"A brand exists in your mind. It's a collection of associations or feelings people have about a particular product, service, or an organization. Branding is the tangible process of creating the signals that generate these associations."-- Allen Adamson, "BrandSimple"
Thursday
Etrade - Baby gets Clown
The other day a girl I work with had a birthday. Her boyfriend sent her a singing clown.
He totally underestimated the creepiness.
This campaign is awesome. Babies, comedy and great casting on the v/o.
DC Shoes Gets it
DC shoes founder and current Chief Brand Officer is also a rally-car driver.
He is the guy behind the wheel. This doesn't feel forced, DC shoes isn't trying to be cool; it is cool so it can pull this sort of thing off. Skechers please don't try this.
Old Bell Solo - Great Idea
Transit Shelter Ads were posted in different Canadian cities. By pushing the walkie-talkie button you were instantly connected to another shelter in a random Canadian city.A great way to demo a product benefit while entertaining. I hope they recorded teh conversations.
From adgoodness
Sunday
Do You Know Your Target?
Do you really know your target? What they think, what they want and what they do?
A large number of people in our industry - account, creative even production - have no idea. It's easy to get sidetracked; we've got timelines to meet, clients to answer too, research, studio, production, creatives, more briefs to write, copy decks...the works.
But that's no excuse. Are you working on a product that targets children 8-16? Well then you must know who this is. No?
It's Disney superstar - Hanna Montana. Currently one of the hottest tickets in the world to see...and yes, she even dances. If you watched the Oscars on Sunday, you might recognize her as she was one of the presenters.
You don't have to love what your target does (even though Aladin was amazing) but you should know what they do. It might take a few days of reading and watching shows you wouldn't on your spare time, but it will be worth it.
Saturday
The "Fun" of Client Approvals
How many approvals does your creative have to go through?
My guess is that the norm would be at least 4:
From Bannerblog
My guess is that the norm would be at least 4:
- Creative Director
- Brand Director
- Direct Client Report
- Clients Boss
From Bannerblog
Monday
How Agencies Sell Themselves
Found this great post from the W+K London blog tonight. It's all about the different slogans that agencies use to help position themselves to clients.
What do you think? Rhetoric or meaningful?
What do you think? Rhetoric or meaningful?
JWT
Slogan: 'Time is the new currency'
They say: "The power of brands can be measured in their ability to attract people's time. Time is what's most valuable to people all around the world, and the way they spend it is predictive of the way they spend their money. Our role is to ensure that more people spend more time with our clients' brands, in the knowledge that their money will follow."
DDB
Slogan: 'Co-creation'
They say: "Co-creativity is a process that puts consumers at the heart of the solution. It's agnostic about where the best idea comes from – online, branded content, advertising, an event – in fact, it is increasingly likely that it is through combining all of these and more that the most creative and influential ideas will be gained."
M&CSAATCHI
Slogan: 'Brutal simplicity of thought'
They say: "The slogan comes from the idea that it's easier to complicate than simplify. Simple messages enter the brain quicker and stay there longer, so brutal simplicity of thought is therefore a painful necessity."
Saatchi &Saatchi
Slogan: 'Nothing is impossible'
They say: "From the outset the Saatchi brothers broke the rules, challenged industry norms and created work that was groundbreaking in every respect. Brands are faced with the danger of becoming commodities that lack differentiation, but we believe that bold and infectious creativity can drive loyalty beyond reason for brands."
BBH
Slogan: 'When the world zigs, zag'
They say: "Our first ad was a poster for Levi's black denim: a flock of white sheep heading one way, with one black sheep going the other way. The message captures our approach to life."
TBWA\London
Slogan: 'The disruption agency'
They say: "All brands have ambitions to outpace the competition, but too many go through life copying their competitors. We aim to uncover the clichés, assumptions and conventional wisdom that hold a category back, then look for opportunities for brands to grow by disrupting those conventions."
Ogilvy Group UK
Slogan: 'To be most valued by those who most value brands'
They say: "The slogan was coined in 1993, but its roots go deeper, to David Ogilvy's belief in the power of brands, as long as they stay relevant and continually refresh their appeal. Our view is that branding is a genuinely useful concept that helps good companies defeat bad ones, so the clients we most want are those who share this belief. We don't apologise for this idealism, since the most successful brands tend to have longstanding ideals at their core, which can be dramatised in myriad ways over time."
Wieden + Kennedy
Slogan: 'Creating strong, provocative relationships between good companies and their customers'
They say: "We believe that great brands lead from the front. They provoke, inspire and change the cultural landscape. The most successful brands have fans, not customers, and the relationship between a brand and its fans is based on dialogue, not monologue."
