BREAK THROUGH CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
Cadillac, a division of Detroit-based auto giant General Motors Corporation (GM), had long been GM’s luxury division, offering higher-priced, roomier vehicles. The brand had been in trouble for several years, however, and saw sales tumble almost 10 percent between 2000 and 2001. One of the primary culprits was Cadillac’s aging customer base. By the early 2000s the average age of Cadillac buyers was 65 years old. Younger drivers tended to prefer European and Japanese luxury automobiles such as BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus. To help reach younger consumers, Cadillac developed the CTS, a sedan that was priced as an ‘‘entry’’ luxury car, along the lines of the BMW 3 Series.
Cadillac earmarked nearly a quarter of a billion dollars for a new campaign, which was implemented by advertising agency D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles. Titled ‘‘Break Through,’’ the campaign revolved around a television spot that premiered at the 2002 Super Bowl. The commercial first invoked the brand’s post–World War II heyday by showing a young professional driving a 1959 Cadillac. The commercial really kicked into gear with the arrival of the new CTS, which passed the 1959 vehicle on the open road while Led Zeppelin’s ‘‘Rock n’ Roll’’ played in the background. Led Zeppelin was one of the most successful rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s, and Cadillac believed that the band’s iconic status and hard-rock sound offered the right combination of nostalgia and edge.
Representing a major achievement for the campaign, the average CTS buyer was 55 years old. Cadillac expanded the ‘‘Break Through’’ campaign for several years, making it a division-wide affair. It became a key component in the company’s efforts to revitalize itself.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Cadillac rose from the remains of the Henry Ford Company. After Ford left the company, his former partners decided to continue in the automobile business. In 1902 they formed the Cadillac Automobile Company. The organization took its name from Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the founder of the company’s home city of Detroit. In 1909 Cadillac was purchased by General Motors. As the twentieth century progressed, GM grew to become the largest automaker in the world. Cadillac developed into GM’s luxury brand. The vehicle never sold well outside the United States, but within the country Cadillac became synonymous with quality and luxury. By the early 2000s, however, the brand was under pressure from European and Japanese luxury brands such as Lexus and BMW. Between 2000 and 2001 the company’s sales dropped about 9 percent, bringing to 40 percent the sales slide that had been going on since the mid-1980s.
As Cadillac’s customer base aged, the brand began to get a reputation as an ‘‘older’’ company aligned with establishmentarian attitudes. In fact, by 2001 the average Cadillac buyer was 65 years old. This presented a problem for GM because the division’s future depended on attracting baby boomers—people who were in their 40s and 50s in 2001. The company also had trouble getting women to purchase its vehicles. In an effort to reach out to younger drivers, for model year 2003 Cadillac replaced its sagging Catera model with the CTS, which was designed to be sleeker and flashier than the Catera. The CTS operated on a 5-speed transmission, reminiscent of that used in BMWs, and it used a 220-horsepower V-6 engine, which provided a smooth ride. It also offered OnStar, a computerized guidance system.

TARGET MARKET
The new CTS was positioned as an entry-level luxury car for drivers who tended to be well established in their careers. It was intended for professionals and other consumers who were interested in a roomier, more luxurious ride but who were put off by the price of such Cadillac mainstays as the Seville, a midsize luxury vehicle that would soon be phased out in favor of the STS. Cadillac hoped to attract a younger audience for the CTS: baby boomers (those born from World War II to the early 1960s) and members of Generation X (those born in the late 1960s and 1970s).
The company was concerned that Cadillac was being seen by consumers as an older, un-hip brand. Imageconscious boomers tended to shy away from Cadillac in favor of flashy foreign luxury brands such as BMW and Lexus. The company also felt that it needed to appeal to more women drivers. Cadillac wanted to reach those consumers with the CTS, with the anticipation of luring them to buy higher-priced Cadillac models, like the Seville/STS, in the future. While the company enjoyed its reputation as a classic luxury car, it wanted to freshen up that image to help meet the challenges of the early 2000s.

COMPETITION
As an affordable, entry-level luxury car, the CTS competed with similarly priced vehicles from other luxury automobile brands. Chief among these was the Lexus ES 300, manufactured by the Toyota Motor Corporation’s Lexus division. The ES 300 was the latest in the popular ES sedan line, first introduced in 1989. Lexus introduced the ES 300 in model year 2003, at the same time that Cadillac brought out its new CTS. Because the ES 300 launch was a major priority for Lexus, the CTS faced intense competition from the beginning. Acura would also be launching a new design of its luxury vehicle the TL, though with less fanfare than Lexus. Other imports that competed directly with the CTS included the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, the Audi A4, the BMW 3 Series, and the Infiniti G35, made by a subsidiary of Nissan. The Ford Motor Company’s Lincoln luxury division was long considered a chief competitor for GM’s Cadillac division. Lincoln, however, did not have a strong entry-level vehicle available at the time. Its flagship model, the Town Car, did draw from some of the CTS’s market share, but it was more expensive and competed more directly with the Cadillac Seville.

MARKETING STRATEGY
Cadillac wanted its new campaign to accomplish many different things. Most importantly, it needed to introduce the CTS successfully. Its other goals were to reverse the previous year’s substantial decline in sales and to burnish the company’s image in relation to import luxury brands. Cadillac enlisted ad agency D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, based in Troy, Michigan, to run its new campaign, which would cost more than $240 million. The agency had worked with Cadillac before and understood the company’s concerns.
To drum up advance publicity, Cadillac offered the CTS for use in The Matrix Reloaded, the 2003 sequel to the popular science fiction movie The Matrix. At the core of the campaign was a series of several television spots, all of which featured the Led Zeppelin song ‘‘Rock n’ Roll.’’ Led Zeppelin, who recorded nine studio albums between 1968 and 1980, was one of the first hard-rock bands and also one of the most enduringly popular. While the band still appealed to younger fans, its original loyal fan base was now comfortably middle-aged.
It was believed that Led Zeppelin’s music possessed a combination of nostalgia and edge that would appeal to baby boomers. The band’s untitled fourth record, featuring the classic-rock staple ‘‘Stairway to Heaven’’ as well as the hard-charging ‘‘Rock n’ Roll,’’ was one of the best-selling records of the 1970s and was seen by some baby boomers as a touchtone of their youth. Because Led Zeppelin had an outlaw reputation in its heyday, attracting various stories and urban myths about its members’ over-the-top parties and decadent lifestyle, the band never acquired a stuffy reputation, even with the passage of time. Also, the band’s classic status—it was in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and was generally regarded as the exemplar of the hard-rock genre—helped to underscore Cadillac’s reputation as the classic luxury car. The campaign kicked off during the 2002 Super Bowl on Fox television, at a cost of more than $10 million. The event, which served as the championship game for the National Football League, was typically the most watched television event of the year, and the advertisements that ran during it garnered not only a large audience but also a significant amount of media attention. The Cadillac spot began by showing a young professional driving a vintage 1959 Cadillac. He was stuck in a traffic jam but then managed to turn off down a side street, which led to an open highway. At this point the Led Zeppelin music began, and a CTS appeared in the rearview mirror. A unseen announcer then declared: ‘‘A legend—reborn.’’ Soon the CTS passed the older car and rocketed down the open road, as the music played louder and louder. The spot closed with the tagline ‘‘Break Through.’’
Other brands, including Coors Light beer and
Sheraton Hotels, also used popular 1960s and 1970s songs in their advertisements during this time. As baby boomers aged, they continued to buy products that celebrated 1960s and 1970s recording artists, such as the Beatles Anthology CDs. Led Zeppelin itself had released several popular box sets in the 1990s, and in 2003 it put out a successful collection of live performances recorded in 1972. On January 27, 2004, Cadillac paid to become the official vehicle of Super Bowl XXXVIII, which was broadcast on CBS. Cadillac featured a new 60-second spot called ‘‘Turbulence’’ that expanded upon the ‘‘Break Through’’ campaign. It featured a voice-over by the actor Gary Sinise, who had played a major role in the Oscarwinning 1994 film Forrest Gump. The commercial retained ‘‘Rock n’ Roll’’ on the soundtrack and highlighted four key Cadillac models: the Escalade and SRX sports utility vehicles (SUVs), the XLR, and the CTS. The spot showed the four cars driving in the desert. The CTS, Escalade, and SRX all met at an intersection, creating a swirl of ‘‘turbulence’’ that eventually subsided to reveal an XLR with its top down, driven by a young woman. Cadillac ran three other spots during the broadcast, featuring the Escalade, SRX, and XLR individually. All three ended with the ‘‘Break Through’’ tagline. The musical focus of the spot dovetailed with Cadillac’s decision to offer XM radio in its DeVille, Seville, CTS, and Escalade models. XM was a popular satellite-radio service that provided a diverse array of music, sports, and entertainment channels. The subscription service required a special radio, which Cadillac began to offer for the CTS and other lines.

