COMM 1500 Chapter 12

Free Different Advertising Campaigns and Lessons they Teach Us

1. "It's Toasted" 2. "Chronic Halitosis" 3. Selling Bottled Water

Chapter 12 Timeline

1. 1833: The birth of the Penny Press comes with the first issue of The New York Sun. The economic foundation of newspapers shifts from political affiliation to advertising. Which causes a shift toward a more objective reporting to achieve a wider readership. 2. 1841: Volney Palmer sets up shop as the first ad broker at the American Newspaper Subscription and Advertising Agency, where he advised advertisers on appropriate ad copy and served as a liaison between publishers and advertisers. 3. 1869: N.W. Ayers & Son, what would be considered the first modern ad agency, is founded in Philadelphia. Although the business originally represented religious weekly magazines, it expanded into the advertising business, eventually coming up with the slogans "When it rains it pours" for Morton Salt, "I'd walk a mile for a Camel" for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, and "Be all you can be" for the U.S. Army. 4. 1906: In reaction to false claims by those selling patent medicine, the Pure Food and Drug Act is passed, giving the government the power to regulate advertising. 5. 1914: The Federal Trade Commission is established as an independent agency of the U.S. government with the primary mission of protecting consumers. The commission increases the government's regulation of advertising. 6. 1941: The first commercial on television, for Buolva watches, costs $9 to air but demonstrates the effectiveness of television advertising. 7. 1955: Psychologists start working in advertising to formulate more effective ways of wooing the American public. 8. 1959: New York agency Doyle Dane Bernbach ushers in an era of creative advertising combining a single-point sales emphasis with bold design, humor, and honesty. 9. 1980: As the Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Los Angeles Rams 31-19 in Super Bowl XIV, a Coca-Cola commercial featuring Steeler defensive lineman "Mean Joe" Green airs. Although it had debuted the previous October, the Super Bowl ad becomes an overnight sensation with fans even writing letters to Coca-Cola, and establishes the idea of telling a story rather than just offering a jingle to see a product. 10. 2000: Google rolls out AdWords, a pay-per-click service that makes performance based ads mainstream. 11. 2007: Facebook introduces the concept of behavior-based advertising by specifically targeting users' social interactions.

Branding Elements

1. Brand Essence: A process called "laddering" is often used to discover the essence of a brand and to deepen its meaning for consumers. It begins at the bottom rung, with an attribute: Jenny Craig delivers low-calorie meals providing a needed balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat. The next step would be a functional benefit of that attribute: Jenny Craig meals will facilitate healthy weight loss. The third step would be the implication of an emotional benefit: Losing weight will enhance your physical appearance and also your self-esteem. The final step on the ladder would be how the emotional benefit implies the brand's essence: Jenny Craig enhances the enjoyment of life, which becomes the consumer's goal in using the brand. With each step up the ladder, the focus is less on the attributes of the brand, and more on the significant role it plays in the lives of its consumers.9 McDonald's provides an unpretentious place to get a good meal, Old Navy is a family-oriented place to buy clothes, and Cartier watches are upscale. 2. Brand Slogan: The slogan for a brand embodies its essence, which covers not only its identity but also its philosophy and vision. Slogans are usually short, memorable phrases that draw attention to one or more key aspects of a product 3. Brand Values: In addition to attributes and benefits, a brand's identity can also represent a core set of values, such as Nike's "Just Do It" attitude. The Maytag Repairman is "the loneliest man in town" because the company values the dependability and reliability of their washing machines and dryers. At a time when American premium ice cream brands were trying to sound exotic (think Häagen Dazs and Frusen Glädjé), Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield put their ordinary faces on Ben & Jerry's ice cream and put the issues they were passionate about, such as peace and redirecting military spending toward social programs, on their pint tops and ice cream pop wrappers. Cohen knew not everybody who ate ice cream was interested in reduced Pentagon spending or saving the rain forests, but explained: "Companies do controversial marketing all the time to break through the clutter. So if you can rise above it by taking a stand against nuclear weapons instead of using some sexy young girl, why not?" 4. Brand Personality: The goal is for a successful brand identity that can be described as easily as if it were a person, which can increase brand awareness and popularity, as well as making it easier for consumers to relate to a brand. If a company had a great brand personality, consumers will have positive thoughts about the company and its products. 5. Brand Appearance: What does it look like? Sound like? Taste like? In1985, the Coca-Cola Company decided to replace the original formula for Coca-Cola. The rationale was that Coca-Cola had been steadily losing its market share to competing diet soft drinks, non-cola beverages, and customers preferring the sweeter taste of Pepsi. However, "New" Coke was a monumental marketing failure as the new cola was met with hostility by consumers. The original formula was reintroduced three months later, re-branded as "Coca-Cola Classic," but eventually went back to its original name, and what was then called Coca-Cola II was discontinued in 2002. The entire episode was considered a cautionary tale on the dangers of messing with a successful brand. On the other hand, in December 2015, Kraft quietly began selling an artificial-ingredient-free mac and cheese and only those customers who actually took the time to pay attention to the tiny print of ingredients listed on the back of the box might have noticed the change. When Kraft had announced it would get rid of the artificial ingredients in its mac and cheese, consumers had been concerned. Many companies were getting rid of artificial ingredients to satisfy consumers demanding "natural" foods. Kraft launched a self-congratulatory ad campaign announcing that they had changed their ingredients and "people didn᾽t notice a difference." 6. Brand Heritage: Brands that have been around for a long time have a history that they share with their customers and with society. With any brand there are questions as to how long it has been around and whether it has customers who have been loyal to that brand for many years. Auto manufacturers have run ads highlighting multiple generations of a family that have bought the same brand of truck or car. When you go shopping for goods, are there specific brands of ketchup, soup, peanut butter, etc., that you purchase, which are the same ones your mother bought. What are the chances that her mother bought those same brands? Additionally, we can talk about the benefits that are associated with a brand, both the practical benefits (Is the product bigger? better? cheaper?) and the emotional benefits (Does it increase pleasure? avoid or /reduce pain?).

What is driving these new compensation methods are the benefits of online advertising over tradition print and broadcast ads:

1. Cost: Electronic communication offers lower costs for online advertisements compared to offline ads, which translated to a better return than with other media. 2. Speed: As soon as ad designs are completed they can be put online without being tied to anyone else's production schedule and can also be changed or replaced just as easily. 3. Targeting: Online advertising can be targeted to reach customizable and narrow market segments, such as by using geo-targeting to display ads that are relevant to the geographical location of online users or tracking whether visitors have already seen a particular ad to avoid showing it to them over and over again. 4. Coverage: At the same time, online advertising can potentially reach everybody and anybody who goes online on the entire planet. Coverage refers to the proportion of a target audience, usually calculated in percentages, who have the opportunity to see an advertisement once. Frequency, the number of times an audience gets the opportunity to see an advertisement, can also be a factor in pricing. 5. Formatting: Promotional messages can be presented in a wide variety of ways to convey information, images, video, audio, and links, as well as having the additional advantage of being interactive. 6. Measurability: Data collection regarding the effectiveness of ads, such as the size of the actual audience responding and resulting sales, are readily available, allowing online advertisers to make adjustments to improve ad campaigns.

There are five main types of brand personalities:

1. Excitement: carefree, spirited, youthful. 2. Sincerity: genuine, kind, family-oriented, thoughtful. 3. Ruggedness: rough, tough, outdoor, athletic. 4. Competence: successful, accomplished, influential, a leader. 5. Sophistication: elegant, prestigious, pretentious

Types of Ad Appeals

1. Fear: Fear has always been a powerful motivator. In the wake of terrorist attacks or mass shootings, the sale of guns goes up. A fear appeal is designed to scare the target audience by describing a serious threat to them. The fear can be used to motivate the audience to buy a product, stop or adopt a behavior, or vote for a candidate. Examples would be anti-smoking ads showing terminal cancer patients and warning that "Smoking kills." Fear appeals are most effective when they come from a trusted source or when the objectives are easy to achieve. John Wayne, who had lost a piece of lung to cancer, once did a public service announcement for the American Cancer society in which all he said was: "We are asking you for help again this year. You᾽re lucky. It could be the other way around."14 The disadvantage is that people will try to avoid unpleasant messages and tune out the threat or decide it does not apply to them.15 2. Guilt: Guilt appeals are commonly used by charities to persuade people to make charitable donations. Working mothers are a prime target of guilt appeals. An advertisement for Juicy Juice shows a young boy riding a bicycle with training wheels, captioned: "You check his helmet. You check his training wheels. Shouldn᾽t you check the label on his juice?" Research indicates there are three ingredients required for a persuasive message to induce guilt in an audience: (1) Responsibility, because we will not feel guilty about something for which we do not feel in some way responsible; (2) Action, or lack of action, causes harm, so failing to make a charitable donation causes harm; and (3) your personal moral standards are violated.16 Guilt appeals work not only on an emotional level, but on the rational level as well, because Juicy Juice is "All natural 100% juice and Vitamin C. And nothing you can't pronounce." 3. Value: Sometimes the bottom line is simply that people want to get a good deal. When promotional messages include the idea that if you can find a better price for the same product, they will match it, they are underscoring the importance of value. 4. Belonging: A lot of people do not just buy a Harley Davidson motorcycle, they also buy Harley Davidson merchandise as well as join clubs and online communities, all of which create a sense of belonging to its customers. 5. Trust: Financial institutions not only tell us that we can trust our money with them, they also assure us there are "no hidden fees." While any brand can claim to be trustworthy, trust is ultimately earned over time as consumers have consisted experiences with a product. The goal is to establish brand loyalty, whether it is toward a particular soft drink, brand of sneaker, car company, or a political party. Trust is most important in high risk brand purchases, because the more something costs the more you want to feel that you are not making a mistake. The downside is that consumers are brutally unforgiving when promises of trust and security are broken. 6. Competition: At the heart of this type of emotional appeal is the need to "keep up with the Joneses." Starbucks is perceived as being cooler, richer, and better than other brands of coffee. Emotional appeals to competition require you to think that a particular brand delivers something better than other brands, which will make you better (or at least equal) to your peers. This applies to not only luxury brands just as Rolex watches ("Live for Greatness") or jewelry from Tiffany & Co. ("For Someone Extraordinary"), but also for non-luxury brands like a Craftsman tractor ("It᾽s the ultimate suburban accessory. Naturally it drives like a car").17 7. Trend-setting: Cigarettes are a product that often targets trend-setting males, as with the stylish Winston metal-flask-shaped S-2 cigarette package or the Camel Exotic Blends.18 The Gatorade ads with Michael Jordan that urged Americans to "Be like Mike," is an example of such an appeal. Using someone like Jordan, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, or Taylor Swift in advertisements underscores the fact that trendsetters are followed. In the age of social media some advertisers are targeting trendsetters within communities as a way to use their influence on consumers. TrenDemon has started to emphasis this type of "Word of Mouth" marketing, where instead of spending money on advertising, companies use social media to influence the trendsetters who influence their followers and choose what to share with their community. 8. Instant Gratification: The vast majority of advertising is designed to trigger impulse buying by consumers. Nobody pretends that fast food is as tasty as food prepared in a five star restaurant, but fast food is by definition "fast" (not to mention convenient and relatively inexpensive). Advertisers can cater to the cultural sense of urgency by using words like "now," "today," "in one hour of less," or "within 24 hours," to trigger the desire for instant gratification. Rebecca Minkoff decided to make the new clothing in her line᾽s Fall 2016 collection available at the time of the show or within the next 30-45 days instead of having shoppers obsessing over items and then forgetting all about them when they are finally available for purchase. By aiming her collection at consumers as much as at editors, Minkoff is changing her business model to fit a world of social media and instant gratification.20 In case you were curious, the opposite of instant gratification is long term satisfaction 9. Leadership: Be the first on your block to own the last technology or the hottest new toy. Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, be the Joneses. This type of consumer will respond strongly to marketing messages that appeal to their desire to be leaders, even though when we are talking about new technology the costs are initially higher than they will be once a product moves to a mainstream market. 10. Time: The convenience of fast food is based primarily on the value of saving time, because, after all, time is money. This is implicit when McDonald's declares "You deserve a break today." Sears advertises its new Craftsman front-propelled platinum engine key start mower with the caption, "Cuts Grass. And time." We could also look at the way advertisements use humor and sex to appeal to potential customers. Humor can make people laugh, create an emotional link with a product, and help make the ad so memorable they tell others about it. The primary purpose of using sex is to capture attention, although it rarely actually promotes product consumption.