Euro RSCG London
Slogan: 'Contagious ideas'
They say: "We live in a world where consumers can more judiciously edit what they consume, [and can] mould and reconfigure ideas relatively easily and be far more expressive to their friends, family and colleagues about what they like and don't like. Contagious ideas live beyond the space in which they first appeared by creating word of mouth, word of keyboard or media interest."
Fallon
Slogan: none
They say: "We choose not to have a fixed positioning point. In an increasingly open media and creative environment, where more is possible every day, we feel that it doesn't make sense to pre-pack what we do. What we do, and how we do it, is fundamentally bespoke and about building the confidence to do something different."
Thursday
The New Instant Win
Download the software. Find a Pizza Hut promo poster. Take a picture and you are instantly taken to the Promo site and told what you have won. Everything from coupons to prizes.
This promo is simple, rewarding and instant - I like it. What could make it better? Have the software available for a bluetooth download from transit shelter ads or kisoks in Pizza Huts.
Consumption on the move
I have spent the last 30 minutes studying this graph. I find it amazing. The most intersting items I have pulled from it are that it is entertainment items that have the fastest adoption rates and not quality of life products. It looks to me like the products that have the steepes curves are VCR, colour TV and radios.I have also noticed that there appears to be some loose correlation between related products, which would be expected. Computer and internet curves both seem to increase after a 20% adoption, for these products it took 20% of households to convince the other 40% that these products are worth your dollar.
Found on Adverlab via NY times
Monday
Rogers Wireless - Now on Facebook
Rogers Wireless, a Canadian Telcommunications company, has recently launched a new corporate page on Facebook called MyMusic.MyMusic is a page that consolidates a number of music partnerships that Rogers has - from top Universal artists to MTV Canada, as well as their own music properties like the Rogers MusicStore and Redpipe.
It also houses an application, called MyArtist, that allows you to post questions for featured artists. The top five users with the most questions after a few weeks have them asked to Hedley (the current band) in an exclusive interview that is then posted back to the page.
In the interests of full disclosure, I have helped develop this page over the last few months and am excited that Rogers is now involved in the Social networking world.
When developing the page, we did an audit of how other brands are using Facebook (see Verizon or TD for examples) and found that the majority of them are simply creating wallpaper pages that drive back to their home sites.
One of the main objectives of MyMusic was to ensure that the user experience was not fragmented and kept within the Facebook environment.
Although we only have a few hundred fans, the hope is that we will continue to grow the page over time (with additional artists and apps on their way) and become a solid part of the social network scene.
Feel free to add your comments - good or bad - and please visit here if you want to check it out.
Sunday
100 for 18?
In a recent NY times article, columnist Ron Nixon goes into an in-depth overview of how the RED campaign has performed. Launched a few years ago by some mega-brands - GAP, Motorola and now Dell - the campaign was designed to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic and the funds raised help go to HIV foundations in Rwanda, Ghana and Switzerland.Even though the cause is an excellent one, many groups are criticizing the campaign because (after an Advertising Age article) of the amount of money spent on advertising vs. the amount donated - approximately $100 million vs. $18 million.
Although their actions are noble, the brands associated true objective was most likely to build brand preference by leveraging a social cause.
It has certainly worked. The campaigns for Red from Motorola, Dell and Gap have been quite powerful but they are also expensive to produce. Would it have been better to have simply lobbied these companies to give a one-time donation directly to the fund rather than advertise as well?
For Red, yes. For the brands, hell no.
$18 million in the context of a donation is a massive number and the Red campaign as certainly done a lot of good for the AIDS cause. But make no mistake, it's sold a lot of non-Red products for the brands involved as well.
10,156,199,000
That's the number of videos that were viewed online in 2007 according to Comscore.
Google sites (YouTube), represented the largest stake of the views with over 32% of the total. With numbers like that, the pre-roll won't be far away!
From Mashable -
Friday
Sears - Manage my home
Sears has launched a new site called Manage My home. Seems like a good idea...will it work?It allows you to regsiter your products purchased from Sears and it helps you track warranties, maintenance, and news about them - including recalls. They have also added video content as well as household maintenance and general tips to enrich the site and potentially make it a destination for their customers and prospects.
I wonder what the adoption rate will be? Maybe it would help if they made all of their warranties virtual, so you didn't get a piece a paper, only a warranty posted to Manage My home. Although this may discourage purchase.
I guess we can just wait and see....
