Client: Pierce Manufacturing
Location: Appleton, WI
About:
Pierce Manufacturing is a U.S. company based in Appleton, Wisconsin that manufactures customized fire and rescue apparatus and a wholly owned subsidiary of Oshkosh Corporation. Pierce was acquired by Oshkosh in 1996 and is currently the largest fire apparatus company in the world.
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I designed an advertising campaign for a final project for Milwaukee Portfolio School. The objective is to sell the products and innovations Pierce has to offer in terms of its firetrucks and innovations and show that lives are what they do for a living.
My process behind formulating the idea was to think about other famous ad campaigns that tug at people's heartstrings and give sad and alarming testimonials to prevent someone's life being lost. For example, the CDC campaigns and testimonial-driven commercials on the effects of smoking or PSAs and commercials encouraging the audience to not drink and drive. I wanted to tug on the audience's heartstrings because testimonials make things real and it's unedited. I researched several stories of firefighters giving their testimony in the day and life of a firefighter, including traumatic moments that all firefighters have to live through - losing the lives of people they couldn't save.
Loss is what firefighters sometimes have to experience, so it is believable when the audience (the firefighter or chief) reads a testimonial about something common in the profession, it's easier for the target audience to understand and feel connected to the campaign. There is always power in one's testimony. The imagery is to define who the target is and the mini stories/testimonies is to bring the firefighter in.
Creative brief
I narrowed my idea down to producing a testimonial campaign to sell Pierce trucks and innovations. The campaign will consist of different firefighters telling the story of how using pierce trucks helped them save lives. The fireman helmet, glove and boots are shown at the bottom of the ads with white text.
Digital banner ad: Small quotes from the perspective of the survivor of fires that Pierce helped put out for each digital banner ad
(Sketches shown below)
The following images are the final digitized ads. The large red quotations are to engage and bait the reader. Though it was difficult, The larger print and the beginning of these stories are engaging enough for the target audience to read and relate to.
Digital Banner ads
Guerilla Tactic
