Sterling Cooper Draper Price had a very interesting genesis. The firm was created from the ashes of the previous Madison Avenue agency Sterling Cooper, which, after being acquired by Puttnam, Powell, and Lowe, was about to fall under the management of local competitor McCann. When asked about his thought process upon being confronted with this situation, the former Creative Director of SC, Don Draper said: "I could die of boredom or holster up my guns. So I walked into Lane Price's office and said: 'Fire us.' Within a year we'd taken up two floors of the Time-Life building." And so, he, Lane Price, and the partners of previous firm Richard Sterling and Bertram Cooper decided to form their own agency from scratch.

The company seemed to be on the outset of an amazing period of growth, with "creative guru" Don Draper at the helm. However, the firm unfortunately lost their largest account Lucky Strike, when Lee Garner Jr. decided to fall back in with the pack, so to speak, and take his business to BBDO, who services other tobacco companies. While the departure of large accounts like Lucky Strike and Glo-Coat occurred early after the inception of this new firm, it was not before SCDP could create a successful ad for Glo-Coat. This ad, featuring a small boy dressed as a cowboy, crying to get out of "jail" (a chair placed up-side-down on a kitchen table) was a good example of a demonstration of the key attribute of a product because it shows that Glo-Coat can protect a kitchen floor even from a romping cowboy!

However, in 1968, the firm decided to merge with one of its direct competitors, CGC, in an attempt to attract larger accounts, including Chevrolet.  This merger could be viewed as a precursor to the consolidation in the advertising industry which occurred in the 1990s. However, back in the late 60s, it was merely a fact that smaller agencies could not compete after large accounts due to the nature of television advertising at the time.

Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price was a fine example of the ability for strong human capital to overcome bad luck and tough times, and I can't wait to see what happens next season on Mad Men.

From the opening of their first store, Lulu has not been afraid of bizarre marketing tactics. Leading up to the first store's opening in Vancouver, BC, the company spread via social media a promotion that the first 30 people who showed up to the retail location in the nude would be clothed with free Lululemon undergarments. This story made huge headlines and even aired on CNN, resulting in massive, free awareness building for the company.

Since then, the company has continued to come up with marketing ideas that are out of the ordinary. One other story that generated big headlines for Lululemon was in 2009 when they released a line of clothing titled "Cool Sporting Event that Takes Place in Vancouver between 2009 and 2011." Obviously this is an attempt to build on the hype surrounding the 2010 Winter Olympics in British Columbia. While this seems like a harmless and successful marketing strategy, a company called VANOC had "exclusive Canadian marketing rights to Olympic brands from Jan. 1, 2005 to Dec. 31st 2012." (CBC article). However, Lululemon did their research thoroughly, and VANOC could do nothing about them. While the press surrounding this story tended to involve a negative attitude towards Lulu, it was still free promotion for a company that doesn't do mainstream advertising.

In addition to publicity stunts, Lululemon's main method of promoting its brand is through local brand ambassadors. The company will give their clothes to yoga instructors in areas in which they plan to expand. Then these brand ambassadors recommend the brand to their students. Studies have shown that peer to peer promotion is extremely effective. For Lululemon, it is likely even stronger because they are able to generate recommendations from people's instructors, and so there is already an established relationship of trust and of knowledge.

Interestingly, Lululemon's strong following is sometimes associated with using tactics that are seen in the formation and spreading of cults. For a period of time the phrase "Who is John Galt?" was posted on their bags. This is a reference to Ayn Rand's famous novel Atlas Shrugged, who's philosophies were very influential to Lulu's founder Chip Wilson. While this may seem relatively innocent, Chip's other ideas such as the birth control pill have led to high divorce rates because of man's inability to cope with the "new woman" and his being an advocate of child labor have caused some serious negative press surrounding the brand.

Despite the negative aspects of the founder's philosophies and despite the extremely high price point, the women that shop at Lulu are extremely brand loyal and love to participate in their free, in-store yoga lessons. This company is growing rapidly and has a strong fan-base from which it plans to continue expanding.

When I think back on my childhood, rarely does advertising fit into the picture. I definitely watched a lot of tv, I remember many cartoons from "back in the day" that don't exist anymore, but I don't particularly remember any of the ads that played in between those shows. However, there is one advertising campaign that I will never forget. The Seattle Mariner's, you gotta love these guys. (This link is a compilation of many older Mariner's commercials, but can only be opened in Internet Explorer)

From the entirety of the Mariners advertising campaign, a couple of these commercials stand out in my memory. In particular, the "Thinking Game" from 1997 and the "Road Trip" from 1998. "Thinking Game" is a classic commercial in which Lou Piniella, the manager at the time, tells his players that "baseball is a thinking game. Every pitch, you gotta think..." The commercial shows the manager thinking a relevant baseball question and then plays a montage of various star players from the Mariners thinking more... obscure questions. For instance, short-stop Alex Rodriquez thinks "Why do fans sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame if they're already here?" and my personal favorite, right-fielder Jay Buhner thinks "If a cow laughed real hard, would milk come out its nose?"