A Brand

A brand is a product or range of products that has a set of values associated with it that are easily recognized by consumers. Brands are instantly recognizable by their names (e.g., McDonalds, Coca-Cola) and/or a symbol (e.g., the Nike swoosh, the Apple "Apple").

Bumper

A brief announcement placed between a pause in the program and its commercial break, and vice versa.

Ad broker

A person who acts as an intermediary between newspapers and advertisers.

Contextual Targeting

A process that matches ads to relevant sites in the display network using keywords or topics.

Advertising Dramas

Advertisements that use stories rather than statistics or celebrity endorsements as the primary way of trying to sell their product.

Cost-per-action (CPA)

Also called pay-per-performance (PPP), has advertisers paying publishers for the number of users who perform a specific desired activity: filling out a registration form, requesting contact, signing up for newsletter, etc. CPA is favored by direct response advertisers, who determine what the desired action will be.

Ethics: Issues in Advertising

Advertising involves ethical decisions, almost always involving shades of gray rather than black and white choices. Start with the premise of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In 1900, the explorer Ernest Shackleton posted as advertisement in the London papers for men to join his Endurance expedition to the Antarctic: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success."31 The Endurance became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed by the ice, forcing Shackleton and his men to spend two months camped on an ice flow before risking an 720-mile open-boat journey to find rescue. Consequently, Shackleton᾽s advertisement has been recognized as an ultimate example of truth telling in advertising. The only problem is nobody has actually found the ad in a London newspaper, 1900 was 14 years before Shackleton᾽s expedition left for the Antarctic, and in England the spelling is "honour" not "honor." We can appreciate the irony of someone having to make up an ad that actually tells the truth. In 1991, the car maker Volvo and its New York ad firm each paid a $150,000 penalty for a misleading television commercial that featured a structurally reinforced Volvo holding up to an oversized truck rolling over it, while vehicles from rival car companies were structurally weakened to be crushed by the monster truck. This was the first time the Federal Trade Commission required not just the advertiser but the ad agency to pay for a deceptive advertisement. Chris Moore of Ogilvy & Mather in a speech on "Ethics in Advertising," declared: An ethical brainteaser we deal with every day is: "What can you legitimately stimulate to illustrate the truth?" Before you answer "nothing!", ask yourself if a Higher Purpose would be served if Pampers and Kotex commercials showed the real thing instead of that fake blue water. With multiple government agencies empowered to take action against deceptive ads, reputable companies obviously should avoid lying, which in practical terms means they can prove what they say to lawyers and government officials. But refraining from lying is not the same thing as telling the entire truth. Full disclosure is rarely in a corporation᾽s best interest when it is trying to sell a product. In this next section we will look at the issues involving advertising to children, the impacts of advertising on health, and the dangers of excessive consumerism.

Counter Responses

At a Trump campaign event in Arizona, Reagan Escude, a Turning Point USA ambassador, told the crowd that "Nancy Green, the original, first Aunt Jemima, she was living the American Dream." Complaining that "Aunt Jemima was cancelled," Escude insisted: "She was a freed slave who went on to be the face of the pancake syrup that we love and we have in our pantries today. She fought for equality, and now the leftist mob is trying to erase her legacy. And might I mention how privileged we are as a nation if our biggest concern is a bottle of pancake syrup." Escude's critics responded that Green could not live off the earnings she made for portraying Aunt Jemima and worked as a housekeeper until just a few years before her death in 1923. Nancy Green was the advertising world's first living trademark, even though the Aunt Jemima recipe was not her recipe. She debuted as Aunt Jemima at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago. Buried in an unmarked grave in Chicago, a historian discovered her resting place in 2015. Receiving approval to place a headstone on her grave, Quaker Oats was contacted about supporting a monument for Green's grave. The corporate response was the Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima were not the same and that Aunt Jemima was a fictional character. Meanwhile, relatives of the former Aunt Jemima spokeswomen expressed concerns that their family history would be erased as Quaker Oats moved to rebrand the syrup and pancake mix. Vera Harris, whose great aunt, Lillian Richard, traveled the country promoting the Aunt Jemima brand and portraying the character for more than two decades, said: "I understand the images that white America portrayed us years ago. They painted themselves Black and they portrayed that as us. I understand what Quaker Oats is doing because I'm Black and I don't want a negative image promoted, however, I just don't want her legacy lost because if her legacy is swept under the rug and washed away, it's as if she never was a person." Signs leading into Hawkins, Texas, read "Home of Lillian Richard 'Aunt Jemima'," and the town hosts pancake festivals in her honor. However, those defending the legacy of the women who portrayed Aunt Jemima paled in significance to public uproar over changing the mascots of sports teams when the issue of racist icons moved beyond what you find in the grocery store.

Other Branding Changes

Changing icons like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's involves changing the name of the brand as well (although it raises the question of how you let consumers know this is an old product under a new name without reminding everybody of the icon's racist past). Other brands changed their names as well in response to what was happening. The Country music group Lady Antebellum announced it was dropping the "Antebellum" from their name and go by the Lady A nickname fans had been using for a long time. The group's name had come from the southern "antebellum" style home where they took their first publicity photos because it reminded them of all the music born in the south that had influenced them such as southern rock, blues, R&B, gospel and country. The announcement declared: "But we are regretful and embarrassed to say that we did not take into account the associations that weigh down the word referring to the period of history before the civil war, which includes slavery." Later that month, the Dixie Chicks changed their name to the Chicks, saying "We want to meet this moment." They also released a new song, "March March," with a music video reminding listeners to "Use your VOICE. Use your VOTE." NASCAR moved to ban the Confederate battle flag, long associated in the South with auto racing. The organization had been asked in 2015 to ban the flag, but only went as far as asking fans to leave Confederate gear at home. Five years later NASCAR declared: "The presence of the confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry. Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special. The display of the confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties."80 A true ban might be hard to enforce. Flags on pickup trucks and full flags would be easy to screen at the gate, but when there are 2000,000 fans at the track in a raucous, party-like atmosphere, it would be hard to prevent every Confederate flag. One NASCAR truck driver declared he would quit because of the ban and accused the organization of being political and catering to one group over another. Shortly after his post, the driver deleted all of his social media accounts. President Trump, who had said the Confederate flag belonged in museums when he ran in 2015, attacked NASCAR's decision and asserted it adversely affected NASCAR's television ratings. Over the 4th of July weekend the Sons of Confederate Veterans raised a 30-foot Confederate flag over a busy highway in North Carolina. After the Marine Corps banned the public display of the Confederate battle flag, the Army discussed changing the names of U.S. bases named after Confederate generals, such as Fort Bragg and Fort Hood (there are ten such bases in six Southern states). However, President Trump refused to even consider renaming the installations, tweeting: "These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a...history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom. The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars." Trump threatened to veto any military spending bill that included changing the name of military bases. During the Obama Administration, the Pentagon declined to change the names of the bases, saying "these historic names represent individuals, not cause or ideologies" and suggesting the naming of bases for Confederate generals "occurred in the spirit of reconciliation, not division." Mississippi, the last state in the country whose flag includes the Confederate battle flag (after Georgia changed its flag twice before hosting the Atlanta Olympic Games), both houses of the state legislature voted to change the flag. Bertram Hayes-Davis, the great-great-grandson of the Confederacy's president, Jefferson David, agreed with the need to change the flag, telling reporters, the "battle flag has been hijacked" and "does not represent the entire population of Mississippi." Several college athletes had said they would not compete for their schools again if the flag was not changed, and the movement was quickly supported by the head football coaches at both the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State, singer Faith Hill, and the Republican governor. The new flag design was unveiled in September and put on the November ballot for approval. Promoted as "The In God We Trust" flag, the new design features a magnolia, the state flower, against a blue background with yellow and red bars on either side. The magnolia is encircled by the words "In God We Trust," as well as 20 stars representing Mississippi as the 20th state, with a single yellow star near the top to represent the Native American people who lived on the land before colonizers arrived. Rocky Vaughn, the graphic designer who created the flag, declared, "What I wanted to do was show every Mississippian that there's a compromise out there, and we are the magnolia state. If it's appealing to the eyes, it will be accepted." Rebranding even extended to amusement parks when Disney announced it was renovating its Splash Mountain theme park to feature Tiana, the first Black "Disney princess" from the 2009 animated film The Princess and the Frog. This followed criticism of the original theme of Splash Mountain, which is based on the 1946 film Song of the South. Based on the collection of Uncle Remus stories adapted by Joel Chandler Harris, the film took place in the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. Critics have described the film's portrayal of African Americans as racist and offensive, pointing out the use of black vernacular was a stereotype and that the idyllic plantation setting was a glorification of that way of life. Because of the controversy Disney had never released Song of the South on any home video format in the United States. However, not all of the proposed changes went forward. In Duluth, Minnesota the City Council tabled an effort by the mayor to drop the word "chief" from the heads of city departments like police and fire. Critics point out that the word has a French and not Native American origin. Meanwhile, in Texas, realtors announced they would stop using "master" to describe bedrooms and bathrooms (but no suggestion as to what would be the more appropriate adjective).

Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is making sure you are hitting the right people with the right information at the right time. A million dollar Super Bowl ad is going to be seen by millions and millions of people, but while most of them are going to buy a soft drink or eat a potato chip in the next week or month or year, most of them are not going to buy a new truck any time soon. But what if advertisers had a way to target those people who actually are looking to buy a new truck in the near future? AdX, Google᾽s ad exchange, was a pioneer of contextual targeting, which allows advertisers to reach users based on keywords within their emails on a cost-per-click model. Google᾽s system analyzes the content of each webpage to determine its central theme, which can then be matched to your ad using keywords and topic selections, language and location targeting, and the visitor᾽s recent browsing history, and other factors. Ads are usually displayed as text only, appearing above, below, or to the right of the e-mail inbox. Advertisers can undertake similar campaigns with Outlook, LinkedIn In-Mail, and Yahoo. This is a very inexpensive way for advertisers to reach customers in an e-mail environment. Since performance can be seen at a keyword level it is ideal of performance driven campaigns. Additionally, AdWords is an open platform, which means it is available to everyone and the most accessible to all advertisers. Some considerations for advertisers with this approach is that text ads are not going to provide the same brand impact as media-rich image ads, that contextual targeting within Gmail can sometimes lead to irrelevant content matching, and that since it is so simple competitors will be using it and there could be multiple brands serving ads within the same e-mail environment. Customers can help increase their sales and lower their costs, by adding, editing, or removing keywords, their match type, their bid, etc. Once a campaign has been running for a while, performance data will indicate which keywords are performing better than others. Customers can increase their bids for keywords that are performing well and decrease their bids for keywords that are translating to sales. Or they could change their lowest-performing keywords to find new ones that will also perform at a high level. AdWords Help provides a Keyword Planner that functions as a workshop for building new Search Network campaigns or expanding existing campaigns.92 For example, a Google search to find out who is on the next season᾽s cast of Dancing With the Star has "Ads: related to DWTS" above the Web results for your search. In most circumstances a company can even use another company᾽s trademark for the purpose of boosting its own website. A Court of Appeals ruling held that the use of a competitor᾽s trademark to trigger a paid advertisement is unlikely to constitute trademark infringement, provided the text of the advertisement does not contain the competitor᾽s mark. Consequently, Pepsi could use Coke or Coca-Cola as keywords—and vice versa—so that those keywords would trigger ads for Pepsi to pop up. P.S. During the 2017-18 season, players in the NBA started wearing corporate logos on their jerseys as part of a three-year pilot program. The ad space will take the form of 2.5-inch square patches tailored to a sponsor᾽s logo on the left shoulder of the jersey (which is where the NBA logo used to be before it was moved to the back of the jersey several years ago). During the 2016 All-Star Game player jerseys sported logos for KIA. Each team gets to sell its own ad space to sponsors and will split the sponsorship money with the league, which is anticipated to bring in $100 million to the league each season. Currently the four major sports leagues allow corporate logos on practice gear, but the NBA᾽s move is the first allowing ad space on jerseys worn during actual games. Retailers will not be able to sell the sponsored version of jerseys, but teams can sell them to fans in their own stores.

Banner Blindness

Describes a phenomenon where users to a website consciously or unconsciously ignore both advertisement and navigational banners, regardless of where such banners are placed on a web page

"It's Toasted"

During the 1930s, Lucky Strike was the top-selling cigarette brand in the United States. In 1917, the brand began using a new slogan: "It᾽s toasted." The slogan referred to heat curing rather than sun drying of the leaf, and was intended to suggest that the process made the cigarettes taste delicious. There are two interesting facets to this story. The first is that Lucky Strike᾽s curing of tobacco did not differ from the methods of other manufacturers. Everybody did it that way. The second is "toasted" was not a term used by the tobacco industry but rather something advertising executive Percival S. Hill came up with when he smelled the delicious aroma of tobacco passing through the toasting machines. Hill asked another man what was appetizing when heat was applied to it, and when the man replied he always had toast in the morning, Hill said, "That is it--it is toasted," and created the famous advertising phrase.1 Although the original "It᾽s toasted" ads boasted about great taste, the company also claimed the process was used to "remove harmful corrosive acids (pungent irritants)." By 1927, Lucky Strike was declaring: "It᾽s toasted. Your throat protection—against irritation—against cough." By 1955, they had returned to "It᾽s toasted to taste better!" Today, the side of a Lucky Strike carton still reads: "manufacture includes the Lucky Strike process, It᾽s Toasted."2 The story of the classic Lucky Strike advertising campaign actually shows up in the first episode of Mad Men, which is obviously a gross historical inaccuracy since it is set several decades later in 1960, but certainly appropriate as an introduction to way advertising works. Everybody might do it the same way, whether we are talking about toasting tobacco or something else, but whoever says it first gets to have the practice associated with their product. After that point, anybody making the same claim essentially sounds like they are following that company᾽s lead.

Abandoning Racist Icons in 2020

Hours after the announcement regarding the Aunt Jemima brand in June 2020, other iconic brands followed suit. The image of Uncle Ben on packages of parboiled rice products had changed in recent years. The bow tie the older black man had worn (above, left photo), signifying his status as a servant, was replaced by an open collar look (above, right photo) that made Uncle Ben look more contemporary. Mars Foods, owner of the Uncle Ben's brand, announced, "We recognize that now is the right time to evolve the Uncle Ben's brand, including its visual brand identity, which we will do." Mars Foods did not know the nature of the change, or the timing, but were "evaluating all possibilities." Congara Brands, maker of Mrs. Butterworth's pancake syrup then released a statement that the company had begun a "complete brand and package review."68 The company had long claimed the brand's signature bottle was intended to evoke "a generic grandmotherly image," but many critics believe the figure was modeled on the black actress Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen, who played Prissy in Gone with the Wind. Congara declared, "We stand in solidarity with our Black and Brown communities, and we can see that our packaging may be interpreted in a way that is wholly inconsistent with our values." That night, B&G Foods announced it had initiated a review of its Cream of Wheat packaging, which featured the image of a black cook, widely believed to be based on Chicago chef Frank L. White (who died in 1938, supposedly having been paid $5 to pose for the photograph). White's image had replaced Cream of Wheat's original black mascot, Rastus, a racist caricature of black Americans that commonly appeared in blackface minstrel shows from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The name "Rastus" is considered a racial slur, and the character was depicted in early Cream of Wheat ads as a dim-witted former slave who spoke broken English and did not even know what vitamins were. Naa Oyo A. Kwate associate professor of Africana studies at Rutgers University, argues the image of White may have helped Cream of Wheat tone down the overt racism invoked by Rastus, but the subtext behind the imagery remains. Kwate points out Aunt Jemima underwent a similar transformation from the character's original inspiration by a minstrel show song to a series of black actresses hired to portray her until the 1960s. The common element for Kwate is that "You still are referencing the place of black people as servants, as your chefs. You can still draw on that legacy of what slavery meant and what black people's natural position is supposed to be—your own personal slave in a box." The pressure change brand elements quickly expanded beyond the United States and to other racial stereotypes. Colgate-Palmolive announced its Asian Darlie toothpaste and oral care line would be getting a makeover. Marketed in Chinese as "Black Person Toothpaste," Darlie's original name was "Darkie," a racial epithet (used in the film version of Gone with the Wind), and its logo was a minstrel who performed wearing blackface. When Colgate-Palmolive purchased the company in the 1980s it changed the brand name to Darlie, simply changing the "k" to an "l," and altered the black and white image on its packaging to be less offensive. The United Fruit Company's Miss Chiquita, introduced in 1944 and clearly based on the Brazilian Hollywood star Carmen Miranda, was criticized for perpetuating stereotypes of Latin Americans as primitive and Latina women as hypersexual. Chiquita brands did not respond to requests for comments on its plan to change its logo. However, Nestle said it would rebrand its Red Skins and Chicos sweets. Finally, the owner of Eskimo Pie ice cream announced it would change the brand name and marketing for its product as well (which seemed to be the last straw for those posting on social media who considered these changes knee-jerk reactions in the name of political correctness). Jason Chambers, author of Madison Avenue and the Color Line: Americans in the Advertising Industry and an associate professor of advertising at the University of Illinois said the current climate made it impossible for brands—even those that had weathered criticism for decades—to do nothing. While the overtly racist images of African Americans as brand icons were replaced decades ago, they are still considered as remnants of the ugly days of Jim Crow. "You could be left with a brand that is smoldering on the heap," Chambers said. "This moment is that big." P.S. In November of 2020, Saturday Night Live did a sketch in which Aunt Jemima (Maya Rudolph) and Uncle Ben (Keenan Thompson) were being "fired." By that time Mars, the parent company of Uncle Ben's had changed the name to "Ben's Original," but PepsiCo., owner of the Aunt Jemima brand, had still not announced its new branding of those products.

