Brand: Hillary Clinton
Execution: Viral Video
Target: Democratic Primary Voters
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
In a sendup of the series finale for the HBO hit ‘The Sopranos’, Hillary Clinton walks into a diner in New Jersey as the Journey song “Don’t Stop Believing” plays in the background. She sits down in a booth and browses a menu. She flips through the songs on a jukebox at the booth, which include Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Smashmouth. Bill Clinton walks in, in a casual shortsleeve shirt and sits down across from her. “Anything look good?” he asks. “We have some great choices,” she says. A waiter arrives and puts down a basket of carrot sticks. “I ordered for the table,” Hillary says and Bill looks despondent. “No onion rings?” he asks and Hillary responds, “I’m lookin’ out for you.” A menacing-looking guy at the counter looks at the pair. “Where’s Chelsea?” Hillary asks and we see a car inexpertly pulling into a parking space as Bill responds, “parallel parking.” The guy at the counter gets up as Bill asks, “How’s the campaign going?” Hillary responds, “Well, like you always say – focus on the good times.” Then the guy from the counter walks by the couple, stopping for a moment to coldly eye Hillary. The couple looks at each other and Bill shrugs. “So what’s the winning song?” Bill asks. “You’ll see,” Hillary answers. “My money’s on Smashmouth,” he says, “everybody in America wants to know how it’s going to end.” “Ready?” Hillary asks as she puts a coin in the jukebox and the screen goes black. The spot ends with the words “Find out the winning song at www.hillaryclinton.com/song“

What Works:
Every four years, professional brand marketers get a fascinating opportunity to peek inside an alternate universe as national political campaigns build brands out of candidates. These campaigns are run by specialists who consistently flout every guideline for ad spend and media concentration that brand marketers have developed and tested for the past sixty years. For example, brand marketers know that a TV spot begins to wear out after 6 or 7 viewings and past that point it may start to have the opposite effect the marketer intends. Political campaign specialists don’t believe this – in fact they seem to think that seeing a spot 20 or 30 times might be optimal. Of course, we professional marketers think that these folks are just trying to chase the media tale – that elusive last 10% of TV viewers that watch so infrequently that they are nearly impossible to capture on network television. To reach these people at 3X frequency you have to oversaturate virtually everyone else. As marketers we also wonder why these campaign specialists don’t use viral media more effectively. After all, they’re operating in one of the highest-interest, highest-attention categories in the world during their ‘buying season.’  And we know these same people who watch little television spend a huge amount of time on the Internet.
All of which makes this tiny viral video from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign worth considering carefully. As wobbly as it looks from an executional standpoint, it has been extremely effective at garnering attention and moving the campaign conversation back to Senator Clinton. While political advertising on network television often looks like amateur hour, this unpolished viral video has all of the hallmarks of solid, professional brand marketing.

Why does this viral video work? By the numbers:

