One of the most powerful TV commercials I’ve seen in years has been banned for a reason that has left the entire advertising community wondering how to respond.

The spot, produced by Ogilvy Dublin for the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, aims to motivate people to help fight for children’s rights by laying bare the emotional and physical toll of abuse. Deeply moving and painfully real, the commercial shows a boy being beaten at home while still managing to articulate, in grown-up language, a manifesto for what children deserve in life and the future he dreams for himself in a present that’s unbearable.

See Adweek’s detailed overview of the making of the spot

The spot focuses entirely on the child. You see a boy attacked with increasing levels of violence, while maintaining his stoic composure. The person behind the abuse is mostly hidden from view, allowing all the emphasis to be on the boy, creating a strong emotional connection with the child. The ad is heartbreaking in its power.

In a stunning move that highlights the absurdity of the minefield of political correctness, the Irish Advertising Standards Authority has banned the ad. As Adland reports, the ad is inappropriate because it isn’t balanced enough in portraying the gender equality of the abuser. In other words, even though we don’t notice (and aren’t supposed to notice) the abuser, because it is a man and not both a man and woman doing the hitting, the ad is inappropriate.

As the ISPCC says in its official response, “any attempt to focus on whether the adult is a male or female is clearly missing the point and purpose of the ad.” Anyone involved in advertising understands this simple truth.

If the ad tried to show both a man and woman beating the child, the emphasis would switch from the child to the abusers, missing the purpose of the message and destroying its emotional impact. The viewers would begin to notice, instead of the child, the people behind the abuse. That’s a huge shift and takes the message away from its objective.

Take a look at the ad and see what you think:

I have seen ever increasing levels of political correctness impacting the advertising world, and these problems have become more and more absurd.

Even though you may wonder how some TV spots manage to reach the air, every commercial has to pass through various committees and rights group approvals before it runs. Each committee has its own issues and concerns, from race equality to gender equality to age equality to whether it meets parental standards and cultural sensitivities for people groups that may not even see the spot! These steps not only increase the cost of commercials, but impact development time, sometimes forcing rewrites and reshoots for reasons that are nothing short of bureaucratic nonsense.

I’m not attacking the intention of these processes. Steps to approve ads became necessary because of the ridiculous lack of sensitivity that we saw in these areas. The way women were portrayed needed to be addressed. People had to step in and put a stop to the stereotyping and other disturbing issues found in advertising. Consider these two actual ads from years past:

Did soft drink producers really promote the idea that giving babies sugary drinks would make them more successful in life? Did marketers really claim that a woman would bond herself to a man because he blew smoke in her face? Apparently so.

But now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. We haven’t arrived at gender equality at all. Instead, gender stereotyping has simply moved in predictable directions. Have you noticed how 100% of the total idiots shown in television advertising are white males? Is this what gender equality has come to?

Committees can’t create. By their very nature, committees can only water down creative messages by attempting to meet the lowest common denominator in the approval process. A brilliant idea is presented. One member of a committee doesn’t like something. A compromise is suggested. Another committee member doesn’t like something else. Another compromise happens. Before you know it, the original idea is no longer recognizable. The committees don’t care. Their job is not dependent on whether the message remains intact. They see only the black-and-white objectives laid out in their guidebook.

In the case of the IASA, it’s unclear what solution will satisfy that committee’s guidebook. Do they want another similar ad that shows a woman as the perpetrator? Or do they want each ad to feature both genders — a demand that would destroy the entire impact of the message.

Children need to be protected, nurtured and given hope. The ad does a wonderful job of moving me to think about the issue of child abuse. I’m personally not a supporter of codified “children’s rights” because they create a host of cultural problems. There’s already enough legal protection for children. The problem of abuse will not disappear because kids are given new powers they aren’t mature enough to understand. But my disagreement with the finer point of the campaign does not limit my concern about this ridiculous Standards Council decision. What is happening here is wrong, and it deserves attention.

The only silver lining in all of this is that through the controversy of these crazy decisions, ads like this one receive much more exposure on the web and YouTube. That ultimately gets the message across just as effectively as if the ad had run, and perhaps more so. Yet it shouldn’t come to this.

In the end, political correctness hurts us all. There needs to be common sense in the process or communication itself has no hope. If we don’t act soon, George Orwell’s chilling implications are not far off.

