Lucky Strike Retro Pick 1

One of the early years' animated ads.

LS/MFT stands for Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. That's as cool as it gets now!
In 1935, ATC began to sponsor Your Hit Parade, featuring North Carolina tobacco auctioneer Speed Riggs. The weekly radio show's countdown catapulted the brand's success and would remain popular for 25 years. The shows capitalized on the tobacco auction theme and each ended with the signature phrase "Sold, American".

The brand's signature dark green pack was changed to white in 1942. In a famous advertising campaign that used the slogan "Lucky Strike Green has gone to war", the company claimed the change was made because the copper used in the green color was needed for World War II. American Tobacco actually used chromium to produce the green ink, and copper to produce the gold-colored trim. A limited supply of each was available, and substitute materials made the package look drab. However, many argue that the white package was introduced not to help the war effort but to lower costs and to increase the appeal of packaging among female smokers.[1]

In the early 1960s, Lucky Strike's television commercials featured the slogan "Lucky Strike separates the men from the boys....but not from the girls" set to music. When Luckies with filters were introduced in the mid-1960s, print and TV ads featured the slogan "Show me a filter cigarette that delivers the taste, and I'll eat my hat!" (usually sung to music on TV). Print ads showed smokers wearing hats from which a "bite" was supposedly taken, whereas TV commercials broke away from the smoker who issued that challenge, then came back to show the same smoker wearing a hat from which a "bite" was taken.

In 1978 and 1994, export rights and U.S. rights were purchased by Brown & Williamson. In 1996, filtered styles were launched in San Francisco, but it was not until 1999 that they were available all over the United States. This cigarette is made with Turkish tobaccos.

The Lucky Strike logo was created by famous industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who also created the logos for Exxon, Shell, AT&T and Coca Cola. The logo later became a prominent fixture in Pop-era artist Ray Johnson's collages.

Lucky Strike was the sponsor of Jack Benny's radio and television programs in the 1940s and 1950s on CBS. (Among its popular advertising slogans on the show, as read by announcer Don Wilson, were "LSMFT: Lucky Strike means fine tobacco!" and "Be happy go lucky, be happy, smoke Lucky Strike!") The fictional character Mike Hammer, as written by Mickey Spillaine, smoked Lucky Strike through all of the Hammer novels. Lucky Strike was also the major sponsor of the BAR Honda team (partly owned by British American Tobacco current owners of the brand) as well as Honda Racing F1 during their maiden year in Formula One before BAT decided to pull out of F1 altogether in the face of increasing anti-tobacco advertising legislation. The cigarette brand is patronized in the anime Cowboy Bebop, where character Faye Valentine is often seen with one in her mouth. The logo also makes prominent background appearances in that show. Lucky strikes were mentioned in ZZ Top's song "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide", and in rodney adkins song "These are my People". They are also mentioned in Stars (band)' song "Life 2: the Unhappy Ending," where the hero "removes the Lucky from the pack." Lucky strikes were also the cigarette of choice of Rep. Detect. Steele in the Blade Runner video game. As well as in the stealth-based video games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake; Solid Snake's favorite brand of cigarettes are Luckys. Lucky Strike cigarettes were also featured in the Stephen King movie Misery where Paul Sheldon (James Caan) would smoke one cigarette after writing a novel. The character Sonny Crockett from the TV series Miami Vice, smokes Lucky Strikes and In the manga GTO, The teacher is seen smoking Lucky Strikes.

In 2007 the Lucky Strike brand was featured as a subplot in the first episode of Mad Men, an American television drama about New York Madison Avenue advertising executives set in the early 1960s. An advertising executive struggles to come up with a new advertising campaign under the new stringent United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations about cigarette companies making health and safety claims about their tobacco products. He eventually comes up with the catch slogan "It's Toasted", the same slogan that was conceived in real life by Lucky Strike in 1917 but for purposes of dramatic license it is depicted as being created in 1960 to deflect consumer concerns about health issues.

In late 2006 both the Full Flavored and Light filtered varieties of Lucky Strike cigarettes were discontinued in North America. However, Lucky Strike will continue to have marketing and distribution support in territories controlled by British American Tobacco as a global drive brand.

Courtesy Wikipedia.org

Puma Behind the scenes

The behind scenes of Puma Ad.. Pretty impressive graphics..

Another great Volkswagen commercial

Volkswagen's Think small campaign is considered the greatest ad campaign in the world. This ad comes from the Volkswagen stable and this is no less.

Some gyan on the ad- In 2005, Gene Kelly's widow gave permission for Volkswagen to use his likeness to promote the Golf GTi car. This advertisement which was shown only outside the US, used CGI to mix footage of Gene Kelly, from Singin' in the Rain, with footage of professional breakdancer David Elsewhere.

