Aflac Duck on the Back Burner

This week's issue of AdAge features an article discussing the new media plan for Aflac, the supplemental insurance company best known from its commercials featuring the Aflac duck. The new plan, according to the company's CMO, Jeff Herbert, includes more targeted marketing, with less appearances by the duck who made the company's name one of the most recognizeable in history. Herbert claims he wants to market what Aflac does, without the duck, and instead with more messages aimed at specific, target groups, with particular opportunity in business-to-business marketing. The plan puts more of the company's advertising budget into mediums like outdoor and print and less focus on primary mediums, paritcularly Television. Herbert also organized Aflac's marketing division of 200 people into seven, more directed groups, including product marketing and strategic planning, and strives to create what he called a "consumer-products/business-products" hybrid.

After reading about this new media plan, I have to say I don't think it's the best idea for the company. Aflac achieved national name recognition because of the Aflac duck, and while at first, many people probably just remembered the commercials and not necessarily what product/services were being advertised, I think that over the course of the last five years, American consumers have come to know that Aflac is an insurance company. In fact, today, the Aflac duck is more recognized than Ronald McDonald or the Engergizer Bunny, according to The Kaplan Thaler Group, Ltd. (http://www.kaplanthaler.com/ourwork/index.php?clientid=1&name=Aflac), which is the advertising firm who created the Aflac duck and continues to be Aflac's advertising agency.

While I can understand that Herbert wants consumers to know exactly what services Aflac provides, and doing so through more targeted marketing would be one possibile way of doing so, I think that taking away the duck will leave consumers wondering, "Where's the Aflac duck? What happened to him?" Aflac commercials with an absence of the duck will, in my opinion, leave consumers with less recognition of the ads for the company, which is unlikely to increase sales. Instead, I think it would be more beneficial, from a marketing perspective, to keep the duck in the advertisements, but still put more of an emphasis on the company's services, and put more money into outdoor and print ads with the duck. As an aspiring creative, I think Aflac could use the duck in print and/or outdoor mediums as part of an integrated campaign, with each ad consecutively documenting the duck's adventures to different places, while using the outdoor/print mediums to drive people to the company's website.

With sales' earnings of $14.6 billion in 2006, I just have a hard time understanding why the market leader in supplemental insurance in the U.S. would want to minimize the use of the ad icon that virtually made the company what it is today. Granted there may be room for growth in the market, but personally, I can't understand the choice to downplay the duck.


Read the article at: http://adage.com/article?article_id=115039