Famous Logos Brought to Life to Revive Sales
What do RCA’s cockeyed-canine logo and Coppertone’s beach-bred child with the tan-less bottom have in common?
They’ve been brought to life in new TV commercials.
Last week, for the first time, Coppertone gave life to its 37-year-old logo in a TV spot for its Water Babies suntan lotions. A 4-year-old actress with pigtails and a less-than-perfect tan plays the child in the famous logo. Earlier this year, RCA for the first time began running several TV spots featuring a lively Nipper, the endearing dog that has been part of its logo for more than a century. The RCA ads also feature a cuddly puppy.
Advertisers are not trying to be cute, but realistic. In tough times, companies are quick to look at the added value in existing logos and make the best of them. Marketing experts say some of the best-known logos have billions of dollars in increased value. What’s more, advertising psychologists say, anxious American consumers are searching for anything that brings them comfort.
“In uncertain times like this, people look back for familiar icons,” said Allison Cohen, senior vice president and director of account planning at the New York agency Ally & Gargano. “What’s more familiar to Americans than the advertising characters of the past?”
Don’t be surprised if a lot more golden-oldie logos start coming to life in commercials, said Bob Pringle, partner at the San Francisco-based corporate identity firm, Landor Associates. “We are a video generation,” Pringle said. “You’ll be seeing a lot more brands taking advantage of the technology that can give them some life.”
Unlike familiar logos such as the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Campbell’s Soup Kids--who only come to life as cartoon or clay-animated characters--the latest trend is toward real-life people and animals taking the forms and shapes of logos from our past.
“It’s all part of reinforcing a brand image,” said John O’Shaughnessy, marketing professor at Columbia University. “Advertisers today all want to get at our emotional sides. Here’s a way to touch on some experiences from our past that help set our values.”
Executives who market the Coppertone and RCA brands say the logic is simple.
“We have one of the most famous advertising icons ever created,” said David Fowler, associate creative director at the New York agency Ammirati & Puris, which created the RCA spots. “The economics of advertising these days say you should use an image that already exists in peoples’ minds.”
“We know it’s one of the most popular trademarks around,” said Don De Mott, product manager at Schering-Plough Healthcare Products Corp., the New Jersey company that makes Coppertone products. “But we knew if we could make it move, it would make people take a lot more notice than some one-dimensional picture.”
But bringing that image to life isn’t easy. “The hardest part was finding a dog that looks like the logo,” Fowler said. “If we had any idea what that meant, we might not have pursued it.” They finally found a dog--one scheduled for laboratory experimentation.
The puppies for its ads will be continually provided by breeders. “Each puppy we use has to look exactly like the one before it,” Fowler said. As a result, filming of the ads will depend upon the success of the breeders in raising identical generations of puppies.
Coppertone officials had an even trickier problem to deal with: how to get away with showing a youngster’s bare buttocks on TV. If you remember, the drawing in the old print campaign showed a dog tugging at a toddler’s pants. Coppertone knew that the networks would never show the ad with a real child. So the TV spot--which eventually dissolves into a picture of the famous logo--simply shows a dog nuzzling up to the child.
Even that wasn’t easy. To get the dog to strike the pose that matches the logo, a trainer placed a hot dog in the back of the child’s swimsuit.
Briefly
U.S. ad expenditures are expected to rise just 3% to 4% in 1991, down from the previous forecast of 4.6%, according to a report prepared for Advertising Age by Bob Coen, director of forecasting at McCann-Erickson Worldwide . . . Eveready Battery Co. filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court to prevent Coors Brewing Co. from airing a TV spot that the firm says infringes on its Eveready Bunny ads . . . Two of the nation’s top creative ad people, Phil Dusenberry of BBDO Worldwide and Jerry Della Femina of Della Femina McNamee, will announce in New York on Wednesday a nationwide ad campaign against AIDS . . . Embattled Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates will be luncheon speaker at noon, May 29, when the Advertising Club of Los Angeles hosts its next meeting at the Beverly Hilton . . . Film director Dennis Hopper, who co-starred in the 1969 classic “Easy Rider,” has joined the Los Angeles commercial production company Gibson/Lefebvre/Gartner.
