Marketing Icon Is an Element

Marketing icon is an element of marketing that has incredible resonance both with the general public and inside the marketing world as well, citing the definition of the word icon. The Energizer Bunny was created as a spokescharacter to convey a specific set of values to the Energizer brand (Garretson & Burton, 2005). The bunny featured in a large number of spots across multiple media forms.

The result is that the Energizer bunny became indelibly associated with the Energizer brand, to the extent that one cannot think of Energizer without thinking of the bunny. The bunny therefore is iconic in its status, being recognized by almost all consumers, and associated with the brand. The bunny's recognizability has been transferred across a number of different campaigns, further highlighting its effectiveness.

When a spokescharacter, slogan or other element of a marketing campaign makes the leap from marketing to popular culture, that is a high level of achievement in the marketing world. The bunny therefore represents a high level of marketing success, having reached more consumers than a battery company could reasonably expect to reach. Energizer's brand increased in value significantly with the bunny, to the point where the company is now branching out into a number of other products, leveraging the strength of the brand name (Parekh & Neff, 2013).

Consumers associate the bunny in a couple of ways. The first is that they relate in some way to the character itself. Nothing but a pink drumming toy rabbit, the Energizer bunny has always been associated with the "keeps going, and going, and going" tag line. This can be applied to a lot of different products. The power of that association is strong and conveys the same basic value to just about any product to which the bunny is applied.

The character has the same attributes as the brand and can be used in place of the brand, still garnering instant recognition. Only the strongest of marketing campaigns has this kind of resonance. There are certainly other characters that have strong brand associations and have entered into iconic status -- Ronald McDonald, Toucan Sam, the Geico gecko are all pretty good examples -- and they have done so with heavy repetition, strong appeal to consumers and the ability to instantly convey the same values as the brand.

On that level, the Energizer bunny has had enduring appeal that seems like it will never run out of steam. An interesting tidbit about the Energizer Bunny, is that the character was created in response to Duracell letting their trademark lapse on the Duracell bunny, a character that it still uses in other parts of the world. The Energizer bunny was just a spoof on the Duracell character, but resonated with consumers to a much higher degree, creating an instant marketing hit.

The bunny has been featured in the copany's marketing ever since, lending strength to its iconic status. Brand development at this point for Energizer has to be considered a challenge, because the bunny is.