Thesis Abstract
(This is my thesis abstract as it now stands. These days I waver back and forth between being really excited about it and really terrified that it won’t be finished in time. Cross your fingers for me! And let me know what you think!)
One quality that has been constant in the most effective marketing campaigns over the course of the past century is that each company attempted to convince the public that there was more to their product than its physical attributes. Somehow, through a combination of strategy, creativity, and luck, some brands are able to not only achieve financial success and market dominance, but they earn an iconic status, representing a segment of our culture or an abstract ideal. As time passed, the overall culture evolved, professional marketers continued to experiment, and the public became increasingly savvy of marketing tricks, but finding a way to make people believe that mundane products could represent abstract desires remained the secret to success for many of the most acclaimed brands from the early 1900s to today.
This thesis will explore how psychological persuasion has been applied to the marketing of products through the study of three of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time: Edward Bernays’ “Torches of Freedom” campaign for Lucky Strikes in the 1920s, Doyle Dane Bernbach’s “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagen in the 1960s, and Wieden + Kennedy’s “Just Do It” campaign for Nike in the 1990s. Each marketing individual or agency utilized different techniques, but each managed to overcome major obstacles for their client by creating a recognized association between a product and a cultural ideal. This thesis will contemplate how each individual or agency achieved that association, how it led to the client’s success, how those ideas can be applied to other companies in the future, and finally how current transformations in the culture affect that application.
