Intro
The i love rock and roll original campaign was a huge success. It was so successful in fact, that they created a second “original” campaign called i love rock and roll original.
The same creative work was done, but the copy was slightly different. There were more words, more opportunity to make people think about what kind of music they like and which one is the best for them.
In fact, I’ll be coming back to this one soon because it’s just as exciting as the first campaign!
Love
I love rock and roll original, I love rock and roll original, I love rock and roll original, I love rock and roll original, I love rock and roll original.
I can’t remember where it came from but it stuck in my head. It’s a quote from the last line of the final track on Blue Oyster Cult’s cult classic Dope. The song was about a drug that seemed to let you feel everything. It was about the pain of no sleep (and not just the short-term trauma of withdrawal); it was about an addictive addiction (and not just the temporary profits); it was about sex (and not just the temporary satisfaction of a sexual act); it was about well-being (and not just the temporary depression or anxiety caused by withdrawal). And at least that part is true: a lot of drugs do let you feel everything.
As far back as 1980, when I first heard this song, most people thought they were talking about heroin or cocaine. Then came the “heavy stuff” punks who claimed that they were only doing drugs to get high; then came those who claimed they were only doing drugs to get stoned; then came those who said they were only doing drugs because their parents had been abusing them; then came all those who said they were only doing drugs because some DJ told them to do so for their own good. And now here we come, in 2017:
Most people think that drug use is bad — despite its very real benefits, including making you feel like you are alive again after being dead for years—and yet at least half of us have tried some kind of illicit substance at least once in our lives. Indeed some surveys suggest that up to 70% of Americans admit to having used an illicit substance at least once in their lives — so why? Some people think that high-grade substances such as heroin make life exciting; others don’t think marijuana is even addictive; others assume ecstasy is harmless fun until someone dies from ecstasy poisoning—others assume LSD is harmless fun until they almost lose their mind while under its influence—others assume marijuana makes life exciting until all but one person dies from smoking too much of it—others think cocaine is harmless fun until someone dies from cocaine poisoning—others think heroin makes life exciting until someone dies from heroin overdose—drug users believe that if we could just get rid of cocaine for good, there would be no more crime or
Rock and Roll
It’s the summer of 1998, and I’m sitting on a beach in the Dominican Republic. I am drinking a lovely local rum, listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “I Love Rock ‘n Roll Music” on my huge fat iPod. This is not a good time. In fact, it is the worst time in my life. The weight of my depression is crushing me, and I can’t figure out why. Then it hits me: New Car Smell!
My neighbor has just bought a new car. It smells like new car smell! The smell lingers in the car for days afterward and we drive around with it stuck to our noses. It is actually kind of funny; but then again, that is exactly what you want people to say about your product or service: funny.
The point here is to talk about an experience we have all had at some point; that there are ways to make something smell really good without using any chemicals at all (the kind of thing you can use on your clothes or closet). But most people don’t know why that particular smell happens; they usually just think it’s because their clothes or shoes have been washed recently and their skin feels better after wearing them for a while (or in this case, bumping up against the sound waves from Springsteen’s music).
The reason so many things smell clean and fresh comes down to physics. When you sniff a freshly laundered shirt or pair of jeans, you are pushing air molecules through mucous membranes along with your scent molecules (which are actually more complex than simply molecularly-based odors) — these molecules are tossed around as they travel through the air by air flow, so they can collide with other molecules (which also happen to be carrying scent molecules) in their path, creating an array of different scents and odors that persist over time as they move through the air around us — which keeps an environment smelling fresh forever! So when someone puts his shirt or his socks on a fresh hanger overnight — he will get those same pleasant smells that linger for days after he puts them away — even after he puts them away for awhile (whereas if he wore his clothes for months instead of nights/days/weeks/months), his shirt would start to lose its freshness quickly from exposure to other people’s bodies over time anyway — which means he would merely get less and less off-putting scents as
Original
This is an article I wrote a few years ago, the original version of which is in this collection of essays on marketing and branding.
In it, I describe three types of marketing: (1) direct; (2) indirect; and (3) creative. We can think about marketing in terms of these three types: a company like Rock & Roll Industries or our own iLoveRockandRoll.com website can be said to serve customers by directly providing them products and services or by indirectly providing them information about the products and services we have to offer. Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses, but each has its place. For example, Rock & Roll Industries could write ads for us in The Wall Street Journal, but most people won’t see our ads because they are too small to read. This works fine for us because our ads are big enough to be seen by all who want to read them. But it doesn’t work so well with an ad network like Google AdSense, which only shows ads that are large enough to be seen by users who actually click on them.
Direct advertising is what most companies do today – they send out direct mail solicitations or postcards or phone calls from their sales offices or whatever else, and people respond by buying stuff from the company that sent it, not just any random person in a traffic jam on the freeway or whatever else. They may also buy stuff from other companies – RadioShack would have made one heck of a profit off those blank CDs sold at Wal-Mart years ago – but that’s not what direct advertising is about at all.
Direct advertising is how businesses with lots of cash get paid for doing nothing more than creating a lot of noise in the marketplace. It’s how companies like Red Cross get paid every year by people who don’t need their services but who happen to live near a disaster zone so they can donate money as they go along (or maybe not donate at all if they don’t need the money).
Indirect advertising works better when there is some element of mystery around what you will do once you have done something for someone whom you don’t know very well – there is no direct connection between your personal life and your business activities; your business activities affect someone else’s life too; but if you are going door-to-door selling ice cream samples then you definitely need to talk about some aspect of your business that