Here are some great Hot Wheels ads from the past couple years:

Hot Wheels for Real campaign

Recently Hot Wheels has been running a clever “Hot Wheels for Real” style ad campaign, including the use of larger-than-life posters that put real cars in the position of toys. Creative and memorable. Here are some of the better applications of that campaign:

Terrific application of the “Hot Wheels for Real” idea in Mexico

Another approach, this one produced in Colombia

This ad, part of a series, hails from the UK

Fearless at the 500

Now Hot Wheels has, quite literally, ramped things up even more. Shortly before the start of the 2011 Indianapolis 500 on May 29, Hot Wheels will send a life-size version of a Hot Wheels car down a giant custom-built ramp. At the end of a straightaway, it will attempt a new world-record jump by a four-wheel vehicle (trying to beat the current record of 301 feet). “It is a feat of engineering, and it’s a jaw-dropping sight when you see it,” said VP of Marketing Simon Waldron.

The stunt will be tied to a 30-minute Hot Wheels program airing on ABC the day of the race, the work of LA ad agency Mistress. The spot builds on a stylish and appropriate Area-51 style mythology, suggesting that there’s a testing facility “hidden for 43 years,” where all sorts of out-of-this-world driving takes place on huge Hot Wheels tracks. Great fun. Here’s a fun teaser video:

I just think it’s so much fun to see a great legacy product continue to keep the magic alive through powerful advertising. Best of luck to the team for the big stunt next weekend. I’ll be watching.

The winner of the inaugural YouTube Ad of the Year was a campaign for Sussex Safer Road called “Embrace Life – always wear your seat belt” and created by Alexander Commercials.

This 90-second PSA is very compelling. Rather than showing the typical images of mangled bodies or other horrific messaging, it takes a caring, gentle approach that is nevertheless just as powerful. Shows that you can send a strong safety message without having to shock people into submission.

The other three shortisted campaigns in the YouTube category were: Old Spice, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” by Wieden & Kennedy Portland; “O2 Gorillaz” by VCCP and “Good call” for Fosters by Adam & Eve.

Here’s the winning ad:

Frankly, it can be hard to define what is a ripoff and what isn’t. We’re all influenced by what others are doing. We see ideas and these influence our own perception and the surrounding culture. So in one sense most ads do rip off elements of other ads, whether intentional or not. And some creative comes out being similar to what others are doing or have done. That’s not what I’m referring to. By ripoff, I mean ads that are very obviously not original, but blatantly steal a concept or style from another, a shortcut to coming up with an original idea.

So far this year, we’ve seen not one, but two major rip-off television commercials by large brands that should know better and have the resources to avoid this kind of stupidity. What were they thinking? In one case, it’s possible the decision makers didn’t know it was a ripoff. In the other, it was so obvious that the creatives could not have been the only culprits.

Windows Phone 7 loses Spice

Isaiah Mustafa has very quickly built a reputation as the “Old Spice Guy.” The original “Look at me, now look at your man” commercial by Wieden+Kennedy that made him famous was delightful, a refreshing change from the usual approach to male deodorants. As the ad series went on, we grew familiar with the concept and it became less interesting, yet people still enjoyed them — especially the original ad that started the whole thing. I’ve seen parodies of the commercial (including this delightful version and this fun version from Sesame Street), references on various TV shows, and even voice mail messages you can download. Here’s a look at the first ad:

Enter Microsoft down under in Australia. They hire the same guy to use his same distinctive Old Spice delivery approach to sell… tada! Software! Kinda. We don’t really know much about what he’s selling for two reasons.

1. First, we’ve fallen asleep before the end of the spot because it’s so dull. Only Microsoft could take a great concept and make it this boring. It reminds me of the joke about the wife of a Microsoft engineer who tells her friend that life in the bedroom consists of him describing to her how great it’s gonna be.

2. The other reason we don’t know is that the spot doesn’t really tell us. So what we’re left with is the Old Spice Guy, standing against the same familiar ocean background, talking us to death about a product we don’t really get to understand. Bad as the spot is, everyone can see it’s a blatant ripoff. There’s no way that essentially everyone involved in this didn’t have a clue about what they were doing. Judging by the response on the advertising blogs, I doubt it will endear Mr. Mustafa to future prospects. Here’s the Microsoft spot. Please don’t drive or operate machinery after viewing.