Advertising and Health: Alcohol

In 1985, the Center for Science in the Public Interest submitted a petition to the Federal Trade Commission requesting increased regulation of alcoholic beverage advertising. The FTC rejected the petition, declaring they had found: "no reliable basis on which to conclude that advertising significantly affects alcohol abuse. Absent such evidence, there is no basis for concluding that rules banning or otherwise limiting alcohol advertising would offer significant protection to the public." However, there continues to be a widespread belief that intensive advertising by the alcohol industry exerts a strong influence on adolescents and the elimination of such advertising would lower both underage drinking in general and binge drinking in particular. In their study on "Alcohol Advertising and Alcohol Consumption by Adolescents," Henry Saffer and Dhaval Dave suggest that a total ban on all alcohol advertising "could reduce adolescent monthly alcohol participation by about 24% and binge participation by about 42%." The report also maintains that a hefty price increase, such as doubling prices, could reduce underage drinking by 28% and underage binge drinking 51%. As with tobacco, there are concerns that advertisements for alcohol are also targeting children and adolescents as their next generation of consumers. In the United States ads for alcohol can only be placed in media where 70% of the audience is over the legal drinking age, and these ads cannot promote brands on the basis of their alcohol content or their effects. Prohibited from encouraging excessive drinking, many alcohol ads in the United States remind consumers to "drink responsibly." Super Bowl XXIX in 1995 was a blow out, with the San Francisco 49ers defeating the San Diego Chargers 49-26, but the game was also the first appearance of a Budweiser commercial set in a swamp where a trio of animatronic frogs (designed by the Stan Winston studio that did the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park) combined their voices to croak out the name of the beer company: "Bud-weis-er."55 The frogs were an immediate pop culture phenomenon, generating free advertising for Budweiser. But after a 1996 study revealed three-quarters of children ages 9-11 recognized the Budweiser frogs and Bugs Bunny, while about half could identify Smokey the Bear and Tony the Tiger, there were charges Anheuser-Busch was targeting kids and adolescents with its cute frogs. The company denied the charges, but ended up replacing the frogs with lizards (which presumably were not as kid friendly). When the FTC conducted investigations of possible targeting of alcoholic products to minors, it failed to uncover evidence of such targeting in current scholarship.57 It can be argued that there is less incentive for alcohol manufacturers to engage in such targeting compared to tobacco companies, because beer and other alcoholic products can be advertised on television, whereas cigarette commercials were banned on television and radio in 1971, after Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act.

Advertising and Health: Tobacco

In 2012, tobacco companies spent $9.6 billion marketing cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, a number that translates to more than $1 million every hour. Promotions by tobacco companies provide free samples of cigarette brands along with tee shirts, baseball caps, sports bags, beach towels, and lighters. Ads and promotions encourage young people to start smoking and specifically target teens, women, and blacks. Almost 9 out of 10 cigarette smokers first try smoking by age 18, and every day in the United States more than 3,200 youth (18 or younger) smoke their first cigarettes, while an additional 2,100 adolescents and young adults become daily cigarette smokers.44 In addition to coming up with the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel for promotional purposes, flavorings in tobacco products make them even more appealing to youth. A 2014 study reported 73% of high school students and 56% of middle school students who used tobacco products in the past 30 days used a flavored tobacco product. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement in 1998, made between the four largest U.S. tobacco companies and the attorneys general of 46 states, settled the Medicaid lawsuits against the industry by the states to recover tobacco-related health-care costs and exempted the tobacco companies from private tort liability regarding harm caused by tobacco use. In exchange, the tobacco companies agreed not to "take any action, directly or indirectly, to target Youth within any Settling State in the advertising, promotion or marketing of Tobacco Products, or take any action the primary purpose of which is to initiate, maintain or increase the incidence of Youth smoking." The restrictions included bans on outdoor billboards, advertising on transit vehicles, and restrictions on sports marketing, event sponsorship, and product placement in movies. The tobacco companies even created youth smoking-prevention programs to enhance the industry᾽s public image and to head off further tobacco regulations. In the first decade after the settlement, tobacco companies spent more than $110 million (92% of their total marketing expenditures), on advertising and promoting cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products in the retail environment. Seventy percent of adolescents shop in a convenience store at least once a week. A 2011 survey of tobacco retail outlets in California found stores contain on average 20 pieces of tobacco marketing materials such as advertisements, brand displays, and shelving units. Almost half of the convenience stores had at least one tobacco ad at the eye level of young kids (three feet or lower) and one in ten convenience stores had tobacco ads placed near candy (39% of stores in California sell tobacco near candy). The federal government has tobacco control laws and other policies aimed at preventing people, particularly children and youth, from starting to use tobacco products, helping people quit using tobacco products, and reducing the harmful effects caused by tobacco use. Starting in 2009, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration comprehensive authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and sale of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. Tobacco companies could no longer market products with the health descriptors "light," "low," or "mild," unless the FDA determined such modified risk claims were supported by scientific evidence. The act also restricted tobacco marketing and sales to youth, required smokeless tobacco product warning labels, and required disclosure of ingredients in tobacco products.

Advertising and Health: Eating and Body Image

In Killing Us Softly, her documentary on images of women in the media, ad critic Jean Kilbourne looks at the subconscious messages in food and body image-related ads and argues they create a "toxic culture environment" that harms our relationship with the things we eat. Kilbourne repeatedly finds an image of idealized female beauty at the heart of many of these ads, personified by models who are tall, slim, light skinned, and, more often than not, digitally altered to enhance their presumed perfection. "Women and girls compare themselves to these images every day," Kilbourne says, "And failure to live up to them is inevitable because they are based on a flawlessness that doesn᾽t exist." Today, girls become dissatisfied with their weight and body image at alarmingly young ages. Numerous studies show that most young girls are afraid of being fat, that by middle school most are dissatisfied with two or more parts of their body, and that their self-esteem plummets at age 12, at a time when most females enter puberty, and does not improve until age 20. A 2010 study of 1,002 13- to 17-year-old girls entitled Beauty Redefined: Girls and Body Image Survey, conducted by the Girls Scouts of the USA and The Dove Self-Esteem Fund, reports: -Almost nine in ten girls say the fashion industry (89%) and/or the media (88%) place "a lot of pressure" on teenage girls to be thin. -A total of 81% of girls would rather see "real" or "natural" photos of models than touched-up, airbrushed versions. However, 47% say fashion magazines give them a body image to strive for. -A total of 63% of girls think the body image represented by the fashion industry is unrealistic, 47% consider it unhealthy, and 28% say the fashion industry body image looks sick. Still, 60% report that when they compare their bodies to those of fashion models, 48% wish they were as skinny as the models and 31% admit to starving themselves as a strategy to lose weight. Even though girls recognize such images as being unrealistic and unattainable, they still want to meet those images and then suffer when they fail to achieve what is obviously impossible. Numerous studies have linked exposure to the thin ideal in mass media to body dissatisfaction, internalization of the thin ideal, and eating disorders among women. Such media effects appear to be stronger among young adults than among children and adolescents, which some suggest is a result of long-term exposure during childhood and adolescence laying the foundation for what happens during early adulthood. For men, body dissatisfaction appears to be related to a mass media emphasis on being muscular. Again, young men are seen as being more negatively affected by such media images than adolescents. At the same time, television commercials entice children into eating massive amounts of unhealthy food, resulting in a sharp increase in both childhood obesity and diabetes. A report by the Institute of Medicine found that most of the food and beverage products promoted to children were high in calories, sugar, salt, and fat, while low in nutrients. Many of those products were promoted with popular cartoon characters. Of course, the advertising industry was sharply critical of the recommendation of the report, with Daniel L. Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers arguing "Government stepping in and saying what should be in messages on TV is a very radical proposal. . . . If you do it for food, there᾽s no reason it can᾽t be done for other controversial product categories. People are already trying to restrict the advertising for prescription drugs."

Society & Racist Advertising: Changes from George Floyd's Death

In the wake of the death of George Floyd in May 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests against racism, several brand icons that were originally caricatures of black people were changed. On June 17, 2020, Quaker Oats announced its Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mixes would get a new name and image. The company said it recognized "Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype." One of the first black corporate models in the United States, the Aunt Jemima figure had been around for 130 years, the name having been inspired from a minstrel song, "Old Aunt Jemima," in which white actors in blackface mocked and derided Black people. Also, there are a lot of Aunt Jemima collectibles available, such as cookie jars, with the oldest pieces being quite expensive, although sometimes any black woman collectible is offered as being an authentic "Aunt Jemima" piece. The logo was based on the stereotype of the "mammy" figure as a devoted and submissive servant who nurtured the children of her white master while neglecting her own. Nancy Green, a former slave, became the face of the product in 1890. Over time the figure has been changed, with the "mammy" kerchief being removed to blunt growing criticism that the Aunt Jemima brand perpetuated a racist stereotype dating back to the days of slavery. The original heavy-set woman wearing a bandana and apron became younger and thinner in 1968. A hair band was added and then later removed, and in 1989 Aunt Jemima got a new hairstyle, along with pearl earrings and a lace collar. Quaker Oats, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, said removing the image and name of Aunt Jemima was part of an effort by the company "to make progress towards racial equality." The company would be taking a hard look at their entire portfolio of brands to "ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers' expectations." Quaker also announced It would donate at least $5 million over the next five years "to create meaningful, ongoing support and engagement in the Black community." The New Orleans rapper Master P launched a line of "Uncle P" food products to offer consumers a Black-owned alternative to brands that used Black icons but did not often give back to Black communities. The serial entrepreneur had always assumed brands like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's were Black-owned, but learned otherwise when those brands began to be phased out for perpetuating harmful racial stereotypes. His new linke of "Uncle P's Louisiana Seasoned" food products includes rice, beans, grits, pancake mix, syrup and oatmeal. A portion of the profits will go towards educating inner city kids and assisting elderly people in Black communities across the United States. "If they made billions of dollars off Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben," the rapper told CNN, "imagine how much we'll make to give back to our own community. It'll be us helping us without having to wait for the government. We can actually change the world.