1. Courts Controversy: As Hillary Clinton’s campaign seems to understand, loud voices transmit most effectively on the Internet. There are a number of designed elements of this video which beg for supporters or opponents to speak up passionately. First is the choice of casting Hillary Clinton as Tony Soprano – a mobster. This plays into the pre-existing views of the Republican opposition who could be expected to speak loudly about this fact – thus spreading the video and gaining the attention of the mainstream press. It is not lost on the campaign that these folks will not vote in the Democratic Primaries. A number of other small choices give fertile ground for conspiracy theorists to create conversations about the video – who is the goon looking harshly at Hillary? Is he part of some vast, right-wing conspiracy? Why would the campaign draw attention to Bill and Hillary’s relationship?
2. Changes the Media Conversation: Lost in the debate over this video is the fact that the media could easily have spent last week with a different story on Hillary Clinton – how her song contest ended up picking a Canadian theme song for her campaign (by Celine Dion). This video is ostensibly luring voters to the campaign web site to view the video, but the real purpose is to bury that story under the weight of a new controversy.
3. Reframes the Candidate: Solid brand marketing does not argue with consumer’s pre-existing beliefs about a brand. Instead, it embraces these views and then subtly subverts them by showing the positive side of seemingly negative qualities. Listerine is painful to use and tastes bad. When the brand tried to run away from this in the seventies and eighties, it failed. Only when it embraced the experience – as evidence that Listerine was ‘killing bad bacteria’ – did the brand succeed. Similarly, Hillary Clinton is embracing the stereotype of herself as a power-hungry candidate, but subtly recasting the issue. She is shown here as a patriarch, someone who is exceedingly competent and will take care of the family. It is a good bet that competence will be one of the primary voting issue for Democrats this campaign season.
4. Addresses a Brand Issue: This spot also cleverly redefines the relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton as she looks forward to a general election. The problem here is that Hillary Clinton needs ex-President Bill Clinton to win the race, but she cannot risk being seen as his pawn or part of a dynasty. If Al Gore made a mistake by running away from President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Senator Clinton cannot make the same mistake. In this spot, when Bill Clinton asks the question, “How’s the campaign going?” we are given a recast version of the Bill/Hillary relationship. He is supportive, available and engaging, but not in control – not involved on a daily basis.

What Doesn’t:
It’s safe to say that Senator Clinton won’t be able to pay the bills as an actor should her Presidential bid fail. Bill Clinton, on the other hand shows some promise. It is also a risky proposition for the campaign to raise the issue of the relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton, as the trickiest question for the general election would be the vision in voters minds of a White House inhabited by two occupants, one called “Madam President,” and the other by right and tradition, “Mr. President.”

Branding Bottom Line:
Love them or hate them the Clintons have stolen four days of the national debate from their political rivals.

Issue: The Audi Driving Experience shows the opportunities and challenges of building a brand experience
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

Your advertising blogger recently had the opportunity to attend the Audi Driving Experience at Sebring Raceway in Florida. The program is called an ‘advanced handling course’ and as such it falls somewhere between the teenage netherworld of driver’s ed and the high thrills, high dollar sport of amateur racing. The goal is to teach adults how cars handle in real-world situations and give them practical experience in recovering from ice-induced skids, sudden road obstacles and other road hazards. The program is run by experienced professional race car drivers; at Sebring it is a team led by Grand-Am Cup racer Nick Fanelli through Panoz Racing School. About a dozen adult males (and the adult daughter of one) turned out for the opportunity to drive Audi TT coupes around various configurations of cones and on a wet/dry skidpad with Nick Fanelli’s team.

The Audi Driving Experience is an enjoyable weekend for the participants, and a nice add-on to race car training for Fanelli and Panoz, but it is deadly serious business for Audi. It is a very rare chance for Audi to indoctrinate its most loyal customers in the brand and to turn them into brand advocates. As we all know, those consumers who are most passionate about a brand recommend it. These brand advocates (or brand evangelists) have a huge effect on long-term brand strength. In some brands, we can see over half of all new users being influenced by a brand advocate with a personal recommendation.

The Audi Driving Experience is a well-run program, but it misses huge opportunities to position and build the Audi brand with enthusiasts. The Audi marketing team seems to have little connection with the school and they did not turn the Audi Driving Experience into a step behind the velvet rope for the participants. Among the missed opportunities:

1. Brand Connection – There was good Audi signage and Audi vehicles as well as instructors who had tested other Audi products and spoke highly of them. However the school didn’t either sell or distribute Audi branded material (students seemed uniformly disappointed not even to be given a t-shirt or hat to commemorate their weekend). Beyond that, nobody from Audi USA corporate attended the event. This would be a golden opportunity for marketers to connect with the base and more importantly to give these consumers a sense of being included in the Audi family by discussing upcoming vehicles, challenges, etc. Instead the experience seemed very removed from the brand.
2. Sampling – The majority of the adults in this class were high-net worth individuals, many with a stable of cars. Given that, it was surprising that Audi only supplied the school with 2006 model Audi TTs, and none of the high-end Audis that the participants would be more likely to buy upon returning home. This obviously springs from a cost reduction focus (flogging a $70,000 A-8 or RS-4 on the skidpad is more expensive than a car costing half as much and makes maintenance trickier as well). On the other hand, Audi could have sold a few cars immediately (perhaps getting a return on the higher equipment and maintenance costs) and it certainly would have generated more enthusiasm with these brand faithful if they had let the students drive their premium products. BMW appears to understand the importance of high-end sampling as they routinely use M-5′s (one of their most exclusive cars) in their own driving school.
3. Relationship Building – Running a branded experience should be the beginning, not the end, of a relationship. While Panoz, the company running the training understood this, Audi did not. Ironically, at the end of the course students walked away with materials on other classes from Panoz but nothing from Audi.

