Humor in Ads

Jury is still out on humor in advertising. Sure every once in a while it is a lot of fun and people dig it. What remains unsure is its selling ability. Here is a good example when humor in ads is truly funny. Hapa sushi.

Super Efficient Re-Branding

Sure, you can call it cheap or cheesy or whatever.



Let's just call it efficient or cost-efficient or super-efficient. All it took was a razor blade and an "A" plus"B".

I want to live in a Barclaycard commercial world

This is a first for me. I literally want to reside in a make belief world that only exist in a TV commercial. I know it sounds cheesy, but who wouldn't want to commute using a rollercoaster?

Browser Manipulation for Acciona

Good cause, good song, great execution. Campaign for Acciona, a sustainable development firm based in Spain. Song “Pure Imagination” (made famous by Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory). 80-second clip by director Marcel Burgos for McCann Erickson Italia. 1-2-3 punch.


http://www.youtube.com/experiencere

I'm not sure how they did it, but it is impressive. YouTube browser window starts to tremble and shake and then seemingly implodes. Something new combined with something old (the song) definitely captured my short attention span.

Social Media Real Time Counter

Since you got on this site:



Thanks Gary, this is pretty cool.

Expense a Steak

This is an absolute riot. What a great campaign idea.

http://www.expenseasteak.com/

Oh no, MS does it again.

This is a wild bunch. I don't think I would last at this party for even couple of minutes.

ESPN and W+K/N.Y. Go Virtual

How cool is this?



ESPN

W+K/N.Y.

Judges Pick The Funniest Tv Commercials

Market research and communication firm Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, a unit of Omnicom Group, provided handheld meters that allowed the judges to record second-by-second reactions to the commercials, which dated from 1965. These are the best of the best. What do you think?


No.1 Ikea

No.2 Levi's

No.3 Outpost.com

No.4 Federal Express

No.5 Alka Seltzer

No.6 Verizon

No.7 Budweiser

No.8 Yahoo

No.9 EDS

No.10 Southern Airways

I don't always like Beer Commercials, but when I do, I Prefer Dos Equis

The Most Engaged Brands on the Web

A study by Wetpaint and Charlene Li of Groundswell fame scores the engagement level of each of the top 100 brands across more than ten social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums. Here's the top ten:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The study also claims a correlation between social media engagement and revenue growth. The brands most aggressive in social media saw revenues grow an average of 18 percent over the past 12 months, while the least active saw revenues drop 6 percent. I doubt that their level of social media engagement had much to do with their revenue growth, it is just that these are companies that do a lot of stuff right besides social media. Then again they're not taking any chances with social either.
'

Gotta love #9, who would've guessed SAP?

Cherry Girl

MTV has just come out with an environmental campaign "Cherry Girl". It includes a 60 sec. video spot, website, Facebook page and of course a Twitter feed. That's all good, but the the clip itself is a perfect example what advertising should not be - ART. Advertising is a business and it should always be measured by it's ability to sell stuff. I do get the difference between an ad for CPG and a public service announcement, but still - you need to sell the message. By the way I did get the story: she works at the dry cleaners, stuffs envelopes with cherry pits into clean suit pockets and when a customers discover and open the envelopes - cherry trees all over. I just did not buy it. By the time the clip was over I had forgotten about the environment also.





She also has a blog and she's on Flickr

Wikitude makes Augmented Reality useful

Augmented Reality has always been cool, but that's just it - it has been only cool. Now Wikitude from Mobilizy makes it also useful, while keeping it cool.

Semantic Marketing

If you built it they will come, just imagine a marketing plan that interconnects all aspects of your and your clients' existence. Harness the data, then meta-data, then analyze across the board not forgetting that everything is connected, then optimize...oops, let's call it SWO - semantic web optimization. Optimization within subnetworks of networks and so-on. Then react accordingly and distribute your own data with your own meta-data. Then track and measure the impact across the board, analyze, re-analyze, mash it all together, add a pinch of nutmeg and think for a second that you're done.

Marketing plan that mines the semantic web for customer service, market research, customer monitoring, competitive intelligence, brand protection and something else that I can't even imagine. Your brand in all of the spheres - blog-comments-forums-viral-social-micro something and Google. Because Google will not die anytime soon. It is afraid, but afraid with lot of money. Every time it gets scared it will buy whatever makes it scared. Twitter's next.

Semantic branding and marketing, it's coming and it's gonna be cool.