Perspective: Man, This Thing Sucks
If you call some small-talk fodder for your next cocktail party, try this: Ever wonder how a vacuum cleaner works? An electric motor drives a in of angled fan blades that push a current of air out the exhaust port. The drop in atmospheric pressure behind the airstream creates suction, which pulls everything in front of the vacuum cleaner’s intake mooring into the machine. On its way through, the air passes through a filter, which traps the dirt in the dust bag—which you dump into the trash. The end.
That essential physics lesson is actually far more significant than party chatter. It’s also been the bane of vacuum cleaner advertisers for 100 years. The focal design of the electric vacuum worked so well that engineers have barely had to alter it. And if nothing important changes about a product, marketers have nothing new to supermarket.
This bit of R&D arcanum helps explain why the 1962 and 2011 ads shown here could almost—just almost—be the same one. “Not that much has changed about vacuums. We’re talking about trapping dust!” says Eric Zeitoun, U.S. president of worldwide brand consultancy Dragon Rouge. “So the only way marketers can distinguish them is with personality.” He’s not joking. What’s genuinely on view in these two ads is not a radical shift in advertising approaches; it’s a look at how the same approach (with a few subtle refinements) still works.