Pepsi goes SOUR

The other example of recent ripoff advertising comes from Pepsi. With the help of TBWA, they produced what looked, at first glance, like a really great spot about the world coming together. When I first saw it, I loved its creativity and stylistic treatment. People in different locations sharing objects through the magic of the video interface, becoming one common community in the process. Cool idea, good execution to “One Tribe” by the Black Eyed Peas. Here’s the Pepsi One World spot:

Not long after, I learned through the magic of the global community that this ad stole all its visual styling from a Japanese music video by SOUR, produced six months earlier, for their song “Hibi No Neiro.” Take a look at the original SOUR video Hibi No Neiro, then you decide for yourself what you think of Pepsi’s effort now.

It’s certainly possible that the agency and even the client may not have known about the ripoff. Maybe it was the producer of the spot who thought nobody would find out. So I don’t want to come down too hard on the company or agency. But seriously, with all the approvals and licenses that have to happen, I doubt nobody knew. I don’t know if Pepsi paid a licensing fee to SOUR for the use of that video style treatment. I’ll excuse you if you have to step outside and choke with laughter over that one, but call me an eternal optimist. Even if they did, it’s just wrong shy of using SOUR for the music itself. I can understand if some creative schmuck in a small agency, feeling under pressure with an impossibly small budget, might cross the line to steal that much of an idea from someone else. But in a major agency? For a major client? A global client, no less? That’s just ridiculous. Please, ad people, let’s stop going down this kind of road.

I find it wildly entertaining, and feel that overall it does do an admirable job of making you remember the intended message. Take a look and see what you think:

As expected, professionals in the ad world are complaining. They don’t like the fact that it’s obviously not real. They note that there are several edits. There have been arguments that it’s pointless because we know the outcome ahead of time. They complain that the logo is always in view. Do these things invalidate a viral approach? What does make a great viral video?

Does it matter if it’s not ‘Real’?

Personally, I don’t see that it really matters a whole lot if your viral video is completely believable as being “real.” The main point of anything like this is that it’s memorable. If people like it, they’ll share it with their friends. If they don’t, no matter how real you’ve made it, they won’t. It’s as simple as that. On that basis, I think this succeeds, because it’s entertaining and ‘real enough’ to be shareable. This entire setup is clearly preposterous from the start. Anyone who believes that some geek really built this kind of set in their bedroom probably doesn’t have enough friends to be of viral use anyway. But most viral videos aren’t real, or at the very least, have questions hanging over their authenticity. We’re smart enough these days to know that this stuff isn’t real. We watch videos like this because of their entertainment value. Are Evian’s roller-skating babies real (see below)?

Does it matter that the logo is overused?

A lot has been made about the fact that the Samsung logo is constantly in view. I think this would be a valid complaint in a typical case, but here the logo has a reason for being there. It’s part of the product itself. If you shot a viral video of a Coke bottle making a journey across the country, the logo would be in view as well because that’s the product. So this is a pointless argument. If you’re considering a viral video effort, be careful about how the logo is used, but don’t be concerned if the logo is obviously a part of your product and would normally appear. Just don’t force it.

Does it matter that we know the outcome?

We know the outcome of movies, but we still go to watch them. We know the outcome of almost every television show, but we still watch. This argument holds no weight at all.

What makes viral video work?

As far as viral video advertising goes, I find Samsung’s approach more enjoyable than some of those on the Ad Age Top 10 list, like this lame Gymkhana Three music video for DC Shoes, which is just as obviously an ad and not really all that exciting. I can’t handle more than a few seconds of it. Yet it has achieved more than 2.7 million “real” views. Why? Likewise, Buick has an extremely lame effort that’s got no viral qualities at all, but has over a million views. It’s so bad you would think the ad industry is all over even attempting to call it “viral.”

My take on the whole “fake viral video” issue is that companies should just do it and see what happens. Try to make your video as real as possible, and make sure it’s entertaining. Don’t sweat the small details, they won’t matter one way or another. Nobody but your competitors and a few ad critics will take issue with those small points. If people like what they see, they’ll share it. If they do, you win. If they don’t, hopefully you had fun trying.

Another viral campaign that is still climbing rapidly in popularity after many weeks is Evian’s “Live Young” video featuring a group of lively babies skating to a hip hop beat. It’s delightful. Like Samsung’s video, it isn’t real and is also clearly commercial in nature. Yet we don’t care. Because it’s entertaining. It has over 800,000 views and growing.

