Perhaps not surprisingly for someone working in marketing, I have an interest in the long and diverse history of consumer advertising and how companies branded their products. Of course when it comes to business to business marketing there are different issues, but are there lessons to be learned?
Even if you weren’t around when they originated, there are some campaigns that, with the passage of time, have achieved iconic status. How many of these products can you identify?
- “Put a tiger in your tank”
- “You can go well with SSSSS”…
- “It looks good, it tastes good and by golly it does you good”
- “A YYYY a day helps you work, rest and play”
- “X00X cleans a big, big carpet for less than half a crown”
More recently, what about a brand of whisky that ‘has come a long way’
Example 3 is interesting in that it used celebrity endorsement, with famous actor Sir Bernard Miles supping the drink with relish. Before you say that was pretty much of its time, think of a French footballer and lager.
What are the messages they were trying to put across? 1 and 2 are about performance and reliability, 3 and 4 claim that the products fit in with and in some way ‘improve’ your lifestyle and 5, which was in the form of a jingle, focused on cost and value for money. One problem with this example is that it is time specific. Presumably inflation impacted the size of carpet that could be cleaned for the fixed price.
The reason I have cited these examples is that many years later they are still for some people closely associated with the product. When people think of your product what immediately springs to mind and, short of expensive advertising campaigns how can you influence the image they have of your company?
Or are we looking at this the wrong way? What are businesses looking for when they choose a partner? Are they looking for ‘the biggest and best’ - whatever that means, and we can all point out some rather spurious examples. How important is it that other similar companies have used your products and will endorse them. Is it your understanding of the type of problems they face and the flexibility of your solutions in solving these problems? Or is it all about the bottom line and the return on investment?
Most likely it is a combination of a number of factors in that businesses want is long term success and to work with partners who can help deliver it. It’s about enhancing confidence in the future of their business. At Glory we have given a great deal of consideration to how we can best meet customer needs. In some senses that’s the easy part. We know the industry and have been dealing with cash for over a hundred years. We are confident in the benefits we bring to companies in the retail, banking, gaming, Cash in Transit and OEM industries. We can transform the way they do business, now and in the future and we can do it securely.
I can’t think of a jingle but one phrase that encapsulates what we do is ‘securing the future’ and if you want ‘celebrity endorsements’ just take a look at our case studies.