Just Do It, Baby!

August 26, 2010  by Nik Yokomizo

Like many of you, fashion trends have come and gone with me. First came the shorts with striped socks pulled all the way up at age 7, then pegging my jeans in elementary, followed by pulling my sweat pant legs up during junior high, wearing hats all the time up until high school, etc.  The list of often silly trends and outfits is endless, most of which I wish I’d never worn. But one fashion choice has remained constant throughout the years and that has been my love for shoes.  “Tennis shoes”, “kicks”, “sneakers” – whatever you want to call them – I will always have a love for them.

The person who started this obsession was my good ol’ Mom. She always tried to keep me in nice clothes, but I rarely noticed my outfits. However, the one thing I will never forget was my first pair of Nike’s when I was in pre-school.  They were beautiful: plain white canvas, red swoosh and Nike written in blue. Before then I didn’t know anything about shoes, and didn’t frankly care, because I just wanted to play. But for some reason that first pair of Nike’s really caught my attention.  My love for Nike’s started that day and sitting in my closet now are over 150 pairs.  That doesn’t include the extras in my car or the boxes of shoes I have at my mom’s house.  It’s a bit embarrassing to think of all the money I’ve spent on Nike’s over the years. So I just don’t think about it and just continue to feed my “Nike fetish”.  Lucky for me, my generation wouldn’t really look at it as a fetish, rather they’d call me a “Sneaker Head,” or something to that affect.

Ok, so I love shoes in general, but Nike’s… they have always been my true love.  I honestly love their shoe designs, creative names for each shoe and their advertising.  The first Nike shoe ad that really caught my attention was for the Nike Air Revolution.  It was the first Nike Basketball shoe at the time, state-of-the-art in its design which introduced the Velcro strap at the top and the first “air bubble”  -which is still very common on Nike’s.  The TV commercial featured the Beatles song, “Revolution” and, according to sources, Nike paid over $250,000 to use it for only a year. That seems like a bargain these days, doesn’t it?

Nike ads have always been clever and entertaining to me.  It started with the Nike Air Revolution campaign featuring Michael Jordan.  His nickname “Air” had become well known, and tying him to that brand was one of the smartest things Nike has ever done. That advertising campaign has been heralded as one of Nike’s best ever, and spawned numerous follow ups with Michael Jordan.  The Air Jordan shoe is in a class all by itself and has continuously grossed over $100 million dollars in annual revenue.  That’s a big improvement from when it debuted in 1984 and the NBA banned players from wearing them because of the tremendous amounts of publicity they were receiving.  I got my first pair of Air Jordan’s in the 5th grade and not only will I never forget them (Jordan 1’s, black, red and white with black & white laces), I haven’t stopped buying them since.


Since Michael Jordan, Nike has gone on to endorse some of the best athletes in every sport around the world, with the likes of Lebron James, Tiger Woods (no comment), Ken Griffey Jr., famous Soccer (futbol) teams and not to mention Bo Jackson, who didn’t know “didley” back in the 90’s.  One thing that Nike has also done to expand the reach of their famous endorsers and shoes has been creating a matching shirt to go with each shoe.  So what’s a guy with a Nike shoe obsession to do, but of course get the matching shirt too, right? Clearly, I can go on- and-on about Nike, their endorser’s and their careers and how they have influenced so many other people to wear Nike’s, but that would be a novel and this is just a blog post.

I’ve grown up watching Nike flourish into the biggest shoe company in the world, making a little under $19.2 billion in 2009.  Until Nike starts becoming boring (which I doubt will happen because they keep releasing limited edition, classic shoes in different colors and updated styles) or drop their quality standards, I will continue to add to that $19.2 billion by praising and throwing money at the Greek Goddess of Victory – my beloved Nike.  Just do it, baby!

Posted in Advertising

Recreating Everyday Objects

August 12, 2010  by Jennifer Yi

Recently, I made a conscious effort to go back to the Legion of Honor to peruse its wonderful variety of art and sculpture. This has always been one of my favorite things to do in San Francisco.

I especially love works by the artist Alberto Giacometti, 1901-1966. He was best known for sculpting & painting, and was also an accomplished printmaker. I fell in love with his work because of the beautiful simplicity of his black and white sketches and ‘the descriptions’ of how he was known to work to produce these pieces.

A wanderer of his beloved city of Paris, Giacometti was said to draw and sketch items that other artists often neglected. He brought to life subjects that many considered mundane – like everyday nature, “Utilitarian” items such as street lamps, clocks, or trees. He spent a significant amount of time just walking and “looking up” to the sky to admire and see what he could see as he passed the same paths and walked  the same streets each day.

He wrote, “Paris… I feel all of her space outside around me, her streets, her sky, I see myself strolling her neighborhoods, a little everywhere, my portfolio under my arm, stopping, drawing…”

This description, combined with the sketches that seem just a bit obscure, drawn in black and white, reminded me of how I too spent much time walking along the same Parisian streets during my two months in France (post-college). Each day I found it as different to me as watching waves on the beach.

