Monday
IBM Seer Wimbledon App (Update)
It's nice to see IBM continuing to create relevant applications around their major events. Once the application is installed on a handset, they can follow up with the user as often as they like (even when the 2-week event is complete). Great stuff.
Wednesday
Timely, entertaining and product-centric. Nice one, Lego.
When brands think about how to be relevant for their consumers, they typically look inward and think about the core product benefit that would be most meaningful to their target.
Not Lego.
The formula? Product + Timely Event (World Cup) + Dramatic Event = Viral video rooted in your brand. Love this:
(Specifically relevant for the pain felt by every English Football fan right now...)
Not Lego.
The formula? Product + Timely Event (World Cup) + Dramatic Event = Viral video rooted in your brand. Love this:
(Specifically relevant for the pain felt by every English Football fan right now...)
Tuesday
An ad from Microsoft that isn't awful? Weird.
A tactical ad but so true. It's not often you see good advertising from Microsoft these days but the message here is a good one. The sheer amount of data that we share online is staggering. And it doesn't take $500 American to make us do so. Mostly we just want to creep on someones photo's so we create a Facebook profile.
Thursday
Hi Marketers it is the future calling
If you and your agencies are still relying on TV to get the message out you have in my best pulled out of my ass estimate 2 years to get your shit together. Why because changes in technology are going to make your campaign even less effective then it is today. If you rely on interrupting your consumers favourite shows to get your message across versus creating content that your consumer wants to watch, engage with or learn from you and your brand message will soon disappear.
For the sake of post-length I will skip over all of the talk about how in 10 years an entire generation going to be the 24-34 year olds that are used to turning to the web for entertainment first and TV second or lower. Add to this that TV itself is changing as the web has rocked the boat of content creation and put control, creation and choice in the hands of the consumer not the big networks.
Goodbye Cable box. Hello Google TV (as soon as I can get my hands on it).
For the sake of post-length I will skip over all of the talk about how in 10 years an entire generation going to be the 24-34 year olds that are used to turning to the web for entertainment first and TV second or lower. Add to this that TV itself is changing as the web has rocked the boat of content creation and put control, creation and choice in the hands of the consumer not the big networks.
Goodbye Cable box. Hello Google TV (as soon as I can get my hands on it).
Monday
Tuesday
Sunday
Being creative makes life more fun
Genius. Pure Genius captured with my iPhone in Downtown Toronto earlier this week.
Do you think about sound?
If you don't think about sound you should. It impacts productivity, sales, mood, your health and more.
It can also define a brand. What is the sound within your retail locations, your advertisements, your on-hold message and how does it all work together to create a positive and healthy world of sound.
It can also define a brand. What is the sound within your retail locations, your advertisements, your on-hold message and how does it all work together to create a positive and healthy world of sound.
Friday
Stanley Cup Finals
If you aren't Canadian you might not get goosebumps like I just did - but watch anyway.
Go Hawks.
Go Hawks.
Thursday
The Glee Effect
For all the talk about TV being dead, it still has a huge influence over our behavior. When we see something we like on TV, we surf for it, try to find more of it and broaden the experience we just had.
Here's a recent example of this effect:
Glee, a popular American TV series (one that I am forced to watch with my girlfriend...right), is a show based about an American Glee club that sings 4-5 popular songs each show. Essentially, it's a musical sitcom to songs that we all know by artists that people love - think Madonna, Aerosmith, etc.
So what happens when a new Glee episode airs in the US? The world searches for the songs on Google.
Take the May 18th episode 'Dream On' as an example. One of the major songs in the show? 'Dream on' by Aerosmith. Let's look at Google Trends for Search for 'Dream on aerosmith' and see what happened on May 18th:
Searches rose almost 300% on one day. And it wasn't just because that was the best song on the episode. Here's the results for 'I dreamed a dream' (from Les Miserables):
You might be thinking that this was just a popular episode (it was, Neil Patrick Harris was in it, how could it not have been sweet?), so let's look at one more example from an old episode that happened early in Season 1.The episode, called 'Mash-Up' aired on October 21, 2009 and featured the one-hit-wonder 'Thong Song' by Sisqo. Here is the result:
Again, a huge rise in searches the day the episode aired. (and I'm not sure what that second bump was but Vietnam was coming up so I'm assuming someone sang it on their version of X-Factor)Clearly the behavior exists among a large group of people. We see content that we like and we jump to our laptops to get more of it.