OUTCOME
The CTS did not fare well competing head-on with BMW or Mercedes, but its competitive pricing—it came in at under $35,000—meant that Cadillac could reorient its campaign to take on the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. Otherwise, the campaign met with success. Automobile journalists awarded the CTS the North American Car of the Year at the Detroit-based North American International Auto Show in 2002.
Cadillac was pleased with the ‘‘Break Through’’ campaign results. Eventually the company’s website even carried the ‘‘Break Through’’ tagline. As late as 2005, 85 percent of respondents to an internal survey still saw the campaign as fresh and different. Most importantly, within nine months of the ‘‘Break Through’’ campaign’s inception, the average age of CTS buyers was down to 55, a marked improvement over the Cadillac division’s average of 65. Nearly 40 percent of those consumers were women. Internal data showed that approximately half of CTS buyers would not have previously considered purchasing a Cadillac

REVOLUTION CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
In 1997, when it was acquired by CKE Restaurants, Hardee’s Food Systems was a struggling chain in the Midwest and Southeast with a growing reputation for poor service and substandard food. By 2002 the chain had launched 10 different marketing campaigns in nine years, each designed to turn the chain’s business around. The campaigns met with little success. To try and carve out a niche somewhere between inexpensive fast-food chains and pricier ‘‘quick-casual’’ restaurants, as well as to win back customers, Hardee’s executives initiated the Hardee’s ‘‘Revolution’’ in select test markets. The rebranding effort included a scaled-down menu featuring the chain’s new premium Thickburgers, renovated restaurants, and a new emphasis on customer service.
In 2003 the ‘‘Revolution’’ program was expanded to the rest of the chain with a supporting marketing campaign created by Mendelsohn/Zein Advertising, an agency based in Los Angeles. Andrew Puzder, president and chief executive officer of Hardee’s, told Nation’s Restaurant News that the chain planned to devote all of its marketing energy in 2003 to the ‘‘Thickburger Revolution.’’ According to Nation’s Restaurant News the campaign had an estimated budget of $50 to $60 million. The commercials, which ran on television and radio, were honest and apologetic about the company’s slip into substandard food and service. Puzder was featured in some spots, where he admitted that the food the chain used to serve was bad. In other spots former customers stated why they no longer ate at Hardee’s. Although it seemed that Hardee’s was taking a risk by introducing higher-priced premium burgers at a time when competitors were slashing prices, the strategy paid off. In 2004, following the launch of ‘‘Revolution,’’ the chain’s fourth-quarter same-store sales increased 9.2 percent over 2003. In addition the ‘‘Revolution’’ campaign was awarded an EFFIE in 2005.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Hardee’s started out in 1960 in Greenville, North Carolina, as a simple walk-up counter business owned by Wilbur Hardee. It eventually grew into a small-town hero to hungry diners throughout the South and Midwest. The chain built a reputation for good quality, nontraditional fast-food fare such as roast beef sandwiches and ‘‘made from scratch’’ biscuits. For a brief time, before Hardee’s became known as the place to avoid if you were hungry for hamburgers, the chain bumped Wendy’s International from its number three spot. But by 1990 its downward spiral had begun. The chain’s food quality was unpredictable, and menu changes left customers confused, while poor service sent them running for the door. In 1997 CKE Restaurants, which already owned the burger chain Carl’s Jr., acquired Hardee’s with a plan to transition the entire chain to Carl’s Jr. restaurants. Hardee’s franchisees and executives bitterly rejected the plan. Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. maintained their separate identities, but the former became known as Star Hardee’s and sported the Carl’s Jr. happy-star logo on its signs. The menu at Hardee’s also underwent changes to more closely match the offerings served by its sister chain, and stores were haphazardly remodeled to make their decor resemble that of Carl’s Jr. The changes did little to boost business for Hardee’s, and the brand slipped to number six among fast-food burger restaurants. In 2003 Puzder, who had become president of Hardee’s in 2000, determined it was time to reestablish the brand’s identity and to rebuild the neglected chain’s business and reputation. The Hardee’s ‘‘Revolution’’ was launched.

TARGET MARKET
Sister chain Carl’s Jr. had focused its energies on being the place for young men to go for big, juicy burgers, but the goal for Hardee’s was to appeal to adults by offering a broader range of menu items that included fast, tasty breakfasts and restaurant-style burgers for lunch or dinner. ‘‘The Hardee’s brand is broader—it has more breakfast business, it’s more adult,’’ Brad Haley, the company’s executive vice president for marketing, told Restaurants & Institutions.
The two brands not only appealed to different consumer groups but also were distinguished from each other by regional differences, which made it difficult to create a single marketing theme for both brands. Hardee’s was centered in the Midwest and Southeast, whereas Carl’s Jr. served the West. Haley said, ‘‘In the Southeast, Hardee’s is a very strong breakfast brand. In other regions it’s more a lunch/dinner [concept]. So when you’re looking at the brand, it’s not one-size-fits-all.’’

COMPETITION
While Hardee’s was taking a risk by offering customers the kind of thick burgers served at casual-dining restaurants and selling them at a higher price (about $4 for a burger), the chain’s key competitors, McDonald’s (the number one burger chain) and Burger King (the number two chain), were promoting discount prices to attract customers. The tactic was dubbed the ‘‘99-cent menu war’’ by Jim Kirk of the Chicago Tribune. He wrote, ‘‘With No. 2 burger chain Burger King preparing a major national marketing assault around 99-cent menu items, executives at McDonald’s are making their own value strategy a priority with franchisees.’’ McDonald’s launched a national marketing campaign focused on its ‘‘Dollar Value Menu’’ in October 2002. Burger King launched its campaign just a month ahead of that of McDonald’s. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that, faced with complaints that fast-food restaurants were causing American obesity, the two chains had earlier ‘‘tinkered with their menus to add healthier choices and more sophisticated flavors. Now they’re turning to price to win back customers.’’ Individual items on the 99-cent value menu at McDonald’s included two sandwiches, fries, salad, and beverages; Burger King’s 99-cent offerings included hamburgers, tacos, and chili. For both chains the strategy behind the 99-cent value menu was to attract price-conscious consumers who were limiting their visits to restaurants because of the weak economy. Harry Balzer, vice president of the market research firm NPD Group, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ‘‘The average cost of preparing a meal at home is $1.96, making it tempting to turn the cooking over to someone else for just a few pennies more.’’ The 99-cent value menu strategy produced mixed results and weakened profits for the dueling chains. As Burger King’s global marketing officer Chris Clouser noted during an interview with Time magazine, the problem with promotions offering deep discounts was that ‘‘you train customers to come only when there’s a blue-light special.’’

MARKETING STRATEGY
‘‘Revolution’’ was created to set the Hardee’s chain apart from other fast-food restaurants and to establish it as a premier-burger specialist, according to Jack Hayes, writing for Nation’s Restaurant News. The company was also trying to lure customers by carving out a niche somewhere between typical fast-food chains and higher-priced quick-casual dining establishments. To accomplish that, Hardee’s introduced a selection of Angus-beef burgers and eliminated about 40 percent of its lunch and dinner items. The breakfast menu, popular with customers, was left intact. In addition to a menu overhaul, the campaign included a series of television commercials that boldly tackled the chain’s reputation for bad food and poor customer service. One spot, which opened with a scene shot in black-and-white, featured a young man stating that, while Hardee’s ‘‘used to be cool,’’ he no longer went there because when he wanted a burger, he wanted a big, juicy one. The spot then switched to a color shot of a Thickburger and the tagline ‘‘It’s how the last place you’d go for a burger will become the first place.’’ Other commercials featured company president Puzder humbly agreeing with customer complaints that the food quality at Hardee’s had deteriorated and that service was substandard. The spots had been developed based on consumer research that included reviewing comment forms customers had filled out and left in suggestion boxes at Hardee’s restaurants.
The ‘‘Revolution’’ campaign also signified the chain’s shift away from the low-cost—and often low-quality—approach to fast-food menu items that had dominated the quick-service food arena almost since its beginnings. Puzder said that the chain’s new campaign was intended to set Hardee’s apart from the competition and to build its brand identity as the premium-burger specialist among fast-food restaurants. In an interview with QSR Magazine, he explained, ‘‘We not only made the burgers bigger and began using higher quality Angus beef, we also improved the quality of virtually every ingredient on the burgers . . . At a time when most of our competitors have turned to discounting tactics, Hardee’s is banking on America’s ongoing love affair with truly great burgers.’’

OUTCOME
After declining steadily for more than 10 years, Hardee’s experienced a swing in the other direction following the January launch of ‘‘Revolution.’’ The chain reported a 9.2 percent increase in same-store sales in the fourth quarter of 2003 compared to the same period the previous year. Sales growth continued, and Hardee’s reported same-store sales increases for eight consecutive months through March 2004 at stores open for one year or more. Haley told QSR Magazine, ‘‘This was a pure quality strategy and it’s very reassuring to see that fast food consumers appreciate what we have done.’’ The success of the campaign was enhanced when CKE, reversing its original strategy, applied the Hardee’s approach to sister chain Carl’s Jr. and introduced to the latter’s menu not only Thickburgers but also some of the Hardee’s breakfast items. Further recognition of the campaign’s success came in 2005, when it was awarded an EFFIE for meeting its goals of increasing sales, regaining consumer confidence in the brand, winning back the company’s core customers (men aged 16 to 34), and earning credibility as the best place to go for a great burger.

