Miller High Life - Common Sense Platform

Ladies & Gentleman - The High Life Guy has entered the Presidential race.

My favourite beer campaign of recent memory is still kicking ass.

See other post... here

The world of Fonts exposed

My favourite lines, "NOBODY USES MICROSOFT WORKS" and "airplane, mailbox, candle, candle"....

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Bogusky's six rules for being a media maverick

An interesting little read I found in todays enewsletter, imedia connection.

1. Sell the solution, not the ads

iMedia: Is it hard to sell clients on some of your wackier ideas?

Bogusky: Our approach to advertising is not necessarily to come at it through advertising. We use creativity as a leverage-able asset in solving business problems. We don't present things in such a way that they're ever misaligned to the business issues clients have. We don't wind up in a selling "situation," we wind up in a conversation where we usually talk about the work and the different aspects of each, where one might be stronger or weaker. It's everyone together looking for a solution, and not so much, "Hey, what's the most creative thing or the most outrageous thing?"

2. School the creativity

iMedia: How do you manage your staff to foster creativity while encouraging strategic thinking?

Bogusky: There's a little bit of work to be done to adjust people. I think as an industry, we sometimes get it a little wrong. We think that our creative goals are at odds with commercial goals. Until you get through that, you don't ever become a great creative person.

We're not in the business of making cute little films and throwing logos on the end of them. We're in the business of being really compelling.

One thing we do as we begin a creative project, instead of working on specific media, we write press releases about our ideas. For example, a press release for the Whopper Freakout campaign would say, "Burger King announced today they would be removing the Whopper from their restaurants." It would go on to talk about consumer outrage. It's a good way to determine whether you have a rich idea or not. If an idea is good enough for someone to write about, it's probably good enough for someone to talk about.

3. Follow your nose instead of the money

iMedia: Explain your product innovation strategy and how it fits in with the traditional agency business. You've reinvented the kitchen sponge, for starters.

Bogusky: Reinventing the sponge is really fun, and it's such a small creative box. "Design more sponges." What could be more impossible?

Our approach to industrial design is purely around brand: creating products that best illustrate the values of the brand and that potentially have marketing baked into the actual design. For example, the Twist sponges we designed are actually branded with little tags. They're pretty enough to be left out, so if you're in somebody's kitchen, you see the sponge and the Twist brand.

4. Always tell the truth

iMedia: Do you have a personal mantra or golden rule of advertising?

Bogusky: No, I don't think it's a personal mantra, because you're discovering the brand and discovering what needs to be changed about pop culture, so the brand and the offering you're working on becomes an obvious choice for the culture. That's our way of going about things. We don't want to find some trend and then do advertising that basically lies about the product to attach it to the trend in the hope that it will sell. If it's Burger King, and we want to help guys who are being inundated with the notion of metrosexuality, understand that it's OK to have a killer burger -- that's a great path. And that's going to help our client become an offer that's culturally relevant. I don't want to do CP+B work; I want to do the right work for the client.

5. Look ahead but not too far

iMedia: What excites you about the future?

Bogusky: What's always kept me in it is that it's ever-changing. I get asked a lot to predict where things are going in media; for some reason, people think we have an idea. There are so many pieces moving at the same time. I can look at the sponge business and make some assumptions, but the media business is so complex that it's all chaos theory. We try to think about what's going to be possible 15 minutes from now. That's worked pretty well for us.

6. Do what you like, not what you want

iMedia: If you were a young person excited about the business, how would you prepare yourself to do great work?

Bogusky: At first, you have to just get started and learn more about what it is that you really like about the business. Sometimes you talk to young people and they think they want to be an art director, but you realize they're more of a writer. You talk to an art director and you see that the only time their eyes begin to sparkle is when they talk about the toys they make. And you realize: that's a toymaker. And yet, there's probably a lot of pressure at school and at home to do something because you're good at it. Yeah, you're good at that, but your eyes light up when you talk about this.

You have to discover that for yourself, and you can discover it at any place. Be open-minded and just slide toward those things that give you joy.

If you haven't guessed this article is from imedia.

Are You A Serial Killer?

The popular HBO show Dexter has done some excellent marking in the last few years and they've launched another site in the UK that allows people to customize their own videos and send them to their friends. Which of your friends are going to be on the Dexter copycat's hitlist?

If you want to see a great example of how to quickly customize videos and send them out, then go to this site now. It's simple to use, the story is great and the production excellent.

Although no metrics have been made public, I'd be that this has been passed around more than a few thousand times...