In the 1960’s, Giacometti was diagnosed with cancer & ‘Paris sans fin’ was a sequence of 150 lithographs that would be his last known project before his death.

‘Paris Sans Fin’ shows the constant reevaluation of his world, a “continual re-working of similar subjects, (cafés & the streets of Paris.)… which was noted to be the artist challenging and expanding his cognitive perception of the world around him.”

Discovering Giacometti’s work and understanding his way of viewing the world struck me as very similar to what we do here at RHDG.  When we approach a project, we take an object or idea that is common place or ordinary, and reshape it into an advertising campaign, brand or publication that has elements of the familiar but is in fact entirely new.

Having studied Philosophy in college, I learned about the constant flux of a river and how (as philosophers) we are trained to realize that nothing is ever quite the same; because we are not ever in the ‘exact same moment’. Viewing the ‘Paris Sans Fin’ is emotional for me, as it reminds me of this philosophical perspective and connects with my personal views on life, art and every day moments.  I encourage you to go see this collection for yourself. I hope you come away with a similar perspective.

Posted in Design

Happy Goats Come from California

August 4, 2010  by Sarah Ma

A couple of weekends ago I paid a visit to Harley Farms in Pescadero, California with my husband.  I love animals and love food (although not animals as food –I’m vegetarian), so we thought a farm tour would be the fun getaway from our busy city lives.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when we got there it quickly became clear this wasn’t your hayride and pumpkin patch kind of farm—it’s a real working farm.

Harley Farms is the last remaining dairy farm in San Mateo County and one of the very few remaining farmsteads in the USA (meaning they only use milk generated by their animals to make their dairy products – nothing is brought in from outside producers).  Wherever possible, they also try to incorporate sustainable practices in raising their feed sources, diary production and waste management.  For example:

  • To reduce the amount of water they use, Harley Farms collects rainwater for their personal use and will reuse it as many times as possible before its final application to irrigation.
  • As an alternative to water, their goats are given whey strained from the cheese-making process.
  • Harley Farms also doesn’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Instead, goats are rotated between fields, allowing their waste to serve as a natural fertilizer and to give the grass time to grow back.
  • To fix bare patches in their yard and pastures, the farm’s chickens are used to scratch and turn up soil.
  • They use the bedding from their goats’ sleeping stalls to generate homemade compost.
  • Harley Farms also tries to keep their carbon footprint low by selling to local retailers, hiring locals and offering housing on site to the farm’s staff.

At RHDG, a lot of our client work centers around sustainability issues – whether it’s getting people to reduce how much they drive or promoting recycling and composting programs. So I’ve seen first-hand how challenging it can be to get people to change their behavior. As a result, watching this little farm do close to everything sustainably was very inspirational.

 I think this environmentally gentle approach to farming makes for happier animals. Also by having a smaller herd of goats (they have about 200 goats now) they can ensure each animal has a high quality of life, which means higher quality milk and in turn higher quality cheeses.  I’ve always loved goats’ cheese and Harley Farm’s chevre was—I dare say it—the best I’ve ever had! It was amazing to stand in the middle of the herd and experience the fragrance of the salty Pacific Ocean breeze, the verdant grass and to then savor all of those nuances in the resulting chevre. Clearly I’m not the only one that’s been impressed since Harley Farm’s chevre won 1st place at the 2009 American Cheese Society Awards.  My trip to this incredible farm gave me a new appreciation for the small food producers in the San Francisco Bay Area that work hard to provide sustainably-made, unique, high-quality products.

Posted in Marketing

Advertising with Character

July 29, 2010  by Nick Tiano

As media has dramatically evolved over the past 10 years, so too have audience expectations.  From TV to YouTube, outdoor to online, audiences are no longer inspired to become consumers simply because they’re entertained.  In today’s increasingly crowded media space, audiences expect brand experiences to go beyond superficial enjoyment and to actually connect with them on a more personal level.

 Like most applications of the 80/20 rule, the purchasing process is 80 percent emotional and 20 percent rational.  Although the clear communication of a value proposition is important, the heavy lifting in a consumer appeal is making the target audience acutely aware of a previously unsatisfied emotional desire that makes the value proposition relevant.  As advertising professionals our challenge is to not only select the medium that will deliver the most targeted impressions, but to understand how we can better package a brand so each audience touchpoint helps to build a natural rapport.  One technique that is finding its way back into an increasing number of campaign strategies is the brand mascot.

 A brand mascot (a.k.a. spokesperson) is a character or persona that delivers messages that support the brand’s unique value proposition.  More importantly, a mascot can demonstrate a brand’s ability to meet the unsatisfied emotional needs of the audience. Much more than a celebrity endorsement, a mascot is crafted to appeal to the target audience on a personal level. Because they are unique characters with seemingly real personalities, they also have the ability to develop relationships with target audiences that can evolve over the course of a campaign and across a variety of media applications.

