Blog 2: Moms & Babies

Bruce discusses the current events taking place in the world of advertising, in chapter two. He especially explains how media fragmentation has impacted marketing communications.  In chapter 3, he defines the “media evolution” and the manner in which consumers are now targeted.

In chapter 2, Bruce explains the four guidelines to creating iconic communication: respect the past, keep it simple, make it meaningful, and make it easy. I believe using these guidelines can allow not only the creatives, but the media and account planners, to develop efficient strategy in order to create successful advertisements. A great example of these guidelines executed effectively is the Procter & Gamble “Thank You, Mom” campaign. The primary target of most of the P&G items are mothers. They are usually the ones in the stores shopping for laundry detergent, paper towels, cosmetics, shampoos, etc. By focusing the whole campaign on motherhood, they did not add complexity to who they were targeting and therefore kept it simple and easy for everyone to connect to the advertisement in one way or another. After all, everybody can relate to concept of motherhood. The ad successfully captures the attention of the audience through emotional appeal. Another guideline they utilized is “respect the past”. Approximately in 2010, P&G released their famous “Every Little Miracle” campaign through the Pampers brand.  The campaign was centered on babies’ differences, ending with no matter the differences they are all little miracles. The “Every Little Miracle” campaign and the “Thank You, Mom” campaign share video concept similarities, showing that the Pampers campaign was taken into consideration when looking for inspiration for the P&G advertisements. The spot also provokes the audience to feel appreciation for their mothers, whether close or far away, dead or alive, therefore making it meaningful to the target audience By creating the campaign with some inspiration of their previous campaign, the Wieden + Kennedy, Portland agency did a great job in respecting an old campaign, taking elements from it, and transforming those elements into a great campaign that touched the audience.. This agency proved that successfully implementing the four guidelines could lead to great campaign.