Editor’s Update:

While the Gymkhana Three music video I mentioned in the article is extremely lame, there’s another Gymkhana viral video (curiously not in the Ad Age Top 10 though it has over 13 million views) which is highly entertaining. In fact, it’s so good, it deserves to be posted here:

Coke had already been in business for decades when the ad on the left above appeared in 1920. We don’t see the famously shaped bottle, which was designed in the shape of a woman’s curves in 1915. Was this omission deliberate? Or did they just not think the shape of the bottle was relevant in advertising?

In the ad from 1936 on the right, we see a reference to how long Coke has been around, probably in response to market pressure from Pepsi and other brands. By tying into the history of the brand, it was the first move towards its positioning as the “real thing,” though that tagline would come some 10 years later. We also see the beginning of the red circle, and the tagline “the pause that refreshes” used in the headline.

Until the late 1920’s, Coke was only thought of as a warm-weather beverage. The company set out to change that image through advertising.

The look of Santa Claus that we’ve grown so familiar with began as Coca Cola ads in the Saturday Evening Post back in 1930. In 1931, a series of illustrations were created for the D’Arcy ad agency by Haddon Sundblom, who was inspired by the famous poem The Night Before Christmas. Sundblom’s images were so successful his work was used for the next 33 years. The timing was right for Coke, as it tied in with the new explosion of commercialism. Perhaps it was the consistency of how Coke continued to portray Santa year after year that caused this style treatment of the Santa image to be so well established around the world. Today, we can’t imagine Santa looking any other way.

In 1941, advertising began to focus on product benefits, but it was still pretty unsophisticated. Notice how the ad on the left touches on multiple themes, from convenience to taste and quality, rather than staying on one message. While the ad is unfocused, it does a good job of communicating the portability of the six-pack.

Five years later, soft drink brands were putting their emphasis on group dynamics, showing people getting together in social settings with the product as the “life of the party,” so to speak.

In 1951, with American society buoyed by the post-war boom, two significant cultural changes seemed to impact the Cola Wars.

Automobile travel was huge. Coke took advantage of this trend by positioning itself as the refreshment for people who loved to drive.

The second change was the growth of full color in print publications. Cheaper printing meant everything was in color, and ads everywhere now exploded in the use of full-page, full-color, full-bleed images.

Meanwhile, 7-Up was floundering, with some seriously flawed soft drink advertising. These examples from 1955 and 1958 show how badly the company managed its advertising image at that time. It’s a wonder people drank 7-Up at all, given ad messages like these!

These ads for Pepsi and Coke from 1964 show the emergence of modern advertising. Everyone wanted to copy the look of the famous “Lemon” ad created by Doyle Dane Bernbach for the Volkswagen Beetle that year. It was the birth of art direction, with emphasis on eye flow and carefully managed font treatment. Notice how carefully these photographs were art directed, in order to move the eye towards the copy.

7-Up continued to struggle with pointless, silly advertising approaches. An example is the ad on the far right, from 1967, part of a lengthy “Wet and Wild” series showing inexplicable photos of glasses covered with carbonation foam. Look at the confusing body copy: “You’ve never seen anything like the taste of 7-Up. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.” What?

Meanwhile, Coke’s simple ad emphasized practicality with a simple message. Note the use of the Helvetica font, which was now taking the world by storm.

In 1963, the Coca Cola company launched Tab, the new diet cola brand. Curiously, given the sophistication of the parent company, their advertising for Tab was a disaster, focusing on an image of upscale, snobbish users that ordinary people simply couldn’t relate to. A slogan in the 1970s touted the brand as “a beautiful drink for beautiful people.” Although there was a clear strategy around the idea of the wealthy being thin, I think the effort fell short of the mark. Who really cares if rich people drink Tab? How would that ever make it hip? Not surprisingly, while Tab enjoyed some success, especially in the 1960’s, it never fulfilled the potential for that market segment, and eventually Diet Coke would fill that niche with much greater impact.

Versus TV trailer

Versus Television ran this nice trailer during the 2010 Tour de France, highlighting the power of sports and competition as a vital element of human life. It makes its point well.

