Rosetta Stone Ads Emphasize Fun, Not Efficiency ROSETTA STONE, the 20-year-old language instruction company, has taken a fairly straightforward approach to advertising with commercials that promote a software-based method as an effective alternative to classroom learning. In a 2008 commercial, for example, the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps says he used Rosetta Stone before the Summer Olympics in Beijing because he likes going quickly outside the pool, too. The commercial closes with a slogan about expeditiousness akin to those coined for tax preparers and antacids: "The fastest way to learn a language. Guaranteed. Now the brand is, appropriately enough, expanding its marketing vocabulary with a new campaign that stresses the delight language learners can feel more than the mechanics of the method. A new television commercial opens with up-tempo symphonic music as a stunning Japanese woman strolls down a Tokyo street on the arm of a disheveled American man, who sings operatically: "I picked up a hot supermodel in Japanese. What a tease. Next, a businessman who drove his car onto a Rio de Janeiro sidewalk and knocked over a trash can stands beside a policeman, both of them beaming, and belts, "I begged my way out of this police thing on my knees - in Portuguese." Later, a young woman in a cluttered electronics shop in Beijing sings, as a Chinese man stands behind a counter, "I lost my cellphone, talked to this guy, and got a new one on the fly." The spot closes with the tagline, "Live life fluently." The campaign, with print, online and outdoor advertising, including an animated billboard in Times Square, is the first for the company by Kaplan Thaler Group, New York, part of the Publicis Groupe. Rosetta Stone, which declined to reveal the advertising budget for the new campaign, spent $98.5 million on advertising in 2011, up from $70.5 million in 2010, according to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP. Pamela Mulder, chief marketing officer of Rosetta Stone, said that when the brand first placed national television ads around 2004, the primary message "was this stuff works, and we were focused on really going after the hard-core language market, who may have desperately needed to be fluent for a job." The new "Live life fluently" slogan and whimsical approach of the ad aims to also appeal to what Ms. Mulder called language "dabblers, who turn it off and on at different points in their life." The software has been promoted heavily to air travelers through airport kiosks and in-flight publications, and has tended to draw consumers from 35 to 55. But the new campaign is primarily for those 25 to 35, the age of most of the language learners in the new ad. To that end, Rosetta Stone will for the first time advertise on channels like MTV, programs like "Late Show With David Letterman," and publications like Vogue and Men's Health. Jason Graff, a group creative director at Kaplan Thaler, said "young globalists" are the target of the new ads. "They're young, multicultural, socially connected, tech savvy and they're moving up and across borders," Mr. Graff said. Previous ads featured lingering shots of the familiar yellow Rosetta Stone product packages, but because younger consumers are apt to download the software, new commercials show no packaging. "We kept saying, "We want to think outside of the yellow box," " Mr. Graff said. Whitney Pillsbury, another group creative director at Kaplan Thaler, said: "We wanted to take it from this serious yellow box to something very fun and engaging. We also wanted to kind of surprise this target and make them smile. Typically, when a company goes public, as Rosetta Stone did in 2009, the influx of capital can discourage new competitors. But in the new world of language instruction, where a developer can sell an app on iTunes, such expensive hurdles as producing disks and securing shelf space have largely disappeared, said Rick Aristotle Munarriz, a senior analyst at the Motley Fool, an investment Web site. "There used to be a big gulch you had to cross to launch a language-learning program, because you had to have a distribution system and a publisher," said Mr. Munarriz. But now it's just a matter of shaking hands with Apple - anyone can launch a Rosetta Stone killer. Mr. Munarriz hastened to add that no one has, and that Rosetta Stone is a stock that Motley Fool recommends buying. About 75 percent of consumers are aware of the Rosetta Stone brand, with Berlitz a distant second with 20 percent awareness and Pimsleur third with 11 percent, according to research by Global Market Insite that was commissioned by Rosetta Stone. Annual revenue for the company totaled $268.4 million in 2011, up from $258.9 million in 2010. It lowered prices by 20 percent in 2011, with the average product priced at $313, down from $389 in 2010. Nataly Kelly, an analyst at Common Sense Advisory, a marketing research firm that follows language services, said a lack of enthusiasm for learning languages among adults may hark back to their school days. "You think of your high school French teacher, or a painful experience you had learning in a classroom environment," said Ms. Kelly. But after reviewing the new Rosetta campaign, Ms. Kelly said she thought consumers would be enticed by the approach. "What's interesting about these ads is that they're not selling software - they're selling something much more interesting," Ms. Kelly said. A multilingual lifestyle looks vibrant and fun, and the life of a monolingual looks boring by comparison.