CORPORATE IDENTITY ADVERTISING

2.3 CORPORATE IDENTITY ADVERTISING

Companies take pride in their logos and corporate signatures in fact, the graphic designs that identity corporate names and products are considered valuable assets of the company, and great effort is expended to protect their individuality and ownership. The corporate logo may even dominate advertisement. What does a company do, though, when it decides to change its name, logos, trademarks, or corporate signatures, as when it merges with another company? How does it communicate that change to the market it serves and to other influential publics? This is the job of corporate identity advertising.

When software publisher Productivity Products International changed its name to Stepstone Inc., it faced an interesting dilemma. It needed to advertise the change. But in Europe, a key market for the firm, a corporate name change implies that the business has gone bankrupt and is starting over with a new identity. So, rather than announcing its new name in the print media, stepson used a direct-mail campaign. It mailed an announcement of its name change to customers, prospects, investors, and the press. The campaign was a success: within days of the mailing, almost 70 customers and prospects called stepstone to find out more about the company and its products. More familiar corporate name changes from the recent past include the switch from America of Western Bank corporation to First Intestate Bankcorp; the change of Consolidated Foods to replace the premerger identities of Boroughs and Sperry.

2.4 RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING

When the prime objective of corporate advertising is to attract employment applications, companies use recruitment advertising such as the Chiat/Da ad in Exhibit 18-10. Recruitment advertising is most frequently found in the classified sections of daily newspapers and is typically the responsibility of the personnel department rather than the advertising department. Recruitment advertising has become such a large field, though, that many advertising agencies now have recruitment specialists on their staffs. In fact, some agencies specialize completely in recruitment advertising, and their clients are corporate personnel managers rather than advertising department managers These agencies create, write, and place classified advertisements in news papers around the country and prepare recruitment display ads for specialized trade publications. So far in this chapter, we have discussed only the advertising of commercial organizations. But nonprofit organizations also advertise. The government charities, trade associations, and religious groups, for example, use the same kinds of creative and media strategies as their counterparts in the for-profit sector to convey messages to the public. But unlike commercial advertisers whose goal is to create awareness, image, or brand loyalty on the pan o' consumers, noncommercial organizations use advertising to affect consume! opinions, perceptions, or behavior—with no profit motive. While commercial advertising is used to stimulate sales.

3. NONCOMMERCIAL ADVERTISING

Used to stimulate donations, to persuade people to vote one way or another or to bring attention to social causes.

If a specific commercial objective for a new shampoo is to change people'; buying habits, the analogous noncommercial objective for an energy conservation program might be to change people's activity habits, such as turning off the lights. The latter is an example of demarcating, which means the advertiser is actually trying to get consumers to buy less of a product 01 service. Exhibit 18-11 compares objectives of commercial and noncommercial advertisers.

3.1 EXAMPLES OF NONCOMMERCIAL ADVERTISING

One example of noncommercial advertising conducted on a large scale is the antidrug campaign created by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. In 1987, this coalition of more than 200 ad agencies, the media and many other companies in the communications business launched an all-out attack on drug abuse. The coalition set its goal as the "fundamental reshaping of social attitudes about illegal drug usage." The $1.5 billion program entails the efforts of ad agencies across the country, each developing components of the campaign at their own cost.

The antidrug program includes hundreds of newspaper and magazine ads as well as 200 different commercials and print ads. The space and time allotted for the ads, all donated by the media, are worth an estimated $310 million per year.²⁴ Similarly, most of the creative and production suppliers have donated their services.

The wide variety of ads have been created to reach specific target groups. Some are aimed at cocaine users, some at marijuana smokers; some are aimed at parents, some at children. Most ads present hard-hitting messages about the dangers of drug abuse, depicting drug use as a sure route to the hospital or the cemetery. In a TV commercial targeted at teenaged marijuana smokers, for example, the Ayer agency suggests that pot smokers are subjecting themselves to the risk of physical and mental health problems. Other commercials compare the brain on drugs to an egg in frying pan or show dead rats that have succumbed to cocaine abuse. Print ads have also emphasized the dangers of cocaine abuse, including a series of ads developed by DDB Needham Worldwide that enumerate cocaine's effects. Exhibit 18-12 is from that series of ads. In addition, some ads speak to parents who use drugs ("If parents stop, kids won't start"), to women tempted to use cocaine ("What to do if he hands you a line"), and to parents who have put off talking to their children about drugs ("If everybody says it can't happen to their kids, then whose kids is it happening to?").

The effort is being billed as the "largest and most ambitious private-sector, voluntary peacetime effort ever undertaken." Believing that the United States cannot succeed as a drug culture and that advertising can "demoralize" drug use, the organization wants nothing less than a drug-free America.

Not all public service advertising is done on such a massive scale. We see advertisements daily for intangible humanitarian social causes (Red Cross), political ideas or issues (political candidates), philosophical or religious positions (Church of Latter Day Saints), or particular attitudes and viewpoints (labor unions). In most cases, these advertisements are created and placed by nonprofit organizations, and the product they advertise is their particular mission in life, be it politics, welfare, religion, conservation, health, art, happiness, or love.

Research conducted by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America proves that noncommercial advertising does change consumer attitudes. Specifically, the coalition's ads have changed attitudes about drug use. Thus, by providing information to the public on issues such as health, safety, education, and the environment, noncommercial advertising helps build a better society. Public service announcements emphasizing the dangers of unsafe sex and drunk driving and those stressing the virtues of recycling and continuing education demonstrate that noncommercial advertising can help to enhance the quality of life.