SNEAK A PEEK CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
With its ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ advertising campaign, Hallmark Cards, Inc., hoped to convince consumers to insist on buying only Hallmark greeting cards and to check the brand insignia on the backs of cards they received. ‘‘This campaign hinges on the concept that there is only one thing consumers need to know: it’s Hallmark, cards that say what they think and feel, the brand they trust,’’ said Brad Van Auken, the company’s director of brand management and marketing. The television spots for the campaign featured a young married couple either exchanging greeting cards between them or picking out cards to give to others. The woman attempts to teach her husband the best techniques to discreetly check whether or not the cards he receives are from Hallmark. The campaign played on the company’s long-running slogan, ‘‘When you care enough to send the very best.’’ Hallmark, the dominant greeting card company in the United States, had a wholesome image and was known for its emphasis on excellence. The company had a long history of successful marketing endeavors, including the award-winning ‘‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’’ series of television programs. Hallmark and its two major competitors, Gibson Greetings, Inc. and American Greetings Corporation, branched out in 1997 by marketing their merchandise via the Internet and offering related products, such as cards that consumers could print at home on their computers. The ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ commercials won an Effie Award and were popular among consumers, especially with women, who were the primary target market. The campaign was launched in 1996 and ran through 1997. As in previous years, Hallmark’s sales accounted for nearly half of the $7 billion in revenues generated by the greeting card industry in 1997.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Hallmark company was established in 1910, when a penniless teenager named Joyce C. Hall arrived in Kansas City, Missouri, and began marketing his two shoeboxes full of picture postcards through a mail-order business. The business grew rapidly and was soon producing greeting cards, ornamental gift wrap, party decorations, and jigsaw puzzles. In 1984 the company acquired Binney & Smith, which manufactured Crayola products, Magic Markers, and Liquitex art supplies. By 1997 Hallmark Cards was a global firm employing more than 20,000 people, including hundreds of artists, designers, writers, editors, and photographers. In addition to the Hallmark brand, the company made Ambassador Cards, Shoebox Greetings, and several other lines. Hallmark products were sold at a chain of stores owned by the company but also at drug stores and other retail outlets. Since consumers wanted the convenience of finding Hallmark products wherever they shopped, the company launched a new line of cards, Expressions from Hallmark, in 1996. Unlike some other Hallmark brands, the Expressions line was available in supermarkets and other mass-merchandise stores. By encouraging consumers to check the insignia on the back of cards, the ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ campaign helped call attention to the fact that Expressions was a Hallmark line.
Some of the company’s advertisements were tailored to promote specific products, such as Ambassador Cards. Others, like the ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ campaign, were intended to generate awareness of Hallmark products in general. In 1951 the company had begun a long-term sponsorship of the popular and critically acclaimed ‘‘Hallmark Hall of Fame,’’ a series of television programs for family viewing. In 1997 alone Hallmark sponsored 87 films and miniseries for television, including Gulliver’s Travels and Larry McMurtry’s Streets of Laredo. In 1996 the company spent $23 million to publicize the Hallmark Hall of Fame and $102 million on advertising designed to draw consumers into Hallmark Gold Crown stores, which carried greeting cards and specialty items. The print and broadcast ads promised, ‘‘You’ll Feel Better Inside.’’ A Hallmark survey in the spring of 1997 showed a 93 percent approval rating for the programs and an 86 percent approval rating for the company’s advertising.
The ‘‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’’ broadcasts won numerous
Emmy Awards, and the Hallmark commercials that
accompanied the programs were recognized for their
tastefulness and creativity. Joyce Hall’s motto, ‘‘Good
taste is good business,’’ had helped the company establish
a wholesome image. The company’s slogan since 1944,
‘‘When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best,’’ was a
reference to Hall’s memoirs When You Care Enough. For
many years the slogan was incorporated into the company’s advertising. Consumers age 50 and over tended to be particularly fond of Hallmark’s sentimental, familyoriented advertising. In 1997 the company’s Internet site included a Nice-O-Meter, an interactive survey that allowed visitors to measure how nice they were.
TARGET MARKET
In 1997 the market for greeting cards, stationery, and other correspondence products was increasing steadily. Hallmark’s research showed that 29 percent of consumers were writing more than they had previously, 46 percent of grandmothers said they received correspondence from their grandchildren, and 58 percent of mothers said their children wrote them thank you notes. A poll in Adweek said nearly a third of the people in the United States planned to correspond more frequently than they had in the past. Consumers liked to give cards that expressed the feelings that they did not have the courage to say aloud. ‘‘If the message in a card rings true, people identify with it and see themselves in it,’’ said Ellen McKeever, manager of the Shoebox Greetings division of Hallmark. ‘‘If a character on a card reminds people of someone the know, or if they just like the character or find it funny, they will choose that card.’’ The perception was that the exchange of cards made people feel good and enhanced their relationships. The ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ campaign played up these feelings by emphasizing that sending a Hallmark greeting was the ultimate demonstration of caring. The company had conducted extensive research to determine what its customers, who were 90 percent women, wanted in greeting cards. ‘‘From all the information we’ve collected directly from greeting card purchasers, three things are abundantly clear,’’ said Mark J. Schwab, the company’s vice president of strategy and marketing. ‘‘First, consumers want to find great products that are a good value . . . Second, the time-pressed consumer longs for a convenience-based greeting card offering from Hallmark, a company she knows and trusts . . . . Third, we have to make it crystal clear to the consumer that the card shop is simply the best place to shop for our category of products, an exciting, vibrant site from which to reinforce Hallmark brand equity.’’ The ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ campaign encouraged consumers to have such faith in the Hallmark brand that they would not bother looking at anything else.

COMPETITION
Hallmark was the dominant greeting card company in the United States, with a market share that averaged about 42 percent, according to USA Today ’s Ad Track. American Greetings Corporation came in second with 35 percent, and Gibson Greetings, Inc., was third. In 1996 American Greetings had entered a small but expanding market—interactive entertainment for girls—by developing books and video games that featured several of the company’s popular characters, including Strawberry Shortcake, the Holly Hobbie Blue Girl, and the Popples. In 1997 the company worked with Avery Dennison Corp. to produce a line of greeting cards for inkjet printers. Television commercials and ads in women’s magazines were planned to target women 25 to 54 years old who had children less than 18 years old. American Greetings was involved in various other marketing endeavors during 1997, including advertising on the Internet site of Hearst HomeArts, which featured several magazines published by the Hearst Corporation. The World Wide Web offered vast opportunities for selling greeting cards, candy, and related merchandise, a market estimated to be more than $219 million in 1998. In December 1997 American Greetings tapped into the world of electronic commerce by promoting its cards, flowers, chocolates, and gifts via America Online at a site that had previously been known as AOL’s Card-o-Matic store. American Greetings invested $3 million initially, committed to the arrangement for three years, and agreed to pay millions more in the future. The venture, which had been announced in October, was launched at about the same time that Hallmark began an on-line marketing partnership with the company operating Yahoo!, an Internet search engine. Although some of Hallmark’s on-line cards were free, American Greetings charged for all its cards.
American Greetings was also one of 65 businesses that began marketing merchandise through Compu-Serve’s Electronic Mall on the World Wide Web in March. In addition, the company collaborated with SmarTalk TeleServices in an on-line promotion before Mother’s Day, from April 22 through May 11. Customers who purchased American Greetings merchandise were awarded free telephone time, and customers could follow a link to SmarTalk’s site on the Internet. American Greetings products were also featured at the redesigned Internet site of a third company that offered telephone services, MCI Communications Corp. Meanwhile, Gibson Greetings invested $6 million for an equity in Greet Street, an Internet site where the company could market its cards. Gibson also made an agreement with Firefly, a software company, to market cards through Firefly products. By the end of the year Gibson was preparing to launch its first television advertising campaign to promote its popular bean bag toys. The company had lost $28.6 million in 1994 but had made a profit of $900,000 in the first half of 1995. In that year Gibson wanted to sell either its greeting card business or its Cleo, Inc., gift wrap division. Although American Greetings expressed interest in merging with the greeting card division, Gibson would not agree to the arrangement because of possible antitrust complications.

