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Ferrari, Marlboro, and Subliminal Advertising
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http://www.fastcompany.com/1640432/ferrari-drops-wickedly-sneaky-cigarette-advertising-from-its-racecars
The article has a lot of pictures so I won't quote it here. The summary of the story is that Marlboro had a $1 billion advertising deal with Ferrari to have its brand on Ferrari's race cars. Due to a recent law in Europe though, they could no longer advertise the name openly. So what did they do? They put the extremely recognizable Marlboro barcode on it instead.
Old car:
New car:
This is probably not the first time that subliminal advertising has been used, but I'm not aware of any previous cases where it was used to circumvent regulation. So it was very appalling.
Ferrari CEO's response was hilarious:
In my opinion, both companies should be fined for this.
The article has a lot of pictures so I won't quote it here. The summary of the story is that Marlboro had a $1 billion advertising deal with Ferrari to have its brand on Ferrari's race cars. Due to a recent law in Europe though, they could no longer advertise the name openly. So what did they do? They put the extremely recognizable Marlboro barcode on it instead.
Old car:
New car:
This is probably not the first time that subliminal advertising has been used, but I'm not aware of any previous cases where it was used to circumvent regulation. So it was very appalling.
Ferrari CEO's response was hilarious:
Frankly, I find this argument completely pointless and it is verging on the ridiculous to claim that the color red or a graphic design which shows a bar code could induce people to smoke. At a time when, on the other side of the Atlantic they are fighting to provide a more equal health service, in the old continent of Europe, so called experts are racking their brains to come up with theories that have no scientific basis.
In my opinion, both companies should be fined for this.
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Because they actively tried to circumvent the law?
I have been a smoker for a reasonable proportion of that time.
I had absolutely no idea that was supposed to be the Marlboro barcode. Really, it's probably enough that the team's official name is "Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro" and appears as such on anything official.
Also, what did the law itself say? No logos or no references to the brand at all?
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
However, ineffective attempts to break the law should still be punished. We don't let incompetent crooks off the hook just because they're incompetent.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That's not the point. Times did an experiment and showed that people indeed picked up on the design.
I would argue that's far worse in the context of trying to evade bans on tobacco advertising.
Alice Ducati
Rizla Suzuki
They do it in MotoGP too.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
It was about advertising it, period. In this case, subliminal advertising is still advertising.
I don't see any experiment on that link. Not that it matters.
And name != advertising. Advertising is any symbol, text or otherwise, that represents a product.
This is really a simple question. Did Marlboro give Ferrari money to put a symbol representing their product on their F1 cars? [y/n]
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
(ignore the fact it's on fire) vs:
because seriously, McLaren did this for at least three or four seasons. As did other teams.
EDIT: To be honest, I can probably accept that it's advertising. I don't think it's "subliminal" in any sense, though.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
Yeah, the people in that article who recognized it as the Malrboro bar code were
Color me shocked that these people would recognize it.
Wow.
I bet if a rival tobacco maker tried to produce a brand with a different name but using that font and design, West would have a C&D out for trademark infringement so goddamn fast.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The wording of the OP suggests that only advertisements using the name were banned. He also suggests that the intention of the law was to prevent any form of advertisement at all, of course, but that's hard to believe if the law explicitly singled out brand names to the exclusion of recognizable imagery. A loophole of that magnitude doesn't seem likely.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Yeah, it doesn't seem likely to me, either.
I can't find the text of the ban. Everything I've found (such as the Times article or the Wikipedia article) refer to it as a ban on "sponsorship."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
People associate Marlboro with red F1 cars. It's an iconic image of the sport. It's like Colin McRae's 555 branded Subaru Impreza.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
As it stands, I hardly see how you can punish a company for obeying the letter of the law. The law says "You can't have your name on there." They said, "OK, our name's not on there."
They're not breaking the law. If you're mad about it, change the law.
Pretty much that.
But think of the children.
Children still watch car racing?
Hell seeing people racing cars is probably more dangerous. A lot of teens get killed because they were driving like idiots, they have decades to quit smoking.
I wouldn't go that far.
Advertising and brand awareness campaigns (which is what sports sponsorship is, more than advertising per se) definitely have an effect. There are studies to back that up and also the simple fact that businesses do not routinely pour vast amounts of money (F1 sponsorship, particularly, is expensive as hell) into something that doesn't produce results.
But brand awareness only rarely convinces someone to buy a certain product, brand awareness mostly just make sure that when you have decided to buy a product you buy the version with the brand that you've had shoved in your face. In short a logo on an F1 car might make smokers buy Marlboro, but it isn't very likely to make non-smokers into smokers. So the law is pretty stupid.
Yeah they've been doing this for as long as I've been watching F1 (4 years at least). Some races the car could say Marlboro, some races it couldn't so they use the barcode, but now I guess it never can have the name. Everybody knows Marlboro is the sponsor though, they have been forever. Pretty sure they still say Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro when they announce the podium finshers or whatever though since that's the official name of the team.
How are they good for everyone, unless you are arguing that they increase the adoption of cigarettes as a market segment, rather than simply shifting demand from Generic Cigarette Manufacturer to Marlboro.
In which case, it isn't good for Marlboro to ban them, since you aren't engaged in the sort of game theoretic zero sum type game that I've seen advertising modelled as. I mean maybe you don't care about Marlboro, which is fine. Just trying to suss out how this argument works.
I've always envisioned marketing to be rather poor at actually shifting the total demand in a given market, but maybe I am wrong and it is effective. I'd love to see any studies showing the magnitude of such an effect. In my managerial economics class, we always treated it as an excercise in game theory.
To make smart politicians look good to stupid constituents because smoking is the current "think of the children" topic.
Its disgusting how many of these feel good laws are on the books.
but it's perfectly fine to have beer companies sponsor race cars because Drinking Beer is an American Way(tm)
"Subtle" isn't synonymous with "subliminal". They are not the same words.
Subliminal advertising is an extremely specific thing, don't confuse it with alternative logo branding.
Calling what Marlboro-Ferrari is doing "subliminal advertising" is a dishonest attempt to make it appear they are doing something far more insidious than they actually are.