So here is my question. Is anyone searching for more after they see your TV campaign? If you can't notice a change in search trends, your campaign isn't working.
Skittles: Tube Sock
I love the risk taking that lies within the marketing department of skittles. I also love how they are able to capitalize on other trends or pop culture phenomenon in a way that doesn't come across as copying or contrived.
Betty White put old people back on the map as being funny and entertaining to youth like no one else had since Grandpa Simpson rose from a supporting cast member to front and centre in the early 2000's. While Betty White's putting old people back on the cool map handing out awards for MTV, starring on SNL and posing on magazine covers Skittles comes out with this.
Nice work.
Betty White put old people back on the map as being funny and entertaining to youth like no one else had since Grandpa Simpson rose from a supporting cast member to front and centre in the early 2000's. While Betty White's putting old people back on the cool map handing out awards for MTV, starring on SNL and posing on magazine covers Skittles comes out with this.
Nice work.
Saturday
Social media success starts with asking the right question
For the last five years, I've done a lot of work with brands and clients in social media. From podcasts to blogs, Facebook to Foursquare, social platforms have been - and continue to be - the hot topic for brands across the globe.
About two years ago, many brands entered what I would call the test period - they took a small percentage of a campaign budget - say 5-10% - and asked their agency, media company or PR group to brainstorm a few 'extension ideas' to 'bring the campaign to life' on a site like Facebook. The agency thought a bit about it, pitched some ideas (usually a FB page and a few ads, an application and definitely a promotion) and for a moment - a few months - progressive brands were heralded as the ones who tried something new. The ones who connected with their target via these 'new' mediums and - we were told by countless social experts at the 200 conferences they attend every year - the results were amazing, fantastic and mind blowing!!!
So more brands entered the space. More brand pages were launched. More promotions that involved voting for something, uploading a photo or sharing with your friends. And for awhile, everyone was pretty happy. (if I had to put a year on it, I'd say this was during the back-half of 2008 in North America).
But then the test period ended. The results came in and beyond the number of fans, amount of photo's uploaded, page views and general metrics, few people really knew how to make sense of social. Was it working? Did it actually help the brand attributes? Did it move sales? There are plenty examples of brands that do this and each platform highlights a ton of them in their sales presentations (which, for some reason, tend to highlight Hollywood movie releases in almost every one, Adidias, Nike, Starbucks or Apple). Yet most clients (and to be honest, agencies) still felt that the whole picture wasn't there.
And most of us still feel this way.
That's where the questions start. Unlike in 2008 when the question was, 'should we be using a bit of our budget to test social?' the question is now 'who should be managing social among our agency partners?'
This - inevitably - leads to a more fundamental question that some (but not all) brands are asking themselves: 'Who should be managing social within my company?'
For brands that have a couple hundred people, are concentrated within one country or region and sell a specific set of products, this answer can come a bit easier. But for the ones with a global presence, ones with thousands of brand managers across multiple regions, languages and locations, it's a lot harder. This effort is made tougher by the fact that some brand managers may have embraced social during the 'test phase' but others are just getting started. Some have already seen success and failure while others are still asking what a 'ReTweet' is.
To often, it seems that brands look outward for the solution. Give social to the PR group because they manage our brand reputation. Or give it to the digital agency because they do our sites. Or give it to the media group because they buy media and have a 'social expert' who seemed smart.
But the real question starts from inside. And, in some organisations, simply asking it can lead to trouble.
The product team, marketing group, customer services, tech and everyone else within the organisation wants (and needs) a say. But they are mostly isolated form one another except for the Christmas parties and all-staff meetings. They've got their own objectives, bonus schemes and priorities. Success for one group in social means nothing to another.
And that's the challenge. Unlike the early days of the web where organisations could slice up digital based on their pre-existing structure (marketing makes the banners and campaign sites, customer services has a 'live web chat' on our corporate site, PR sends the press releases out over the web, and we all keep doing what we're doing), social is more ubiquitous and forces these groups to come together - even if they don't want to.
The brands that have internally come together and had conversations about structuring, social metrics that they all align towards and have set the goals that they want to use the space for are the ones who are succeeding. They can then look at their agency roster and divvy up the priorities to their specialists and set sub-targets based on their individual objectives and priorities.
