Comedians and Advertising: Rebranding with Laughter

By Rebecca Phillips
Let’s be honest – there are some brands that have been around for so long that their advertising just gets a little stale. Not only that, but some brands are simply overshadowed by industry-dominating competitors. While many brands turn to celebrities to endorse their products, consumers often see right through these endorsements. In order to set themselves apart from the many celebrity endorsements out there, some brands have turned to comedians to spice up their advertising.
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New Client Spotlight: Unity FI Solutions

By Adam Bowers
RLF has extensive experience designing eye-catching websites and creating compelling content to populate them. We recently partnered with Unity FI Solutions to redesign its website, which launched earlier this year.
Unity FI Solutions is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based provider of electronic payment solutions to financial institutions and other corporate clients. Within the industry, Unity FI Solutions is well known for its ability to tailor solutions to meet very specific and complex client needs. This client-centric approach reflects RLF’s own commitment to service and has made for a strong and mutually beneficial partnership.
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Super Bowl Ads Draw on Our Emotions

While several of this year’s Super Bowl ads tended to the more serious or focused on generating a laugh, there were also several that seemed designed to draw on our sentimentality and emotions, such as Nissan’s “With Dad” commercial.
In our final review of the best 2015 Super Bowl commercials, we will focus on these more heartwarming, and often tear-evoking, ads.
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Super Bowl Ads Continue to Generate Laughs

While many of this year’s Super Bowl ads seemed to take a much more serious tone, there were also several lighthearted commercials in the bunch. Here is a look at some of our favorite of the funny.
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2015 Super Bowl Commercials Take a More Serious Tone

Super Bowl ads have historically been funny and clever, focused more on selling beer, junk food and cars than creating serious dialogue about societal issues. However, many of this year’s Super Bowl ads varied from that course and instead focused on a wide range of serious issues, starting with a highly controversial commercial by Nationwide looking at accidental deaths among children, and also including ads discussing cyberbullying, domestic violence and gender stereotypes.
Tomorrow we will look at some of the more humorous ads from this year’s Super Bowl, but today a few RLF employees will share their insights into some of the more serious ads from yesterday’s big game.
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The Best and Worst TV Ads of the 2014 World Cup

By Nick Ramsey

More than 3.2 billion television viewers watched at least one minute of a game during the 2010 World Cup — that’s nearly half of the world’s population – and many predicted the viewership to be even higher this year. To help capitalize on such a sizable audience, a wide variety of brands took advantage of this global platform and created brilliant advertisements that tugged on the heartstrings of viewers and inspired soccer fans across the globe. However, some brands missed the mark, coming up short in reaching their audience and being direct in their messaging. Now that the World Cup has ended (Congratulations Germany!), let’s take a look back at some of the best and worst ads from this year’s tournament.

Top 3 Campaigns

McDonald’s Gol!
McDonald’s scored big on this ad, creating a montage of seemingly average fans performing incredible trick shots. The ad is entertaining to watch, appeals to sports fans worldwide and encourages viewers to visit gol.mcd.com to participate in the McDonald’s’ “Peel. Play. Olé Olé.” competition, which provided an opportunity for customers to win a trip to the World Cup final in Brazil.
Beats – Game before the game
Beats uses Brazil’s poster boy Neymar da Siva Santos Jr., among other famous celebrities and athletes, to embrace the pregame routine, which of course features the brand’s signature noise-cancelling headphones. This ad gives viewers an inside look at how some of the world’s best get ready for the game, while clearly communicating the message that the top athletes from across the globe use Beats headphones to prepare for competition. Although the YouTube version lasts five minutes, shorter versions of the ad ran on TV.
Nike – Winner Stays
Nike has consistently produced some of the top ads for major athletic events, and the 2014 World Cup was no exception. This ad shows average fans playing a pick-up game of soccer, and then morphing into their favorite players and moving onto the world stage. The ad shows that Nike is the apparel of choice for athletes on any stage, whether it is a backyard pick-up game or the World Cup final. The excess of soccer superstars doesn’t hurt either, as the ad features Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Neymar and more. Similar to the Beats ad, the full YouTube ad lasts four minutes; however, shorter versions of the commercial appeared on TV just a few days after its Internet debut.

