THINGS are starting to look up on Madison Avenue, or so it seems, as more advertising takes on the type of upbeat tone that had been noticeably missing during this recession.
The primary reason is “a feeling of cautious optimism about the economy at large,” said Bruce Lefkowitz, executive vice president for advertising sales at the Fox cable entertainment unit of the News Corporation, responsible for channels like FX.
That belief was buttressed on Wednesday when ZenithOptimedia, part of the Publicis Groupe, raised its forecast for growth in global ad spending this year to a 2.2 percent gain over 2009, compared with an increase of 0.9 percent that the agency had predicted in December.
An example of the mood shift is a major corporate brand image campaign to be introduced on Thursday by AT&T, which is one of the five largest American advertisers, according to data from the Kantar Media unit of WPP. The campaign, by the Atlanta and New York offices of BBDO North America — part of the BBDO Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group — carries the sunny theme “Rethink possible.”
Robert K. Passikoff, president at Brand Keys in New York, a research company that studies consumer and brand loyalty, said a campaign to burnish the AT&T brand “makes a lot of sense” as the company battles rivals in the intensely competitive telecommunications category because it can counter the negative effects of ads that use low prices to peddle products and services.
“Selling on price is a pathway to commoditization,” Mr. Passikoff said, which can devalue a brand image. “The only way to get out of that is to have the brand stand for something meaningful to consumers,” he added, like innovation or heritage.
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