But the brands who haven't continue to be fragmented. They might have a social hit but they have many failures and their social strategy doesn't go much further than 'we should run an ad on Facebook for that'. The result is hundreds of tests but few long term platforms. Dozens of community pages but no engagement strategies.
Before you think about which agency should 'run' social and the millions of different social tools and campaigns that you want to launch, ask the question about how your organization is structured for social success. If it's not, get help. There are groups, brands and (of course) agencies who can help educate your organisation on what structures they have seen currently working vs. the ones that don't.
The help is there. But in order to get it, you've got to ask the right question.
About two years ago, many brands entered what I would call the test period - they took a small percentage of a campaign budget - say 5-10% - and asked their agency, media company or PR group to brainstorm a few 'extension ideas' to 'bring the campaign to life' on a site like Facebook. The agency thought a bit about it, pitched some ideas (usually a FB page and a few ads, an application and definitely a promotion) and for a moment - a few months - progressive brands were heralded as the ones who tried something new. The ones who connected with their target via these 'new' mediums and - we were told by countless social experts at the 200 conferences they attend every year - the results were amazing, fantastic and mind blowing!!!
So more brands entered the space. More brand pages were launched. More promotions that involved voting for something, uploading a photo or sharing with your friends. And for awhile, everyone was pretty happy. (if I had to put a year on it, I'd say this was during the back-half of 2008 in North America).
But then the test period ended. The results came in and beyond the number of fans, amount of photo's uploaded, page views and general metrics, few people really knew how to make sense of social. Was it working? Did it actually help the brand attributes? Did it move sales? There are plenty examples of brands that do this and each platform highlights a ton of them in their sales presentations (which, for some reason, tend to highlight Hollywood movie releases in almost every one, Adidias, Nike, Starbucks or Apple). Yet most clients (and to be honest, agencies) still felt that the whole picture wasn't there.
And most of us still feel this way.
That's where the questions start. Unlike in 2008 when the question was, 'should we be using a bit of our budget to test social?' the question is now 'who should be managing social among our agency partners?'
This - inevitably - leads to a more fundamental question that some (but not all) brands are asking themselves: 'Who should be managing social within my company?'
For brands that have a couple hundred people, are concentrated within one country or region and sell a specific set of products, this answer can come a bit easier. But for the ones with a global presence, ones with thousands of brand managers across multiple regions, languages and locations, it's a lot harder. This effort is made tougher by the fact that some brand managers may have embraced social during the 'test phase' but others are just getting started. Some have already seen success and failure while others are still asking what a 'ReTweet' is.
To often, it seems that brands look outward for the solution. Give social to the PR group because they manage our brand reputation. Or give it to the digital agency because they do our sites. Or give it to the media group because they buy media and have a 'social expert' who seemed smart.
But the real question starts from inside. And, in some organisations, simply asking it can lead to trouble.
The product team, marketing group, customer services, tech and everyone else within the organisation wants (and needs) a say. But they are mostly isolated form one another except for the Christmas parties and all-staff meetings. They've got their own objectives, bonus schemes and priorities. Success for one group in social means nothing to another.
And that's the challenge. Unlike the early days of the web where organisations could slice up digital based on their pre-existing structure (marketing makes the banners and campaign sites, customer services has a 'live web chat' on our corporate site, PR sends the press releases out over the web, and we all keep doing what we're doing), social is more ubiquitous and forces these groups to come together - even if they don't want to.
The brands that have internally come together and had conversations about structuring, social metrics that they all align towards and have set the goals that they want to use the space for are the ones who are succeeding. They can then look at their agency roster and divvy up the priorities to their specialists and set sub-targets based on their individual objectives and priorities.
But the brands who haven't continue to be fragmented. They might have a social hit but they have many failures and their social strategy doesn't go much further than 'we should run an ad on Facebook for that'. The result is hundreds of tests but few long term platforms. Dozens of community pages but no engagement strategies.
Before you think about which agency should 'run' social and the millions of different social tools and campaigns that you want to launch, ask the question about how your organization is structured for social success. If it's not, get help. There are groups, brands and (of course) agencies who can help educate your organisation on what structures they have seen currently working vs. the ones that don't.
The help is there. But in order to get it, you've got to ask the right question.
Thursday
I Have An Idea Portfolio Night 8: Advertising is Calling
I remember doing sponsorship sales for Portfolio Night in Canada 2 when it was only in Toronto & Vancouver - now look at it. Well done Ignacio and team.
