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.
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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.

Viral is not a noun

Since when "viral" no longer describes a spread of things. It seems that nowadays "viral" refers to a thing, not an action. In any case here they are - the latest hits:







Is it just me, but it seems that online viral clips are becoming little too main-stream? Cool factor - gone. I guess all that's left is to play by the rules that all other media channels obey by - make content that people love and that's not an easy thing to do.

Big Mac & Apple Pie

Hip-hop artist/producer/stylista Pharell at the Paris Charles deGaulle airport starts singing and dancing just to get food at McDonald's is the very best kind of customer "Lovemarks". Somebody being there with a video-cam makes it perfect. McDonald's should be ecstatic and maybe they are. Let's not forget that Pharell, unlike some other hip-hop artist, is a real cool guy and all in all likable human being. If only the employees in Golden Arches uniforms would have shared some of the enthusiasm for their product shown by Pharell.

My Name is Bond, James Bond and I wear Baltman

What's going on here? When most brands in a whole wide world are directing their ad and marketing campaigns towards sensibility right now, Baltman is taking the opposite approach, by telling us that if we wear their suits we are not only gonna look good, but also gonna get laid. A lot. Beautiful women, even better, beautiful women in pairs and blindfolded, will become our sex-slaves.



All this because I'll be wearing Baltman clothes? Well it better happen. I'm taking your word for it and buying it. Plus I will complain if it does not happen. Complain a lot.



I'm as kinky as the next guy, willing to roll with the best of them, but the last picture gives me the creeps. Once again Baltman you better deliver on your promise.

@savisaar - To Tweet or not To Tweet...

...that is the question and the answer for you @savisaar is a simple NO. Whoever is in charge of your Social Media or Online Media or Earned Media tactics unfortunately does not have any kind of understanding what Social Networks are all about. Sure he made you start a blog or at the very least started writing the posts for you, but that's not enough in 2009. Fire him.

Posting links to your blog on your Twitter account is not just beat, it's a pathetic attempt to do something without knowing what you're trying to accomplish. Twitter is not about you, Twitter is about what everybody thinks of you. Make it personal, make it human... OK that'll be hard. Well make it funny then and fire him. Make that announcement your first real Tweet. He is no good at his job. He's work has "me too" attitude written all over it and now so does your Twitter account.

By the way, your Tweets are your voice and right now you're telling everybody that you got nothing to say.

Holy Mess Over the Rainbow - the Future of a Corporate Web-site

Skittles has taken a small step for a candy, but a giant leap for a CPG brand web-site. A click on skittles.com will not take you to a corporate home page in a traditional sense, but instead to Skittles on Facebook. The only thing that has the functions that we have become accustom to on brand web-sites is a small widget in a upper left corner. Clicking on listed products will land you on a product Wikipedia page, so even this is very Social Web.

The rest of the clicks on the widget categories will take you respectively to these: Pictures - Flickr, Videos - YouTube, Chatter - Twitter, Friends - Facebook. So it's all good, somewhat messy, but still good. When I say messy I'm talking about little things that make up the big picture. For example if you search for Skittles on Twitter, you'll end up with 43 results and there's no way to tell which is the actual brand among them. I finally settled for these two - @skittlesrainbow that has 0 updates and @skittles_com that has 126 updates all of them going like this "I'm a Skittles master... get a free Netbook only for Skittles USA/Canada: http://tinyurl.com/bl3yeg #skittles". Not sure which is worst.

Still, is Skittles showing the way for the rest. Is this the future of a corporate web-site? Let's not forget the risk factor that comes with earned media - the social media - the uncontrollable media. For Skittles this undertaking is pretty low risk. When was the last time somebody opened a package of candy and was so disappointed with it's contents that it stayed with him or her for years. At the same time I still remember when an airline refused to let me board a plane with my kids at 6 in a morning. The younger one was only two at the time. Let me see if I can remember the airline, well there's no way I can forget that. SAS.

So here it is. Is this the future? Is this the solution? Is it worth the risks? I think it could be . Even when a Brand drops a ball and really screws a customer and the customer posts all his negative emotions on the brands Facebook wall, it will give the brand an opportunity to engage in a dialog. Not an easy thing to do, but it's better than watching and hearing all these conversations from a sideline.

What do you think?

NB! Oh yeah the picture is one of the results from the Twitter search.

WHOPPER SACRIFICE HAS BEEN SACRIFICED

I know this happened a while back, but just now I checked the link and it made me smile. First of all, I think that Burger King "Sacrifice your Facebook friends for a Whopper" was a truly original and funny campaign, scarce commodity nowadays. Give up ten of your so-called Facebook friends and earn a free burger. Tell me this is not making you at least crack a smile. The loose connections so widely spread all over Facebook are called friends, if Facebook would use a word like contacts for example, then a sacrifice your contacts would not be funny at all.

Unfortunately Facebook forced Burger King to terminate the whole thing over some privacy issues and that's too bad, cause c'mon it is funny. Still, I think it's gonna be a while till we see something as simple, free and absolutely hilarious. Good for you Burger King and also you must admire the perfect ending. Here it is http://www.whoppersacrifice.com/



As an afterword I want to add that who knows which side of this app was more receptive to the marketing message. The one who was willing to give up friends for a value of a sandwich or the one who got the message that this burger called Whopper is more valuable than his or hers friendship. LOL. Perfect execution.