Energizer Bunny begins 20th year

ST. LOUIS -- Turns out he really does just keep going and going.

The Energizer Bunny is beginning his 20th year as the symbol of St. Louis-based battery-maker Energizer Holdings Inc.

The advertising icon has become famous enough that people who persevere beyond reasonable expectation are often referred to, or call themselves, the "Energizer Bunny."

The pink bunny, always pounding a drum, always wearing sunglasses and flip-flops, made his debut in an October 1989 ad in which he marched off the set as the stage manager implored, "Stop the bunny, please."

The bunny soon showed up in a series of parody commercials for products such as wine, coffee, long-distance phone service, always banging the drum into the commercial to interrupt.

Two decades later, it is still going strong.

"It became an advertising icon," Neal Burns, an advertising professor at the University of Texas, said Friday. "They found a meaningful and differentiating position within the category that is important to the consumer, and what's important for a battery is that it's long-lasting, it just keeps going."

To mark the start of its 20th year, a 40-foot tall bunny float took part in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York and kept going down 34th Street while other participants made a right onto 7th Avenue.

The ad agency DDB Needham Worldwide came up with the idea of the drum-beating bunny. In a recent advertising-related study, 95 percent of respondents were aware of the bunny. AdAge.com has named it one of the top 10 advertising icons. In 2006, the Oxford English Dictionary defined the Energizer Bunny as "a persistent or indefatigable person or phenomenon."

That same year, Energizer began its Keep Going Hall of Fame to honor people with a tenacious spirit.

"The message of the Energizer Bunny has remained consistent over the last two decades," said Ward Klein, chief executive officer of Energizer. "He speaks to longevity, determination and perseverance. He personifies the American spirit."

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On the Net: http://www.energizer.com/