Ad Campaigns that SELL!

When I was a boy – back during the Franco-Prussian War – my mother would occasionally take me to the store to pick up some ice cream for dinner that evening.

The guy behind the counter, enthusiastically digging into one of the tubs with his scoop and then packing the ice cream into a cardboard container, remarked to me, “It’s the fact that it’s hand-packed that makes it taste so good!”

Well, I was only nine (or maybe seven), but I was already beginning to question what was said to me by older folks, also known as adults. Surely, I thought, it’s the quality ingredients that make it taste good; whether it’s packed by hand or not would probably not make all that much difference.

Reason I’m thinking about this today is that I have been impressed again with the never-ending desire of salespeople and advertising folks to come up with hot sales points to sell their products -- something special and exclusive about their item that no other product has.

But of course there aren’t all that many exclusive features, so they have to make up stuff.

Surely everyone must be familiar with Bud Light’s newest slogan: “Drinkability.” I worked a lot with ad agencies over the years, and I’m sure the agency working on this account sweated for many hours to try to come up with something special, something unique, about Bud Light.

Not all that easy since it’s pretty much the same as other light beers.

But they hit pay dirt. “Drinkability,” shouted someone in on of those meetings. Everyone loved it. It was something, they claimed, that no other beer had. (Presumably other light beers had Chewability.)

And today I noticed that Michelob, a beer I had previously respected, also has a new slogan: it has a Smooth-Pour Bottle. This might seem to the uninitiated to be not all that important, but it’s evidently vital; it makes all the difference.

It “pours easy for a smooth taste,” claims Michelob. Other beers pour roughly, making them taste bad.

And you may have seen the beer bottle whose label changes color so you know it’s cold. What a step forward. Some of us old-timers remember when you actually had to feel the bottle to see if it was cold. And what a disappointment it was, after you had a bottle of beer in your fridge for a day or so, to notice that there was no change of color in the bottle’s label, thus giving you no hint as to its temperature. Or, as far as that goes, its drinkability.

Can you suggest any other ad campaigns based on wildly irrelevant claims?