ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 1996 TAG: 9605220017
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: MARKETPLACE
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL
It's a scorchingly hot spring day - is this May or August? - and you've just dragged the lawn mower back to the shed. You're parched, so you head inside and you grab a bottle of -
Beer?
Milk?
Bourbon, maybe?
Three new ads will be vying for your thirst this summer. The campaigns - two in magazines, one on TV - attempt to cut through the usual advertising clutter. Whether you agree with the advertisers' methods is up to you to decide; my (extremely unscientific) water-cooler poll found co-workers' opinions split.
But are the ads effective? I give you two sets of opinions. The first is from a veteran ad-watcher: Bob Denton, head of communications studies at Virginia Tech, who has worked on his share of ads, including the Army's ``Be all you can be'' campaign.
The second point of view is taken from those water-cooler conversations with average consumers.
First, the beer. Coors Light debuted its new - and eye-catching - commercial last week, during the season finale of "Friends." The spot uses digitized computer technologies - similar to those that let Tom Hanks shake JFK's hand in "Forrest Gump." It places John Wayne in a scene with a drill sergeant and a six-pack of Coors Light. Shooting the commercial with a Wayne stand-in took five days; digitally inserting the Duke's likeness took three more weeks.
Do you have a problem with seeing the Duke sell alcohol? Denton says you should get over it. This ad really isn't so far off from Pepsi's Michael Jackson ads, he said; both use celebrities to sell products. "Well, that's just different," said the consumers I polled; Pepsi didn't resurrect a dead American icon to sell beer (and light beer at that).
But whatever your personal feelings about using the Duke to hawk suds, it stands to be an effective commercial from an advertising standpoint. Any commercial that can hold our attention is doing its job, Denton said.
"It grabbed me," he said. "I almost wanted to see the whole thing again."
How many times have you said that about a TV spot?
And then there's milk. The National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board - known to most of us as the people who created the milk-mustache ads - just introduced the newest milk spokesman: Billy Zane, who will play The Phantom in an upcoming movie.
The ad features a photo of the superhero kicking back in his cave and says, in part: "After a grueling day of defending the Earth from piracy, greed and cruelty, I just can't wait to get home, kick back and pour myself a drink. Of milk, that is."
Over the past year or two, the promotion has enlisted the milk-ringed mouths of model Kate Moss, actress Jennifer Aniston and tennis star Pete Sampras. Ads have appeared in women's magazines, in newsweeklies, in entertainment mags. The campaign topped a new survey, conducted by Video Storyboard Tests, of the most popular print ads of 1995.
But that doesn't mean everyone loves it.
"I don't like milk, and seeing people with milk mustaches certainly isn't going to make me buy it," said a co-worker. "You know, those aren't even real milk mustaches."
Such sentiments probably don't bother the milk folk too much, Denton said. Typically, advertising is meant to reinforce what we already do rather than persuade us to change our habits. And ads are especially effective reinforcers when they feature pitches from celebrities, he said. If you admire a particular movie star, you're more likely to pay attention to a commercial he or she stars in.
Finally, bourbon.
Jim Beam may be 200 years old, but he ain't stodgy. If you doubt that, pick up a copy of Sports Illustrated or Raygun, two of the magazines that are carrying the bourbon maker's new black-and-white ads.
They certainly do cut through the clutter Denton talks about. Nothing subtle about the tag line, for one thing: "Get in touch with your masculine side."
Or the six photos. One is a (painfully) close shot of a man getting a tattoo on his forearm; another shows two hands gripping a golf club; a third pictures a bare-midriffed woman lounging on a couch.
Little surprise that the campaign is designed to reach men ages 21 to 26. In the company's words, the ads take the "inherent masculine qualities" of Jim Beam - those would be honesty and self-assuredness, in case you didn't know - and depict them in a "contemporary and engaging manner."
But, you say, between sips of your milk, isn't ol' Beam in danger of alienating its female customers?
Denton doesn't think that's a concern. Women make up such such a small percentage of bourbon drinkers that catering to them would be a waste of Jim Beam's money.
"Well, Jim Beam is all I drink," said a female co-worker - the same one who doesn't drink milk, incidentally. "It's my house bourbon. And I never thought of it as masculine."
Actually, if the campaign does raise some feminist hackles, that could be to Jim Beam's benefit, Denton said. Anti-political correctness sentiment is coming into vogue; a direct, in-your-face appeal such as this one stands to cash in on the PC backlash.
"If they're lucky, they would hope to stimulate a little outcry," he said.
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Coors Light beer resurrects John Wayne (left) for aby CNBnew commerical. The Duke's likeness - taken from the 19966 movie
"Cast a Giant Shadow" - is difitally inserted into the scene. 2.
"Get in touch with your masculine side," urges bourbon-maker Jim
Beam. The comapny's new ad campaign (below) is running in magazines.
3. Even superheroes need calcium. The Phamtom (above), played by
Billy Zane in an upcoming movie, dons a milk mustache for the
National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board's "Milk: What a
surprise!" campaign. color.