Alexander Keith's Birthday

For our International readers information Alexander Keith's is one of the most beloved and revered beers in Canada. Every year Keith's launches an integrated campaign to honour the man who brought us the delicious Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale 214 years ago.

To be full transparent I am on the team that worked on this campaign but an overview of campaign includes:

1. Mobile - SMS contest executed on-premise (in bars that serve Keith's) for a chance to win a trip to Halifax (Alexander's hometown) for the biggest birthday party in Canada.
2. Social Media - A Facebook based contest where you can create and/or sign a card for your chance to win a $5000 Keith's Birthday party or a trip to Halifax for his Birthday. With almost 50,000 fans on the Facebook page, over 1500 cards created and thousands of signatures, Alexander may be old but he loves Facebook.
   
3. TV - Driving awareness of the Birthday and driving to contest.
4. External online - Some pretty sweet creative including rich media video banners
5. On-premise - Pubs across Canada are taken over by Keith's creative.
6. Retail - pin-in-pack contest where one pin is provided with each purchased case on Keith's. Consumers are driven to keiths.ca to enter into another contest to win a trip to Halifax for the party.
7. The Birthday site
8. And we will be sharing even more in the coming weeks.

Buy a case, hit a pub and celebrate Alexander Keith's birthday on Oct.4th.

User generated billboards delivering happiness

Original? No. Unique? Not really? Good? Yes.

In the words of Marcel Proust, "The real voyage of discovery exists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes".

J -hova is back with the blueprint for music ads

Insights and brands. Why do they matter?

I think that this TV spot created by Droga 5 answers the question. Most agencies would have approached this opportunity with a very different lens and most clients would have expected a very different result.



What is different? Insights, true insights that allows the creative to resonate with the consumer and an ad that delivers on a brand. Compare this to the average CD release spot that is 20 seconds of the first singles video followed by a shot of the CD, the name of the single, some logos that mean nothing to the consumer and a voice over that repeats everything we already know.

This spot is almost like an inside joke where only enthusiasts and loyalists would understand that the spot is a homage to the legend of Jay-Z. It also subtlety nods to his retirement and showcases that they man that made this album is the same legend that created multiple iconic and successful ads.

But more importantly to this strategy, music today can be downloaded for free by everyone, so one of the biggest challenges of a ad for a new album is getting people to buy it. How can you do that? Well, look to showcase the legend, share the album covers of all the CD's that the enthusiasts own. In short, make the new album a required piece of the collection.

Nice work Droga 5. Even more congratulations to the clients that understood.

This is about to go viral...

You know you've got a great product when a team of drug cops gets distracted from their raid for 9 hours to use it...from Mashable:

PayPal Opens Up

On November 3rd, PayPal is going to open up to developers world wide. I sense that this could mean big things for PayPal (a client of ours) and I'm very excited to see how developers around the globe incorporate one of the most reliable payment systems on the web.

To help announce this change to the world, PayPal has created a launch spot and microsite:



Sadly, the site wouldn't load for me. Hopefully they'll fix that soon. Because I'm a fan of the spot. Good mix of emotion and humour.

Imagine Leadership

I've been searching around for some great presentations lately that contain great stats. These searches have been focused on the Global Ad industry in relation to digital and consumption habits but I stumbled on one tonight that focuses on Leadership.

Being a leader means vastly different things to different people. To some, it's about business success and getting to the top of the corporate ladder. To others, it's about helping people and pushing to make the world a better place. However you define it, it's worth watching this video:



Pretty inspiring stuff. Now what are you going to do?