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Twenty years ago, Times Square swelled with millions of tourists who’d flocked to New York to start their holiday shopping and marvel at 161 megawatts’ worth of electronic billboards. The world’s leading brands had all paid top dollar for a piece of this spectacle and, several stories above the sidewalk, they vied for attention: Toyota, Budweiser, Pizza Hut, Wachovia, NBC and scores of other household names.
Then, on the night of Dec. 17, 2003, a newcomer joined the lineup, flashing to life on a 50-foot-tall LED screen: LG Electronics. Debuting along with the billboard was a new slogan: “Life’s Good.”
The sign had cost a reported $10 million, but this was a branding rite of passage: LG’s competitors had all paid for their piece of Times Square, too.
Yet something unquantifiable was missing in that flashy debut. Sure, the slogan was upbeat and clever. “Life’s Good” was meant to explicate the “L” and “G” of the brand name, something that American consumers had been puzzling over. (More on that later.)
Even as the new slogan answered that one question, however, it raised others.
“I have to confess that we were not very successful in delivering the core message to consumers,” said Lee Jeong-seok, svp and head of global marketing at LG, speaking with Adweek from the electronics giant’s global headquarters in Seoul. “We only said, ‘Life’s Good.’ So, what does it mean? Is my life good? Is your life good?”
As Lee was to discover, confusion over the slogan even existed within LG’s own ranks.
“That question also arose from inside our company for a really long time,” he continued. “Someone asked me, “Life’s Good”? [It] sounds like a slogan for an insurance company—so what is the relationship? [Our] company is an IT company.”