MARKETING STRATEGY
One of Hallmark’s strongest selling points was the popularity and widespread recognition of the brand. In a 1995 survey by UPS Equitrend, consumers preferred the Hallmark brand more than 18 times as often as its closest competitor. When asked to name a brand of greeting cards, 91 percent of consumers mentioned Hallmark, and 84 percent mentioned Hallmark first. The company had built its brand equity by insisting on excellence, continually pushing its creative staff to be innovative, developing new ways to help Hallmark outlets and other retailers market the company’s merchandise, and conducting research to determine consumer response to the company and its products. ‘‘The marketplace is changing, and consumers’ needs are always evolving, but excellence remains at the top of our priority list,’’ said Hallmark’s Van Auken. ‘‘Through our products, our advertising, our retail environments, and even our World Wide Web site, Hallmark creates experiences to strengthen the tremendous equity of the Hallmark brand. So the real good news is, we’re on the right track, and consumers see it.’’
In 1996 Hallmark had begun to employ a new, multifaceted marketing strategy that included launching the ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ advertising campaign to promote general awareness of the brand. Of the $175 million Hallmark spent each year for marketing, it budgeted $50 million for the ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ campaign in 1996 and $44 million in 1997. The campaign, developed by the Leo Burnett USA advertising agency in Chicago, was intended to motivate consumers to act on their preference for the Hallmark brand when they purchased greeting cards and other personal expression products. The campaign centered on a consumer’s impulse to look at the back of a greeting card to see whether it was a Hallmark. ‘‘Sneaking a peek’’ was portrayed as a commonplace indulgence that required enviable adroitness. The broadcast commercials featured a young couple who verified that they ‘‘cared enough to send the very best’’ by glancing furtively at the backs of cards they received from each other. Celebrities appeared in some of the television commercials during 1997; one spot showed three women checking for the Hallmark insignia on the backs of Valentine’s Day cards they had received from singer Ray Charles. Another spot showed a baby in a bassinet looking at the ‘‘Hallmark’’ on a card. The commercials aired during popular prime-time television programs such as Friends, Frasier, Mad about You, and Home Improvement. The campaign also included advertisements in print media. These ads, which made the back covers of magazines such as Good Housekeeping and National Geographic look like the backs of Hallmark cards, ran in 115 publications in 1996 and 125 publications in 1997. Most of them featured a single line of text that was tailored for each magazine. Other ads on the backs of more than 100 magazines consisted of the Hallmark name only.

OUTCOME
The ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ campaign received an Effie Award in 1996 for effectiveness and creativity in advertising. Hallmark’s research from the spring of 1997 indicated that 86 percent of consumers felt positive about the company’s advertising. In October 1997 Hallmark’s brand equity was ranked fourth among 282 national brands in a study by Total Research Corporation. The study analyzed how well consumers recognized each brand and their perception of the quality associated with it. In another survey USA Today’s Ad Track reported that 31 percent of respondents liked the ‘‘Sneak a Peek’’ campaign, compared with a survey average of 22 percent. The campaign was particularly popular with its primary target market; 36 percent of women liked the ads. In contrast, 21 percent of men liked them. Only 4 percent of the respondents said they disliked the ads, compared with a survey average of 12 percent. Consumers age 65 or older liked the campaign best; 37 percent gave it the highest scores for popularity. The Hallmark ads were among only a few in the survey to receive high marks for both popularity and effectiveness.
The company maintained its dominance in the $7 billion greeting card industry with sales of $3.4 billion in 1997, $3.6 billion in 1996, and $3.4 billion in 1995. The market remained strong and was expected to expand because the average age of the population was increasing, and older people tended to send more greeting cards. Additional sales were expected as card companies customized more of their products for target markets.

WORRIED ABOUT BILL CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
In 2000 the largest tax-preparation company in the Unites States, H&R Block, Inc., was venturing beyond the niche industry in which it had excelled for 45 years. After a series of acquisitions and changes in upper management, the firm known for preparing tax returns began touting its new mortgage and brokerage services, financial-planning services, and line of personal-finance software. The company’s executives also wanted to brand H&R Block as a financial service available to all Americans, not just high-profile businesses. Assimilating all of the company’s changes into one advertising message, H&R Block released its ‘‘Worried about Bill’’ campaign. Created by the advertising agency Young & Rubicam, ‘‘Worried about Bill’’ broke nationally on January 12, 2000. H&R tripled its advertising budget to finance the $100 million campaign, which employed television, radio, print, and outdoor advertisements. Most of the campaign’s 21 television spots featured the fictional character Bill, who, as the April 15 tax deadline approached, grew increasingly anxious while preparing his taxes. The commercials depicted the frazzled Bill becoming so obsessed with the task that he ignored his wife’s attempts at seduction, allowed his daughter to stay out all night, and eventually looked to his daughter’s boyfriend for financial advice. The campaign’s storyline culminated with Bill, delirious from reading his 1099 tax form, incinerating his financial records in the backyard barbecue.
The campaign collected the Best of Show and two Gold awards for the broadcast category at the 32nd annual American Advertising (ADDY) Awards. It also garnered two Gold awards in the television competition at the One Show’s 2001 ceremony. Besides its ad-industry success, the campaign helped H&R Block boost its 2000 sales 38 percent over the previous year’s sales. David Byers, the company’s chief marketing officer, explained to USA Today, ‘‘We’re very happy with the creativity. The feedback we’ve gotten from consumers has been that it’s been enormously successful for us.’’ Much to Young & Rubicam’s astonishment, H&R Block opened its advertising account up for review only a few months after ‘‘Worried About Bill’’ began.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Henry and Richard Bloch, brothers from Kansas City, Missouri, first offered their tax-preparation services in 1946 under the name United Business Company. The business quickly grew after the Bloch brothers franchised it. Wanting to change the name United Business Company but afraid that consumers would pronounce their last name as ‘‘blotch,’’ Henry and Richard renamed the business H&R Block in 1955. Later in the 1970s Henry appeared in television spots for the company and assured his audience that their taxes were safe with H&R Block.
In 1996 Young & Rubicam won the firm’s advertising account. Some of the agency’s early work for H&R Block included a 20-second radio spot titled ‘‘Proctor,’’ which stressed the importance of privacy by humorously featuring a street-corner proctology exam. The magazine Advertising Age deemed ‘‘Proctor’’ the best radio commercial of 1998. That year H&R Block spent an estimated $30 million on advertising. In 1999 the firm spent $28 million on advertising during the first nine months. Believing that his company could offer more services to its preexisting customers, newly elected H&R Block president Mark Ernst wanted to brand the business as more than just a tax preparer. In 1993 the company had purchased the personal-finance-software company MECA Software; to expand its mortgaging services H&R Block purchased Fleet Financial Group’s Option One Mortgage; and in 1999 the company expanded its brokerage services by acquiring discount brokers Olde Financial Discount. By late 1999 the firm wanted Young & Rubicam to unify its services under the H&R Block brand. The Delaney Report quoted H&R Block chief marketing officer David Byers as saying in 1999, ‘‘We’re going through a major transformation—moving from being a one product company to a financial services powerhouse. H&R Block is a brand that is ubiquitous. We want to capitalize on that as well as on the high degree of trust the consumer has in the brand.’’

TARGET MARKET
‘‘Worried about Bill’’ targeted its preexisting small and medium-sized business customers that trusted H&R Block for their tax preparation but that still relied on brokerages such as the Charles Schwab Corp., Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch & Company for financial planning, mortgaging, and investing. In addition to businesses, the campaign also targeted individuals with similar financial needs. Differing from H&R Block’s advertising during the late 1990s, which suggested that H&R Block was the best firm for preparing taxes, ‘‘Worried about Bill’’ communicated to audiences that the firm offered a wider range of financial services. According to Greg Farrell of USA Today, the campaign attempted the transform ‘‘H&R Block from tax preparer to full financial services company for Middle America.’’ By early 2000 the surge of young entrepreneurs within the burgeoning technology sector had expanded America’s newly wealthy crowd. According to market researcher Spectrem Group, the number of U.S. households with more than $1 million in assets had doubled from 3.45 million in 1994 to 7.1 million in 2000. Spectrem Group also reported that 44 percent of this population felt overwhelmed by the amount of time needed to manage their assets. Sixty percent of the same population believed that there was too much information regarding financial planning. ‘‘Worried about Bill’’ suggested that using H&R Block’s services would make organizing their finances easier.

COMPETITION
The ad agency Emmerling Post released a series of print ads for the asset-management branch of financial holding company the Phoenix Companies in 2000. One print ad featured the text ‘‘Money. It’s not what it used to be,’’ above a picture of a queen dressed in ostentatious clothing beside another woman wearing black leather and a tiara. Other print ads stated, ‘‘Some people still inherit wealth, the rest of us have no choice but to earn it.’’ Specifically targeting an audience composed of the newly wealthy, a third print ad featured a casually dressed young man standing beside a dapper-looking gentleman with the copy, ‘‘New money is different than old money. For one thing, it’s younger.’’ Instead of repeating the trends of other asset-management firms that placed print ads in financial magazines, Phoenix Companies placed Henry appeared in television spots for the company and assured his audience that their taxes were safe with H&R Block.
In 1996 Young & Rubicam won the firm’s advertising account. Some of the agency’s early work for H&R Block included a 20-second radio spot titled ‘‘Proctor,’’ which stressed the importance of privacy by humorously featuring a street-corner proctology exam. The magazine Advertising Age deemed ‘‘Proctor’’ the best radio commercial of 1998. That year H&R Block spent an estimated $30 million on advertising. In 1999 the firm spent $28 million on advertising during the first nine months. Believing that his company could offer more services to its preexisting customers, newly elected H&R Block president Mark Ernst wanted to brand the business as more than just a tax preparer. In 1993 the company had purchased the personal-finance-software company MECA Software; to expand its mortgaging services H&R Block purchased Fleet Financial Group’s Option One Mortgage; and in 1999 the company expanded its brokerage services by acquiring discount brokers Olde Financial Discount. By late 1999 the firm wanted Young & Rubicam to unify its services under the H&R Block brand. The Delaney Report quoted H&R Block chief marketing officer David Byers as saying in 1999, ‘‘We’re going through a major transformation—moving from being a one product company to a financial services powerhouse. H&R Block is a brand that is ubiquitous. We want to capitalize on that as well as on the high degree of trust the consumer has in the brand.’’