You can see a full length (2:16) version here

Nike World Cup

In a similar vein, Nike ran this outstanding ad just ahead of the 2010 World Cup. The storytelling is superb, and I can only imagine what kind of a budget was behind this effort:

Apple Facetime

Apple created this powerful ad to highlight the new Facetime feature in the iPhone 4. I really like how it feels. It makes me want to use the feature, which is the mark of a great commercial.

Livestrong/Nike “Engine”

Lance Armstrong’s new ad for Livestrong Foundation and Nike does an excellent job of creating emotion with what would normally be just a jumble of background noise. Works beautifully in this context.

Apple Think Different ad

When Steve Jobs regained the helm of Apple, he introduced this new message to remind people of what Apple represented. Great way to apply the emotion of a brand. Not everyone “gets” this message, and that’s the way it should be. Only those who get it will connect with the brand, and they will be loyal.

McDonald’s Larry Bird vs. Michael Jordan

Okay, it doesn’t have quite the same emotional power, and falls short of some of the great McDonald’s commercials from the 80’s, but not a bad effort to help the brand ward off its negative perception as a junk food provider and attempt to relate to the world of athletics.

Advertising has gone through many transitions during the four decades since the ground breaking creative headline of the “Lemon” ad changed marketing communications forever. There were periods when many ads had no headline at all, and times when headlines were so long they took up more space than the rest of the ad. In an effort to move away from what might be seen as ‘too traditional,’ it seems that many copywriters have forgotten the value of the headline.

Research has found that the headline represents 84% of the effectiveness of any communication. 84 out of every 100 people who read an ad, web page or E-mail message will do so only if the headline or subject line does its job. No doubt some people will say, “But what about [insert dramatic exception here]?” Of course there are exceptions. There are no hard rules in advertising. But there are patterns and realities of human behavior. Research is useful for finding out what is most likely to be effective.

I’ve seen many A/B tests where one headline would pull far better than another, when everything else about the message was the same. In one dramatic case, changing a single word in the headline drew four times as many responses. Headlines matter.

So, if the headline is as important as all that, it makes sense that copywriters should spend time on it. Far too many don’t give it enough thought. And far too many clients don’t think they should. In fact, you should actually spend four times as long writing the headline as the rest of the copy!

A great headline is short, concise, and powerful. But it rarely starts that way. It takes time to cut away and edit and painstakingly reshape until you have something that can’t be reduced any further without changing the message.

Carmine Gallo, in his excellent book “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs,” writes that the best headlines need to be short enough to fit into the 140-character limit of a Twitter post (known as a “Tweet”). It’s good advice. Twitter is an excellent tool for copywriters. It forces you to think in short sentences, compelling you to write copy that does the most with the least.

Gallo goes on to illustrate his point with real examples from Apple:

• MacBook Air. The world’s thinnest laptop. (42 characters)
• The iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket. (37 characters)
• Apple reinvents the phone. (26 characters)
• The industry’s greenest notebooks. (34 characters)
• iPhone 3G. Twice as fast at half the price. (43 characters)

You might think that these apply well to Powerpoint, but won’t prove as creative or effective as the headline of an ad or E-mail message. Not so. Apple actually ran these same headlines in all their communication channels, and even used them in interviews. They appeared on their website as the feature headlines found on the home page, in the subject lines of their E-mail promotions, in press releases and in their magazine ads.

The media found they couldn’t write more effective versions. This meant that editorial coverage on these product announcements ran with exactly the same headlines. When Apple introduced the iPod, the Associated Press ran their story with the headline, “Apple’s new iPod player puts 1,000 songs in your pocket.” When the iPhone was launched, PC World ran the headline that Apple would “Reinvent the Phone,” using language provided by Apple. It doesn’t get any better than that.

In his book, Gallo points out that this rule is equally important in other presentation settings. For example, your pitch about a business concept given to potential investors also needs to meet the “Twitter” rule or it won’t go anywhere. Google pitched its concept using the following headline: “Google provides access to the world’s information in one click.” Gallo mentions that one investor told him, “If you cannot describe what you do in ten words or less, I’m not investing, I’m not buying, I’m not interested. Period.”

If you write copy, create a Twitter account and start using it. You’ll be amazed at how it could improve your headline writing skills.

