Nike Beats Out Calvin Klein in Ad Survey

The shoemaker Nike Inc. nosed out fragrance maker Calvin Klein as the sponsor of the most popular print advertising campaign of 1990, according to a consumer survey.

Nike moved up from fourth place in the 1989 survey, while Calvin Klein fell from the top spot for the first time in four years, according to results in the survey released Sunday by the research firm Video Storyboard Tests Inc.

The Nike print ads last year included a campaign that featured basketball star Michael Jordan and filmmaker Spike Lee.

Earlier this year, Nike placed second in a similar consumer survey that Video Storyboard conducted on television commercials for 1990.

“Nike is the first to do so well in both media,” said Dave Vadehra, who heads Video Storyboard Tests.

He said Nike also produced a number of multipage ads that were inserted into magazines and featured long essays or collections of artwork that attracted readers’ attention.

“They say they think Nike is very creative and unique and imaginative,” he said.

Video Storyboard Tests interviewed 24,000 people over the course of 1990 for its latest survey, asking them to recall the newspaper and magazine ads that they found to be the most outstanding they had seen recently.

Calvin Klein placed second mostly because of its ads for Obsession for Men that show nudes in various poses. It also received a few mentions for its ads for the fragrance Eternity and for its jeans, Vadehra said.

Third were ads for Camel cigarettes that use a cartoon camel who usually is shown relaxing stylishly with a girl friend nearby.

Revlon cosmetics placed fourth with its “Unforgettable Women” print campaign that featured beautiful models.

Absolut vodka came in fifth. One of the most frequently mentioned of its ads is one called Absolut Manhattan that gives an aerial view of Midtown Manhattan with Central Park shaped like an Absolut bottle. Absolut San Francisco showed its bottle shrouded in fog.

Rounding out the Top 10 print campaigns were Infiniti cars, Marlboro cigarettes, Guess apparal, Ford automobiles and trucks and Maybelline cosmetics.