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Ketchum's new Zippo campaign lights everything but cigarettes
Friday, September 11, 1998 By Teresa F. Lindeman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
For a company like Zippo Manufacturing Co. in Bradford, the problem is not getting publicity. The problem is getting noticed by the right people - a generation of skeptical college-age kids who have their own ideas about what's cool. Sure, everyone knows the little flip-top lighters helped Grandpa win World War II. Yeah, yeah, and we know that U.S. soldiers carried 200,000 Zippos into Vietnam.
That's ancient history. Why should 18- to 24-year-olds care about something used by past generations to light their unhealthy cigarettes?
"It has an inherent coolness to it," according to Lynn Mento, consumer account director in the Pittsburgh offices of Ketchum Advertising. Ketchum, which won the $5 million Zippo account earlier this year, has decided the way to boost sales is to position the 66-year-old product as a hip, young thing.
Sales at the private company are pretty good already, said Pat Grandy, Zippo's marketing communications manager. Nevertheless, officials noticed the core user was getting older. And, Mento said, Zippo took note of anti-smoking trends in America.
The new campaign, which has started to show up in youth-oriented magazines like Details and Maxim, won't use a single cigarette. Instead, emotional birthday scenes and candle-lit beaches demonstrate there are a lot of fires to light besides smokes.
The new tag line is "Zippo. Use it to start something."
By the end of the month, Ketchum plans to push the concepcept out to the edge where the youth market likes to live. A series of television ads follows a young, sideburned man in a sort of quest across America. He drives the Zippo car - a re-creation of a 1947 Chrysler that disappeared years ago somewhere in Pittsburgh --and has humorous adventures in which his lighter plays an important role.
The most audacious 30-second spot shows the hero holding his Zippo under the tail of a Holstein cow as a voice explains that gases from such animals could be a threat to the earth's ozone layer. Before anything explodes, farmers rush to her rescue.
"College kids are going to be in their dorms talking about it," said Carrie Jablunovsky, Ketchum account executive.
That's the goal. Ketchum's research indicates this very targeted audience doesn't dislike advertising, it just hates the ones that use hype and insincerity. And it hates being sold to. Mento said the traditional ad style of pointing out all the reasons someone should buy just turns off media-savvy 20-year-olds.
One of the agency's key decisions was not to play on the Zippo history that has made the lighters a collectible that's traded in swap meets and sold in second-hand shops. "The history is somewhat irrelevant to this audience," said Lee St. James, executive creative director.
This audience has seen a lot of Zippos lately, most prominently in movies like "Out of Sight," where actor George Clooney flips his lighter regularly. "Snake Eyes," starring Nicolas Cage, also has a role for Zippo. Unfortunately, free publicity often pairs up the lighter with cigarettes.
Ketchum will put the non-smoking Zippo message on World Wide Web sites that have proven popular among the young, on college campuses through a Details magazine tour, and on TV channels like MTV and ESPN. Raunch radio talk show host Howard Stern has agreed to be part of the campaign.
Grandy said the brand-oriented campaign is a change from Zippo's recent reliance on specific product promotions. For example, one recent effort promoted the Harley-Davidson line.
The new ads - which feature the Classic 200, brushed-chrome lighter - build the entire line. "Any Zippo lighter is a cool thing to carry," Grandy said.
He admits he wasn't certain some of the proposals coming out of Pittsburgh, especially the script for the cow advertisement, would make it past the family members running the company. "I had to keep telling myself, 'This is not your father's Zippo.'"
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