Mark Faulkner: “The brand is actually two hundred years old. … Music and
computers were coming from Seattle then. So it had that coolness. But you
can’t say you are cool; you have to be cool.”
Haan: “One thing we definitely tried not to say in the ads and posters was
‘cool.’ The ads speak [for] themselves, more or less. They just talk about the
product and are a complete tribute to the product. In advertising, the best
designs are the ones that focus on the product itself. It’s not an ad for the ad’s
sake.
“We were given carte blanche to say that they are very strong mints. We kept
the tagline ‘curiously strong mints.’ A lot of people might have tried to take
that away, to update it somehow, but that was the best thing that series cre-
ators Steffan Postaer and Mark Faulkner could have done. They built off the
package design and the tins.”
Faulkner: “The first two ads were the muscleman and the ‘mini mints so
strong they come in a metal box.’ When we thought of strong, we thought of
bodybuilding. My partner Stephan made a little sketch of a deltoid, which
sounded like ‘Altoid.’ I looked at body builder magazines from the 1940s.
Those guys were kind of fun to look at, not scary like the bodybuilders today.
The other ‘strong’ concepts have evolved over time.”
Haan: “The ads have that mint green background—it almost looks medical.
Altoids are a more serious mint. It doesn’t have a candy look to it. The ads are
also very flat-footed and easy to read; the advertising doesn’t get in the way.
What’s great about working on the Altoids ads is that they are more graphic
design than advertising. There’s real symmetry and balance in them.
“We embraced puns in the campaign; I know a lot of people reject them. But
you can go further with a pun. On the J. J. Walker ad, instead of him saying
‘dy-no-mite!’ as he would have on his TV show, he is saying, ‘dy-no-mint!’
Altoids has become a stage where all these characters like Walker can
appear, and even the simplest puns are forgiven as hilarious because they
are up on the stage.
“The biggest compliment we have gotten on the Altoids work is when some-
one said it was the next Absolut campaign. Of course, timing was a big part
of its success. People were starting to spend three dollars on a cup of coffee.
People liked the little metal box. And the product stands by the advertising—
it’s a really good product. The ad campaign kind of wrote itself.”
MARK FAULKNER AND NOEL HAAN, ART DIRECTORS FOR LEO BURNETT
COMPANY, CHICAGO, SPOKE ABOUT THE AMAZING SUCCESS OF THEIR FIRM’S
ADS FOR CLIENT CALLARD & BOWSER-SUCHARD AND ITS AMAZINGLY STRONG
PRODUCT, ALTOIDS. NOEL HAAN: “ICON—THAT IS A WORD WE USE A LOT WHEN
WE WORK FOR ALTOIDS. BUT IT’S ONE THING SAYING IT AND QUITE ANOTHER
TO DO IT.”
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