TARGET MARKET
‘‘Worried about Bill’’ targeted its preexisting small and medium-sized business customers that trusted H&R Block for their tax preparation but that still relied on brokerages such as the Charles Schwab Corp., Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch & Company for financial planning, mortgaging, and investing. In addition to businesses, the campaign also targeted individuals with similar financial needs. Differing from H&R Block’s advertising during the late 1990s, which suggested that H&R Block was the best firm for preparing taxes, ‘‘Worried about Bill’’ communicated to audiences that the firm offered a wider range of financial services. According to Greg Farrell of USA Today, the campaign attempted the transform ‘‘H&R Block from tax preparer to full financial services company for Middle America.’’ By early 2000 the surge of young entrepreneurs within the burgeoning technology sector had expanded America’s newly wealthy crowd. According to market researcher Spectrem Group, the number of U.S. households with more than $1 million in assets had doubled from 3.45 million in 1994 to 7.1 million in 2000. Spectrem Group also reported that 44 percent of this population felt overwhelmed by the amount of time needed to manage their assets. Sixty percent of the same population believed that there was too much information regarding financial planning. ‘‘Worried about Bill’’ suggested that using H&R Block’s services would make organizing their finances easier.

COMPETITION
The ad agency Emmerling Post released a series of print ads for the asset-management branch of financial holding company the Phoenix Companies in 2000. One print ad featured the text ‘‘Money. It’s not what it used to be,’’ above a picture of a queen dressed in ostentatious clothing beside another woman wearing black leather and a tiara. Other print ads stated, ‘‘Some people still inherit wealth, the rest of us have no choice but to earn it.’’ Specifically targeting an audience composed of the newly wealthy, a third print ad featured a casually dressed young man standing beside a dapper-looking gentleman with the copy, ‘‘New money is different than old money.
For one thing, it’s younger.’’ Instead of repeating the
trends of other asset-management firms that placed print
ads in financial magazines, Phoenix Companies placed

SINGLE MALT CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
Having established what constituted a high advertising budget for its Glenfiddich brand of scotch, nearly $1.7 million, William Grant & Sons Ltd. at the end of 1998 moved its account from New York-based McCann-Erickson Worldwide to a much smaller firm, Gyro Worldwide in Philadelphia. The change marked the end of McCann’s three-year ‘‘The Friday Scotch’’ campaign. Scotch whisky was not usually a product whose advertising attracted enormous attention in the United States, simply because it was not marketed on television or radio. Nor had Glenfiddich or its family-owned Scottish distillery attained enormous exposure in the American market—despite the fact that it was the world’s leading brand of single-malt scotch. For that matter Glenfiddich’s 1998 advertising itself did not make headlines:
the real story was the gathering resurgence of scotch in general and of single-malt scotch in particular—a trend on which Glenfiddich and its competitors sought to capitalize. ‘‘About five years ago,’’ wrote Jerry Shriver in USA Today in 1998, ‘‘a wave of well-heeled consumers began rebelling against the prevailing low-fat/abstemious lifestyle.’’ Shriver went on to note, ‘‘distinctive and pricey single-malt scotches began elbowing aside generic blend whiskies. Then, cigar smokers helped revive cognac, port, and bourbon sales.’’
Despite the renewed interest in scotch among the youthful set, single-malt scotch whisky still suffered from an association with old age, according to Lisa Buckingham in the Guardian: ‘‘Think of whisky and the picture which most readily springs to mind is that of a greying cardigan wearer, nestled contentedly in a high-backed armchair. It is an impression most distillers would give their right arm to eradicate.’’ Age and the changing of the guard between generations were themes that had animated the advertising of Glenfiddich for many years.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Scotch whisky received its name for a simple reason: it came only from Scotland, which in the 1990s had some 100 distilleries. Most of these were of long standing, though few had remained in the hands of their founders’ descendants from the beginning. Thus William Grant & Sons, established in the 1850s and led some 140 years later by the great-great-grandchildren of the founders, was an exception.
The term ‘‘single-malt scotch’’ had little meaning until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Up until that time all scotch was made from malted barley and was distilled unblended; then a distiller by the name of Usher began blending high-grade scotch with less expensive varieties of whisky, using water to further extend the mixture. The resulting whisky was not only cheaper than single-malt but also weaker, which actually proved to be an advantage since it made it more appealing to a wider range of drinkers.
Another benefit to the distiller was the fact that blends were easier to control. Each batch of single malt tended to have its own level of quality, which was consistent throughout the whole batch but did not extend to future batches. The many variables in a blend actually made it more predictable, since a distiller could use varying mixtures to correct for anomalies such as bitterness.
Thanks to these factors, single-malt had all but disappeared by the end of World War II. Scotch itself continued to be popular, but by the late 1960s liquor consumption began to decline and was increasingly confined to older and older drinkers. The young, who became ever more health-conscious in the 1980s, saw liquor as something their parents drank. Yet in the early to mid-1990s there came a popular backlash against those values of the 1980s. This was accompanied by the stigmatization of ‘‘political correctness’’ and an embracing of fashions from the 1950s and early ‘60s, albeit reinterpreted for the ‘90s. The change in the zeitgeist extended to diet: thus red meat, vilified for many years, was in again. So were martinis, cigars instead of cigarettes, and single-malt scotch.

TARGET MARKET
Driving the new trends toward single-malt scotch and other fashions was the same youthful market that made crooner Tony Bennett one of the most popular performers on MTV. In 1998 James B. Arndorfer of Advertising Age speculated that William Grant would introduce ‘‘shooter-type drinks aimed at young adults,’’ and though a William Grant executive declined to comment on this supposition, vice chairman Grant Gordon—great-grandson of one of the company’s founders—told a reporter for the Indian edition of Business Line that ‘‘Our targetgroup all over the world is the 25-30 age.’’ Gordon went on to add something that seemed to contradict his first statement: ‘‘Whisky is for mature drinkers.’’ What he meant, of course, was that it was not for people who had merely reached legal drinking age, a clientele more inclined toward beer. The youngest drinkers, after all, would not typically be able to afford the prices associated with higher grades of scotch. According to Peter Simoncelli, food and beverage director at the Four Seasons hotel in Chicago, ‘‘the trend is to order the 18-or 25-year-old selections at prices up to $23 a pour.’’ Such prices fit with the upscale ‘‘menus’’ of cigar bars. ‘‘Cigar rooms in restaurants provide a clublike setting,’’ said Curt Burns of Chicago’s Hudson Club, quoted in the Orlando Sentinel, ‘‘and since it takes time to smoke a great cigar, it’s tempting to sip a special spirit too. The need to spend $10 to $18 for a snifter hasn’t scared anyone off.’’ Burns was referring to brandy or cognac, but similar rules applied to single-malt scotches. Yet price, combined with the long-standing image associated with scotch, meant that brands such as Glenfiddich had to overcome resistance among the young. According to Mike Dennis in SuperMarketing, a British survey in 1997 revealed that 62 percent of regular whisky drinkers were 50 years old or older.

COMPETITION
The British study also showed that 61 percent of vodka drinkers, by contrast, were in the 18-to-34 age group. Vodka, the star component in the martini, thus represented one of Glenfiddich’s primary competitors. Then there were the 100-plus makers of scotch whisky. Dominating the scotch industry, in terms of quality appraisal if not sales, were six distilleries that earned a five-star rating from British connoisseur Michael Jackson, arguably the world’s leading authority on scotch. These six distilleries were the Macallan, Auchentoshan, the Glenlivet, Highland Park, Lagavulin, and Springbank. As for the top scotch in terms of U.S. sales, that position was held by Dewar’s; but Glenfiddich still held the lead in Great Britain, with a 22 percent market share, and in the world, where it enjoyed a 27 percent share. According to an October 1998 report in the Herald, three brands had managed to overcome vicissitudes in the market, such as a decline in overall growth of whisky sales in Europe and North America. These three brands were Glenfiddich, Laphroaig, and Glenmorangie, each of which had reached a ‘‘respectable’’ 13 percent increase in sales during the year. Of Glenfiddich, a commentator in Off Licence News (‘‘off licence’’ is the British term for a liquor store) wrote, ‘‘It is sold in 190 nations. Considering [that] the United Nations has just 185 members, that’s pretty impressive brand penetration.’’ Hence William Grant marketing manager Patrick Tully spoke proudly of Glenfiddich as the ‘‘category captain.’’ Certainly maintenance of a distinct identity proved crucial in a heavily segmented industry. William Rice in the Orlando Sentinel quoted Ronny Millar of United Distillers as saying, ‘‘One thing is clear: if you try to duplicate a whisky at another distillery, it won’t work.’’ But in the sudden rush to single-malt brands that characterized the market during the late 1990s, numerous scotch makers either attempted to get on the bandwagon or to shore up existing offerings. Dewar’s announced plans in 1998 to introduce a ‘‘high malt content’’ 12-year-old scotch, and Bowmo represented a ‘‘cask strength’’ malt. The latter had a higher alcohol content than most single malts, up to 120 proof; Glenfiddich also marketed its own cask strength variety.

