More of America’s Big-Business Advertising Is Going Corporate : Marketing: It won’t replace product ads, but firms are once again buffing up their images.
By this time next year, consumers may know just what American General Corp. makes and realize that Tylenol pain reliever, Band-Aids bandages and Reach toothbrushes all come from the same parent: Johnson & Johnson.
If they do, it will be the result of two new image campaigns that are part of an avalanche of new ad agency assignments, designed to help large corporations become as well-known as the products they make--and already advertise.
Corporate-image advertising isn’t likely to replace product ads, but after a long hiatus, marketers are once again buffing up companies’ images. Spending on corporate-image ads reached $1.5 billion last year from $1.1 billion in 1993. And judging from agency assignments, that number should be even higher this year.
For large corporations, the trend “signals the end of being an ostrich,” said George Fertitta, president of McGraw-Hill’s ad agency, Margeotes, Fertitta Inc. “They buried their heads for four years,” he said. “Now, riding the wave of the stock market, they realize they have something to crow about.”
WPP Group’s $6.3-billion J. Walter Thompson ad agency recently added several corporate image projects to existing campaigns it creates for such companies as Citibank.
“In economic downturns, corporate image advertising is easy to cut because it doesn’t visibly effect the bottom line,” said Burt Manning, JWT chairman. “Now that profits are starting to climb again, long-term visibility is returning.”
Boosting a company’s image can also bolster its products. “It’s the halo effect,” said Keith Reinhard, chairman of DDB Needham Worldwide, which handles image advertising for Digital Equipment Corp. among others. “It’s almost a requirement in more jaded times. Consumers want to know a brand’s parentage.”
“Reputation advertising” as Wells Rich Greene BDDP Chairman Ken Olshan calls it, is also a way for a company “to define, redefine or clarify what it stands for. It reaches many audiences and satisfies many agendas, fueling employee pride, wooing bankers and informing shareholders. “It suggests a commitment, because a company is saying it publicly,” he said.
WRG, which was recently awarded the task of defining American General, has been producing reputation ads for Ford Motor Co. since 1981 and for ITT Corp., which may use the image-polishing to try boosting its value in a possible split into three companies.
After firing the Young & Rubicam two years earlier, Johnson & Johnson recently rehired the agency to construct a corporate pitch that identifies the diversified health-care company as the nation’s family caretaker.
For McGraw-Hill Cos., new image ads are designed to change the perception that it’s only a publisher--highlighting 111 brands that include Standard & Poors, Business Week, F.W. Dodge, DRI and McGraw Hill textbooks.
International Paper Co. recently launched a sepia-toned corporate campaign to “get people to understand we’re the world’s leading paper company, and that we operate very responsibly managing our forests,” said ad manager Joe Montana. “The advertising isn’t to make sales, but to keep legislators on our side and drum up people’s support for our activities.”
Sometimes, corporate image is the best way to sell the product. Mutual of New York ads, for instance, show a boy moving from infancy to old age. “Each of MONY’s financial services’ products is customized, so it would extremely difficult to describe one with sufficiently broad appeal,” said MONY Vice President Eileen Ast.
With about 70% of MONY’s business repeat-purchase or referred by existing customers and all of it designed to mature with the client through life, Ast said, “an image campaign must say; ‘You can trust us.’ ”
Eastman Kodak Co. is talking to ad agencies and Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency about a corporate campaign, Chajet said, and American Standard Co. is telling the world there’s more to the heavy equipment maker than bathroom fixtures. Even the world’s largest advertiser, Procter & Gamble Co., is bundling products under one umbrella to cash in on its reputation.
A few months ago, software giant Microsoft Corp. launched a $100-million “Where Do You Want to Go Today?” campaign, designed to help make it a household name. To promote its image as a technology leader, International Business Machines Corp. recently ran a series of ads in its “Solutions for a Small Planet” campaign, said IBM spokesman Scott Brooks.
Not all corporate campaigns succeed, however.
Prudential Corp. has tried with only limited success to leverage its image across all its financial service activities. And some large corporations take pains to separate themselves from multiple brands aimed at similar markets: Witness Anheuser-Busch Cos.’ Red Wolf beer and Dave’s Tobacco Co. from Philip Morris Co.
Still, more companies are testing their images among consumers to determine if their parentages are assets. “Corporations are more visible and accountable,” Chajet said. “They used to be able to be invisible. Now the media have decided they’re news.”