Stuff White People like #106 - Packed with Truths

Copied verbatim from Stuff White People Like

Social Networking sites have been embraced by white people since their inception. Because these sites use profile pages, white people can more efficiently judge friends and future friends on their taste in film, books, music, and inspirational quotes. Advanced level white people, fearful of being judged on their tastes from last week, will often only list one or two ironic things as their favorites. For example under music they would simply list “P.M. Dawn” or under films they would choose only Armageddon. In both cases these ironic answers serve as protective shields from the harsh gaze of other white people.

However, it is important to remember that the “where” is often as important as the “who” when it comes to social networking. As noted in earlier posts, white people are obsessed with being in the right neighborhood and the Internet is no exception.

In the early days, white people joined a social networking service called Friendster where they could connect with old friends and make new ones. Eventually, white people started to notice more and more of their friends on MySpace, so they closed their Friendster accounts and migrated to the new service. It was like living in a neighborhood that was pretty good but kind of far away, so you might have to miss out on a few parties. Needless to say, this was unacceptable.

For a brief period of time, MySpace was the site where everyone kept their profile and managed their friendships. But soon, the service began to attract fake profiles, the wrong kind of white people, and struggling musicians. In real world terms, these three developments would be equivalent to a check cashing store, a TGIFridays, and a housing project. All which strike fear in the hearts of white people.

White people were nervous but had nowhere else to go. Then Facebook came along and offered advanced privacy settings, closed networks, and a clean interface. In respective real world terms, these features are analogous to an apartment or house with a security system/doorman, an alumni dinner, and a homeowners association that protects the aesthetics of the neighborhood. In spite of these advances, some white people still clung to their old MySpace accounts. That was until they learned that Facebook started, like so many things beloved by white people, at Harvard.

Within a matter of months, MySpace had gone from a virtual utopia to Digital Detroit, where only minorities and indie bands remain.

If you plan on befriending white people, it is essential that you join them in the digital suburbs and open a Facebook account immediately. It’s also a good idea to make up a story about how someone from high school sent you a friend request and after accepting you discovered that they were fat and unsuccessful. White people love these stories.

In an unrelated note you can join

Stuff White People Like Facebook Group

Stuff White People Like Facebook Application

Another Great Execution from BeJay's

No explanation necessary. Found on copyranter.

AgencyU

Another great post from Advergirl about the importance of training within the agency environment. I find that success early on in the industry really depends on who your core team is, how the train you on specific aspects of the job (ie. managing creatives, writing a brief and saying no to a client) and how clear they are with you on what things you need to learn moving forward. 

For now, check out these 5 tips.

Top 10 Tech Ad Campaigns

Gearlog has recently put together a Top 10 list of their favorite tech campaigns of all time. The list was created due to the fact that Microsoft is about to launch their $300 million Vista campaign to battle the Apple vs. PC stuff (created by CP+B). As we all wait for the campaign to launch so that we can tear it down, take a moment to check out this list. My favorites below.

Maxell "Blown Away Guy" - this TV spot might have become one of the most iconic brand print images of all time.

Microsoft - Window's 95 - I hadn't seen this spot before, but I'm a big fan. Gearlog reports that The Stones song cost the software giant somewhere between $8-14 million. That's a lot of cash to get the baby boomers excited about the web.

An Ad-Free World

About a year ago, there was a big story about a new policy that Brazil had implemented banning all OOH advertising. No billboards were allowed in the city and major companies had to stop selling advertising on them. The issue started because thousands of billboards had sprung up without approval and instead of selectively removing those that were unauthorized, the government set out a landmark policy eliminating them all.

A recent interview with New York Times columnist, Rob Walker, posed this question to the advertising author:
"Q: Will we as Americans, the targets of an unstoppable torrent of unrestrained advertising, ever rise to the level of the British and impose more regulation upon it?"

Walker responded:

"Polls consistently tell us that Americans can't stand advertising, don't trust it, are annoyed by its incursion into and murkier venues -- and yet there appears to be no particular popular interest in regulation. I don't know why. The FCC is looking at ad placement, but it's unlikely that tough regulation will ever occur in the U.S. without serious public demands for it.

There's much talk about tech-enabled consumer power these days, but it takes the form of "complain about a product on a blog and get a free replacement," rather than more broad-based and wide-ranging reforms that might benefit everyone. Maybe that will change.

Consumers truly do have a lot of power -- movements of the past demonstrate that repeatedly -- so maybe we're just learning how to use the technology more effectively."