Wednesday
Oh the humour: Darth Vader for TomTom
"You should have seen his face when I told him I was his father"....priceless.
Great stuff from TomTom.
Monday
I love this guy...
Funniest American commercial actor? I think so. Playstation...keep up the good (hilarious work). Thanks to Jason via Facebook for the original link.
Friday
Lawtons Ad Experiment
Lawtons is a drug store in Atlantic Canada and they have partnered with Atlantic Business Magazine to offer the Great Ad Experiment. Simply put 6 agencies submitted creative, people are voting and the winning campaign is run.
Interesting approach as Lawtons is getting 2 campaigns out of 1 but unfortunately the campaigns are only being rated based on print ads, not a whole campaign or the strategy that brings all touchpoints together to deliver on the campaign objective. Honestly I thought we were well past the world of thinking a print ad alone can achieve brand success. Regardless that is how it is going down.
The agency I work at (Extreme Group) is ad #1. Click on the embedded viewer below (view fullscreen), then visit this link and vote for us :)
http://www.abmonline.ca/great-experiment/
Interesting approach as Lawtons is getting 2 campaigns out of 1 but unfortunately the campaigns are only being rated based on print ads, not a whole campaign or the strategy that brings all touchpoints together to deliver on the campaign objective. Honestly I thought we were well past the world of thinking a print ad alone can achieve brand success. Regardless that is how it is going down.
The agency I work at (Extreme Group) is ad #1. Click on the embedded viewer below (view fullscreen), then visit this link and vote for us :)
http://www.abmonline.ca/great-experiment/
Thursday
Wednesday
Samsung: 3D LED TV
I thought you needed glasses to see this? Product over-promise in the ads? Or am I wrong?
Discussing the dynamics of regional advertising in the context of national campaigns
Next week in Toronto following The Canadian Newspaper Conference I will be participating in a discussion of sorts with a group of Publishers, Media Directors and Ad Agency types.The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the dynamics of regional advertising in the context of national campaigns.
I'm interested to hear the view points of the group that includes a lot of VP's, Presidents and I expect a group from a much different demographic then I.
I don't think this will skew my viewpoint much on the discussion topic as I won't be thinking of a specific media, more the needs of my clients but it will impact my view as to how Newspapers can play a role in answering these needs. I'll let you know if it gets to that point.
In the meantime how about you share with me your thoughts on the dynamics of regional advertising within a national campaign from your experience (client or agency). If they are good you can count on me sharing them - and stating they came from my blog which will instantly make me hated as us bloggers have stolen so much money from Newspapers :)
I look forward to your comments.
Monday
John Lewis - 'Woman'
I'm really enjoying this spot from Adam & Eve for John Lewis. For those of you not reading from the UK, John Lewis is a traditional British retailer that has done some great work over the past few years.
I write a lot about great storytelling here on AdJoke and I think this is another prime example of how a simple idea, well executed can create work that you want to share with others. I didn't have any perception of John Lewis (other than passing them on the high street) but I can't help but know that the next time I walk by one, I'll consider stopping in.
Thanks to adliterate for the link.
Wednesday
G-Speak - Minority Report is now here...
I've been doing a bit of work lately with touch and Surface systems and really hope that we can start to see this Minority-report-style tech hit the market in an accessible way. When the first systems hit (think mall event instillations or conference centers), it's going to be very tough to ignore.
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
Tuesday
One. Dramatic. 5 Year-old.
Cinestud 2010 Trailer from Chris Christodoulou on Vimeo.
Nice spot. Although I can see some groups and associations getting pretty upset with this in the coming weeks. Found via copyranter.
Monday
Creative Inspiration (5 Links)
It's been awhile since I've posted. I've really missed it but have been a bit slammed on the work front. But I do have good news. I've been checking out all the latest awards sites and have 5 links that you've got to check out (these are all from the Webby's but there are a ton of good repositories out there).
So here are my favorite five (in no particular order):
So here are my favorite five (in no particular order):
- Banners that actually are useful (vs. ones that you never see / wish were never there) - from VISA
- Lonely Planet and Surface come together to create one helluva book experience
- The Economist shows people where great ideas come from (from great people)
- Nike Japan uses some cool technology to launch their flagship store
- NFB Canada tells water stories in a way you've never seen (shout out to a former creative colleague)
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