Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, the UK’s best-selling tabloid known for photos of topless women and celebrity sex scandals, is promoting goodwill and funny cats in its latest ad campaign to wipe away the January blues.
Under its “Big Smile Giveaway” campaign, newspaper readers will be sent on holiday, treated to free tea and even have their road tolls paid by The Sun Smile Squad, which will visit towns across the UK. For the owner, News Corp, the effort may be the latest attempt to restore the tattered image of Murdoch’s media empire dragged down by phone-hacking charges and the arrests of top executives.
The tactics are also part of a push by advertising agencies to highlight their clients’ social and environmental initiatives. With the corporate world reeling from scandals and missteps by executives, companies from condom makers to soda manufacturers are trying to keep brands above the fray, handing ad agencies a new type of marketing method that is boosting their global US$497 billion business.
Photo: Reuters
“For an organization that has a reputational trust issue this type of marketing is going to be critical,” said Leo Raymond, head of planning for WPP PLC’s Grey London, which helped create The Sun’s campaign.
In similar moves, Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC’s Durex donates condoms to Haiti, Unilever’s Lifebuoy soap brand promotes handwashing in Africa and Coca-Cola Co reduces waste by using bottles made with plant-based material.
GIVE BACK
Companies’ social and environmental efforts increasingly play a role in consumers’ decisions on which products and services to buy, said Ian Maude, a media analyst at Enders Analysis in London.
“The feeling now is that in order to win you’ve got to give back a bit and show that to your customers,” he said. “You don’t have to win by screwing everyone else.”
In the US, 56 percent of Internet users said they bought a brand because proceeds went to a good cause or the brand supported a particular cause, according to a survey by AYTM, a San Francisco-based market researcher.
“It’s definitely a significant trend that’s growing, and part of it has to do with transparency,” said Simeon Duckworth, head of business planning at Mindshare, a WPP-owned marketing company that works with Ford Motor Co, Unilever and HSBC Holdings PLC.
The Sun’s 50-second TV spot for the Big Smile Giveaway began airing on Jan. 1. The ad features a young girl singing and dancing about in her room encouraging viewers to “smile through the pain” that is January and to focus on things that make life fun: boy bands, silly puns, funny cats and two-for-ones.
TRUST ISSUE
Executives and companies are being held more accountable these days with the rise of social media, which has placed power in the hands of consumers who can influence their friends on Twitter and Facebook Web sites or even galvanize masses like at last year’s Arab Spring uprisings.
“The behavior of governments and businesses led the world to the edge of collapse,” said David Jones, chief executive officer at Havas SA, France’s second-biggest ad company. “People are now empowered through social media to sanction or support business.”
A company that is responsible and showing that to consumers will do better in business, said Jones, who advised British Prime Minister David Cameron during his election campaign.
BLOOD RELATIONS
Ad agencies are also benefiting from political initiatives seeking to promote peace.
Saatchi & Saatchi, owned by Publicis Groupe SA, the third-largest advertising company, was behind the Blood Relations short film that draws attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by featuring bereaved families on both sides donating blood to each other.
“In the backdrop of economic hardship there’s not much joy to be had and it amazing to feel you’ve been part of something that has such potential in the world,” said Robert Senior, Saatchi & Saatchi’s head of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The attempt to appeal to consumers’ emotions also works in the corporate world.
Proctor & Gamble’s spot for Pantene shampoo, which follows a chubby Russian girl as she overcomes obstacles to become a champion gymnast, was also created by the Grey Group and was shown online only, with P&G pledging US$165,000 to Russia’s Olympic rhythmic gymnastics team should it receive 5 million views. To date it has drawn more than 5.3 million views.
“We felt that we needed to bring more local relevance for consumers,” said Tanja Riemann, a brand manager for P&G in Moscow. “The Olympic ad is very Russian, from the girl living in a small village to her relationship with her grandmother.”
TOILET ACADEMY
Unilever’s Domestos cleaner is sponsoring a Toilet Academy, which was designed to bring attention to poor sanitation conditions in parts of the world.
“Making marketing noble again is possible,” said Marc Matthieu, senior vice president for marketing at the company.
“At Coca-Cola, an ad spot called Daniel and His Mother features the son of a polymer scientist who helped invent the company’s plant-based PlantBottle packaging, extolling how much his mom cares about the environment.
The recession that began in 2007 “drove out these issues at companies,” said Scott Vitters, general manager of Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle group. The packaging for plastic bottles, made from up to 30 percent plant-based material, is credited with increasing sales at the company’s Dasani bottled water brand in North America by 11 percent in 2011.
Coca-Cola, which spent US$3.3 billion on advertising in 2011, also collaborates with HJ Heinz, Ford and Nike to speed up the development of products made from plants.
BOTTOM LINES
The emergence of social media means a company can go from “zero to zero” in seconds if they are caught contradicting themselves,” Senior said.
Still, even as companies tout sustainability, they are not charities and topics such as profit margins and investor returns remain clearly at the forefront of business, said Hamish Kinniburgh, global strategy officer at the Universal McCann ad agency.
Socially aware ads are not an “uncommercial activity,” he said. “Ultimately advertising is about selling and delivering to clients’ bottom lines.”
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would