Word: lanahan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...global companies pursuing teenagers these days have been so elaborately slick in inventing ways to be unslick. Few, in other words, have gone to such great lengths to convince teens that the corporate voice is sincere. "You have to first and foremost acknowledge that you are marketing," says Brian Lanahan, manager of special projects for Coke's marketing division. Today's teens are "very versed in participating in the commercial world," he adds. "Probably their main area of power is as a consumer...
...other researchers, Coke saw that teens were concerned about violence, aids and getting jobs, all of which heightened their typical adolescent anxieties. "Economic prosperity is less available than it was for their parents. Even traditional rites of passage, such as sex, are fraught with life-or-death consequences," says Lanahan...
Armed with its findings, Coke set out to address the very real problems that teens face without seeming, on the surface at least, to exploit them. The OK trademark struck company marketers as the ideal solution. "It underpromises," says Lanahan. "It doesn't say, 'This is the next great thing.' It's the flip side of overclaiming, which is what teens perceive a lot of brands do." At the same time, the OK theme attempts to play into the sense of optimism that this generation retains. ("OK-ness," says a campaign slogan, "is the belief that, no matter what, things...