Orange Zone Debuts Restyled Clothestime Ad Campaign
The executives at Bates USA West were in the driver’s seat last week.
The ad shop won a gold Effie Award from the New York American Marketing Association for its 1999 “Driving Is Believing” campaign for longtime client Hyundai Motor America in Fountain Valley.
The campaign helped break Hyundai out of an eight-year slump of disappointing sales, said Mark Winfield, Bates senior vice president of strategic planning. Sales last year were nearly double the 85,000 vehicles sold in 1998. The sales spurt followed the launch of a new campaign debuting Hyundai’s 10-year warranty. This year, sales are projected to be about 200,000, Winfield said.
“Hyundai had been so far down for so many years,” Winfield said. “So we developed the warranty (jointly) and built it into the communications. The image has gone from abysmal to respected.”
The spots involved some new thinking at Hyundai, Winfield said.
“There were a lot of years where Hyundai really spent a lot of time using short-term tactical strategies instead of long-term thinking, but in 1997 we committed them to a long-term brand strategy and they began making changes within the organization to live up to that,” he said.
The agency has held the account since South Korea-based Hyundai’s U.S. debut in 1986. This is the firm’s third Effie for Hyundai, and the fourth for Bates’ OC office. The shop won a silver last year in the nonprofit category for the California Science Center.
Meanwhile, Goldberg Moser O’Neill won a bronze for last year’s “Yes 2 Kia” campaign for Irvine-based Kia Motors America Inc. The ad shop was replaced in February by David and Goliath Advertising in Los Angeles.
‘All That’ Jazz
The Orange Zone, a division of The T & O; Group in Irvine, is launching a new ad campaign for Anaheim-based Clothestime.
The youth-oriented agency’s “Be All That” summer campaign includes a radio spot that mixes techno, rhythm and blues and groove music, to the lyric “Gotta know where it’s at if you are going to be all that.”
“We are building Clothestime from the bottom up and changing its image with an advertising campaign that will create a new buzz for them,” said Mark McVicker, director and creative leader for the Irvine-based agency.
The work involves radio, store posters, direct mail and overhauling the company Web site to include entertainment features and eventually an e-commerce store. The Orange Zone is targeting a shopper who thinks she is “all that.”
The store posters depict a girl holding a skateboard under the tagline: “She broke your skateboard. She digs you. Clothestime. Be all that.”
Clothestime is a 285-unit retailer of young women’s clothing. The retailer has 12 stores under the Eye Candy moniker, a concept named after its private label clothing and launched about a year ago.
Orange Zone won the estimated $3 million to $5 million Clothestime account in April without a review, replacing incumbent Pasadena Advertising, architects of the “Take Control” campaign. Orange Zone also handles the Hispanic portion of the account.
“We are proposing to do a separate campaign for Eye Candy, that will be the next release and it’s going to be a new thing with its own personality. A different child that we will treat differently,” McVicker added.
Bits and Pieces:
OC Post, Irvine, handled post-production work for a new 30-second spot created by Young & Rubicam for the Lincoln Mercury Dealer Association. The TV spot, “Freedom Rules,” utilizes computer-generated imagery such as a blossoming flower and a butterfly Creative Media, Cypress, is producing a series of eight audio tapes for Extreme Success for Young Adults in Long Beach, an audio tape for Nutrilite Corp. targeting the Filipino market, and a radio spot for an investment seminar series sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and the Orange County Register The 5th Annual Communicator Awards 2000 recently presented Lawrence, Mayo & Ponder, Newport Beach, an award of distinction for the “Couch” and “Headphones” television spots it created for the READ California program. Meanwhile, the agency’s PR arm, Pittman & Associates, has picked up the Art Institute of Los Angeles-Orange County account A newly released book by author Isabel Valdes, “Marketing to American Latinos, Part I: A Guide to the In-Culture Approach,” features a case study on the marketing tactics of Irvine-based El Pollo Loco Trade show operator Miller Freeman, Laguna Beach, is planning to repeat its popular Youth Marketing Exchange Conference at the company’s annual Action Sports Retailer Show in San Diego on Sept. 7 and 8.