MARKETING STRATEGY
In 1996 Glenfiddich and McCann-Erickson ran 90-second spots on British television in a campaign that cost 1.5 million pounds, or about $2.5 million. The spots focused on a father and son, whose dialogue emphasized the concept of scotch as a tradition passed down through generations. At the end of the commercial, the two shook hands, and the father handed his son a small bottle of Glenfiddich.
This advertising represented a shift from past Glenfiddich marketing, which was built around images of Scottish heritage and time-honored techniques of distilling.
In the United States at about the same time,
McCann-Erickson launched ‘‘The Friday Scotch,’’ a series of print ads centering around the idea of scotch as an element of good times and celebration. During this period William Grant dramatically increased its advertising, establishing an annual budget as high as $10 million for all its brands. In 1997 it devoted $3 million to Glenfiddich and Frangelico alone, and by 1998 it was spending 1 million pounds, or about $1.68 million, on Glenfiddich.
‘‘We have outstanding brands,’’ Mark Teasdale, senior vice president for marketing, told Advertising Age in April 1998, ‘‘and we’re going to aggressively get back to building their upscale status.’’ At the same time William Grant moved away from its exclusive relationship with McCann, first by signing Grace & Rothschild of New York to handle all brands except for Glenfiddich. Teasdale suggested that the company would be reviewing its ‘‘Friday Scotch’’ campaign but declined to discuss future plans; meanwhile, as Arndorfer reported in Advertising Age, Glenfiddich sales in the stateside market had leveled off at 95,000 cases in 1996, the last year for which sales information was available.
By December 1998 Glenfiddich was running a new campaign in Britain. Posters displayed at bus stops and shopping centers asked ‘‘How much do you love your next-door neighbour?’’ and ‘‘How much do you love your father-in-law?’’ According to a report in Off Licence News, First Drinks Brands, distributor of Glenfiddich in Great Britain, had conducted research which showed that ‘‘consumers hold their beloved bottle of single malt in such high esteem that they are likely to hide it away when expecting a high influx of visitors, and offer their guest less prized drams instead.’’

OUTCOME
William Grant spent one million pounds on the British poster campaign and by the end of 1998 was prepared for a new assault on the U.S. market—with a new advertising agency. Thus on one of the last business days of the year, December 22, the New York Times reported that the company was prepared to drop its ‘‘Friday Scotch’’ campaign. According to Teasdale, the latter had run ‘‘for about three years and delivered some solid numbers,’’ but apparently it was time for a change. That change came with the December selection of Gyro Worldwide as the U.S. agency for Glenfiddich. McCann would still handle other advertising throughout the world, but the choice of Gyro represented a clear desire to appeal to a more youthful, MTV-influenced market. The Philadelphia agency, as the New York Times reported, was ‘‘known for provocative campaigns aimed at consumers in the 20’s and 30’s for such products as clothing, alcoholic beverages, and cigarettes.’’ Gyro’s techniques had not always won praise from critics of advertising: its print ads for clothing retailer Zipper Head, for instance, showed convicted mass murderer Charles Manson along with the headline, ‘‘Everyone has the occasional urge to go wild and do something completely outrageous.’’
In 1999 a new William Grant marketing director, Heather Graham, signaled the company’s interest in a new agency to handle its British advertising, primarily on television. During the spring of that year, it launched an agency review with the help of pitch consultant Agency Assessments, and by July BMP DDB had won the British account for William Grant. Universal McCann would continue to oversee media buying in the British market. If anything was clear about William Grant in general, or its Glenfiddich single-malt advertising in particular, it was the fact that changes were afoot. As Off Licence News reported in November 1998, ‘‘there are clearly busy times ahead for Glenfiddich and William Grant. Whether the brand succeeds in maintaining the momentum in the malt market or not over the next few years, no one will be able to turn around and accuse it of not trying.’’

ON THE WINGS OF GOODYEAR CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
Upon regaining its title as the world’s largest tire manufacturer in 1999, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company broke sales records and was busy collecting the tattered market shares of its competitors. Its competitor Bridgestone/Firestone Retail & Commercial Operations suffered notably in 2000, when tires made by the company malfunctioned, causing some 200 deaths. In an attempt to gain even more ground over the competition and create a campaign outside of its traditional format, Goodyear decided to embark upon a new campaign. Goodyear awarded its $60 million advertising contract to San Francisco–based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The resulting television and print campaign, called ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear,’’ began over Labor Day weekend in 2001. The agency tailored ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear’’ for viewers who were previously unresponsive to product-centered tire commercials. ‘‘It really wasn’t about the tires. It was more about the role that tires, and specifically Goodyear tires, play in people’s lives,’’ Cathryn Fischer, Goodyear’s vice president and chief global marketing officer, told the PR Newswire. Three different 30-second spots, all centering on the experience of travel, aired across network and cable programming. The commercials continued into 2003 and focused on universal travel themes; for instance, one spot depicted families from different cultures on road trips, all with children asking, ‘‘Are we there yet?’’ from the backseat. Aiming at a wider target than past campaigns, six print variations of ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear’’ appeared in consumer magazines.
By 2003 Michelin North America and Bridgestone had rallied back, knocking Goodyear to the number three position. Analysts attributed Goodyear’s market slip to its restructuring attempts, which involved consolidating factories and performing cost-cutting measures. Even though ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear’’ did not draw many accolades from the ad industry, it forced all tire makers to rethink using a technical pitch to sell their products to Americans. In 2004 Goodyear ended its relationship with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and reassigned responsibilities to Arnold Worldwide, but the company continued to use the tagline ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear.’’

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Goodyear was founded in 1898 and led the world’s tire market by 1916. Throughout the twentieth century it oscillated in and out of the number one spot in the tire industry. By 1990, however, Goodyear had been suffering so drastically that it lost money for the first time since the Great Depression. With the help of CEO Stanley Gault, Goodyear by 1999 had rallied back and regained its position as market leader. Gault moved the company’s tire sales outside Goodyear’s retail stores by forging partnerships with Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Sears. Goodyear also benefited from the misfortune of its competitor Firestone when Firestone Wilderness AT tires malfunctioned on Ford Explorers. Ford replaced them with Goodyear-made tires.
In 2001 Goodyear ended its 15-year relationship with ad agency J. Walter Thompson, which had orchestrated Goodyear’s straight-shooting ‘‘Serious Freedom’’ campaign. The campaign included spots that explained to consumers the inner workings of tires. Advertising commentators criticized ‘‘Serious Freedom,’’ along with campaigns launched by Michelin and Bridgestone, for not differentiating the brands from one another. Except for a handful of tire enthusiasts, most consumers described tire commercials ‘‘simply as a lot of tires,’’ Fischer told the PR Newswire. In an attempt to reach a wider audience, Goodyear hired Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to craft its advertising. Saul Ludwig, an industry analyst, said to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, ‘‘Goodyear is getting in with their new ad program, while Firestone is on the sidelines, and Michelin is in the process of changing their advertising. Goodyear hasn’t had a brand problem. Goodyear is acting out of strength, not out of weakness.’’

TARGET MARKET
Goodyear’s new campaign targeted a much broader market than its previous ‘‘Serious Freedom’’ campaign, which had appealed to male, sports-orientated tire consumers. In contrast ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear’’ focused on safety-minded consumers with an affinity for travel. Awareness about tire-safety issues, however, did not automatically translate into brand awareness. ‘‘Surprisingly, even with all the Firestone stuff, it’s not on people’s minds,’’ Harold Sogard, general manager of Goodby, explained in an interview with the Plain Dealer. ‘‘If you go ask your neighbors what kind they are driving on, they don’t have a clue.’’ Research conducted before the campaign showed that most consumers never purchased tires with a brand in mind. The company concluded that explaining tire safety with a heartfelt narrative would make a more vivid impression.
To make sure the ads connected with consumers, Goodyear first screened the campaign for 20,000 of its employees. A.J. Faught, vice president of Goodyear affiliate Northwest Tire & Service in Flint, Michigan, told Tire Business, ‘‘So many tire ads look so technical, which doesn’t appeal to anyone other than the enthusiast. This campaign goes straight to the point about safety. Safety is a big issue right now with consumers, who don’t want to have to worry about their tires.’’ Goodyear employees felt that the new campaign was more ‘‘touchy-feely’’ and that it would indeed strike a chord with a larger demographic.

