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Purple Cow
You could never afford to introduce Cap’n Crunch
today, regardless of who made your commercial. Kids
won’t listen. Neither will adults.
Consumers were kids in the candy
store; they had pockets filled with shiny
money and they had a real desire to buy
stuff. We shopped on TV and we
shopped in stores. We were in a hurry
and we wanted to fill our houses, our
fridges, and our garages.
A quick look down this list of Procter & Gamble brands
turns up significant proof of the presence of the TVindustrial
complex. Is it possible to read the list without
filling your head with images and jingles
Bold, Bounce, Bounty, Cascade, Charmin, Cheer,
Cover Girl, Crest, Dawn, Downy, Folgers, Head &
Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Ivory, Max Factor, Miss
Clairol, Mr. Clean, Nice ’n Easy, Noxzema, NyQuil, Oil
of Olay, Old Spice, Pampers, Pepto-Bismol, Pringles,
Safeguard, Scope, Secret, Tampax, Tide, Vicks, Vidal
Sassoon, and Zest. Throw in particularly annoying product
pitches like Wisk and Irish Spring, and the point is
obvious. Advertising this stuff used to work. Really well.
It’s hard for me to overstate the effectiveness of this system.
Every time you buy a box of breakfast cereal, you’re
seeing the power of TV at work. Due to a commercial you
likely saw thirty years ago, you’re spending an extra dollar
or two on a box of puffed wheat or sugared corn. Over
your lifetime, that’s thousands of dollars in cost premium
for TV ads just for breakfast cereal.
Of course, it wasn’t just supermarket brands. It was John
Hancock and Merrill Lynch and Prudential. Archer
Daniels Midland, Jeep, and Ronald Reagan as well. Big
brands, big ideas, big impacts on our lives.
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