Advert Campaign - Get a Mac - Case Study Example

CASE STUDY REVIEW (TEMPLATE) Name Institution Tutor Course Date Get Mac: PC vs. Mac Background/Introduction The advert campaign is titled ‘Get a Mac.’ The Brand being advertised is Apple Mac Computer. The client company is Apple Inc (Adage 2015). Apple is an American based technology international company. It has its headquarters in Cupertino, California. It designs, develops and sells electronics, personal computers (PC), online services and computer softwares. One of the major challenges that face Apple products is a strong market competition. There is a wide variety of companies that design, develop and sell consumer electronic as Apple Company. Such companies include Dell, Samsung and Toshiba. This report analyses the aforementioned advert campaign, which is a contemporary advertising strategy that the company uses to market its products. Overview of the Agency The Apple Company hired TBWA/Chiat/Day advertising agency to design and develop the campaign. Just like Apple Company TBWA/Chiat/Day is an American Company (Adage 2015). Since its inception the in 1995, the agency has expanded its operations to the international stage. In the US, the company has offices in Nashville, Los Angeles, Mexico City and New York City. At the international scene, the company operates as part of the Omnicom Group Inc. This is also an American Company, associated with corporate communication and marketing. It is headquartered in New York City. The company offers a wide variety of services such as strategic media planning and buying, promotional marketing and advertising. In addition, it also offers customer relation management services (CRM) (Bulik 2006). According Omnicom Annual Report (2010), TBWA is one of the leading agencies among the US based agency networks. For this reason, it can be argued that TBWA/Chiat/Day advertising agency is one the options that is sought after by major companies in the US. It provides advertising service to international companies such as McDonalds, Apple, Sony Playstation, Nissan, Michelin and Visa. Part of this is attributed to the proper brand positioning. Even as it makes brands of various companies stand out, the agency itself has ensured it image stands out so that it can be the preferred choice of its target audience. Being an affiliate company of Omnicom Group Inc. is also an added advantage. This enables the company to carry out its operation at the international scale with a lot of ease. Omnicom Group is well established internationally. This factor gives its affiliate brands a significant advantage in the sense that they operate under an established image. Objectives The campaign was developed to defend brand position. Macintosh personal computers, branded as Mac has been in existence since 1998. In fact, that was the not the first time the ideology of the PC was developed. The original version was first introduced on January 24, 1984. For all these years, products of Apple Company were stereotyped for being products of the rich and creative people. As the company underwent a transitioning phase in 2006 it adopted the Intel Processor systems and completely overhauled their product line-ups. The advert was developed around the same period that these product transitions were taking place. The main motive was to erase long held perception and establish the company and its products as ‘everybody’s company’. The adverts were designed to affirm the Apple Mac brand into the market after a long period of time since it was first introduced. The features of the advert are elaborate. They are a series of sixty six commercial campaigns that aim at proving the superiority of Mac computers over PCs intended benefits everybody. The perception of everybody is used in the sense that the products were designed to be used by all people irrespective of class, creativity or lack thereof. Creative concept/idea, execution and tactics employed There were significant elements of creativity in the development of the campaign. Foremost, the characters used in the campaign are two comedians. The comedy actors were tactfully used to develop and initiate the features of Mac computer, especially those that PC does not have. The actors are John Hodgman and Justin Long. Mr Hodgman is portrayed as a lookalike of Bill Gates and represents PC, whereas Justin Long personifies Mac Computers. The ads were managed to be funny and playful and to influence the target audience to choose Justine Long by making him the best choice. The campaign developed and initiated various aspects. In one instance, there was a case of catching virus. The PC sneezes and coughs severely. Then he explains that he had been infected with 114,000 viruses that destroys PCs. He then warns Mac to stay back. Mac on the other hand, explains that he ok because he does not get viruses. He is confident and goes ahead to wipe the nose of PC. Still sneezing, PC says he is going to crash and falls down (Rhoads 2007). Besides being funny, the series of campaign is highly competitive. The campaign is designed to favour Mac computers. This suggests that the campaign was intended to target audience who do not have a strong brand preference. This implies that the target audience is the people who do not actively prefer PC to Mac. In other word, these are consumers who are not technologically savvy and are not particularly entrenched in PC brands. Generally, the campaign targets the average people, who do not know much about viruses and computers as well as those who do not know about the Mac computers and may not prioritize them when making a purchase. The campaign has several themes. For instance, Mac displays uncluttered simplicity. This