Technology: Advertising in the 21st Century

James Allen and Rob Markey of Bain & Co. argue that in the 21st century marking is all about delivering the customer experience: "Future generations of consumers will have more discretionary income, less time and more choices, and will display wholly new spending patterns, depending on age, geography and wealth." The world they envision is one dominated by "crossover" buying behavior, as companies that make mobile phones will be competing with companies making candy for the discretionary income of teenagers. They conclude that "What customers want in this cross-category world is a customer experience, not just a product," and point out that the new generation of marketing tools that address the three Ds of design, deliver, and develop, are emerging from technology, telecoms, and financial services rather than from consumer goods companies. Their final pieces of advice: "Marketing directors in the 21st century will need to get a bigger toolbox if they want to stay on the job."89 So let us take a look at some of those new tools.

"Creative without strategy is called 'art.᾽ Creative with strategy is called 'advertising.᾽"

Jef I. Richards

Cost per click (CPC)

Known as pay per click (PPC), directs traffic to websites and has advertisers pay a website when the ad is clicked. This approach works well for advertisers who want visitors on their sites and is currently the dominant online advertising compensation method. Of course, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers. A GoldSpot Media study reports up to half of all clicks on static mobile banners are by accident, with visitors leaving the new site immediately.28 Obviously, the PPC advertising model is susceptible to abuse through click fraud, where an automated script or computer program (or low-wage workers) generates clicks to increase the amount of money to be paid. Google and other companies have implemented automated systems specifically to guard against click abuse by publishers, competitors, or corrupt web developers.

Pitching Accounts

Presenting new ideas for advertising campaigns to a client or prospective client.

Cost-per-view (CPV)

Requires advertisers to pay for video views and other video interactions. In setting a CPV bid, advertisers would enter the highest price they are willing to pay per veiw while setting up an advertising campaign and its target consumer groups. Other advertisers with similar products or services also enter the highest price they are willing to pay as well. If you bid 50 cents a view for a selected add group and your competitors big 30 cents and 10 cents, you would not be charged 50 cents per view, but 31 cents (the next highest bid plus one cent). Both Google and TubeMogul endorse CPV. With video ad reporting advertisers can evaluate how engaged consumers are with their content, such as whether they choose to watch a video and when they disengage from watching your content.

Focus Groups

Small group of people who are observed by researchers while participating in a guided discussion about a specific product or topic.

Cost per mile (CPM)

Stands for "cost per 1000 impressions" (mille being Latin for "thousand"), where advertisers set their desired price per 1000 ads served and pay each time their ad appears. Ad displays are called "impressions," which indicates they are seen but not necessarily read and/or viewed. This was the standard compensation method prior to the development of the Internet and explains why the average cost for 30-second Super Bowl commercial is now around $4.5 million: those commercials can be viewed by over 114 million consumers. CPM is a commonly used measurement in advertising applied to radio, television, newspaper, magazine, out-of-home, and online advertising, based on showing such advertisements to one thousand viewers. Publishers can use various techniques to increase page views and CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud" (overstating the number of views to make the advertiser pay more). Consequently, advertisers have technologies they can use to verify whether these impressions are actually delivered.

Society & Racist Advertising: The Smith Brothers

The Smith Brothers might not have been the first advertising icons in American history, but of the ones we still recognize today they are clearly the oldest. Their remedy was originally called James Smith & Sons Compound of Wild Cherry Cough Candy, but when James died his sons William and Andrew rebranded the product as Smith Brothers Cough Drops. The brothers had their bushy faces crudely cut on woodblocks and reproduced on cardboard boxes containing sixteen black, licorice-tasting troches. Imitators calling themselves the Schmidt Brothers, Schmid Brothers, Original Smith Brothers, and Improve Smith Brothers—as well as a pair of Smith Sisters—tried to palm off their cough drops as those of the Poughkeepsie merchants. The Smith brothers registered their trademark in 1877, making it one of the oldest and most famous in America (the registration of trademarks had only been authorized by Congress in 1870 and amended in 1876). Because the word "TRADE" appeared under William with "MARK" under Andrew, the brothers were called Trade Smith and Mark Smith the rest of their lives.65 After the Smith Brothers came the Quaker Oats Man (1898), Campbell Soup Kids (1904), Morton Salt Girl (1914), Mr. Peanut (1916), the Sun Maid (1916), and Betty Crocker (1921). An image of "Betty Crocker" used to be on boxes of cake mixes, her image updated for each generation, but today her face has been replaced by a name on a spoon. Then in 1963 was the first appearance of Ronald McDonald, who is the most recognizable advertising icon on the planet.

Advertising to Children

The Action for Children᾽s Television (ACT), a "grass-roots" activist group, was founded by Peggy Charren and a group of housewives and mothers in her home in 1968. Their initial concern was with the lack of quality television programming offered by children, but the group successfully lobbied the FCC to enact rules regarding the placement of separation devices between commercials and children's programming, the selling of products by the hosts of children᾽s shows, and program length commercials. ACT᾽s biggest success was passage of the Children᾽s Television Act of 1990, after which Charren closed her group.34 During the late 1970s the FCC began requiring a bumper to make a distinction between programs and commercials. Most children᾽s programming bumpers include some variation on "We᾽ll be back after these messages" or "And now, a word from our sponsor." Advertising in schools has been around for decades, but in a world where slashed school budgets have school systems looking for alternatives to fund-raising, corporate dollars have been more attractive to secure funding for equipment and in-school activities. Advertising can be found virtually everywhere in a school, from stadium and hallways to cafeterias and textbook covers. Advertisers are even providing curriculum kits that mix lessons with a corporate name or its products (e.g., a math worksheet with Disney characters on it). Education World reports that a well-planned soft drink advertising campaign can generation hundreds of thousands of dollars for a school district. While most schools avoid sponsors with political or religious overtones--or having anything to do with alcohol, tobacco, violence, or sex--they are signing deals with shoe companies, restaurants, and telecommunication companies. On average, children in this country watch 15 commercials about food on television every day, which adds up to about 5,500 such commercials in a year᾽s time. Studies have indicated that 98% of those food commercials are for products low in nutritional value and that only 2% of such ads are about fruits, vegetables, or beans.36 In 2013-14, 33% of children were overweight and 17% were obese, and all classes of obesity continued to increase.37 The impact of advertising on health obviously extends beyond children.

Internet Advertising

The Internet offers advertisers a wide variety of ways for clients to reach customers, with the added advantage that many of these promotional services are cheap, if not free: 1. Owning a website. A generation ago people would grab a phonebook and look through the Yellow Pages to find companies that provided the goods or services they needed. Today we look for them online, and when we find them we will find considerably more information about those companies: not just their location but instructions on how to drive there, not just the main phone number but the phone numbers of individual employees, and not just what products they sell but the opportunity to order them online. Visitors to a website need to be helped to find what they are looking for, so web design has to be not only attractive but efficient. 2. E-mail marketing. In a world when spam makes up most of the e-mail sent each day, companies offer consumers the opportunity to sign up for a "newsletter," that can be sent to them. If you buy tickets for a local theater production, you can receive e-mails about their upcoming productions, which is significantly less expensive than sending actual newsletters by mail. Your favorite shoe company can notify you what sales they are having this week or include a coupon that you can use on your next purchase. Personalized welcome, birthday, and anniversary emails can be used to build connections with customers and potential customers. Companies can upload mail lists and use an autoresponder to send out the right emails at the right time. Companies can also engage in article marketing, by writing and distributing short articles to various outlets to grow an online audience and increase sales opportunities. 3. Search engine optimization. The goal of search engines is to refer users to the websites and content that are most relevant to their searches. To determine what is relevant search engines consider: (a) content: the titles, text, and descriptions on the website; (b) performance: the website working properly; (c) authority: other authoritative sites using a website as a reference or citing its information; and (d) user experience: the attractiveness and safety of the website.90 When companies understand how Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Internet channels work, they can take advantage of those practices to their own advantage. 4. Social networks. Today, online advertising focuses on social networking services, taking advantage of the demographic information of users to strategically target their ads. Most Internet users are members of at least one social network, and even older users are turning to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, for example, advertisers have the options of promoting posts, sponsoring stories, and paging post ads. On Twitter, tweets and trends are promoted, while YouTube offers branded channels, promoted videos, and in video advertising. We can also include online video and photo sharing sites under this category, which can show celebrities on a red carpet in front of the logo for your company or "candid" shots of people using your product. 5. Online classifieds. Advertising can be posted online on sites like Craigslist and eBay, whether we are talking online job boards, personals, listings for real estate and automobiles, or auction-based listings. As is the case with online directories and local business listings, these are online versions of resources that were originally published in print. In the section on economics, we covered how new compensation methods for advertising have evolved in the age of the Internet. Next, we turn to the driving philosophy of 21st-century online advertising.

Audience Research

The collecting of data about consumer targets in advertising campaigns.

Clutter

The excessive amount of advertisements competing for the attention of consumers.

"Chronic Halitosis"

The antiseptic mouthwash Listerine was named after Joseph Lister, a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, by Joseph Lawrence, an American chemist who came up with it in 1879 as a surgical antiseptic. The alcohol formula contains several chemicals, which have an antiseptic effect, and Lawrence hoped to promote Listerine as a general germicide in addition to its use in surgery. Originally promoted to dentists for oral care, Listerine became the first over-the-counter mouthwash sold in the United States in 1914.3 The distilled form was used as both a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. Then in the 1920s, advertisements for Listerine sold it as a cure for "chronic halitosis," an obscure medical term for bad breath. Advertisements in magazines showed forlorn young women or men, yearning for marriage, but thwarted by the bad breath of their prospective mate, worrying: "Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" "Halitosis makes you unpopular" one advertisement warned young women, adding: "Don᾽t fool yourself. Since halitosis never announces itself to the victim, you simply cannot know when you have it." The ad also warned readers that having halitosis "is unexcusable" but "can be instantly remedied." Another was more direct: "How about you? Are you guilty?" Not only were the ads effective, but they were also different. Instead of focusing on the product or the relationship between the consumer and the product, it emphasized relationships between consumers. These were some of the first examples of advertising dramas, where a young woman is "Often a bridesmaid but never a bride" because she does not know she has halitosis. Another had a young man telling his friend, "Let the tide take her out...I WON'T!" Other ads warned that even your closest friends would not tell you about halitosis ("They talk about you behind your back"), while another asked, "Are you unpopular with your own children?" Fortunately, those same ads were there to offer you advice and a solution and also to remind you that your friends were seeing those same ads and if you did not use Listerine you could end up being the only one in your group without fresh breath, or, as another ad put it, "If it᾽s bad, you won᾽t be welcome...Play safe...use Listerine."4 Advertising scholar James B. Twitchell noted, "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis." Profits for Lambert Pharmaceutical, which sold Listerine, went from $100,000 in 1920 to $4 million in 1927.5 Listerine was also promoted as a means of preventing and curing colds and sore throats, until the Federal Trade Commission ruled in 1976 these claims were misleading. Starting in the 1930s, Listerine claimed applying the product to the scalp could prevent "infectious dandruff," and it was also promoted as a perspiration deodorant and an after-shave.6 The lesson is that creating the idea that customers actually need your product, as opposed to merely wanting it, is quite powerful.

