Specialty Firms Pitching Pizazz in Ads for $40-Billion Disabled Market
At first blush, it could almost pass as an ad for a Ferrari--or maybe even a Lamborghini.
“ Sleek best describes its narrow, tapered front. Get the edge . . . for life on the edge.” The vehicle in the ad even has a racy name: the Rigid-Edge.
But the ad is not for the latest European sports car. It’s for a wheelchair.
The advertisement, which appears in Careers & the Handicapped, a Greenlawn, N.Y.-based, twice-yearly publication for the disabled, signals a major marketing change that is finally reaching the nation’s 35 million disabled. After all, the disabled spend an estimated $40 billion on products and services annually. With that in mind, specialty companies are suddenly pitching their products to the disabled in the much the same way that Levi’s sells jeans: image.
“Unquestionably,” said Paul Fourchy, vice president of marketing at Active Life Wheelchairs Inc., “the disabled (who drive) are probably more conscious of how their wheelchairs look than how their automobiles look.”
So, over the past few years, his Fresno-based company has revamped all of its advertising. For years, the company ran print advertisements that simply showed pictures of wheelchairs next to model numbers and prices. “Now we have to be a lot more tuned in,” he said. “Our users are much more sophisticated.”
One of those users is Alan Reich. Reich, who is disabled, is president of the Washington-based lobby, the National Organization on Disability. Reich said that wheelchair ads with pizazz are particularly effective among the young. “I think this is a very healthy trend,” Reich said. “There are a lot of young disabled and this will certainly appeal to them.”
Now, even motor home operators are chasing after the increasingly lucrative disabled market, with specially made models that retail for more than $70,000. “This seems to be the year for the disabled,” said Roman Rybczynski, sales manager at Summit Luxury Motorcoach, a Carson-based firm. In a new marketing twist, the motor home company has, for the first time, put on display motor homes for disabled travelers at a recreational vehicle trade show in Anaheim.
The manner in which many specialty items for the disabled are marketed have become as innovative as the products. Magazines with names like Parapalegia News and Sports ‘n Spokes feature lively advertisements for products ranging from therapeutic bicycles to specialty skis.
Perhaps some of the ads that show disabled people living the good life are exaggerated, said James Schneider, editor of Careers & the Handicapped. “But we try to encourage people with disabilities to lead as active a life as possible,” he said. “Page through Playboy or Gentlemen’s Quarterly and most of the ads in those magazines aren’t very realistic either. But people still enjoy them and that’s what matters.”
Nike to Continue Its Musical Revolution
Nike is about to start another revolution with the Beatles. But this time, it’s Revolution No. 9.
Last March, Nike set the music world abuzz when it used the Beatles’ song Revolution on a commercial. It was the first use of an original Beatles song for commercial purposes. Now, Nike has decided to take another song from the Beatles’ White Album--Revolution No. 9. Basically, it’s the same song recorded at a much slower tempo.
When the first Nike ad began airing, the Beatles’ record company, Apple Records, said the Beaverton, Ore.-based company had no right to use the song and sued Nike. Nike said it had purchased the rights to use the original music from a different company that now owns those rights.
While the courts try to decide who is right, Nike is going ahead with plans to air next month an ad for its women’s athletic shoes that features Revolution No. 9. “We’re using it because we have a license to use it,” said Kevin Brown, Nike’s director of corporate communications.
In the meantime, Nike continues to receive some angry letters from Beatles fans, he said. “We’ve received some letters that border on the obscene.”
Merged Agency Calls Out for New Name
It is a standing joke in the ad biz that ad agency mergers over the past few years have left many agencies with names longer than those of most legal firms.
When the New York ad firms Bozell & Jacobs merged with Kenyon & Eckhardt in 1986, for example, the name lengthened to Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt.
But that’s about to change. So serious is the agency about shortening its name that it recently sent two-page questionnaires to clients seeking suggestions on how to shorten it. In fact, the agency’s official name may even be shortened to something as terse as Bozell or BJKE.
Of course, there may be some addition to subtraction. Whatever new name it finally chooses, the company is also considering adding the term “worldwide” to the end of it.
LIFE Ads Provide Food for Thought
For a few moments, it looks like some Third World country. Laborers toil away in a sweatshop-like setting. But suddenly, the scene fades into a cityscape and the city is clearly Los Angeles.
“We’re not asking you to help another Third World country,” says the ad, “just the third-wealthiest city in America.”
The point of the television ad is this: 1.5 million Los Angeles residents go to bed hungry every day. “That’s the kind of statistic that sounds more like a Third World nation than Los Angeles,” said Gary Alpern, creative director of the Los Angeles office of the ad firm, D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles Inc. “The hungry of Los Angeles aren’t just on Skid Row. Many of them are working people who only make enough money to feed their families for 20 days each month. The other 10 days they go hungry.”
The ad campaign is for Love Is Feeding Everyone, a Los Angeles-based charitable organization. The group, which now feeds 30,000 Los Angeles residents every week, wants to double the number it feeds this year.
The ads--created voluntarily by the agency--began airing locally last month. “People don’t have to go overseas to see hunger,” Alpern said. “There are a tremendous number of hard-working people who go hungry right here in Los Angeles.”
Reunited Raisin Team to Give Dallas a Whirl
They may not be dancing in the streets. But the writer and the artist from the ad firm that created the original “Dancing Raisins” ads have reunited at a Dallas ad agency, Bloom & Co.
Their titles, however, are no longer copywriter and artist. Seth Werner, 33, who wrote the “Raisins” ads while at the San Francisco office of the ad firm Foote, Cone & Belding, was hired as Bloom’s president six months ago. Then, last week, Bloom hired former partner Dexter Fedor, 29, as Bloom’s creative director.
Are more dancing products on the way? Perhaps a disco-dancing piece of fried chicken for client Church’s Fried Chicken? “We taught raisins how to dance,” Werner said, “but you can’t live on raisins forever.”
