Happy Father´s Day! Here are some Dad Ads!

Happy Father´s Day! In honour of this, I might just get down to business and write about marketing (the point of this whole blog after all). Here is my favourite marketing campaign based around fathers.

more at canadianclubwhiskey.com

You knew this one was coming didn´t you? While this Canadian Club whiskey ad is 3 years old now, it´s the very best example I know of capitalizing on the age and tradition of a brand in a new and fresh way. Even more luckily, it was timed perfectly with the start of Mad Men and a rise in interest in that time period.

Canadian Club realised they were looking old and stodgy, that young men weren´t interested in whiskey and whiskey martinis like they were in the 60´s and 70´s. The years of James Bond stylishly drinking martinis in rock glasses, while making eyes at busty ladies, is past. And while I´d say CC wasn´t able to make martinis a whole lot less of a menacing word for guys, they did make their brand seem pretty damn cool. Instead of pulling the usual "we're not your dad´s insert oldies product here", they decided to capitalise on the dad you never knew, the cool dad, the player dad. They also played up the manly men stereotype of the 60´s- martini a girl´s drink? No way!

Plus, these ads are a lot of fun to play with. People started making their own (not all of them very flattering, but many very funny). Needless to say, the ads spread all over the place.

and many more of various levels of inappropriateness here

Edit:

Thought I´d just add this campy version of the exact opposite campaign by oldsmobile. This is from the late 80´s - "not your father´s oldsmobile". Except apparently it was, with all the same old problems. So this is an example of not just turning your back on your valuable tradition, but pretending to be something you´re not. Bad, bad marketers!