Fast Company Book Club
Chicago Company of Friends
Chicago, Illinois
Robin Koval, co-author, Bang!: Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World

In late March, the Chicago Company of Friends group held its first Fast Company Book Club discussion event with Robin Koval, co-author of Bang!: Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World, and Charles Decker, host of the Readers' Choice.

After Koval, general manager and chief marketing officer of the Kaplan Thaler Group -- and one of the advertising visionaries behind the AFLAC Insurance and Herbal Essence ad campaigns -- showed some video clips of the agency's work, the group explored several topics, including who to target with a campaign and how to work more effectively with clients. Here are some highlights of the March 30, 2004, event:

Book Club: Why don't we hear more jingles in commercials these days?

Robin Koval: Well, the advertising industry doesn't think jiggles are hip anymore, although Oscar Meyer is still using their famous jingle in current commercials. "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner."

Book Club: Perhaps quick "stingers" like Yahoo!'s yodelling and Expedia's similar technique might be replacing a full jingle. These companies are using a short musical stinger to say their name in a way that will be memorable.

Koval: Intel has had success using this technique, too, and they don't even mention their name.

Book Club: What about people who don't watch television? How can advertising be effective?

Koval: I'll give you an example in the case of Herbal Essences shampoo. To be frank, we don't care what men -- much less men who don't watch TV -- think about Herbal Essences because they're not the target audience for the product. We care about what she thinks, and what she thinks. (Koval points at women in the audience.)

Book Club: Was it hard to get buy in from within the agency to pitch the abrasive duck concept to AFLAC?

Koval: We typically pitch three ideas, and even then, the creative team had to fight to get the concept tested. Our agency even offered to pay for the testing themselves if the duck failed to generate a positive response. When it tested through the roof, the numbers were all the client needed to run with it.

Book Club: A lot of people have been talking about offshoring. What happens when you take an ad campaign overseas?

Koval: When we took the AFLAC campaign global, there were problems in Japan. Ducks do not say "quack" in Japan. They use a different sound to indicate a duck's noise. It didn't allow them to say the word "AFLAC" using the Japanese sound for a duck, which presented a bit of a problem.

In Japanese, the sound is translated as "ga ga." However, as we learned more about the business situation, we realized that the role of the duck would be slightly different in Japan. Unlike the U.S., which had very low awareness of AFLAC prior to the launch of the duck campaign, AFLAC is a very well known company in Japan. We didn't need to focus on name awareness -- to have the duck quack the name of the company so people would remember it -- as much as we wanted to enhance good feelings about the company and promote specific insurance products, something that can be done in Japan but not in the U.S. So, although the play on the soundalike nature of "quack" and AFLAC does not travel to Japan, the feisty, funny, highly likable character of the duck does. He is incredibly well liked by the Japanese, and we have produced and aired nine executions of the duck campaign in the past three years. Business is doing great in Japan.

Book Club: How is it working with celebrities like the duck?

Koval: Working with celebrities can be fun, especially with folks like Yogi Berra, who appeared in an AFLAC commercial. When the celebrity has a different agenda, it can cause a problem. Debra Messing of TV's Will & Grace wanted to be perceived as someone who can be a dramatic actress before the show became a huge hit. The shampoo commercial was written to leverage her comedic talents.

When repeatedly directed to be funny instead of serious, the actress eventually began to cry in frustration. The shoot fell behind schedule, which is very expensive considering the crew and the studio costs involved. There was $1 million in makeup running down her face. They finally reasoned with her that they had hired her to be funny, she is good at being funny, and she should just be funny for the commercial. It worked out in the end.

Report written by Leslie Banks and Dan Limbach. Photographs courtesy of Dan Limbach.

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