Wal-Mart Larger than Manhattan

From BoingBoing - unreal how big the World's largest retailer is.

A Few Creative Men

This is amazing. Thank you to whomever created this. I am entertained.



- found on rm116

Nike + Supersonic = Amazing Promotion

This could be one of the coolest event promo's I have ever seen. Nike is creating an event in London called Supersonic for 3000 fast people.

There are only two ways to get in; run fast or know someone who can. Tickets can be "earned" competing at four weekly 100m speed trials across London throughout October. Each trial will feature live DJs, athletes, celebrities and Nike gear. Then the fastest 1,000 runners from the trials will get the opportunity to join the Nike+ Supersonic night with two guest passes.

The final event is starts with a 1K race at a secret location where ALL 1000 (500 men, 500 women) will be equipped with a iPod nano, Limited edition Nike running shoes with the Nike Plus sport kit. Who knows what the winner gets. Apparently a top DJ act will be performing during the run for all spectators.

One thing that instantly stood out when I visited www.nikesupersonic.com is that you land on a myspace page created for the event. Check out the site and watch the video it is well worth the time.

The campaing has a great viral aspect by including the 'know fast' element as you can forward an invite to your fastest friends hoping they qualify and bring your lucky ass.

Once again Nike has done something incredible.

Sony Bravia - Pyramid

Sony has released a 4th commercial - Pyramid. According to Adverblog it is rumoured to be a local execution for Egypt created by Y&R. I am not a big fan of the music selection, but the decorated pyramid at the end is awesome to see. Enjoy.

Super Crunching the Ontario Election

In the Ontario Provincial Election tonight (in Canada), TV network Global announced the minute the poles closed that the Liberal Party had won a majority government with at least 54 seats in the assembly.

No ballots had been counted, no ridings had reported.

Immediately after this prediction, Global went on to interview high ranking members of the Liberal party to congratulate them on the win and the majority.

How did they do it? Global conducted an exit poll across Ontario with approximately 6500 respondents. They asked respondents to disclose which party they had voted for and some of the factors as to why. The analysts were confident that their poll was accurate 19 times out of 20, with an error margin of 1.2%.

It was strange to say at the least, but it highlights a trend that is going to become more common - using statistical regression models (tracking the history of an event) to help predict the future.


This concept is wonderfully described Ian Ayres' new novel "Super Crunchers." It's scary to think that we can predict the future based on previous trends / polls.

For advertisers, having terabytes of consumer data to crunch provides us the ability to predict future actions - developing highly effective executions. Think it's far fetched?

Think about all of the information that you currently give to companies. Credit Companies, Teleco's, Amazon and Facebook - all storing your purchase history, likes and dislikes, goals and dreams. This information can be used for advertisers to effectively target the exact group they want.

If anything, it's interesting to see Super Crunching hit the political mainstream.

Stabilo Print.

I haven't yet decided if I like this campaign or not. I like the insight because I hate highlighters that run, are to thick, to skinny, etc. I don't think I like the campaign.

Do I like the execution? Ok, it is a little bit funny; yes it has an endless supply of possibilities...but does that mean it has legs? No. After viewing one or two of these I think the average consumer will choose to ignore them and move along. It reminds me of the word magents that you can use to make poems, one-liners, and jokes on your friends fridge. Yes the first couple times you are there you make a Juvenille Haiku about sex or a dirty rhyming couplet about...umm sex. After that you move on. Let's see how long this campaign remains in market.

And why not get the consumer involved? They should post pages form text books on a website and drive consumers to the site to highlight what they think is the funniest lines using their mouse. Then they can forward to their friend. Another thought could be to have students upload a picture of their highlighted text book making a funny statement as per the ads and then allowign them to forward it to friends for them to vote on the best. The page with the most votes wins free books and highlighters....I don't know just a thought.

And...who selected the font for the line?

Renault Ballet Crash Test

This would have been one hell of a shoot to be on. I especially appreciate the last scene. At first I was thinking "Here we go again, another commercial with cars driving in a desert as if they are performing a choreographed dance". Then it turned into a beautiful demolition derby. Nice twist Renault.

PostSecret

For all the complex websites out there, it always seems like the simplest ideas are the ones that breakthrough. Smart, easy ideas that allow users to engage with a site in an easy way.

PostSecret is a blog with a simple purpose - to allow people to anonymously post homemade postcards with a secret on them. By simply scrolling through the blog, you can see hundreds of examples.



Since it's inception, the blog has over 100 million hits and the author Frank Warren, has published four books using the images from his blog.

What does it take to do something like this? A smart, simple idea and a forum to start the conversation.

The (Useless?) Focus Group

A few weeks ago, we posted a quote from Henry Ford that went something like this:

"If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse."

Why do we use focus groups? To refine our creative or to ensure that if things go wrong we can respond, "...Well it did well in testing..." At best, these groups help provide a reality check for the brand and agency.

At worst, they influence the creative in horrible ways - diluting the execution making it un-inspiring, boring and terribly forgettable.

Arnold created this video for an opening to one of their presentations.



For those of us in the industry, it leaves you thinking - if they had listened...if Apple had been influenced or the account team scared, would 1984 have been created as it was? Would we still think of it as not only the most expensive ad ever created (at the time), but also one of the most iconic and memorable?

Focus groups can be helpful and smart respondents can point something out that an overly focused agency can forget. But they can't tell you exactly what they want.

If they could, we wouldn't have jobs.

Google is freakin huge.

When will the google machine slow down...

Google currently has a closing price of $609.62 per share. Based on this number Google has a market cap of $190.28 billion. The traditional media's Big 3 - Time Warner ($71.23 billion), Walt Disney Co. ($68.50 billion) and News Corp. ($49.00 billion) - equaled a combined $188.73 billion.

Media Daily News noticed that ..."Looked at another way, Google's market value is now 3.6 times greater than all of Madison Avenue's publicly traded ad agency holding companies - WPP ($17.72 billion), Omnicom ($16.43 billion), Publicis ($8.57 billion), Interpublic ($4.89 billion), Aegis ($2.96 billion), Havas ($2.484 billion), and MDC Partners ($274 million) - combined."

Cartoon Beer Ads - circa 1978

I guess back in the 70's ad standards related to alcohol were a little less stringent.

Quit Smoking or this will happen to your mouth.

Here is a anti-smoking ad from Australia. Extremely powerful visual that definitely sticks; that being said the first time I saw the ad I didn't register a thing that she said because I was in such shock from the picture.


Found on The Bottom Rung