"Where do you want to go today?" was the title of Microsoft's second global image advertising campaign. The broadcast, print and outdoor advertising campaign was launched in November 1994 through the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. The campaign had Microsoft spending $100 million through July 1995, of which $25 million would be spent during the holiday shopping season ending in December 1994. [1]
Tony Kaye directed a series of television ads filmed in Hong Kong, Prague and New York City that showed a broad range of people using their PCs. The television ads were first broadcast in Australia on November 13, the following day in both the United States and Canada, with Britain, France and Germany seeing the spots in subsequent days. An eight-page print ad described the personal computer as "an open opportunity for everybody" that "[facilitates] the flow of information so that good ideas—wherever they come from—can be shared", and was placed in mass-market magazines including National Geographic , Newsweek , People , Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated . [1]
The New York Times described the campaign as taking "a winsome, humanistic approach to demystifying technology". However, the Times reported in August 1995 that the response to Microsoft's campaign in the advertising trade press had been "lukewarm" and quoted Brad Johnson of Advertising Age as stating that "Microsoft is on version 1.0 in advertising. Microsoft is not standing still. It will improve its advertising." Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, then the firm's executive vice president, acknowledged that the response to the campaign had been "chilly". [2]
In June 1999, Microsoft announced that it would be ending its nearly five-year-long relationship with Wieden+Kennedy, shifting $100 million (~$172 million in 2023) in billings to McCann Erickson Worldwide Advertising in a split that was described by The New York Times as mutual. Dan Wieden, president and chief creative officer of the advertising agency, characterized the relationship with Microsoft as "intense" and said that it had "run its course". [3]
"Cog" is a British television and cinema advertisement launched by Honda in 2003 to promote the seventh-generation Accord line of cars. It follows the convention of a Rube Goldberg machine, utilizing a chain of colliding parts taken from a disassembled Accord. Wieden+Kennedy developed a £6 million marketing campaign around "Cog" and its partner pieces, "Sense" and "Everyday", broadcast later in the year. The piece itself was produced on a budget of £1 million by Partizan Midi-Minuit. Antoine Bardou-Jacquet directed the seven-month production, contracting The Mill to handle post-production. The 120-second final cut of "Cog" was broadcast on British television on 6 April 2003, during a commercial break in ITV's coverage of the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix.
Joe Camel was an advertising mascot used by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) for their cigarette brand Camel. The character was created in 1974 for a French advertising campaign, and was redesigned for the American market in 1988. He appeared in magazine advertisements, clothing, and billboards among other print media and merchandise.
An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally independent of the client; it may be an internal department or agency that provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services, or an outside firm. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies promotions for its clients, which may include sales as well.
DoubleClick Inc. was an American advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to advertising agencies and mass media, serving businesses like Microsoft, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Motorola, L'Oréal, Palm, Inc., Apple Inc., Visa Inc., Nike, Inc., and Carlsberg Group. The company's main product line was known as DART, which was intended to increase the purchasing efficiency of advertisers and minimize unsold inventory for publishers.
Microsoft Advertising is an online advertising platform developed by Microsoft, where advertisers bid to display brief ads, service offers, product listings and videos to web users. Provides pay per click advertising on search engines Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, as well as on other websites, mobile apps, and videos.
AMV BBDO is an advertising agency that works with over 85 brands, including BT, Diageo, Walkers, and Mars. AMV campaigns may incorporate digital, social, experiential, print or broadcast media.
Wieden+Kennedy is an American advertising agency best known for its work for Nike. Founded by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy, and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, it is one of the largest independently owned advertising agencies in the world.
Mithun was an advertising and marketing firm, founded in 1933 by Ralph Campbell and Ray Mithun. It was part of Interpublic Group of Communication Companies. The core business was consumer advertising through radio, TV, print, digital, mobile and out-of-home. The company was based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On January 27, 2016, Mithun ended its 83-year history through a restructuring that consolidated Mithun, Compass Point Media and McCann Worldgroup’s Minneapolis-based General Mills account team into newly formed McCann Minneapolis.
