THEY DON'T LOOK A DAY OVER 74.
The Story Behind The First 75th Anniversary Ad
TEC has always worked to deliver better product support than anyone in heavy equipment. In their early days, they had to: The equipment they sold was lousy. While that’s absolutely not the case any more, their customer service philosophy is still the same — which is a pretty good message for an ad.
But that wasn’t the message we were asked to promote when our longtime friend and client Jeff Roberts told us the boss wanted an ad celebrating Tractor & Equipment’s 75th year in business, and all the people who’ve led the company over the years. “Oh fabulous,” we’re thinking, “let’s do an ad about how great we are.”
Jeff then handed us an ad the boss had seen, for a human resources company, with the letters ‘HR’ created to look like a building under construction. “At the top of the ad, Dan wants you to make a ‘TEC’ that looks like that.” Now we had a tactic in search of a strategy, for an ad telling everyone how great we are. Who wouldn’t love to see that?
Jeff had told us that once Dan sets his mind on something, you’d better give it to him. Which had us wondering if there was any point in trying to convince Dan (whom we’d never met) that the focus of our message really needed to be on how we benefit, and care about, our customers. There was. The guy’s not CEO for nothing. And that big ‘TEC’ at the top of the ad? We like it (and the ad itself) a lot more than we ever thought we would.
The Story Behind The Second Ad
Pretty simple: We had what we thought was a great follow-up concept. They liked it. We did too.
