomen shampoos are relating the image of the real and strong man with Hitler and his ideas. This kind of connection caught attention to a lot of experts and buyers (especially Jews), for the wrong reasons: "It's totally unacceptable to make use of Hitler, the most striking example of cruelty and savagery," said the Turkish Jewish Community. 

For this matter, we know that the brand tried to use Hitler’s image as a mockery, following the idea of the “Hitler reacts to…” videos (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can always search “Hitler reacts to” in Youtube and pick one example. I’ll leave you one right here). The thing is, the brand didn’t realize that their message could be taken the wrong way: having Hitler telling you that if you want to be a real man, you have to buy Biomen, it could not have the same result in everyone. Some might find it funny, others (like the Jewish Community, as we were able to see) may feel strongly offended with that connection. 

Each brand should know, not only their target, but also who could possible get in touch with their ads. In this case, even if the usage of this character resulted in the brand being talked about everywhere, the thing that were being said about it weren’t that positive. A few days after the campaign being launched, the commercial was off the air. For the online comunity, it was a Youtube phenomenon , with 414152 vies. But, for what we know, it might have worked: the youtube video got 779 likes and only 518 dislikes. If the young people in Turkey think just like the ones who rate Youtube videos, maybe the brand was right after all and the commercial did work. All in all, bad publicity it’s still publicity. 

Inês Maria