COMPETITION
Bridgestone/Firestone had worked its way up to be the world’s largest tire manufacturer by 2003. This was despite the fact that Firestone tires had notoriously shredded on Ford Explorers in 2000, leading to the deaths of more than 200 people. Further investigation into the tragedy’s causes shifted blame onto Ford. One source quoted a Ford Motors spokesperson as admitting, ‘‘Something about the car caused it to roll over and crash, no matter what tires it was riding on.’’ In 2000 Bridgestone/Firestone reported a $2.8 billon loss over the previous year. By 2002 Bridgestone had rebounded with a sales growth of 16.5 percent, reaching almost $19 billion and surpassing Goodyear’s $13.8 billion. Until 2001 Bridgestone had primarily advertised with sponsorships at motor-sports events. After 2000 the company began moving advertising into wider markets, shifted efforts from Firestone to Bridgestone, and premiered two TV spots at the start of the 2002 Olympic Games. For the first six months of 2001 Bridgestone spent $12 million on advertising, a significant increase from the $400,000 the same period the year before. Despite the accidents Bridgestone continued marketing Firestone tires. Grey Worldwide, the advertising firm handling the Bridgestone account, told Advertising Age in 2002, ‘‘We are not going to abandon a more than 100-year-old brand. Firestone has a rich heritage and it’s the tire you can rely on.’’
While Goodyear’s ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear’’ campaign ran, its competitor Michelin drifted between being the second- and third-largest tire manufacturer in the world. Focusing most of its efforts in North America, the South Carolina corporation had $7 billion in sales during 2002 and grew 14 percent. In 2002 Michelin launched a television, print, and outdoor campaign that featured Michelin’s longtime mascot, Bibendum, the plump character made of white tires. The campaign’s first TV spot, ‘‘Guardian Angels,’’ was created by Palmer Jarvis DDB and capitalized on the consumer’s need for safety. The 30-second commercial featured Bibendum making snow angels, followed by the tagline ‘‘Your guardian angel this winter.’’ Another Michelin spot, ‘‘Shuttle,’’ featured Bibendum entering a NASA space shuttle, which also used Michelin tires, just before its launch. The campaign focused primarily on consumer satisfaction and safety issues, as opposed to tire performance.

MARKETING STRATEGY
Before releasing the ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear’’ campaign, Goodyear had 20,000 of its employees preview the first television spots in August of 2001. Each 30-second commercial centered on a specific theme: carpooling, family vacations, and the morning commute. All three aired for the public during Labor Day weekend, and six print ads began appearing in consumer magazines such as Time, People, and Newsweek. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners wanted to venture outside Goodyear’s previous target market, sports-centric males. The television spots ran during a wide range of prime-time television programs, including 60 Minutes, The Drew Carey Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, and 48 Hours. Firestone’s disaster had made the public acutely sensitive to tire safety, a concept Goodby drove home with ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear.’’ The campaign attempted to imply that Goodyear’s tires would keep drivers and passengers safer, which in turn would increase consumer desire for Goodyear tires. One 30-second spot, ‘‘Carpooling,’’ which dwelled exclusively on the theme of safety, featured a young girl being carpooled. The spot’s voice-over warned, ‘‘She’s not your daughter, but if you give her a ride home, she might as well be.’’ Another spot, ‘‘Morning Commute,’’ carried a lighter tone and featured a car full of office workers. The driver was constantly swerving to avoid random furniture and housewares left in the road.
One of the campaign’s most memorable spots, first airing on September 1, 2001, featured four families from different ethnic backgrounds on road trips. The spot, directed by Bryan Buckley of the production company Hungry Man, played on the universality of bored children enduring family road trips. The commercial began with an American family traveling in a midsize sedan. A little girl in the back seat asked, ‘‘Are we there yet?’’ to which the father grunted, ‘‘No.’’ The next shot featured a second family road-tripping through snow-capped mountains, and a similar ‘‘Are we there yet?’’ exchange took place, but in subtitled Russian. A third road trip, in the middle of a rainstorm, unfolded, but this time the family spoke Chinese. The last shot featured an African family all speaking a tribal click dialect and speeding across the desert in a Land Rover. Two young boys in back asked if they had arrived at their destination yet. The mother finally snapped, ‘‘If you ask me that again, I have to stop this car!’’
Later television spots, gravitating around similar themes of safety and introducing Goodyear’s Run-Flat technology, broke in 2003. One television spot, ‘‘Screw,’’ showed a screw tumbling from a skyscraper and onto the street. After a car ran over it, a voice-over explained, ‘‘Sharp steel is no match for smart rubber. Tires with Run-Flat technology.’’ Print ads ran during 2003 as well. Harry Cocciolo, creative director for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners during 2003, told Adweek, ‘‘We tried to find ways to remind people that tires can really make a difference. The Run-Flat technology is being used by Humvees in the military. These are really great proof points that haven’t been taken advantage of.’’ Adweek selected the Goodyear commercial ‘‘Bouncing Balls’’ as one of the best spots of April 2003. The surreal spot featured a driver heading down a street that suddenly filled with bouncing balls. Seconds later children began chasing the balls. The driver slammed on his brakes, and a voice-over remarked, ‘‘The unexpected can be planned for. Tires with proven stopping power.’’

OUTCOME
By 2003 Goodyear had again slipped to number three among tire makers. But despite the fact that ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear’’ coincided with a decline in Goodyear’s sales (from $14.1 billion to $13.8 billion in one year), the campaign was important for reshaping the advertising paradigm that tire makers had used for years. As John Polhemus, president of Goodyear’s North American operations, told Tire Business, ‘‘It’s a dramatic departure from the type of product-and-technologyfocused advertising that Goodyear has used in the past, and quite frankly, a departure for the tire industry itself.’’ In 2002 Michelin and Bridgestone began tailoring advertising efforts around safety and brand awareness instead of product design.
The majority of industry analysts blamed Goodyear’s 2002 backslide on the company’s restructuring efforts rather than on Goodby’s campaign work. The closing of factories and laying off of thousands of workers resulted in an $85 million decrease in annual operating costs. In 2003 Goodyear also sold most of its stock in Sumitomo Rubber Industries, which had sustained the company for decades. To exacerbate Goodyear’s problems even further, it became entangled in an agediscrimination lawsuit.
‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear’’ did score minor adindustry points when Adweek chose the ‘‘Bouncing Balls’’ commercial as one of the best spots of April 2003. By 2004 Goodyear had signed its creative efforts over to Arnold Worldwide, but it continued using the tagline ‘‘On the Wings of Goodyear.’’

GODADDY.COM SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
By 2004 Go Daddy Software had become a leader in the Internet domain-name registration industry, buying available domain names and then selling themto individuals and businesses for a yearly fee. In 2004 the company embarked on its first national marketing effort, contracting New York agency the Ad Store to help make Go Daddy and the GoDaddy.com website known to mainstream America via a TV spot for Super Bowl XXXIX. That Super Bowl, played on February 6, 2005, was the first since the infamous ‘‘wardrobe malfunction’’ that had resulted in pop singer Janet Jackson’s breast being exposed on the air during the previous year’s halftime show. Among the results of the public outcry following the incidentwas increased pressure on Super Bowl advertisers to avoid risque´ images and themes. Go Daddy chose to fly in the face of this pressure by running a sexually suggestive commercial that lampooned the prevailing climate of censorship.
With a 30-second Super Bowl spot costing $2.4 million, Go Daddy’s decision to advertise twice during the game represented a considerable risk for such an unknown company. Additional production expenses approached $1 million. The spot featured a buxom woman undergoing Congressional questioning in order to gain approval to appear in a commercial for GoDaddy.com. As the woman pointed to the GoDaddy.com logo on the front of her tight tank top, one of the shirt’s straps broke, a wardrobe malfunction that was met with camera flashes and shocked exclamations as the woman continued to explain what GoDaddy.com was. The commercial aired as planned during the first quarter of the Super Bowl, but then, apparently because of the protests of a National Football League executive, Fox neglected to run the spot during the second on-air slot that Go Daddy had purchased. The spot was rated one of the Super Bowl’s most memorable, but it was the controversy surrounding the network’s refusal to air it a second time that proved to be Go Daddy’s true marketing coup. The numerous media stories about Fox’s censorship of a commercial about censorship gave Go Daddy nearly $12 million in free publicity. The company continued to run TV spots featuring the tank-top-clad woman, including a spot during Super Bowl XL that made reference to the previous year’s commercial.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Bob Parsons sold his first successful company, Parsons Technology, in 1994, and in 1997 he used the proceeds to start a new company, Jomax Technologies. Unsatisfied with the Jomax name, Parsons and his staff came up with the more arresting moniker Go Daddy. As Parsons told Wall Street Transcripts, the name worked ‘‘because the domain name GoDaddy.com was available, but we also noticed that when people hear that name, two things happen. First, they smile. Second, they remember it.’’ After an unsuccessful attempt to establish the company as a source for website-building software, Parsons reinvented Go Daddy as a registrar of Internet domain names, buying unused website names and then reselling them to individuals and businesses in need of an online presence. Go Daddy also offered auxiliary services and products enabling customers to launch their sites after the domain-name purchase, including (as in the company’s early days) software for building sites. Domain-name registration, however, was a burgeoning industry as America became increasingly wired and more and more businesses found it essential to establish a Web presence. By 2004 Go Daddy had sold nearly seven million domain names and was the world’s leading registrar of domain names. Up to that point the company had done little marketing, relying primarily on word-of-mouth buzz and low prices; Go Daddy offered domain names for $8.95, compared with fees of $35 at the industry’s high end.
In late 2004 Go Daddy enlisted New York agency the Ad Store for its first sustained offline advertising campaign. The company announced that the campaign would make its TV debut during the 2005 Super Bowl, a move that drew widespread criticism, partly because of the recent history of Super Bowl advertising undertaken by dot-com companies. Dot-com advertising on the Super Bowl had been prevalent in the late 1990s and in the first few years of the new century but had been nearly absent from the game since the bursting of the Internet bubble, leading many industry observers to connect such Super Bowl airtime purchases with the fiscal irresponsibility characteristic of failed dot-coms. Parsons argued that his company was different. As he told Brandweek, ‘‘Back in ‘99 . . . dot-coms raised money on ideas that weren’t viable. But we are the leader in our industry and actually do make money.’’
The 2005 Super Bowl presented a uniquely restrictive environment for advertisers. During the previous year’s Super Bowl halftime show a much-publicized ‘‘wardrobe malfunction’’ had occurred that resulted in the on-air exposure of pop singer Janet Jackson’s breast. The uproar surrounding this incident led some critics to address what they saw as the related indecency of much of that year’s Super Bowl advertising. 2004 Super Bowl commercials singled out for censure had included a Budweiser spot featuring flatulent Clydesdale horses and numerous commercials promoting erectiledysfunction drugs. Both the National Football League and the Federal Communications Commission were exerting pressure on Fox, the broadcaster carrying the 2005 game, to ensure that newly rigorous standards of decency were upheld during Super Bowl XXXIX.