The other commercial shows Joey Cora and A-Rod on a plane on their way back to Seattle. In order to entertain himself, Joey has the player in front of him do a puppet show using the "barf bags" to act out Roger Clemmons being too afraid of Joey Cora to even pitch to him, saying things like "Oh no! It's Joey Cora, I don't want to face him! ...Intentional walk intentional walk!" Then Alex says, "Hey do the one with Jose Mason."

These constitute a classic representation of the Mariners commercials. Short and silly. At this time in particular, it was easy for the Mariners commercials to be extremely popular. Not only were the Mariners performing well (winning the AL West in '97) but the team was comprised of numerous stars. Jay Buhner, Alex Rodriguez, Joey Cora, Dan Wilson, and of course, Ken Griffey Jr. The way the Mariners' commercials portrayed these larger than life characters in such silly and humanizing roles allowed fans to develop a more well-rounded relationship with the players. Even if this was just a facade, these commercials turned the Mariners' stars into lovable, almost child-like characters.

Rarely would a Mariners commercial show the players actually in a realistic game situation. If they were portrayed in a game, it was always with an atmosphere of extreme fantasy (like the "All Griffey Team" commercial). More frequently though, the commercials showed the players in situations that were not during a regular game. This followed along with the philosophy of trying to show fans a different side of the players than what can be viewed at the games.

However, in addition to being successful commercials when they aired, these commercials have stood the test of time in my mind because of the sentimental value associated with them. Throughout my family used to regularly watch the Mariners play. It was a very ritualistic experience. In fact, every time the Mariners would hit a home run, I used to run around the couch in celebration. This was such a big deal (to me, and to my family) that even while watching this year's NFC championship, when Marshawn Lynch scored a touchdown, my dad said jokingly, "Run around the couch, run around the couch!"

Like many good advertising campaigns based around emotional values, the Mariners commercials are able to conjure up nostalgic memories in addition to laughter. These are the types of commercials that can stand the test of time and be remembered by those who watched them for their entire lives. Like their slogan said, "You gotta love these guys."

While almost every company would argue that their product or service is unique, the general public does not always share that perspective. Products like cable, phone, and insurance providers often seem to use the same selling points in their commercials to convey their message viewers. For example, Allstate, Progressive, and Geico all claim to save the consumers money, they boast amazing customer service, and a variety of insurance programs from which to choose. So how do consumers decide on which to pick, if all the talking points are the same? One method of swaying consumer behavior is through strong brand awareness. This is why Geico has been expanding beyond the "Geico Gecko" and incorporating more and more characters to increase its brand awareness among consumers.

2013 saw a massive expansion for Geico, including the various "Happier than..." commercials, the Geico Pig (for the app), and the "But did you know" commercials. However, of all these commercials, it is arguable that none have been more successful at making it past the viral "tipping point" than the Hump Day commercial.

To the traditional marketer, this commercial might seem poorly designed. Its focus is on the talking camel, and it briefly mentions the company and benefits of Geico's services at the end. However, the brilliance of this commercial stems from two facts. First, they build off of the high level of awareness of Geico's slogan "15 minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance." This has been, and still is, Geico's main slogan and has had such high market penetration it is reasonable to assume television viewers (especially their target market) have been watching tv for long enough to have developed familiarity with this phrase. Secondly, this commercial has the proper combination of quirkiness, cleverness, universality, and stupidity to have allowed it to go viral. 

Consequently this commercial has spread beyond the reaches of televised programming. In fact, the first time I heard of this commercial was while I was working in a winery, and a friend of mine showed it to me on her smart phone. This level of viral marketing therefore creates free promotion. Geico doesn't pay for people to share videos online, but because of the popular appeal of this commercial, it spreads (and not only from friend to friend). A news story was released about a middle school in Vernon, Connecticut whose teachers banned students from quoting the "Hump Day" commercial! Apparently the children were being so obnoxious with their "Mikemikemike"s and other impersonations of the Geico camel, that teachers couldn't take it anymore. Media attention like this creates even more, widespread promotion for the Geico brand.

Not only has this commercial yielded free promotion either from spreading online or from news coverage, but is now spreading beyond television and even beyond the internet into the movie theaters! Geico has partnered with NCM and Screenvision to air a series of theater PSAs about cell phone etiquette involving both the Hump Day Camel and the Geico Gecko. This wide-reaching, and longstanding commercial is a bit of a unicorn (with a hump), and will likely be the most viewed and most shared ad of 2013. 

Geico, being known as a creative genius when it comes to promotion will definitely continue to capitalize on this opportunity and we can look forward to future commercials involving the Hump Day Camel.