Goal of Marketing Strategy

The goal of a marketing strategy is to increase sales and to gain and maintain a competitive advantage. It identifies the different ways businesses communicate with their customers and helps them concentrate on the ones that will create the most sales. In this section we will be focusing on two key aspects of marketing. Branding, which helps a company distinguish itself from its competitors and create a lasting impression in the minds of customers, and the main types of appeals ads use to influence customers to buy their products and services

Racist Sports Mascots

The push to deal with what was called systematic racism quickly expanded beyond advertising icons. A related issue had to do with racist sports mascots. A mascot is any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck that is often used to represent a group with a common public identity. We find mascots for schools, professional sports teams, military units, and brand names (the basic difference between a "mascot" and an "icon" is that the mascot is the three dimensional realization of a two dimensional icon, which is how we end up with the likes of the San Diego Chicken, the Phillie Phanatic, Smokey Bear, and so on). Ignoring requests for comments were the National Football League's Washington Redskins, whose team mascot had been defended by owner Daniel Snyder against criticism from Native American organizations that most dictionaries define "redskin" as an offensive racial slur. The Redskins' federal trademark was revoked in 2014 after a judge ruled the term "redskin" is a racial slur. In June 2020, a statue of the team's segregationist founding owner, who made sure Washington was the last NFL team to integrate 16 years after the first black players were signed, was removed from in front of Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, the team's home in Washington, D.C. Previously, both the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball had modified or done away with their Native American mascots and imagery.73 Cleveland removed the grinning, red-faced Chief Wahoo logo from their uniforms in 2018 (but can still be found on merchandise sold at the ballpark). From 1966 to 1985 Chief Noc-A-Homa ("Knock a Homer") was the Atlanta mascot, played primarily by Levi Walker (who approached the team about having a real Native American portray the character), until the mascot was retired. The other professional teams with Native American mascots are the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL and the Chicago Blackhawks and Edmonton Eskimos in the National Hockey League. Most college sports teams with Native American mascots had already made such changes. In the early 1920s, St. John's University in Queens, New York, began calling its sports teams the Redmen and adopted Chief Blackjack as their mascot. A variant of the logo was used until 1987 and the school finally ditched the Redmen name in 1994 after pressure from Native American groups. Today its teams are known as the Red Storm. Syracuse University's mascot was Big Chief Bill Orange, the Saltine Warrior. But in 1978 students and members of a Native American organization protested the mascot and it was retired. Stanford University has "The Stanford Indians" as its mascot from 1930-72, when the sports teams were called the "Stanford Cardinal," reflecting the primary school color, and the new mascot became the Stanford Tree. In 2005, the NCAA cited nineteen schools as having potentially "hostile or abusive" names, mascots, or images, that would be banned from being displayed during post-season play. Colleges that had previously called their sports teams the "Indians" changed their nicknames to Red Solves, Crimson Hawks, War Hawks, Mustangs, and Wolves. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Fighting Illini kept the nickname as referring to the state, not Native Americans, but officially stopped using the Chief Illiniwek image and mascot in 2007. Not cited in the report was San Diego State University because the Aztecs were not a Native American tribe with any living descendants. The Florida State Seminoles use names and images associated with the Seminole people, which is officially sanctioned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, was the most notable school that did not make a change. The University of North Dakota challenged the NCAA in court, and in 2007 was given three years to obtain consent from the Sioux tribes in the state. When one tribe refused permission, the Fighting Sioux name and logo were eventually retired and "Fighting Hawks" was selected as the new name in 2015. However, many fans continue to wear "Sioux" jerseys at the school's hockey games. In early July of 2020, FedEX, the sponsor of the stadium of the Washington Redskins, asked the team to change its nickname. The next day, Nike pulled all of the team's merchandising from its website. The list of NFL teams now ends with the Tennessee Titans NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell issued a statement that the league was "supportive of this important step" and PepsiCo, a Redskins partner, declared it also believed it was time for a change. The moves were not particularly surprising since the companies had received three separate letters signed by 87 investment firms and shareholders worth a collective $620 billion asking Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo "to terminate their business relationships" with Washington unless the team agreed to changes it controversial name. Within hours, the team issued a statement: "In light of recent events around our country and feedback from our community, the Washington Redskins are announcing the team will undergo a thorough review of the team's name. This review formalized the initial discussions the team has been having in recent weeks. A few days later, three of the teams' minority owners announced their intention to sell their stock in the team. Coach Ron Rivera said the issue was of personal importance to him, and that he looked forward to working closely with the owner "to make sure we continue the mission of honoring and supporting Native Americans and our Military."75 Sports Illustrated immediately offered a list of potential new names for Washington's football team: (1) Americans, Warriors; (2) Red Tails, Red Clouds; (3) Hogs, Battle Hogs, War Hogs, Swamp Hogs; (4) Senators, Presidents, Federals, Founders; and (5) Ditch the nickname altogether (i.e., adopt "Washington Football Club"). Betting odds were provided for the next team name from Presidents (+300) to Arlingtons (+1000), with Generals, Lincolns, Kings, Memorials, Capitols, Veterans, Jeffersons, Roosevelts, and Monuments in between (consider how many of those names would also be controversial. e.g., Jefferson was a slave owner). But owner Dan Snyder, who was conveniently out of the country during the pandemic, continued to have no official plans to address the renewed call to change the team's name. A decade earlier emphatically Snyder told the press, "We will never change the name of the team." In other interviews he insisted the team's name was seen as a term of honor and respect for Native Americans. Privately, the team tried to point out that no other owner had contributed more to the Native American community monetarily."76 The Atlanta Braves issued a statement that did not address changing the team's nickname, but insisted "The Atlanta Braves honors, supports, and values the Native American community," adding "That will never change." Then the Cleveland Indians released a statement saying the team was "committed to engaging our community and appropriate stakeholders to determine the best path forward with regard to our team name."77 For all of these teams the reaction from fans was a mix of those who thought a name change was long overdue, those who insisted they would never see another game unless their team changed its name, and those who promised they would never stop being a fan if they did. President Trump tweeted an attack on the proposed changes: "They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like they are going to be changing their names in order to politically correct." In 2013 Trump had tweeted that then-President Barack Obama "should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name" because "our country has far bigger problems! FOCUS on them, not this nonsense."78 That same day, Target stores pulled Washington Redskins products from their online stores, soon followed by Walmart and Amazon. Then the team announced that it would be moving away from Native American imagery in its merchandise.79 However, by the end of July the Redskin name was dropped and it was announced the franchise would be playing as the Washington Football Team until a new permanent name was adopted. The logo on the team's helmets was replaced by the number of each player, similar to the helmets of the University of Alabama's football team. Historical footnote: When the NBA's Baltimore Bullets became the Washington Wizards, the process of changing the team's name and all of its branding took two years.

Advertising Agencies

There are hundreds of ad agencies in the United States, although over half of the industry's revenues in 2014 were generated by the big five of WPP Group, London ($19.0 billion), Omnicom Group, New York City ($15.3 billion), Publicis Groupe, Paris ($9.6 billion), Interpublic Group of Cos., New York City ($7.5 billion), and Dentsu Inc, Tokyo ($6 billion).26 Specifically, there are four different types of advertising agencies: 1. Full-Service agencies offer a complete range of creative and media services, working across the entire range of advertising media. Most agencies are large enough to offer their clients a full range of services in terms of marketing, communications, and promotions. Full-service agencies tend to have departments responsible for planning, creating, and producing advertisements, as well as media selection and research. Additionally, they can provide strategic market planning, package design, sales training and promotion, and event management, as well as publicity and public relations. The "big five" are all examples of full-service agencies. 2. Creative boutique agencies provide only creative services, without being involved in the business of placing ads in the media. These agencies are usually small companies representing a limited list of clients and offering highly personalized service. Sometimes full-service agencies will sub-contract work to a creative boutique when they are especially busy or want to avoid adding full time employees to their pay roll. Staff members tend to be highly qualified and respected creators and artists, who can develop both print and video advertising, as well as copyright for ad campaigns. 3. Media buying agencies are independent companies specializing in buying of media, particularly television and radio. Agencies or clients can develop a media plan and then hire this type of agency to execute the plan, although some media buying agencies can help advertisers plan their media strategies. Media buying agencies focus on the increasingly complex task of purchasing advertising media. Because they purchase large amounts of space and time in the media, they receive substantial discounts and can pass those savings on to their client (media buying agencies are usually paid a commission or fee for their work). 4. In-house agencies are set up by some companies as an internal operation, with the goals of reducing cost and maintaining greater control over advertising activities. For example, Coca-Cola has an in-house agency that promotes the company's myriad brands, while Google᾽s Creative Lab is dedicated to "fueling the ecosystem of the industry."27 Hewlett-Packard᾽s CS Wall of Fame Books were the Best-of-Show Winner for the 2015 In-House Agency Forum award. Some advertising may still be directed to outside agencies, on a project by project basis.

