Analysis of the German Lucky Strike Advertising Campaign

Introduction

Whenever a company enters a new market, one of the keys to success is the right promotion.
The following essay will discuss the German Lucky Strike advertising campaign and provide an analysis of textual and graphical ad-components.

The Product

In 1988, Lucky Strike Cigarettes were introduced to the German market. To smoke American cigarettes became a big trend during this time.

The cigarettes, which are produced by British-American-Tobacco - a world leading company in the tobacco industry,carry an image which is clean-cut, and masculine. As an American original it is self-confident, intelligent and humorous. Therefore the target market is the young dynamic opinion leader who shares the same characteristics as the product.

The Lucky Strike product line consists of Lucky Strike without filter, Lucky Strike full flavor, Lucky Strike Lights, Ultra Lights and the Lucky Strike Big Pack.

The Lucky Strike brand family is ranked as number 5 in the total German tobacco market and holds a market-share of 4.6 percent (Jan -June 2001). With an increase of 0.5 percent compared to 2000, Lucky Strike continues to be the fastest-growing cigarette brand in Germany.

Advertising Campaign

The ad campaign, produced by the Hamburg KNSK/BBDO agency, has been running for 10 years. In every ad the package, designed by Raymond Loewy, or/and the cigarettes become the center of attention. Accompanied by witty slogans, which refer to contemporary issues in society and media, the campaign has been very successful. Besides several awards and prizes for the advertising agency, the campaign has created and conveyed a resistant brand image and helped to increase the market share tremendously.

The campain employs various formats, such as Billboards, magazines and cinema-ads. There is no significant difference in design between each format. Because of German law, no cigarette ads can be shown on television.

All ads consist of three components. These are the headline or an equivalent text, the image, and the campaign slogan. In the following section I will take a closer look at a selection of ads from the current campaign. I will analyze each of the components and explain which graphical and rhetorical tools are used.

Graphic Design

Throughout the entire campaign, Lucky Strike ads are image-dominated and appear very similar to each other. In front of a gray-scaled background, cigarettes and/or the box form the focal point. The slogan "Lucky Strike. Sonst nichts." (Lucky Strike. Nothing else.) is placed in a black rectangle underneath the image. The rectangle also serves as a surface on which the objects shown in the image above seem to sit.

The layout takes advantage of the traditional visual flow. Starting with the heading in the top left corner the reader's eye gets pushed through the ad in a z-shaped pattern. (Compare: Felton, Advertising Concept and Copy)

Although the headlines are left aligned the ads are symmetrically balanced. A serif typeface is used for both headlines and bottom slogan. Font sizes as well as typeface remain the same throughout the whole campaign. However I found four examples, in which the layout slightly differs from the rest of the campaign:

• In the "Sie Fuchs" (You Fox!) ad, the picture window layout is replaced by a Mondrian layout.
• Both the "Introduction of the Lights" ad and the "Dunkel war's…" (It was dark...) ad are rather type-dominant. The first uses a chain-letter text and the second a rhyme instead of a headline.
• In the "La Ola" ad, an oblong format is used.
  

Text Analysis

There are two major text elements used in the ads: The headline, which consists of witty slogans, and the campaign slogan "Lucky Strikes. Sonst nichts.".
The headlines are very strong, crisp and to the point. A variety of rhetorical tools can be found:

• "20th Century Box." derives from the preformed linguistic pattern of the brand name "20th Century Fox". In the ad the typical spotlights known from the 20th Century Fox TV-spots surround a Lucky Strike box.
• "Prêt-à-fumer." is a hyphenation and just like the "20th Century Box."-ad, it comes from a preformed linguistic pattern. Prêt-à-porter is a common term used in the fashion industry and could be associated with elegance. In conclusion, the consumer is supposed to be trendy and fashionable themselves. In relation to the image of a lady's shoe formed out of cigarette-boxes, the headline seems to be slightly ironic.

Besides the usage of obvious rhetorical tools, Lucky Strike ads refer to contemporary issues in media (including ads from other products) and society. The Christmas ads could be cited as examples.

The most significant characteristic of the campaign is the personification of the object. The German language helps to imply these personifications. In German three pronouns are used to indicate the gender of a noun: "der" is used in connection with masculine, "die" for feminine, and "das" for neutral nouns. Thus, the pronous used could eqally be interpreted as referring to people as well as things. Therefore, the reader might feel sorry for cigarettes or the box when they see them in an image with a headline that says: "Soll sie Weihnachten etwa im Automaten verbringen?" (Is she supposed to spend Christmas in the vending machine?).

Another characteristic is the varying meaning of headlines as well as the campaign slogan.
The campaign slogan "Lucky Strike. Sonst nichts." could be understood as: 1) There is no compromise or 2) nothing else is needed to be trendy. Furthermore the ironic style of headlines and their equivalents helps to convey the multiple meaning and endorses the connection between the product and contemporary issues.

Conclusion

According to Lucky Strike's public relations department, the unmistakable style of the campaign seems to be the reason for Lucky Strike's success. It has helped to broaden the potential customer group beyond the core target group of young and dynamic opinion leaders. However, the conceptual procedure has remained the same, and continues to aim for trendsetters.

The response to the "Ooh, what a night…."-ad demonstrates that the campaign meets the Lucky Strike-consumer's interests. The ad shows a slightly damaged Lucky Strike box with fictive phone numbers written on it. Shortly after the ad was published, many fans tried to call the numbers. Inspired by this idea, Lucky Strike created a second ad similar to the first one and offered to invite the people who called these numbers to a party.

Market research has shown that after 10 years the consumers still like the campaign and many of them look forward to seeing the new ads.