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Advertising Icons
Advertising Icons Can Propel Your Business to the Next Level
Advertising icons are incredibly powerful marketing tools. Consider the Pillsbury Doughboy and Jolly Green Giant. How hard would it be to sell such a commodity as bread dough or canned vegetables?
It is in these brutally competitive markets that advertising icons work best. Strip away all other ways of differentiating a product or service. All quality is virtually the same. Everyone delivers a high level of service. Delivery is about as fast as it can be. Price pressures have squeezed profits to the point where there is no room to undercut the other guy without hurting yourself. What are you going to do? How to you compete in such a mature and war-torn market?
You have to make something out of nothing. You have to give birth to an advertising icon - a cartoon character that gives your company, product, service or brand unique, memorable qualities that resonate in the market place. When all is said and done, purchasing is still an emotional decision making process, and if you can nudge someone in your direction with an advertising icon that evokes a quality that endears you to prospects, then you have a huge advantage.
What emotions does the Pillsbury Doughboy evoke? You could say he makes you feel good about cooking. Every time he shows up, you get a little "Hallmark" moment - a kitchen warm and fuzzy. Who would have thought bread dough could light a little fire in the heart? That's the magic and power of advertising icons.
Think of all the advertising icons you can recall and try figure out what the brand gurus are trying to get you to think with them.
Tony the Tiger, the Aflac Duck, the M&M characters, Snoopy, the Gieko Gecko, Sonny (Coco Puffs), Keebler Elves, Cheetos Cheetah, Captain Crunch...
What do all these advertising icons have in common? They all do battle in extremely competitive, mature and war-torn markets. If they can deliver results in such competitive market arenas, think of what one could do in your industry. Be careful though. There are what I call "spotlight" issues. Advertising icons tend to hog the spotlight. And while that can be a good thing, you want to make sure an advertising icon enhances, and doesn't detract from, critical positioning elements of your branding campaign. I recommend that the more your are able to differentiate your product or service with innovation, price and service, the smaller role your advertising icon should play. Let those important differentiators get most of the spotlight. If you have trouble differentiating your product or service, shine that spotlight on your advertising icon and let him sing and dance and put on one heck of a show.
Toons4biz® specializes in the development of advertising icons. We have more than 100 stock advertising icons - one for virtually any type of business you can think of. Each advertising icon character comes in its own clipart set so you can build a robust brand building campaign around them. Animated versions of our advertising icons are also available.
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