aspect allows him to carefully and comfortably compare himself with PC as they interact. Another theme is friendliness and empathy. Throughout the series, Mac shows friendliness and empathy to PC who is apparently aggressive. According to Rhoads (2007), goodwill or empathy is one of the fundamentals of credibility. This tactic is strategically employed by Mac to show dominance over the PC. Ethical issues Critical analysis of the campaign reveals that Mac has made claims which are a bit misleading. For example, Mac claims that he is made of an operating system (OS) which is more secure than any other PC. Technically, this claim implies that Mac’s OS X is secure and not prone to virus as all other PCs that run on MS OS. This is not the case. According Barigozzi, Paolo and Peitz (2009), all OS, including Mac OS X are faced by security flaws. Lessons learnt The brands being promoted by the campaign have been in existence long before the campaign itself. However, the campaign escalated the sales volume and the financial performance of Apple significantly between 2006 and 2008. Owing to the positive performance, one can observe that people’s minds can be influenced. People can be persuaded or made to restate their position. However, this can only be possible if the information that they are given provides them with sufficient evidence to solve the arguments that go on their minds. In this case, all that should be done is to make the human understanding or mind to adopt a certain opinion. Everything else will fall into position. The mind will tune all other aspects to agree with ideology and support it. Evaluation and monitoring Measuring the success of an ongoing campaign is normally tricky. This is because companies or agencies would not voluntarily give information about their success factors. This is due to the fear that competitors can use them, which is almost certain. This leaves analysts with no option but to find their strategies of measuring the success of commercial campaigns. One such factor that can be used in this instance is the length of time that the advert ran. Therefore, the grand rule is, the longer time the advert ran, the more successful it is. In this sense, the campaign Get Mac: PC vs. Mac can be termed as successful. It dominated consistently for almost three consecutive years. During the period, the campaign achieved the following results. 1) It was named the best Advert of the year 2006 by Wall Street Journal 2) It emerged 8th in the annual Bobby awards 2006, sponsored by Advertising Age (AdAge. 2006). 3) It was named the most successful campaign of the year of 2007 during Effie Awards 4) It became the advert of the decade during Adweek’s award CREATIVE BRIEF (TEMPLATE) 1. Target Audience (Who are the primary audience? Break this down to demographic, psychographic, behavioural and geographic segmentation. What are their media consumption habits) The primary target audience are people who do not have strong software related knowledge. They are people who do not have a strong brand preference. Finally, they are people who do not know about the product and would not purchase it due to lack of that knowledge. 2. Advertising Objectives (This should not be marketing or media objectives. Include SMARTT if possible) To enhance efficiency. 3. Single Minded Proposition (or USP). (The single most important message you want the target to take from the activity –the one sentence that summarizes the USP. This should not be the tag-line/slogan) At last, the solution arrives. 4. Key Benefits (What are the emotional or practical/rational benefits? How does this support the proposition?) People are likely to change their preference. Even so, there are those who do not prefer specific brands. This is likely to work to the advantage of the proposition. 5. Audience Takeaway (What do you want the audience to think, feel and do after seeing your communication?) After seeing the communication, the audience should feel the unmatched superiority of the product in the market. Subsequently, the communication should trigger positive response and change the consumer behavior. After the communication they should start purchasing the products. 6. Tone of Voice (What style do you require – informal, warm, humorous, direct or functional?) The tone of the voice is humorous. The adverts used comedians who brought humor as they were campaigning for the product. 7. Who are the main competitors? (What are their messages?) The main competitors are other companies producing consumer electronics. They include 1) Samsung 2) Sony 3) Toshiba 8. Deliverables and budget (Extent of marketing communication tools used i.e. TV, radio. design, brochures, banners, display advertisements, etc.? What is the budget?) The communication is designed to be passed through traditional media channels such as radio, Print media, Television, Business magazines, consumer magazines and newspapers. The information can also be delivered through digital media channels such as social media, internet display, email marketing and online video. List of References Adage. (2015). Top Ad Campaigns of The 21 Century. Accessed May 14, 2015, from http://adage.com/lp/top15/#truth AdAge. (2006). “Garfield’s Bobby Awards”. 77(51), 31. Barigozzi, F., Paolo. G, & Peitz, M. (2009). With a little help from my enemy: comparative advertising as a signal of quality. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 18(4), 1071-1094. Bulik, B. (2006.) “Yes, They Do Like Them Apples (Macs, That Is)”. Advertising Age, Vol 77(31). Rhoads, K. (2007). Get-A-Mac Campaign Analysis. Accessed on May 14, 2015 from http://www.workingpsychology.com/download_folder/GAM_Campaign_Analysis.pd f Read More