Slim Jim Parity Advertisement Analysis

Essay by tweitzmannCollege, UndergraduateA, October 2014

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Tiffany Weitzmann

Instructor's Name

Morality and Law in Advertising

DATE \@ "MMMM d, y" September 15, 2014

Parity Advertisement

Slim Jim, a rather recognizable brand, recently faced a strategic brand dilemma. Given their target demographic, males 18-25, Slim Jim has seriously fallen off of their radar, leaving little to no top of mind awareness of the brand. While their highly recognizable tag line "snap into a Slim Jim" has strong ties within the brand identity, it has been two decades since the debut of that campaign, leaving Slim Jim at a crossroads: abandon the tag line and start new, or identity the problem and address it.

After previous attempts of abandoning the tag line and image with a series of ads pushing a "spicy side" from Venables Bell and Partners, it became clear that the tag line was so deeply embedded within the brand identity regardless of the attempted change.

Clearly the brand's target audience associated the tag line with the Slim Jim brand, it just needed a revival within that audience.

The key problem facing the Slim Jim brand was not so much a need of awareness of the product itself, but rather a lack of superiority over competitors in the meat stick product category. Males 18-25 were eating meat sticks, they were just choosing generic or other competitor brand meat sticks over Slim Jim's. This gave Slim Jim the task of creating an illusion of superiority over the competition in order to regain the leader in their product category once again.

Slim Jim approached their newest campaign in a similar fashion other brands targeting the male 18-25 demographic often do. Brands like Axe and Dollar Shave Club have used similar rhetoric and tactics in past campaigns. Using a strategy of blatant comparison, Slim Jim places it's product in the center of attention making Slim Jim's the life of the party, juxtaposed to the generic brand of meat stick which stands alone, suggesting that Slim Jim's are the fun meat stick while the competitor is boring and dull thus not worth your time. This spot claims the brand's superiority over its competition by utilizing comparative visual rhetoric by creating the illusion that Slim Jim is the more exciting meat stick snacking option. However, the issue with this approach is that the advertiser doesn't state any difference or superiority, real or created, over the competition. While the spot directly compares the products, the only difference it presents is the illusion of popularity and acceptance that accompanies the choice of Slim Jim over the competition. This is a well versed strategy, creating a pack like mentality within the target demographic, making the audience feel as though they belong to something or are apart of something when making a point of purchase decision. This technique, however, has it's drawbacks, because there is no real advantage Slim Jim's has over their competitor other than brand recognition, which is most likely the backbone of the advertisement. Since there is no difference between Slim Jim's has a create one, leaving to the approach they ultimately decided upon.