GETTING THE MESSAGE ACROSS: What Works – What Fails Miserably

Thanks to Jonathan Spira for this contribution. Jonathan is a long-time Expert Access contributor. When the media needs experts on knowledge workers and the knowledge economy, they call Jonathan. His Basex analysts can be found quoted in leading newspapers and magazines (The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine), technology publications (CIO, Information Week, Network World, Red Herring), the international press (International Herald Tribune, Le Monde, Wirtschaftswoche, De Telegraaf), and television news programs (ABC World News Tonight, CNN).

It’s Rare

Once in a great while – and it’s rare – companies come up with great messages and slogans.

These messages and slogans share one or more characteristics, but generally they change how we think about a particular product or company and they are memorable. Volkswagen’s “Think Small” (Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1959) and Avis’ “We Try Harder” (DDB again, 1963), numbers one and ten on the list respectively, are among Advertising Age’s top 100 campaigns. Equally memorable and at the same time category-creating are McDonald’s “You deserve a break today” (Needham, Harper & Steers, 1971) and DeBeers’ “A diamond is forever” (N.W. Ayer & Son, 1948), numbers five and six on the list.

Good messages endure

Who doesn’t know M&Ms’ “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands” (Ted Bates & Co., 1954), AT&T’s “Reach out and touch someone” (N.W. Ayer, 1979) or, from  Motel 6, “We’ll leave a light on for you” (Richards Group, 1988), numbers 39, 80 and 91 on the list.  And let’s not forget number 30, Campbell Soup’s “Mm mm good” (BBDO, 1930s).

I have a few personal favorites on the list:

12.) Apple Computer, “1984,” Chiat/Day, 1984 (coming at a critical juncture for Apple, few commercials have ever been more influential).

49.) Cadillac, “The penalty of leadership,” MacManus, John & Adams, 1915.  (An advert that ran only once, and didn’t even mention automobiles or even the brand being advertised. Rather, it expressed the dilemma of the pioneer who breaks with tradition and is subject to the “fierce denial and detraction” of his competition.)

51.) Charmin, “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin,” Benton & Bowles, 1964 (does anyone not think of Mr. Whipple when entering a supermarket?)

84.) BMW, “The ultimate driving machine,” Ammirati & Puris, 1975 (40 years ago, BMW invented the concept of the sports sedan).

87.) Xerox, “It’s a miracle,” Needham, Harper & Steers, 1975 (who can forget the monks in the monastery?)

93.) IBM, Chaplin’s Little Tramp character, Lord, Geller, Federico, Einstein, 1982.

… as well as a few that aren’t (yet) on the list:

“Can you hear me now?” – Verizon Wireless

“Let your fingers do the walking” – Yellow Pages (Geers Gross, 1964)

Why did these work when hundreds of thousands of slogans and campaigns failed miserably?

The true test for a message is two-fold:

 1.) Whether the company actually messages out what it intended to say, and
2.) Whether the recipient actually understands it as the company intended

This is, as evidenced by the information highway, which is littered with failed messages, much more difficult than it would appear.

A quick look at messages from the IT industry reveals that, for the most part, the message just isn’t getting through.

THINK

THINK was one of the phrases and principles frequently used by IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Others included LEARN, STUDY, and THINK IN BIG FIGURES.  THINK appeared in IBM offices, plants, and company publications (it was the name of the IBM employee publication for many years) starting in the 1920s.  By the 1930s, THINK had begun to take precedence over other slogans at IBM.  It gained new popularity in the 1990s when, according to company legend, a researcher took a notepad with the word THINK written on it from his pocket and came up with the idea of a small, portable tool with which one could read, write, work, and think.  The rest is history.

IBM’s THINK is rare.

Most messages fall flat and miss the mark.  One that comes to mind is United Airlines’ “Rising.”  Do other airlines fail to rise?  Some messages come ever so close, but then ultimately fail. A good example of that is Miller Beer’s “It’s Miller Time” campaign. When it was launched, it required a bit of adjustment as people were going into pubs and saying “It’s Miller time, give me a Bud.”

Sometimes companies come really close. American Airlines’ “We know why you fly” would have been perfect had they only used “We know why you fly American.” Otherwise, it’s a rhetorical question that many may answer “to get from point A to point B.”

 Memorable or abominable?

What do you think?  Let me know about slogans you find memorable or abominable. Email me at messages@basex.com. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with one that requires some more thought: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”

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