The Challenge of Creating A Corporate Icon
by Rob Mariani Assistant Editor/Writer
Since the dawn of professional advertising, clients have been creating or adopting people or animals or cartoon characters to represent their company’s persona with the hope of attracting customers. Often it’s a personality who already has an image that an advertiser feels they can become associated with. In the early days of radio shows for instance, characters like The Lone Ranger became identified with ads for Cheerios cereal. Another radio cowboy, Tom Mix, represented “Hot Ralston,” the kind of breakfast food a cowboy eats to keep him strong and healthy while chasing after bad guys and ornery cattle.
Early radio stars like Jack Benny and Bob Hope always found ways to work an advertiser’s name into their comedy scripts. People liked them. They trusted them. They made them laugh. They bought their products.
“Camel Caravan,” sponsored by Camel cigarettes, was a musical variety radio program that aired on various networks from 1933 to 1954. The Camel im- age on the package was created to symbolized one of the brand’s differentiating features: the Turkish paper used to wrap the tobacco. They still sell Camel cigarettes but the Camel icon has been around so long no one even thinks to wonder: why a Camel?
24 | Rhode Island Creative Magazine
One of the longest running trademark personalities in the US is the bubbly white Michelin Man. This icon, whom I’d always thought was made of marshmal- lows, is still going strong. He was invented by the owners of Michelin Tires and introduced way back in 1894 with the slogan, “Now is the time to drink.” Hard to imagine what the tie-in there might be but they’ve stuck with their spokes guy image and even now, just about everyone knows him, and when it comes to buying tires, “Michelin” is usually one of the first names that pops into most consumers’ minds.
Fast-forward to today and we find there are some advertising icons you simply can’t ignore or forget. An example: Speedy Alka-Seltzer, that chirpy little talking tablet with the toothy smile has been around for so long now that you just can’t help thinking of him whenever you feel nauseous. It looks like they’ve tried to faze him out but he continues to repeat on us. (Pun intended.)
And of course, there’s the cutely annoying “Energizer Bunny,” a robot rabbit that just keeps going and going because… well, he’s stoked with Energizer batteries, I guess. (I always wondered where on the little crea- ture’s anatomy they actually inserted the batteries.)
Locally of course, we now have the second genera- tion of Yankee car dealers, Ernie Boch, Jr., who
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32