Selling Bottled Water

Traditionally, one of the ways of referring to a really good salesperson is to say that "they could sell iceboxes to Eskimos," the idea being that Eskimos, living in igloos made out of blocks of ice, would pretty much be the last people on the face of the Earth who would actually need an icebox. But then most advertising are for products that people do not actually need in order to survive and thrive, but merely objects that they become convinced that they want. Today, instead of talking about selling iceboxes to Eskimos we can look at the millions of people who buy bottled water, something that is available for free from faucets and drinking fountains around the globe. In looking at how advertisers created this market, we can readily conclude that people can be convinced to buy anything. Business writer Kathryn Hawkins points out five important marketing lessons that can be learned from the bottled water industry: 1. Focus on image. Looking at the label for Aquafina bottled water, with the sun rising over mountain peaks, and you would assume the water in the bottle comes from a mountain stream. But Aquafina is made of local municipal tap water put through a purification process. Then again, Fiji Water really is shipped from the islands of Fiji and Evian comes from the south shore of Lake Geneva. Hawkins᾽ point is that "It isn᾽t nice to lie to your customers, but you do want to promote the image you᾽re selling." If you link your product to cold mountain streams or exotic South Sea Islands, then that is going to enhance the image of your product. 2. Turn consumers into connoisseurs. Bottled water companies want their consumers to focus on the flavor of their water, because they want their products to be perceived as representing quality. Hawkins points to a blind taste test where London᾽s tap water was ranked third out of 24 water products, which would suggest that the vast majority of bottled water customers might actually be getting less flavor from bottled water. 3. By positioning your product as a sign of wealth, it becomes desirable to people who are striving to reach the upper class. When Americans first started buying bottled water back in the 1970s they probably ordered a bottle of Perrier. At first, doing so was seen as being something only the wealthy might do. But Hawkins notes that as the beverage began to catch on among middle class Americans, and as more companies offered bottle water, at lower price points, it became a "luxury" that most people could actually afford. 4. Offer convenience. Today you can buy bottled water just about any place where drinks are sold, whether you are talking about a restaurant, a convenience store, or a vending machine. Practically speaking, it is actually easier to buy a bottle of water than it is to find a drinking fountain in public. Ironically, because of the rise of bottled water, public drinking fountains have become less common, which, of course, makes consumers even more likely to buy bottled water. Certainly a convenient cycle for the bottled water industry. 5. Position your product as a solution to a problem. Hawkins points out that in general bottled water is not positioned as an alternative to tap water, but instead marketed as a healthy alternative to soft drinks. She notes a recent advertising campaign by Nestlé Pure Life asked mothers to pledge to replace one of their children᾽s sugary drinks each day with one of their water products. Today, the biggest complaint against bottled water products is in terms of the negative environmental impact for the 1.5 million tons of plastic that are used each year in the bottling process. College campuses have started to install drinking fountains that can easily be used to fill reusable water bottles (often with digital counters that keep track of how many plastic water bottles students are saving by getting their drinking water this way). That being said, the lessons of selling bottled water suggest something of the complex psychology that is involved in successfully advertising and marketing products in the 21st century, something we will explore in more detail later in this chapter.

Advertising Agency Departments

1. Account Services. Account services provides the link between the various departments in an advertising agency and its clients. Account executives are in charge of pitching accounts, overall charge of advertising campaigns, putting together the team for the campaign, and coordinating between the client and the creative department. They are also charged with the responsibility of attracting new clients to the agency. 2. Research. A primary focus of audience research in an advertising agency is on gathering data about the target consumers. Audience research focuses on two major areas of measurement. Demographics are measurements of the quantifiable characteristics of a population such as age, gender, income, education, religion, and race/ethnicity. Psychographics, while not as easy to observe and label as demographic, are considered more important because it allows populations to be studied and classified according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria. For example, knowing someone's core political beliefs is seen as being more insightful than simply knowing their age and gender. Research is also conducted regarding the copy that is produced, to test its effectiveness (this can involve both pre-testing and post-testing). This can involve working with focus groups, which are seen as an important research tool for acquiring feedback. These small groups of consumers are interviewed by a trained moderator in an informal setting, which allows follow-up questions given the group᾽s responses. Today, the use of audience response systems (a.k.a. real time response or dial testing), where respondents around the country can use hand-held remote or cloud-based tools to answer questions from researchers. 3. Creative. In an advertising agency the creative department is responsible for developing the ideas, images, and words that make up not only print and broadcast ads, but also direct mail, websites, and guerrilla campaigns. The creative department is made up of creative directors, who oversees the creative team developing campaigns for clients, which in turn is made up of copywriters, art directors, and designers. In many ways, the creative department is the engine that drives the agency. Not only do they create ad copy and designs ads, they can also produce those ads as well, which can include hiring illustrators, photographers, actors, models, and musicians. 4. Media Buying. The media buying department procures the advertising time or space required for a successful ad campaign. A media director has the responsibility of working with the client, the account team, and the creative department to make sure the campaign is seen by as many members of the target demographic as possible. This involves using market research, analysis, pricing structures, and client considerations to maximize the largest media impact for the best price.

Top 10 Ad Icons of the 20th Century

1. The Marlboro Man, Marlboro cigarettes 2. Ronald McDonald, MacDonald᾽s restaurants 3. The Jolly Green Giant, Green Giant vegetables 4. Betty Crocker, Betty Crocker food products 5. The Energizer Bunny, Eveready Energizer batteries 6. The Pillsbury Doughboy, Assorted Pillsbury foods 7. Aunt Jemima, Aunt Jemima pancake mixes and syrups 8. The Michelin Man, Michelin tires 9. Tony the Tiger, Kellogg᾽s Sugar Frosted Flakes 10. Elsie, Borden dairy products Interesting, several of the icons on this list were created by a single agency, the Chicago-based Leon Burnett Co., which specialized in building brands by employing tremendously popular characters.13 In addition to Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Jolly Green Giant, and the Marlboro Man, Burnett came up with the Keeler Elves, Maytag Repairman, Morris the Cat (9 Lives), Charlie the Tuna (Star-Kist) Toucan Sam (Kellogg᾽s Fruit Loops), United᾽s "Fly the Friendly Skies" and Allstate᾽s "Good Hands." Notice that except for the last two icons on the list, the name of the character and the company are the same.

Economics: Compensation Methods

For a long time paying for advertising was relatively uncomplicated. Newspapers offered a flat rate, a standard advertising rate without discounts for bulk or frequent purchases. Sometimes a discount, or earned rate, was applied retroactively if the volume of advertising increased over the course of the year. An advertiser's contract with a newspaper or magazine would often stipulate a guaranteed circulation, guaranteeing the number of copies the publisher expects to sell. Failing to meet that threshold, the publisher would give the advertiser a refund. In the 21st century, advertisers and publishers have a wide range of methods for calculating payment. Advertisers want to pay as little as possible to get the job done while publishers want to make as much money as possible. This economic tension has seen several new compensation methods be developed in recent decades. However, we begin with the original method that was first developed in the print media with newspapers and magazines.

Selling Soap Today vs in the Past

How soap was sold changed significantly over the course of the 20th century. One hundred years ago if you were selling soap there were two things you stressed to your customers. First, that you were an established firm that had been making this product for a long time. In other words, your product was OLD. An advertisement for Wright᾽s Coal Tar Soap proudly proclaimed "Prescribed by the Medical Profession for 50 years." If a company has been around for a century or more, it was not uncommon to tell customers that it was "established 1826." Second, you emphasized that your product was PURE and unadulterated. The classic example of this would be Ivory Soap, which was famously "99 and 44/100% pure." Even today the packaging for Ivory Soap makes that same claim. But today things have changed completely. What is important now is that the product you buy is NEW. It is not the product your grandmother bought or your mother bought. It is probably not even the same product that you bought several years ago. Not only it is new, but it is also IMPROVED because of all sorts of special additives that the previous version of the product sadly lacked. For soap these could be ingredients such as turmeric and sandalwood, which help heal and prevent dry skin. Today there are even soaps that claim to be improved because they no longer contain particular elements. Bath and body products might not contain coconut, palm, or olive oil for those with skin sensitivities, while laundry detergents are now free of phosphates and biodegradable, lessening their negative impact on the environment. Consequently, the way soap is sold today is completely the opposite of what it was a century ago. This represents a shift in what the American consumer values when it comes to soap and detergents. There has even been a shift in recent decades as environmental considerations have come into play. The lesson is that what we value today might not be what we will value down the line, but that values play an important part in advertising

Advertising and Health: Prescription Drugs

In 2012, the $300 billion a year U.S. pharmaceutical industry spend $3.1 billion on advertising prescription drugs directly to consumers (the United States and New Zealand are the only countries where direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs is legal). The estimate is that every dollar spent advertising prescription drugs increases retail sales by $4.20.59 The American Medical Association (AMA) called in 2015 for a ban on direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs and medical devices, citing concerns that such ads are driving demand for expensive treatments instead of less costly alternatives that are clinically effective.60 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintains that prescription drug advertisements can provide consumers with useful information to make wise decisions about treatment in cooperation with their health care providers, but warns that such ads can make correct or incorrect claims about such products: -Product Claim Ads names a drug, says what conditions it treats, and covers both its benefits and its risks through a fair balance of information -Reminder Ads give the drug᾽s name but not the drug᾽s use, reminding consumers about a drug where they already know what it is for. Reminders ad are not appropriate for drugs with a "boxed warning" about certain serious risks associated with its use. -Help-Seeking Ads describe a disease or condition, but do not recommend or suggest specific drugs. Consequently, lawful help-seeking ads are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission rather than the FDA. The debate continues over whether or not prescription drugs should be advertised directly to consumers. Those who support the ads argue they inform patients about diseases and medical conditions, encourage consumers to seek medical advice from health care professionals, and increase the likelihood of treatment, as well as creating revenue for pharmaceutical companies that can be used to research and develop new drugs that can have life-changing effects. Those seeking to ban such ads contend they misinform patients, promote drugs before their long-term safety concerns have been established, and encourage over-medication by health care professionals who feel pressured to prescribe them, as well as increasing the cost of health care in the United States.

Advertising

Paid forms of non-personal communication about an organization, product, service or idea from an identified sponsor, using mass media to persuade or influence an audience. Advertising is what helps to feed consumerism. In addition to adding to the cost of products, advertising persuades people to buy products they do not need (they merely "want" them), and reduces competition.