Worst 3 Campaigns

Burger King – Whopper Fanatic
Burger King embraces the stereotypical American lack of interest in soccer in this ad, and encourages people not to watch their favorite teams play. The restaurant even offers a free Whopper to those who come to eat at Burger King wearing their team’s jersey during that team’s match. However, individuals who do own a jersey are likely to be invested fans, and not willing to miss an event that occurs once every four years. Burger King tries to use humor in the ad to appeal to the stereotypical American, but the messaging and target audience remain unclear.
Kia – Adriana Lima Brings Fútbol to Sports Bar
This ad features supermodel Adriana Lima changing the TV channel in a bar from NASCAR to soccer, as three men sit speechless, dumbfounded by her beauty. While viewers may enjoy the ad’s humor and the attractive model, the connection to Kia is unclear. The Kia Sorento appears only briefly at the beginning and end of the ad, and could be easily missed by World Cup fans. Even if the connection to Kia is made, the commercial doesn’t highlight any of the car’s features.
Hooters – Coach Gruden Knows Fútbol
The international restaurant chain definitely lost with this ad, which showcases a stereotypical American ignorance of soccer, or “fútbol.” Former NFL coach John Gruden and others sports figures don’t understand what the Hooters waitress is saying when she references “fútbol,” because all they know is American football. The ad ends with the tag line, “No matter what football you like, watch it at Hooters.” Unfortunately, the ad just comes across as ignorant and cheaply made—better luck in 2018, Hooters.

The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier: A Guide on Personal Branding for Recent Graduates

By Alexandra Obradovich

Over the past four years of college I have read plenty of assigned books. Yet, with graduation right around the corner, I can only recall one text that I expect to have a constant impact on my future career. The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier was initially written to help businesses bridge the distance between strategy and design, although the disciplines outlined in this book directly relate to personal branding and my immediate job search.
“A brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is,” is one of the first concepts introduced in the book. A brand is defined as a gut feeling about a product, service, person, or company and although people have power over their messaging they do not have control over how others will perceive their brand.
The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier can help recent graduates determine how to leverage their skills and education by exercising five key disciplines required to form an influential brand.

Discipline 1: Differentiate

Before a recent graduate can build a successful brand he or she needs to be able to answer three questions:

Who are you?
What do you do?
Why does it matter?

Professionals with established brands already have (hopefully) compelling answers for all three questions. Answering these questions can help to uncover flaws in focus, self-image, and outsider perception. By effectively communicating strengths and skills, young professionals can develop a strong argument for why they should be hired. Important competitive advantages lie in understanding who you are, what you do, and why it matters.

Discipline 2: Collaborate

Brands don’t develop in isolation. Instead they are a direct result of interactions between people over a long period of time. Building a brand is a collaborative effort that requires contributions from an entire community. For recent graduates, that branding community is a direct result of their networking efforts, like utilizing university career services or reaching out to industry professionals. As Neumeier says: “It takes a village to build a brand.”

Discipline 3: Innovate

In The Brand Gap, Neumeier introduces an idea called the innovator’s mantra: When everyone zigs, zag. Young professionals need to “abandon the comforts of habit, reason, and the approval of peers, and strike out in new directions.” In order to stand out from a sea of applicants recent graduates must attract employers through innovative approaches. “And how do you know when an idea is innovative? When it scares the hell out of you.”

Discipline 4: Validate

Neumeier describes the old model of communication as a monologue. This model fails to recognize that real world communication is instead a dialogue. Neumeier stresses that to transform a brand, feedback is necessary. As a young professional it is important to request feedback about your performance from your boss at work, internship supervisor, or university professor. Feedback can be immediate and unambiguous, which lets your personal brands adapt and make necessary changes.

Discipline 5: Cultivate

Within this disciple, Neumeier introduces the concept of a living brand. He states that a living brand is a dynamic experience. The most successful professionals are the ones that are continually adapting to changes in their industry, economy, and culture. Same goes for brands.