True or false: You have to constantly change your advertising to be a successful marketer.
False. If it works, keep using it and improving it until the results no longer support the costs.
Just Do It. Got Milk? A Diamond Is Forever.
Nike, the milk industry, and De Beers created marketing campaigns that spoke so universally to their audiences that today--decades after their creation and in some case, their promotion—consumers like you and me instantly recognize them and recall brand names, images, print ads, and commercials.
Why’s that? Repetition. In each of these cases, audiences responded to the ads and marketers wisely kept them around. They worked.
First used in 1993 by the California Milk Processor Board, the “Got Milk?” campaign not only brought a seemingly boring product to the foreground, but it also engaged audiences with its arsenal of celebrity endorsements. Over its 20-year life, the “Got Milk?” ads featured roughly 300 different celebrities and athletes with milk moustaches touting the benefits of drinking milk. Even though the Milk Processor Education Program decided to discontinue the “Got Milk?” campaign in 2014, the brilliant catchphrase for this simple staple remains in our memories and in our culture.
Nike commercials and ads have been telling consumers to “Just Do It” for more than 25 years. The phrase, the tweaked last words of an executed killer, has inspired non-athletes to train, athletes to train harder, and the entire shoe giant to work harder since 1988. Would that have happened if Nike had dropped the ad after a year? Just doubt it.
The “A Diamond Is Forever” slogan, created in 1948, not only started a campaign that would last more than 60 years, but it also helped popularize the notion that a girl wasn’t engaged unless she had a diamond ring. De Beers currently owns 35 to 40 percent of the world’s diamond supply, and eight out of ten American brides get a diamond. We’d say that campaign was worth repeating.
Good campaigns, good advertising, good marketing doesn’t get put away after a good run. It gets used over and over again because it works. You’re not going to motivate every prospect to respond in one contact. Sometimes it takes multiple communications/campaigns to inspire a call, visit, or reply. And if an ad works for one segment of your audience the first time, it’s bound to work for another segment of your audience the next time.
Besides, repeating a successful ad or campaign, particularly a catchy one, helps create or reinforce brand awareness, and you want your organization or company to come to mind when a donor, client, or customer needs you.
Not every ad you create will experience the longevity of our examples above (and when you think about it, those campaigns alone have lasted longer than many businesses), but any run that turns in to a repeat effort is a good run.
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