All of this goes back to a theme that the ThirdWay Advertising Blog has been harping on for most of the past three years – execution. It’s not enough to have a good idea for your brand and to construct a decent strategic plan to execute it. You have to get the details right, all of them. The Audi Driving Experience is a great example of a brand getting the big idea right, but fumbling on the execution. While senior management can dismiss the impact of these programs because they reach relatively few consumers, the impact of these consumers can be significant. Just try Googling “Audi Driving Experience” in a week or so. You’ll likely find these words up near the top of the list, next to Audi’s.

Brand: Reebok
Execution: TV, Online, Print
Target: Joggers
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Reebok unveils a cross-platform, $30mm campaign to support its new “Run Easy” tagline.  The intro spot in 1:00 and :30 features pairs of runners (celebrities including NBA’s Allen Iverson, soccer star Thierry Henry and track athletes Carolina Kluft and Aries Merritt) chatting while running at a relaxed pace.  The conversations are intercut to add a comic effect.  The website features social networking functionality, allowing visitors to upload their favorite runs and tunes and share photos as well as chatting.  The campaign takes a direct poke at Nike with the line “I am what I am,” and lines such as “What are you just doing?”

What Works:
The Run Easy campaign is a breath of fresh air from Reebok in a category obsessed with an obsessive attitude towards athletics.  Nike has been successful positioning its brand to serious athletes, thus attracting millions of other consumers who admire but do not imitate this level of dedication.  Too often both Reebok and Adidas ad campaigns have looked like pale clones of the original Nike strategy.  This new multimedia campaign from Reebok aims to position Reebok squarely with casual athletes.  It is a risky but worthwhile endeavor.

We are most impressed that Reebok understands that it cannot own women as it once did (during the early days of aerobics) and needs to find meaningful differentiation from Nike.  Run Easy is appealing because it is not a statement of ability but of purpose.  Reebok uses the spots to show consumers that there are multiple reasons that people exercise, and that one of the primary reasons is social.  Social exercising is obviously still healthy, but considerably more pleasant. Using professional athletes gives ordinary people permission to take a more social and relaxed attitude towards their exercise and seeks to build expertise for Reebok as the brand that connects people through running.  The campaign aggressively targets Nike (as in the print execution above which chides “What are you just doing? Run easy”) and seeks to put Reebok in a separate orbit.

The online aspects of this campaign are slick and well-executed.  It’s too early to know whether Reebok can attract a real community of runners but it seems distinctly possible given the tools they’ve given consumers to share and interact.

What Doesn’t:
There is no doubt that Reebok has hit on a relevant cultural and social message, and this alone should build credibility for Reebok.  However it is less certain whether consumers will perceive “social exercise” as an ownable area of expertise.  The question for Reebok is whether consumer will take the message, relax their attitudes but still buy Nikes because they are what serious athletes wear.  Reebok is in new territory, trying to understand how to make social running aspirational.  Which is why they used professional athletes in these spots.  This was also somewhat jarring because it seemed out of context, but it was understandable given the challenge Reebok faces.

Executionally, our sole complaint is that we would have liked to see more of the Reebok brand earlier in the spot – the usual client-side whine.

Branding Bottom Line:
Reebok smacks Nike with common sense.  We like it.