Apple Inc. has had many notable advertisements since the 1980s. The "1984" Super Bowl commercial introduced the original Macintosh mimicking imagery from George Orwell's 1984. The 1990s Think Different campaign linked Apple to famous social figures such as John Lennon and Mahatma Gandhi, while also introducing "Think Different" as a new slogan for the company. Other popular advertising campaigns include the 2000s "iPod People", the 2002 Switch campaign, and most recently the Get a Mac campaign which ran from 2006 to 2009.
Mary Georgene Wells Lawrence was an American advertising executive. She was the founding president of Wells, Rich, Greene, an advertising agency known for its creative work. She was the first female CEO of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Wells Lawrence was awarded the Lion of St. Mark for her lifetime achievements at the 2020 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
Dan Gordon Wieden was an American advertising executive who co-founded ad firm Wieden+Kennedy. A native of Oregon, he coined the Nike tagline "Just Do It."
David Franklin Kennedy was an American advertising executive who co-founded Wieden+Kennedy (W+K). Some of his most popular campaigns included the "Just Do It", "Bo Knows", and the "Mars and Mike" campaigns for Nike, Inc. He and his creative partner Dan Wieden were listed as number 22 on the Advertising Age 100 ad people of the 20th century.
Pretty is a television advertisement launched in 2006 by Nike, Inc. to promote its "Nike Women" brand of sportswear. The 60-second spot was handled by advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, Oregon. The advert stars Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova in her first appearance as a spokesperson for the brand. Pretty debuted on U.S. television on August 20, 2006, with later appearances in cinemas and in print advertisements. It was directed by Czech director Ivan Zachariáš, with post-production and VFX work by The Mill.
Allen Steven Kay was an American advertising executive and businessman. He created a television advertisement for Xerox that aired during the 1976 Super Bowl, featuring a monk called Dominic Kay is also known for his "See Something Say Something" advertising campaign for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Kay co-founded Korey Kay & Partners advertising in 1982 and served as its Chairman and CEO for 32 years. Kay was active in several advertising industry associations.
Universal McCann (UM) is an international media and advertising agency. UM is a member of Interpublic Group, operating under the IPG Mediabrands branch. Some of its regional offices are known as Universal Media rather than Universal McCann but are still generally all known as UM.
Tag is a television and cinema advertisement launched by Nike Inc. in 2001 to promote its line of sportswear in the United States. It was one of four pieces forming the television component of the $25m "Play" campaign, which had been running for several months. Tag was created by advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. Production was handled by production company Gorgeous Enterprises, who assigned director Frank Budgen to oversee the project. Filming took place in Toronto, Ontario.
McCann, formerly McCann Erickson, is an American global advertising agency network, with offices in 120 countries. McCann is part of McCann Worldgroup, along with several other agencies, including direct digital marketing agency MRM//McCann, experiential marketing agency Momentum Worldwide, healthcare marketing group McCann Health, and public-relations and strategic-communications agency Weber Shandwick.
Partnership to End Addiction, formerly called The Partnership for a Drug Free America, is a non-profit organization aiming to prevent the misuse of illegal drugs. The organization is most widely known for its TV ad This Is Your Brain on Drugs.
Anderson & Lembke (A&L) was a Swedish business-to-business advertising agency started in 1963. It expanded its operations into several countries from the 1970s to 1990s, but the last agency using the original name closed its doors in 2001.
The Diet Coke Break advertising campaign is a series of six television advertisements that ran from 1994 to 2013, used to promote the soft drink Diet Coke. Each advert centers around a group of women ogling an attractive man while he works, soundtracked to a version of "I Just Want to Make Love to You". The first commercial premiered on US television in 1994, and starred American actor Lucky Vanous as a handsome construction worker who removes his shirt while taking his "Diet Coke break". The advert was a huge success, catching The Coca-Cola Company by surprise. Although initially no sequel was planned, Vanous was recast in a follow-up advert, released the next year.