A national or regional campaign is the primary responsibility of an account executive at an ad agency. He or she works closely with the creatives, the copywriter and art director who craft the spots, and the media buyers who determine the most effective locations and times to place the spots and actually purchase the air time.
At a local station or cable company, all of these functions may be performed by the sales executive, or there may be a small team of specialists.
The copy platform covered in the previous unit is an excellent way to approach a campaign, just as it is a single spot. Motivating appeals are critically important, and they may vary widely from spot to spot as the campaign attempts to reach a wide demographic spread.
While the text gives some excellent examples of ad campaigns, the recent Super Bowl provided some contemporary examples. The Super Bowl is unique in offering complete ad campaigns within the confines of a single program. For example, the Pepsi campaign demonstrates how a product with wide demographic appeal requires spots aimed at different segments of the total target audience. Specifically the spots included:
1. A humorous spot aimed at more mature viewers involving 2 bears who loot a refrigerator in a hunting cabin and are distressed to find no Pepsi. They steal human clothing and use a fake ID to purchase Pepsi with a forged check. The slogan is that Pepsi goes with left-overs.2. A spot aimed at a much younger group features a teenage girl saying she was prosecuted for downloading music off the Internet. You think she is going to apologize, but instead she brags that she is going to keep doing it and there is nothing anyone can do about it. This is revealed to be a promotion where you can download songs free with the codes provided under Pepsi bottle caps.
3. A young African-American man is in a diner complaining how he has lost his girl. The waitress comforts him and in a dream scene, tries to pick him up. The slogan is that Pepsi goes with sandwiches.
4. A young Jimi Hendrix decides to purchase a Pepsi from a machine beside a guitar shop rather than a Coke from a machine beside an accordion shop. We see him enter the shop and we hear one of his signature songs on the guitar and then on the accordion. The tag line is "that was a close one." This spot relates to viewers my age who actually saw Jimi Hendrix in concert, to younger viewers who still perceive his music as counter-culture, and to anyone who knows who he was and hates accordion music. It is the unusual spot where mentioning the competition seems not to have backfired--it is clearly a Pepsi commercial!