Cost-per-engagement (CPE)

Requires advertisers to only pay when users actively engaged with an advertisement. If advertisers use a lightbox ad, which expands to a larger size when a consumer hovers over it for two seconds, then they only have to pay when a consumer activates it. Web banners serve as invitations to view additional content, such as videos, games, or other interactive experiences. Placement of such ads online is free; the charges only come when consumers are interacting with the ad. Such engagement can happen in numerous ways: viewing, sharing, voting, commenting, reviewing, playing a game, taking a poll, etc.

Client

The organization paying an agency for advertising advice

Excessive Consumerism

There is general agreement among economists that we live in a consumer culture, which is a form of capitalism where the economy is focused on selling goods that consumers buy. A key aspect of consumer culture is an emphasis on a lifestyle where buying material goods is how consumers attain happiness and satisfaction, which is something that is clearly driven by advertising. But we are not simply living in an age of consumerism. This is an age of consumerism on steroids, fueled by easy credit and a seemingly infinite supply of cheap foreign goods. Because consumer culture tells us that happiness can only be achieved by having material things, it encourages us to overspend. This would explain, in part, why personal debt is a significant financial problem today in the United States. In 2016, the average credit card debt per household in the United States was approximately $5,700 (down from $7,232.07 in 2007), but for an indebted household that number rises to $16,061 (just shy of 2008's record high). There is also reason to believe that consumers are significantly underreporting their debt because they are ashamed of their credit card balances and their growing debt loads. Excessive consumerism is, by definition, living beyond our means. Figures on personal debt would seem to be evidence of exactly that. There are certainly those who advocate escaping from a world of excessive consumerism and living with less stuff and less stress in your life, but they are fighting an uphill battle in a world where the average American is exposed to around 360 ads a day across the five media of television, Internet, radio, newspapers, and magazines.

Statues of the Past in the Future

When the Declaration of Independence was read in New York in front of George Washington and his troops, soldiers and citizens went to Bowling Green, a Manhattan Park, where they pulled down a lead statue of King George III on horseback. The lead was melted down for 42,088 musket balls that were used by the troops during the American Revolution. So the history of America pulling down statues began five days after the United States was born. Statues function as icons and represent the "brand" of the United States. Confederate statues and memorials around the country had been controversial for some time. Some were erected by the sons and daughters of those who fought in the Civil War, while others were put up in the years after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, right before the Civil Rights Movement began in earnest. The protests over the death of George Floyd and other black citizens, Confederate statues were torn down in North Carolina, defaced in Georgia, and removed in Virginia and Kentucky. A statute of John C. Calhoun, defender of slavery and secession advocate, was taken down in Charleston, South Carolina, and put in a museum. The statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia—the former capital of the Confederacy—became a particular flashpoint, put behind barricades after the base was covered with protest slogans. Ironically, Lee opposed erecting such monuments after the Civil War. Declining an invitation from Union and Confederate officers to a meeting to mark the placing of a memorial honoring those who took part in the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee wrote: "I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered." A Quinnipiac poll of registered voters in 2017 indicated only 39 percent supported removing Confederate statues from public spaces. Three years later that number rose to 52 percent. Those polled were split 47-47 on renaming military bases named after Confederate generals, a difference explained by the bases, such as Fort Bragg and Fort Hood, having military histories that exist outside and beyond the Civil War. But statues under attack quickly went beyond those associated with the Confederacy. Statues of Christopher Columbus were removed in Columbus, Ohio, dismantled in Philadelphia, decapitated in Boston, pulled down in St. Paul, and guarded in New York City. Wilmington, Delaware removed statues of both Columbus and Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who was also a slave owner. In Madison, Wisconsin, statues of the state's motto "Forward" and of Colonel Hans Christian Heg—who was an anti-slavery activist who died fighting for the Union in the Civil War--were dragged away from the statehouse. Heg's statute was decapitated and thrown into a lake. In Portland, Oregon, statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, presidents who were slave owners, were toppled. Four men were charged with destruction of federal property for trying to bring down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Protestors in San Francisco toppled statues of Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Army during the Civil War, Francis Scott Key, author of the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner," and St. Junípero Serra, the first Catholic saint canonized in the United States. Grant was said to have owned a slave that he eventually freed before the war. Key was also a slave owner, although a statue of Key in Baltimore was covered in red and black paint with "RACIST ANTHEM" written on the base. As a Spanish missionary, Serra was linked to the genocide of Native Americans. Native Americans called for monuments of conquistadors and missionaries, who started the genocide of indigenous people, to be taken down as well. In New Mexico statues of Juan de Oñate and Diego de Vargas were put into storage. In Florida, statues of Juan Ponce de León were covered in spray paint and rotten eggs. The Spanish Embassy in the United States declared defending the Spanish legacy was a priority and that educational efforts would continue for "the reality of our shared history to be known and understood."82 In what was apparently a counterattack, a statue of Frederick Douglass was toppled in Rochester, New York on July 5, the anniversary of the black activists famous 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Again, the issue moved beyond the statues that sparked it. HBO Max removed Gone with the Wind from its new streaming platform. The film returned with two accompanying videos discussing its historical context. The first, featuring TCM host and film scholar Jacqueline Stewart, acknowledges the films enduring popularity but argues its depiction of African Americans was considered controversial even when it was first released. Stewart tells viewers, "The film's treatment of this world through a lens of nostalgia denies the horrors of slavery, as well as its legacies of racial inequality." The second video is an hour-long panel discussion debating the film's "complicated legacy."83 In California there was a renewed demand that the name of John Wayne Airport in Orange County be changed after the actor's derogatory comments about African Americans, Native Americans, and movies with gay characters from a 1971 Playboy interview resurfaced. Statues of presidents who were not slave owners also came under attack. A statute of Theodore Roosevelt flanked by Native American and black figures was removed from in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York City because of the racist imagery. Another statute that became controversial was of Abraham Lincoln standing over a freed black slave in Washington, D.C. entitled "Emancipation." The statue had been paid for by freedmen after the Civil War and Frederick Douglass has spoken at its dedication. But because the black figure was shirtless and shackled, it was also considered racist imagery. In the last week of 2020 a copy of the "Emancipation Group" statue in Boston was removed in response to a petition with over 12,000 signatures and will eventually be relocated to a new publicly accessible location where its history and context could be better explained. Finally, there were the statues of former Confederates and slave owners in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. The statues at the Capitol building present unique problems in that each state determines the two statues displayed. The law precludes statues being removed by Congress once they have been received. However, the Speaker of the House can decide where each statue is placed. During her first stint as speaker, Nancy Pelosi successfully worked to replace a statue of Robert E. Lee in Statuary Hall with one of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Lee's statue was moved to a less prominent area of the Capitol. In 2019, the state of Arkansas replaced statues of lawyer Uriah Rose and politician James P. Clarke with statues of country singer Johnny Cash and civil rights leader Daisy Bates. Rose owned a slave (who ran away) and Clarke was a defender of white supremacy. Now attention was being paid to see what other substitutions might be offered by other states. President Trump signed an executive order to protect public statues and federal monuments, promising that the continuation of the toppling of statues "is not going to happen." In an Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore on July 3, where he declared "this monument will never be desecrated, these heroes will never be defamed, their legacy will never ever be destroyed, their achievements will never be forgotten, and Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom." He then went on to denounced "a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children" and warned that the "left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American revolution."88 Trump's Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, supported the president's view, arguing "We need to have a balanced view of history." After the speech, Trump ordered the creation of a "National Garden of American Heroes," that would have statues of the greatest Americans to ever live. The garden was to include, but not be limited to, statues of John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison, James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Audie Murphy, George S. Patton, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Betsy Ross, Antonin Scalia, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Controversial Icons in the Past

While icons such as Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Mrs. Butterworth went largely untouched in the years after World War II and during the Civil Rights Movement, there were notable exceptions. Tropic-Ana, a Polynesia girl who used to be topless, was replaced by an orange and straw. The Coppertone Girl was phased out over concerns of the image of an impish child whose blue swimsuit bottoms get pulled down by a cocker spaniel encouraged pedophilia. The businessmen who launched the Sambo's restaurant chain in 1957, claimed it had nothing to do with a popular children's book of the time, The Story of Little Black Sambo, written by the Scottish writer Helen Bannnerman. But the décor at their restaurants clearly capitalized on the association, with art depicting Sambo (who is not African but actually a South Indian boy), being chased by a tiger round and round a tree until the tiger is reduced to butter, which Sambo's mother uses to make pancakes. After a name change and an attempt at an identity makeover in the late 1970s failed the chain went bankrupt in 1981. In 1964, Pillsbury created Funny Face as a product to compete with Kool-Aid. Originally, Funny Face offered "Injun Orange" and "Chinese Cherry" as flavors, complete with racist caricatures on each packet. Eventually the company swapped out its original varieties for "Jolly Olly Orange" and "Choo Choo Cherry" on its own. Pillsbury sold the drink mixes until 1994, and then it became a regional production sold by other companies primarily in the Midwest and New England areas of the country. Perhaps the most controversial figure was the Frito Bandito, who was the mascot for Fritos chips from 1967-71. Speaking broken English and robbing people, the Frito Bandito has a disheveled look and a gold tooth. Pressured by the Mexican American Anti-Defamation Committee, the company combed the Frito Bandito's hair and gave him a friendlier expression, but that was not considered an adequate response. So the company ditched the cartoon and replaced the Bandito with the Muncha Bunch, a band of cowboys. More recently, Stroh Brewery apologized in a 2001 ceremony on the Rosebud Reservation for offering Crazy Horse malt liquor in 1992. The estate of Crazy Horse and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe were outraged, both by the appropriation of Crazy Horse's name and the fact the product appeared to be taking advantage of the popular stereotype of Native Americans as heavy drinkers. It was changed to Crazy Stallion. In early 2020—a few months before the death of George Floyd--Land O'Lakes butter changed the packaging for its products, removing the image of a native American woman with a feather in her hair. Ahead of the company's 100th anniversary, the change saw new packaging very similar to the original, except for the removal of the figure, who dated back to 1928 and had been "modernized" at one point, and the addition of "farmer owned" above the Land O'Lakes name. No one suspected this change was a sign of things to come.

"Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need."

Will Rogers