TARGET MARKET
Parsons told Brandweek that Go Daddy targeted ‘‘everyone who wants a [W]eb presence.’’ Go Daddy’s domainname prices were among the industry’s least expensive, and it offered a range of website-management services that comparably priced competitors did not; therefore, Parsons and his colleagues believed that the company would continue to grow rapidly as long as it could make a wider public aware of its brand. The Super Bowl, of course, offered one of the last giant television audiences in an age of fragmenting viewership, and it was annually the most watched television program in America by a wide margin. Super Bowl XXXIX was expected to reach 130 million U.S. viewers, though the actual number of viewers watching the game at any given time was estimated at closer to 90 million.
If Go Daddy could make a splash with an audience of this size, it could count on a much greater degree of brand awareness among the American population at large. Though that year’s restrictions on the content of Super Bowl commercials limited the degree to which advertisers could use provocative imagery and messages, Go Daddy and the Ad Store nevertheless charted an intentionally controversial course as a means of standing out from the field of high-profile advertisers. The Go Daddy commercial thus featured an attractive female model in sexually suggestive attire and in a context that directly parodied the political hysteria surrounding the previous year’s halftime incident.

COMPETITION
Among Go Daddy’s top competitors was Network Solutions, which was introduced as a technologyconsulting company in 1979, making it a veritable ancient in the online world. Network Solutions was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation in 1993 to create a single domain-name registration service for the Internet, which effectively gave the company a monopoly in the industry of domain-name registration until 1999, when the field was opened to competition. The Internet-security and telecommunications company VeriSign acquired Network Solutions at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000, for $15 billion (the largest Internet merger in history at that point). The company’s 2003 sale to Pivotal Equity was a measure of the changes in the dot-com world in the interim: the purchase price this time was $100 million.
Register.com was another of Go Daddy’s rival domain-name registrars. The company was founded as a domain-name registrar in 1994, and it was one of the five original companies selected for entry into the newly opened market in 1999. Like Network Solutions, Register.com had Internet-bubble baggage. The company made its initial public offering on March 3, 2000, a week before the Nasdaq peaked, at a price of $24 per share; by the end of that first trading day, Register.com was priced at $57.25 per share. Register.com shares climbed to $116 before the dot-com bubble definitively burst. By 2005 the company’s shares were hovering between $5 and $6 and were considered by many analysts to be a good value for the money.

MARKETING STRATEGY
The official price for 30 seconds of Super Bowl XXXIX airtime was $2.4 million, and Go Daddy bought two such blocks of time, intending to run the same commercial twice, once in the first quarter of the game and once just before the two-minute warning at the game’s end. (Media-industry insiders contended, however, that publicized Super Bowl advertising rates were akin to sticker prices on automobiles and that advertisers ultimately did not pay the full amount.) Go Daddy’s expenses were not limited to the media-buying cost; the company invested close to $1 million in production of its Super Bowl commercial, an amount of money equivalent to the yearly marketing budget of comparably sized companies. Part of this expense was a result of unforeseen problems with Fox in the weeks leading up to the game. As Tim Arnold, managing partner at the Ad Store, recounted after the fact in Adweek, Fox approved storyboards of the Go Daddy commercial on December 3, 2004 (just over two months prior to the Super Bowl, which was played on February 6, 2005), only to withdraw that approval on December 22, after the commercial was already in preproduction. After Fox placed new restrictions on the commercial—including a demand that the words ‘‘wardrobe malfunction’’ be removed from the script—the Ad Store shot ‘‘16 and a half’’ versions of the spot to account for all possible objections the network might yet make. The network continued to reject proposed versions of the commercial until the week before the game, at which point Go Daddy finally received grudging permission to use the airtime for which it had already paid in excess of $4 million.
The commercial reproduced the look of the C-SPAN network (known for its live coverage of Congressional matters), with a banner at the bottom of the screen informing viewers that they were witnessing ‘‘Broadcast Censorship Hearings’’ in Salem, Massachusetts. A woman named Nikki Cappelli (played by Candice Michelle), wearing a tight-fitting tank top and jeans in an otherwise formally dressed crowd, explained to the Congressional committee that she wanted to be in a commercial. When asked what she was advertising, she stood and pointed to the chest of her tank top, on which the GoDaddy.com name was printed, and as she began to inform the panelists about the company’s identity, a strap on her top snapped, threatening to reveal her breasts and triggering a flurry of camera flashes and gasps from onlookers. Asked what she would do in the commercial, Cappelli stood and performed a dance with her arms in the air, again triggering shocked gasps and camera flashes. A Congressional panelist then said, ‘‘Surely by now you must realize that you’re upsetting the committee.’’ Cappelli earnestly replied, ‘‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset the committee,’’ as an elderly committee member was shown putting an oxygen mask to his face. A black screen featuring the message ‘‘See more coverage at GoDaddy.com’’ then appeared—a reference to an uncensored and more sexually suggestive version of the ‘‘hearings’’ that was available for viewing on the website—and the commercial closed with the voice of a female committee member saying, ‘‘May I suggest a turtleneck?’’ The commercial never made its second appearance on the Super Bowl. After airing it in its assigned firstquarter spot, Fox decided not to run it in the fourth quarter, reportedly because of complaints made by a high-level National Football League executive.

OUTCOME
During the Super Bowl traffic to GoDaddy.com spiked by 378 percent, and a survey conducted one and then two days after the Super Bowl found that the Go Daddy commercial was the most memorable of all spots that ran during the game. It was the story of Fox’s decision not to air the commercial a second time, however, that proved most useful to the company. The censorship of a commercial that itself poked fun at overzealous censorship proved irresistible to the media, especially in the context of the ongoing commentary about standards of broadcast decency. As word of this incident spread, Go Daddy became by far the most talked-about Super Bowl advertiser. The buzz surrounding the brand in the game’s aftermath—measured as ‘‘share of voice,’’ the percentage of times that Go Daddy was mentioned in stories about the Super Bowl that ran on national, cable, and the top 50 local TV networks—was calculated at 51.4 percent between February 7 and 11, 2005. Go Daddy received nearly $12 million in free publicity, and many of the TV stories about the incident replayed portions of the commercial. Bob Parsons said in a press release, ‘‘Go Daddy accomplished exactly what it set out to achieve with its first-ever Super Bowl ad—increased brand awareness. Today, millions of people now know about GoDaddy.com, which in turn has generated significant new business.’’ The magazine Business 2.0 declared the Go Daddy Super Bowl effort the ‘‘Smartest Ad Campaign’’ of 2005.
Though Go Daddy allowed its contract with the Ad Store to expire soon after the 2005 Super Bowl, moving its creative duties in-house, the company’s subsequent advertising conformed closely to the model established by the Super Bowl commercial. The actress who played Nikki Cappelli, Candice Michelle, continued to appear in Go Daddy spots that drew overt attention to her sexual appeal, and she became known as the ‘‘Go Daddy Girl.’’ In 2006 she appeared in a Go Daddy spot that ran during the NFL Playoffs, and Go Daddy again struggled to get a spot approved for the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl XL commercial, which rehashed material from the previous year’s spot, again ran in an extended form on the company website, as did alternate versions of other Go Daddy commercials. Website visitors could read a detailed history of Go Daddy’s attempt to gain approval for its 2006 Super Bowl entry and could also view numerous spots that had been denied, suggesting that the company’s battles against censorship had become increasingly self-conscious and premeditated. Go Daddy continued to grow rapidly.