 For your viewing pleasure, see some of today’s top performing mascots hard at work.  

 

1. Travelocity – Roaming Gnome

 

The Work

 

The Results

The three-week teaser that introduced the world to this campaign ran from December 2003 to January 2004. It resulted in 1,554,000 visits to the wheresmygnome.com website and 3,180 emails sent to Bill, the gnome’s fictitious owner.  After just one month of the new campaign, Travelocity site hits were 250 percent over the original goal; through July 2004 hits were 108 percent over the goal. The campaign won a 2005 Gold EFFIE Award for campaign efficacy in the specialized Retail/E-tail category.

 

2. Aflac – The Aflac Duck

 

The Work

The Results

The Aflac Duck campaign proved to be a huge success. In 2000, USA Today reported that it was one of the most popular campaigns of the year. The company’s brand recognition went from 12 percent to 71 percent after the campaign. Shortly after that, the recognition went up to 90 percent. The company had more sales leads in the first two weeks of 2000 than it had in 1998 and 1999 combined. Sales went up 28 percent that year. Recruiting went up 22 percent as well.

3. Jack In the Box – Jack

 

The Work

 

 The Results

According to investor reports, since commencing its “Jack’s Back” campaign in 1995, Jack in the Box has racked up 10 Effies, including 5 gold awards, for meeting and exceeding business and sales objectives.

4.      Old Spice – Smell Like a Man, Man

 The Work


 

The Results

According to AdWeek, to date the campaign has received more than 1 billion media impressions (that’s billion with a ‘b’).  Nielsen data also shows overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months, up 27 percent in the last six months, up 55 percent in the last three months, and in the last month up 107 percent.  Sales of the actual Red Zone product being plugged in the spot are up 29 percent in latest comparison studies.

 

5.    Dos Equis – The World’s Most Interesting Man

 The Work

 The Results

In 2009, the import category was down 3.6 percent in the US.  At the same time, the total beer market was down 0.4 percent and Mexican imports were down even further at 1.3 percent.  Sales of Dos Equis, however, were up 20 percent.  In fact, Dos Equis rose from the number 11 import brand in the country to number 8 by the end of 2009 and grew market share by 22 percent according to the brandchannel. Additionally, some great insight on how research drove messaging and creative direction can be read from AdAge.

Posted in Advertising, Marketing

Timeless Ts

July 15, 2010  by Brieanna Hattey

 

Why are we so easily seduced by faded garlands of worn-out cotton?’
-Johan Kugelberg, Vintage Rock T-Shirts

 Around the time of my junior year in high school, I discovered the glory of thrift store shopping and unique vintage T-shirts. I couldn’t get enough of the thin soft material of an old gym shirt, or worn out, three-quarter length baseball T’s. Plus, it’s exciting to pay only $1.99 for so much character!  When it came time to head to college, more than half of my wardrobe had been converted to thrift store finds and graphic T’s.

 One of my favorite finds from back then is a red sleeved, baseball cut, concert T for Loretta Lynn’s “Cole Miners Daughter” tour in 1970. That T-shirt has been through painting walls and cutting grass and still looks good! Every time I put on one of my collectables, I’m confident it will look great and no one will be wearing the same thing.

On a trip to New York four years ago, I stumbled upon a book, ‘Vintage Rock T-shirts’ by Johan Kugelberg. It is mainly a photographic montage of some of the most valuable faded threads of Rock N’ Roll. Starting out the collection is a faded yellow “YardBirds” T next to a one-color print “Led Zeppelin 1973 Tour” T with the caption “This T-shirt is worth a thousand bucks!”… and the book goes on.

Nowadays, I’m still excited to discover new and unique T-shirt designs— faded or not (although faded is preferred). And I still can’t resist a good thrift store!

 If you have an interest in shopping for your own classic T-shirt, here are a few Bay Area designers and distributors worth checking out;

Fiftyseven-Thirtythree
Located in Oakland, Fiftyseven-Thirtythree uses water based solvent free inks to create some cool spray-paint inspired designs and mimics the faded thin fabric of a legit vintage. They are also involved with many of the big events in the area.

Gangs of San Francisco
A small operation, I commend the nostalgia of ‘Gangs of San Francisco’. Who doesn’t love to rock a badass shirt representing your hood!

Bang On-San Francisco
Got an idea for a cool T but don’t want to do a cheap iron on? Bang On will help you out! Make your own T-shirts or pick from their collection. A DIY T-shirt company.

TRUE
This T-shirt company, located near Haight and Ashbury, has a good mix of their own TRUE collection with a California vibe. They also carry a slue of other well known brands such as Obay.

Last but not least, I can’t forget about my roots. A new and up-and-coming designer worth talking about based in Kansas City, MO…

  Angryape
Angryape is relatively new and growing fast! Their neon collection is inspired by urban Midwest living and pop culture. Also, many designs feature characters based on different personalities. Sure to find its way to the coast soon!

Posted in Design