Wednesday
The Future of Web Navigation
We've written about this great TED video before, however it's worth posting again when thinking about the future of navigation on the web.
Right now we're used to traditional ways of navigation on the web - scrolling down a page and clicking on links we're interested in. But in a recent issue of Newsweek, a detailed article talks about how humans best process information - when it is presented to them all at once - the big picture.
Think about it. When you're knee deep in a tough project, what's one of the first things you do? Get into a room, put up all your information, write things on the wall and gather everything you know. It's amazing what solutions can come from looking at a problem when everything about it is surrounding you.
The same idea comes into play with Seadragon navigation from Microsoft. Instead of having multiple pages of content (or thousands for sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, etc), place all the content on one page and allow the user to literally zoom in on what interests them. That way, they can have a perspective of what's around just in case something peaks their interest.
It's a revolutionary way to search and hopefully one that you'll see Microsoft and Google use more of.
Right now we're used to traditional ways of navigation on the web - scrolling down a page and clicking on links we're interested in. But in a recent issue of Newsweek, a detailed article talks about how humans best process information - when it is presented to them all at once - the big picture.
Think about it. When you're knee deep in a tough project, what's one of the first things you do? Get into a room, put up all your information, write things on the wall and gather everything you know. It's amazing what solutions can come from looking at a problem when everything about it is surrounding you.
The same idea comes into play with Seadragon navigation from Microsoft. Instead of having multiple pages of content (or thousands for sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, etc), place all the content on one page and allow the user to literally zoom in on what interests them. That way, they can have a perspective of what's around just in case something peaks their interest.
It's a revolutionary way to search and hopefully one that you'll see Microsoft and Google use more of.
Be More Creative - Example 1
This is, by far, the greatest Ebay auction item I have ever come across. As someone who loves to torment their best friends by leaving "hate" messages and engaging in ridiculous pranks, this is amazing. Last I checked the bid is $415US.See full description below:
You are bidding on a rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.
Here is the arrangement:
I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has one church with no bell because angry Germans stole it. Aside from vodka, there is not a lot for me to do.
During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing.
These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.
The postcards will not be coherently signed, leaving your mark confused, guessing wildly, crying out in anguish.
“How do I know this person? And how does he know I had a ferret named Goliath?”
Your beloved friend or relative will try in vain to figure out who it is. Best of all, it can’t possibly be you because you’ll have the perfect alibi: you’re not in Poland. You’re home, wherever that is, doing whatever it is you do when not driving your friends loopy with international prankery.
Your target will rack their brains in the shower. At dinner. During long drives. At work. On the golf course.
“Who did I tell about the time I got fired by a note on my chair?” they’ll ponder, “And where the hell is Szczeczinek?”
But wait, there’s more.
To add to the sheer confusion and genuine discomfort, one missive will be on an original promotional postcard announcing the 1995 television premiere of Central Park West on CBS.
Another will be a postcard celebrating Atlanta’s disastrous hosting of the 1996 summer Olympic games.
Your mark will be at a complete loss, desperate for answers, debating contacting people he or she hasn’t talked to in years.
“I know this will sound weird, but by any chance were you in Eastern Europe ranting about cantaloupe… twelve years ago… right before some show with Mariel Hemingway debuted?”
When you decide to end the torment is completely up to you. If you can, I recommend owning up on 1 April 2008 - giving you nearly half a year of joy and a George Clooney-esque level of prankage. If you can’t hold it in that long, I totally understand.Ebay item found here and post found on the New Shelton.
My 2nd Puberty
Got forwarded the next rendition of the Philip's "Shave Everywhere" campaign and it's a site called "Second Puberty."
It's a nice follow up to the popular viral campaign and it takes us through a series of steps to identify the signs of your second puberty - nose and ear hair, hairy eyebrows - basically not being able to groom yourself.
What I like about the site isn't just the initial video (which is pretty funny) but the way that the brand houses all of their grooming products under one, core campaign idea.
Brands with a number of different products will sometimes attempt to overly segment based on the individual item. Philips has decided to place all it's key grooming products under one brand idea and the site works much better for it.
Check out the 5 Stages of Puberty below for more info:
Thanks to Jason for the link!
It's a nice follow up to the popular viral campaign and it takes us through a series of steps to identify the signs of your second puberty - nose and ear hair, hairy eyebrows - basically not being able to groom yourself.
What I like about the site isn't just the initial video (which is pretty funny) but the way that the brand houses all of their grooming products under one, core campaign idea.
Brands with a number of different products will sometimes attempt to overly segment based on the individual item. Philips has decided to place all it's key grooming products under one brand idea and the site works much better for it.
