Slogans are crucial if an advertising campaign is going to succeed. Advertisers can use various approaches such as humour, unusual spellings, for example, ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’, and rhymes, among many others to work on our emotions. Whatever approach a campaign uses, though, the slogan must always be eye or ear catching because it is this that sticks in the consumer’s mind. Ironically, by the end of the 1970s, Lucozade was suffering from the very success of its own original slogan, ‘Lucozade Aids Recovery’. This slogan made consumers think it was a product only for the sick – which may have been useful when it was launched in the late 1920s but was increasingly harmful to product sales with improving social conditions and medical care. Furthermore it was only available in restricted outlets such as chemists or specialist shops, only packaged in large cumbersome glass bottles, and only in the one original flavour. A good reputation, wide profit margins and lack of direct competition are not enough to ensure a product’s survival in the face of steadily decreasing sales and no realistic hope of recovery. In short, it was time to make some radical changes to Lucozade or continue to suffer the consequences of it being a product no longer in tune with the times. It was time to get rid of the image that had targeted middle-class mothers in their cosy, suburban family homes. There were some advantages to this setting because it would also have appealed to mothers from a lower class who aspired to the middle class image the advert portrayed, but ultimately it was too limiting and narrow a market place for Lucozade, as demonstrated by the falling sales. Lucozade were effectively ‘placing all their eggs in one basket’ by restricting their target market to low and middle-class mothers with sick children.
Often the first thing to influence a prospective customer will be the overall design of a product, and this is the same with its advertising campaign. Design and image work together with the advertising copy and product logo to contribute to a certain view of a particular product or service. Beechams decided to give Lucozade a new image by updating all the positive features of the original product, such as its well-known and trusted brand name and its association with glucose and health. In one dramatic move, sick beds and recovering children were swept away and replaced with the world’s number one athlete and an image of health and fitness. To achieve design consistency, the new advertising campaign was filmed in gold tones – Lucozade’s corporate colour – an important link with the original product. The old slogan was dropped and although there was no actual replacement, the energetic style of the filming, the rock music soundtrack and powerful slow-motion camera shots implied a slogan of ‘Lucozade equals energy and fitness’. The image of energy was further reinforced by the advert being set trackside instead of bedside and the overall effect could be described as a means of non-verbal communication. In other words, the viewers automatically recognize the implicit meaning of the athlete, the setting and the product, i.e. the non-verbal signals of health and fitness, and can therefore make certain assumptions about the new Lucozade. To summarise Lucozade’s progressive change of brand image in its advertisements up to this point, we could say that they had gone from ‘Lucozade Aids Recovery’ to ‘Lucozade Aids Performance’. This change in tone suddenly and dramatically gave Lucozade a far larger target audience and far greater overall appeal.
Viewers now see Lucozade as a new and trendy energy enhancing soft drink, because it has been associated with popular music styles of the time and Daley Thomson and disassociated with sick children (which may not have been the intention of the original advertising campaign but is probably what was remembered from it.)
In my opinion, Lucozade’s most successful campaign is its most recent association with the computer game heroine, Lara Croft, because it links the product with the very latest in entertainment technology. Lucozade realize that advertising campaigns can be entertainment as well as a means of fulfilling their more traditional functions of informing and persuading us. Beechams did not simply use a section of a Lara Croft game, but created a completely original sequence, at a cost of £1.2 million, that allowed their product to energise and therefore save Lara from pursuing dogs. Equally importantly, they made full use of a camera angle that allowed them to strategically place their product in front of Lara’s most famous physical assets. This has the invaluable effect of bringing Lucozade to the attention of at least every male viewer watching who has a pulse!
Part of Beechams success in marketing Lucozade over the last thirty years has been the ‘story’ their advertising campaigns have told. In other words, the simple but clear ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘end’ to the adverts. Originally this was of a sick child, who was then given Lucozade by his caring mother, and was then seen to improve as he cheerfully tapped his big glass bottle of Lucozade as if it was a drum. The product was cleverly positioned throughout to be in the foreground of the camera shot – almost to the point of being part of the family! By the 1980s, the beginning, middle and end of the advert ‘story’ were linked to the ‘stop, get ready, go’ image of traffic lights. The visually slick advert showed Daley Thompson tired at first – on ‘stop’, then refreshing himself with an energizing bottle of Lucozade that was shown glowing amber to make it the adverts focal point and to emphasize its energy. Finally, the green light is seen and Daley runs up the track towards us in slow motion to demonstrate his renewed power and energy – courtesy of the Lucozade. In the latest Lucozade advert we studied, the beginning of the ‘story’ sees Lara Croft fleeing the pursuing dogs towards a canyon. The middle of the story is the predicament of how to cross it and we see that Lara is genuinely scared. Finally though, after choosing Lucozade over various other energy giving products, such as a rival soft drink and a chocolate bar, Lara triumphs and escapes while the dogs perish. The message of the advert is clearly that Lucozade is as much the ‘hero’ as the character Lara Croft.
In conclusion, the ways in which Lucozade has been marketed in the last thirty years demonstrates that the nature of advertising itself has changed, as has the Lucozade product. To quote Beechams own report, 95% of Lucozade’s sales presently come from Lucozade products that did not exist before 1980, proving that the change was essential. Advertisers have always tried to appeal to our desires to be ‘good parents’, ‘successful career men or women’ or part of a ‘happy family’ and they still do – although more recently with greater finesse. They still exploit our wish to be ‘beautiful’, ‘healthy’, ‘powerful’ and ‘knowledgeable’ – although now with a great deal more subtlety. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was commonly believed that the mass media ‘injected’ their message into unsuspecting consumers who were unable to form their own opinions. Advertisements from this period such as Lucozade’s ‘good mum giving good product to sick child’ would now be considered patronizing and inappropriate. It deliberately exploited our desire to be ‘good parents’ by making us feel guilty if we didn’t buy Lucozade to aid our child’s recovery. The male voice-over would have suggested authority in a way that we would now find politically incorrect. Nowadays, however, viewers are recognized as being more active and able to make informed decisions based on information taken from a range of sources and not passively accepting the mass media messages that they are fed. Advertising manipulates images and language to achieve the best possible results, but most people are aware to some extent of the ways in which they are being manipulated and so advertisers have had to respond in the way that the Lucozade adverts have successfully responded and changed. Although the nature of advertising, and the Lucozade advertisements themselves have changed, they are still providing information and persuasion that is not neutral and never will be. This is because the main function of advertising ultimately remains the same, which is to get us to buy the product.
1707 Words.