The most famous superbowl ad

This is an excerpt from wikipedia about the making of the Ad

"The 60-second film was created by the advertising agency Chiat/Day, with copy written by Steve Hayden and direction by Ridley Scott
(who had just finished filming Blade Runner). Creative director Lee Clow was responsible for this and the later Energizer Bunny and Taco Bell chihuahua campaigns. The film was shot in London and most of the actors were British skinheads hired for the day at a cost of $125 each as the director was unable to find enough actors prepared to shave their heads.The original script had suggested a baseball bat but this was later revised to a sledgehammer. The weight of the hammer made it difficult to cast the part of the runner until Major (a discus thrower) applied.

It was shown to a large audience for the first time in October 1983, at Apple's annual sales conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. Based on the reaction of the sales team and management reviews, Apple executives booked two television advertising slots during the upcoming Super Bowl. However, the Apple board of directors was dismayed by the ad and instructed management not to show it and sell the slots. Despite the board's dislike of the film, Steve Wozniak watched it and offered to pay for the spot personally if the board refused to air it. The reason the commercial was saved from total cancellation was the result of an act of defiance and an act of bravado. According to the book The Mac Bathroom reader by Owen Linzmayer:“ The board hadn't demanded the commercial be killed, nonetheless John Sculley asked Chiat/Day to sell back the one and one half minutes of Super Bowl television time that they had purchased. The original plan was to play the full-length, 60-second 1984 spot to catch everyone's attention, then hammer home the message during a subsequent commercial break with an additional airing of an edited 30-second version.

Defying Sculley's request, Jay Chiat told his media director, Camille Johnson, "Just sell off the thirty." Johnson laughed, thinking it would be impossible to sell any of the time at so late a date, but miraculously, she managed to find a buyer for the 30-second slot. That still left Apple with a 60-second slot for which it had paid $800,000.
”The decision to run the commercial was left to VP of Marketing William V. Campbell and Executive VP of Marketing and Sales E. Floyd Kvamme. In the end, the two decided to run the commercial. It aired at the first commercial break after the second-half kick-off.The sledgehammer (here blurred by motion) is thrown into the air at the screen by the allegorical heroine.

Despite costing $800,000 to make and a further $800,000 of air time, the film was originally shown nationally only once. However, it was aired on television one other time. From the book Apple Confidential:“ The famous "1984" commercial that launched the Macintosh during the Super Bowl in 1984 is purported to have been shown only once; but to qualify for 1983's advertising awards, the commercial also aired on December 15 at a small TV station in Twin Falls, Idaho, and in movie theaters for weeks starting on January 17th. ”

Even with this limited appearance, the ad created such a media frenzy that it gained many subsequent free TV airings and print mentions as it was discussed in the media. At the time Nielsen ratings estimated that the commercial reached 46.4 percent of American households (50 percent of all men and 36 percent of women.) These tactics are part of what made the commercial so influential in marketing circles; it is now seen as the first example of event marketing, and is popularly credited with starting the trend of yearly "event" Super Bowl commercials."

An Ode to advertising

Some companies go to great lengths to get their message across. They spend millions and millions of dollars on a single ad. Like this really really expensive(read 42 million dollars) Chanel ad featuring Nicole Kidman and directed by Baz Luhrman



And then there are some like this one , where economy is the name of the game. Clear thought process to the advertisement and nothing too flashy or grandiose. The sheer power of words comes up through this really creative Fed Ex Express Ad.




























































































Thank you all you great creative directors out there for giving us these great ads.

Gold Spot

Found the following amazing write up on Harish B


Gold Spot : The Zing Thing ( RIP 1977-1993)
Brand : Gold Spot
Company:Coca Cola

Brand Count: 217

Gold Spot is a sad story in the Indian Branding world. This iconic brand was killed for paving way for Coke's brands in India. Every one knows the story but still...

Gold Spot was one among the three major softdrinks brand that ruled Indian market along with Thums Up and Limca. The brand was built by Rames Chauhan of Parle after the exit of Coca Cola from India during 1977. Chauhan spoted the opportunity and three mega brands were born.
When Coca Cola came back to India in 1993, it bought out the three mega brands from Chauhan for a consideration of $10 mn. These three brands had a huge market share (combined) of over 69 % of India's SDC market. Then came the expected move. Coke slowly began killing the Parle brands to make way for its own brands. Thums Up was sidelined in favour of Coca Coala. Limca was sidelined and Goldspot was killed to make way for Fanta.

Gold Spot was the orange drink with a Zingy taste. This iconic youth brand was positioned as " Zing Thing" and was promoted heavily through all media. The jingle " Gold Spot.. The Zing Thing" was one of the most memorable jingle at that time ( still that jingle lingers in the mind of old timers).
Gold Spot was positioned as the youth brand and the ads talked about being crazy about the brand . You can watch the Gold Spot ad here .
But the brand was killed. Fanta was launched but till now the brand has not being able to take the position of Gold Spot. Coke was not able to clearly focus on the segmentation of Fanta. Fanta is never perceived as a youth brand. Fanta is not viewed or targeted at college students/youth. This confused targeting may have crippled the growth of Fanta and still it couldn't reach the status of Gold Spot. Coke expected that the users of Gold Spot will migrate to Fanta but it did not happened.
We saw Limca coming back in 2006.. can we ever hope Gold Spot coming back ?