Check out the 5 Stages of Puberty below for more info:
Thanks to Jason for the link!
Tuesday
Nash's life is amazing - New NBA spot
I enjoy this spot, maybe because he is my favourite basketball player, maybe because I think he is one of the most genuine celebrities/stars in the world....I could go on. Nash is amazing.
The NBA should start a page where people can upload their own 60-second life story along with a tool that takes your copy and automatically converts it to her voice. Another thought would be to have 12 - 16 year old children create their own in a "Where I see my life going" format and reward the best videos with tickets, gear or camps. It could be a great play for inner city youth - the NBA would just have to get them the tools necessary.
Would you be proud of your 60 second spot?
The NBA should start a page where people can upload their own 60-second life story along with a tool that takes your copy and automatically converts it to her voice. Another thought would be to have 12 - 16 year old children create their own in a "Where I see my life going" format and reward the best videos with tickets, gear or camps. It could be a great play for inner city youth - the NBA would just have to get them the tools necessary.
Would you be proud of your 60 second spot?
Monday
The Power of Dreams
New spot for Honda from W+K in London.
Honda has done some amazing spots over the last couple of years and have stayed true to their Power of Dreams campaign. A couple of my favorites includes the evolution of an English race car driver, the human sound spot and - of course - the rip-off but classic launch spot of the campaign featuring the core components of a Honda moving in perfect sequence (only took about 600 takes...).
What I like about this new spot is not only that it's on strategy, but also because it takes a complex problem (the creation of a hybrid car) and makes it simple - just another issue to solve in the playground of life.
Honda takes risks with their brand spots but they are calculated. By choosing a strategy and sticking too it - being innovative in everything that they do - their brand is strong and quite healthy.
Nice work, W+K.
Honda has done some amazing spots over the last couple of years and have stayed true to their Power of Dreams campaign. A couple of my favorites includes the evolution of an English race car driver, the human sound spot and - of course - the rip-off but classic launch spot of the campaign featuring the core components of a Honda moving in perfect sequence (only took about 600 takes...).
What I like about this new spot is not only that it's on strategy, but also because it takes a complex problem (the creation of a hybrid car) and makes it simple - just another issue to solve in the playground of life.
Honda takes risks with their brand spots but they are calculated. By choosing a strategy and sticking too it - being innovative in everything that they do - their brand is strong and quite healthy.
Nice work, W+K.
Make It Personal - Team in Training
A good friend of ours recently alerted us to a great organization called Team in Training.
Team in Training helps people train for marathons, triathlons, walks, century (100 mile) bike rides and other endurance events. Once you are a part of the organization, they help you train for your event as long as you set a specific fund raising goal (say $15K).
The funds are all donated to Leukemia & Lymphoma Cancer society and since the foundations inception in 1988, Team in Training has helped to raise over $850 million towards the cause.
What I really like about the site is how easy it is for members to create their own page and track their fund raising goals. Our friend, Graham, has his own page here and you can see how well it allows you to donate, see who else is donated and how much is left to reach his goal.
It also allows you to post you own videos (like the one below) and update content whenever you want to let your base know how the training is going.
It's a great group and it's nice to see fund raising organizations take a different spin on it. By enabling people to pursue their own goals (running a marathon) and encouraging them to raise money, the cause becomes much more personal for their support network.
I'm much more likely to support Graham (a friend) than a random mail out or call from the Cancer society.
Good, simple ideas to get the word out (in a cheap way) and enable your support network to spread the message for you.
Team in Training helps people train for marathons, triathlons, walks, century (100 mile) bike rides and other endurance events. Once you are a part of the organization, they help you train for your event as long as you set a specific fund raising goal (say $15K).
The funds are all donated to Leukemia & Lymphoma Cancer society and since the foundations inception in 1988, Team in Training has helped to raise over $850 million towards the cause.
What I really like about the site is how easy it is for members to create their own page and track their fund raising goals. Our friend, Graham, has his own page here and you can see how well it allows you to donate, see who else is donated and how much is left to reach his goal.
It also allows you to post you own videos (like the one below) and update content whenever you want to let your base know how the training is going.
It's a great group and it's nice to see fund raising organizations take a different spin on it. By enabling people to pursue their own goals (running a marathon) and encouraging them to raise money, the cause becomes much more personal for their support network.
I'm much more likely to support Graham (a friend) than a random mail out or call from the Cancer society.
Good, simple ideas to get the word out (in a cheap way) and enable your support network to spread the message for you.
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