Since most headlines are short enough to fit within the limits of a Tweet, ask yourself if the headline will actually mean anything if that’s all you saw. When you strip away the graphics and other parts of the message, is it still compelling? How well do your headlines meet the Twitter rule? Will they stand out in the ever-changing stream of a Twitter feed? If not, they won’t stand out in the stream of consciousness that impacts all media.

I came across this interesting example of how moving simple punctuation around can totally change the context of a story. It’s pretty funny.

The first letter:

Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy — will you let me be yours? Gloria.

The second letter:

Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Gloria.

Alfred Korzybski, who developed the concept of general semantics, explained it this way: Insane people try to make the world of reality fit what is inside their heads.

Someone who thinks he’s Napoleon makes the outside world fit that notion. He filters and interprets the events and signals around him to fit that belief. There’s no room at all for facts.

But the sane person is exactly the opposite. She constantly analyzes the world of reality and adjusts what is in her head to fit the facts. In other words, while the insane person has only opinions, the sane person never has opinions or feelings. She would be totally unaffected by colors, shapes, other people’s viewpoints and so on — using only cold, hard facts to make every decision. She would buy a mustard-colored sports car called the Slug on the same emotionless basis as a bright red Viper because issues of color or semantics have nothing to do with actual performance. What friends think wouldn’t even be an issue. Indeed, a completely sane person would be like a computer, and in many situations would be unable to make any decision at all! If you were truly making your decision on logic alone, you would often be unable to make a decision for lack of sufficient input.

Most people are somewhere in between. You make up your mind about something you like based on input from many sources, including visual appearance and emotion. A lot of it comes from your gut reaction, how you feel about it overall. You might like the color of the red car, causing you to prefer it over the brown one, even if other aspects of the car are less favorable. Once you start to form your opinion, you look for additional pieces of information proving that you are making the right decision, despite the fact that many aspects of your decision are not based on fact. You may even find the nearest expert (or non-expert) and accept his or her opinion. That way you don’t have to bother with too many facts. In the advertising business, that’s called “word of mouth.” So how did the ‘expert’ you went to get his or her opinion? The same ‘unsane’ way you did!

A good marketing or advertising strategy makes use of this psychological process. A good strategy must be simple, fitting easily into the mind of the prospect. It must be memorable. It must provide just enough facts to be believable. And it must strike an emotional chord to satisfy “unsane” people.

So how does this actually work in the real world?

Strategies and brand positioning are used to appeal to the emotional part of our decision-making process. Very rarely, if ever, are these designed to appeal to logic.

When Apple computer said, “Here’s to the crazy ones,” it was talking about all of us. That “think different” campaign was entirely pointed at our emotional response to being seen as leaders and innovators in a world of followers. This claim had nothing directly to do with whether the computer was better than the competition, because those arguments would have had no impact. People don’t want to hear that they made a bad choice. They want to be inspired by their association with one brand because it is cool, or thoughtful, or daring, or whatever.

Here are a few other historical examples of unsane marketing at work:

Pepsi: The Choice of a New Generation

This campaign used emotion to trigger existing feelings of rebellion in young people, giving them an option to drink something different from what their parents were used to. Does this have anything to do with taste? No. But it worked wonders with an unsane audience.

Coke: The Real Thing

This campaign stood on Coca Cola’s position as the “original” soft drink. The factual side of this strategy combined with the implied perception that any product that has been a leader for so long must taste good. Personally, I think it’s a weak campaign (there’s no product definition), but it served the need Coke had to re-establish its position as the “original” cola.

BMW: The Ultimate Driving Machine

Despite the fact that this car doesn’t look anything like a true sports car, this campaign effectively positioned the BMW as a driving enthusiast’s automobile. A certain amount of factual information had to be used to make the statement believable, but I wonder how many people make a sports-car buying decision without ever trying a Porsche.

United: Fly the Friendly Skies

This campaign ran for many years, and was very effective. Yet while it ran, I flew many different airlines and found staff at most of them equally friendly and courteous. This ad campaign worked because people want to believe that there’s a difference. Of course, success with this type of approach means you better be as good or better than others in the area you’re talking about, or you could crash and burn (it won’t be pretty).

Budweiser: King of Beers

Now, Bud may be a great beer, but exactly what makes one beer a “king” compared to another? Nothing, except the image of that bottle cap turned upside down. A brilliant campaign, directly targeted at the “unsane” nature of how and why we make buying decisions. It has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotion. Long live the king (of beers)!