Maxell's classic black-and-white "blow-away guy" image is the centerpiece of a new multi-million dollar integrated marketing campaign.
"The image of the hip, young guy being completely blown away by his entertainment experience is timeless," said Don Patrican, executive vice president of Maxell. "We had allowed this icon to become marginalized over the years. But now, when brand is so important in our business, we've decided to leverage this image that tens of millions of people associate with Maxell by putting more energy and investment behind it." The key creative decision in the "blow-away" relaunch was to avoid the impulse to update the image, said Patrican, who was a sales and marketing executive at Maxell when the original ad was conceived. Instead, the strategy was to modernize the placement of the image. "Attempts had been made over the years to contemporize the 'blow-away guy', but we decided that the genius of the ad was the purity of the black-and-white image and how it thoroughly and elegantly communicates the joy of a great recorded entertainment experience. We just needed to find new ways to expose that powerful image," explained Patrican. The "blow-away guy" began life in 1979 as an idea for an advertisement aimed at retailers in trade magazines. But client and agency management immediately realized the potential power of the image and developed consumer-directed print and television executions. Millions of television viewers of the 1970s and 1980s still associate Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Walkyries," the soundtrack of the original television ad, with the enjoyment of recorded entertainment. Additional millions spent their college years waking up to posters of Maxell's blow-away guy on the walls of their dorm rooms.
