Degree Men's Deodorant: The Big Idea

From day one, I’ve had it in my head that my campaign has to be bigger and better than any other deodorant ad. Easily done, right? Uh. Sure. If you’re my professor or I don’t know, Jeff Manning. But since I’m not, this campaign was a little harder for me. I spent weeks, longer than I should have, trying to come up with my big idea, which is fine. Coming up with the idea is the hard part, and with that out of the way, everything seemed to flow smoothly. I was even able to come up more, smaller ideas that coincided with the main one. “Carried through any campaign, there must be a distinct core idea, an underlying central concept or related ideas—one could call it a theme (a distinct recurring, unifying idea) or story”, (Landa, Advertising by Design,192).  The underlying theme for my campaign is that Degree men’s deodorant will keep a man prepared for anything. Of course, this idea didn’t come right away. The reason it took me so long to come up with it is because I kept switching back and forth between that and doing something else completely, which, thankfully, according to Robin Landa, author of Advertising by Design, is normal; “and because design is an iterative process, many of us work, going back and forth—thinking, sketching, rethinking, and so on,”.

Once my big idea was decided upon, I now had to go through the daunting task of figuring out what to do with it. Robin Landa had a few ideas on how to help me, “To best determine a creative approach you could ask a few questions: Does this audience prefer to read or look at pictures? Are the words interesting enough for people to read them? Is the visual compelling enough to stop people, to grab their attention?”. From this point on, I worked backwards, knowing exactly what I wanted to show, but not entirely sure on its relation to my idea. I figured out what images I wanted to use, and how to create them. “Since people do not spend much more than a few seconds glancing at an ad, the principle of visual hierarchy creates order and coherence, facilitating rapid message communication,” (Landa, Advertising by Design, 162). When men see my ad, I want them to be able to relate to the image as well as the text, and think, “Hey that’s how I am!”. When women see my ad, I want them to think, “Hey that’s how my boyfriend is! He’d rather play video games than climb a mountain. He’s not the only one!”. Yes, my ad is meant to be comical and fun, as well as informative. That’s why my ad campaign is going to be different. It will appeal to both men and women on a whole new level.