I missed posting last week because the spring semester began at USC and, even though I knew it was coming, I still managed to find myself running behind in preparing for my class; something I admit happens most semesters. Between work in progress, two new clients and getting ready for the class I teach to graduating seniors in “Advertising Campaign Strategy”… I was admittedly….blog-less.

This week, I borrow heavily from Advergirl, (click here) one of the blogs I read as often as it’s updated. Her article “Commercials That Open Minds” focus on two companies—Carnival and Kaplan. I liked her topic for several reasons:

1) She, like me is smart enough to admit “These are tough products to introduce to new audiences. We all have pretty firm (and final) opinions on online degrees and cruises. They’re either for people like us – or a weird choice “other people” make.”

2) She’s right! Kaplan and Carnival both, get us to reconsider what we think we know with these two decidedly emotional campaigns. “They connect with us in ways that inspire camaraderie and delight,” she writes.

3) She used a great quote, “The basic difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.” Donald Calne

4) And finally, the Kaplan commercials really struck a note with me, personally. Although I teach in a very traditional environment, I constantly seek new ways to challenge my students in their ways of thinking. It’s not always easy.

So here are the two Kaplan commercials that create a unique “collegiate sensation of DISCOVERY. A sense of reaching new conclusions, staking new ground, discovering new ways to think about old problems – shown in moments of heady philosophy:”

And here are the two Carnival commercials which evoke a “sense of absolute playful fun – shown in moments you wish you were a part of:”

Both do a great job!

How will you open minds within your business this year? How will you give your customers a sense of JOY, DELIGHT, or DISCOVERY? In what ways can you do things differently, be different from your competition and most of all convince your customer of that? In the words of Henri Bergson, “Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”

And again, thanks to Advergirl for inspiring this article and me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Branding, Great Ideas, Highly Recommended, Traditional Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.