The Language of Advertising
American shoe manufacturer, Nike, recently announced a 69 percent fall in
profits, the second quarterly drop in a row, and announced it would sack
1600 workers. A 69 percent fall in profits: that means they only made $73.1
million last quarter, instead of $237.1 million. Oh my heart bleeds for Nike
(not!). The reasons given for the fall were the Asian crisis, the high price
of shoes, and significantly, the abandoning of the brand by American youth.
It seems that Nike has become viewed by many teenagers as a symbol of corporate
America. Of course, that’s just calling a spade a spade; but I guess
the point is, the teenagers of America aren’t supposed to know that.
Maybe Nike needs a new advertising program?
Advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi, had a real good idea for Sprite recently,
which Nike could at least try emulating to get back that elusive youth
demographic. They used an off-set, mixed-typography font in their print campaign
for Sprite. It was as simple as that. Here’s Saatchi’s co-director
of creative services, Stephen Freed, giving the rationale for his approach:
"We feel this crazy, jagged, broken typewriter-style font will resonate strongly
with the jaded youth of Generation X…Its broken, imperfect look captures
perfectly that disillusioned, anti-commercial, 'I don't fall for slickness,
dude' sentiment of today's slacker youth grunge culture. It also scanned
extremely well with our test focus groups." Yes, that’s right, that’s
what he said.
The language of advertising is full of this kind of cynical, manipulative
thinking. The scary thing is, it often pays off. Advertisers have found,
through their neverending market research and psychology studies, that the
youth market is highly susceptible to appeals to uniformity and some kind
of tribal identity, most commonly exploited by popular brand names. For example,
research findings into 13 to 16 year old teenagers, by Ellen Baron, a consultant
for Stancombe Research and Planning concluded that "Teens shop to invent
themselves and to begin living…", and asked the question "Is this the
'tribalism' that so many marketers and advertisers have recently postulated;
a process in which totems and iconography are consumed and collected so as
to demonstrate being, identity and belonging?"
Whether the youth market is strong and savvy enough to defend itself against
a corporate world that is hell bent on identifying and throwing their own
values back at them via ads that are ‘branded’ to the company product,
remains to be seen. But the apparent reaction of teenagers against Nike is
at least a heartening development. Could it be that Nike’s advertising
icon, Micheal Jordan has had his day (at least outside the basketball court)?
Maybe Nike could drop him for someone more relevant to today’s
‘slacker youth grunge’ market. Would anyone care to nominate Eddy
Vedder? What - grunge is out? Okay, how about Will Smith? At least he’d
be cheaper. And who knows, with the money they’d be saving maybe Nike
could re-employ some of the workers they sacked. I wouldn’t count on
it though.