Why don't we ban advertising? People hate it, don't trust it and find it annoying (especially before a movie), so why not get rid of it altogether?

First we have to acknowledge the economic factors. Advertising is big business. For agencies, production houses, photographers, actors, media companies and - of course - marketers, the amount of money going through the system is massive. It's not going to stop due to a channel closing down or a new government policy - it will just find new ways to get the message out (see coffee cup ads here).

Second, we have to understand the primary messaging that content exists - to sell advertising. Major networks, newspapers, magazines and anyone making content has a goal to sell their target to an interested brand. It's just the way things work. Always have, always...

...will?

Walker mentions how new technologies are helping consumers complain about brands but maybe technology will alter the traditional content-advertising relationship. Sites like Digg allow users to drive news content, rather than dictate it. What if Digg didn't sell banner ads on the site and didn't optimize their revenue model against more targeted placements? Would it be more credible?

Maybe. But it would probably make it less well-known as well.

The temptation for a site to sell it's space is extreme and one that I don't know if I could turn down. However, there is something to be said for a place that doesn't have huge billboards, ads on everything and millions of messages clamoring for your attention. It's so different that you actually have time to think about stuff other than your next purchase.

I understand the irony of this post. An ad guy writing about closing the ad industry. That's not what this is about - it's about stronger messages brought to you by less channels. Powerful brands that don't need to be everywhere, just on the minds of their consumers.

Media is undergoing a shift and I think it's a good thing. I think we're all tired of the same media plans, same media "innovation awards" given for buying space that you couldn't buy last year. It's not a good thing and it shouldn't be rewarded.

I'd like to see what would happen if advertsing was limited to three channels - Digital, Print and TV - no other extensions. No other placements. Only in places where the consumer chooses to go - where they expect it.

For now, though, I'll just finish this post and stare at the nearest elevator wrap.

Snickers Animal Instinct

I don't know how I feel about this new Snickers print but it grabbed my attention - that's for sure. Especially the weird face on the wolf execution. We've blogged some of the previous snickers creative with the viking, village people, etc that I really enjoyed but this seems to be a new strategy - when you get really hungry, you repress back to the basic need and forget everything else about your life - social relationships, work, everything.

The only thing you can focus on is your hunger - sort of like a shark or a whale.

"For those who can't think about anything except hunger and reproduction, have a snickers"

From AdFreak

I Want Proof

On a number of ad-related things:

1. How many impressions in a campaign are actually seen, not just recorded?

2. Do flash display ads actually resonate more than static versions?

3. Is increased time spent within a site a good thing? Or simply a sign that your users can't find the information their looking for without searching for it?

4. That people notice online ads and choose to click on them (vs. accidentally)

5. Of how a video, any video, becomes "viral" when the original objective is to create content that becomes viral.

I've been working on a deck about metrics lately and found that even when reading a number of different articles, I have more questions than answers. Determining answers to some of the above questions over the next few years is critical - especially when it comes to the value of an impression.

More to come...

Quote of the Day

"Never overestimate the intelligence of your audience"
- anonymous

Do smart ads work better than dumb ones? Sure, we see a lot of brutal ads out there, but are they easier to understand and remember than the emotional ones?

Naked Intern is very happy

An intern at Naked Communications the agency for Contiki Tours has gained the jealousy of every ad agency intern currently organizing catering requests, photocopying presentations and updating finance binders . On his first day, intern Gavin Chimes was ambushed with the agency sending him on a surprise trip to Europe; first stop, Amsterdam.

The agency will be documenting his entire Contiki Tour, a company that offers travel tours for 18-35 year olds, so as to share the experience from the vantage point of an unsuspecting traveler. Any other agencies want to offer up a better intern program?

Found on adrants

The Evolution of an Agency

It's slightly surreal to hear the rock star of the ad world, Crispin Porter + Bogusky CCO Alex Bogusky, talk lovingly and at length about the lowly sponge. Sponges are, after all, boring, utilitarian, drab. But if anyone can change the way we think about them, why not someone in advertising? It's just one example of how Bogusky and others within the agency world are increasingly busying themselves by leveraging their consumer insights and creative imaginations to create and develop products as well as market them.

The Twist sponge brand debuted on the market in 2007, with a line of all-natural, biodegradable sponges that don't have chemicals or dyes. CP+B contributed ideas for new sponges, including marketing, packaging and a clean, fun design aesthetic across the brand. Already in Target, they're a hit, and the brand is talking to the agency about next year's product. It's also leading to much bigger things. "It looks like this is going to lead to a sort of accelerator where we would work with some venture capital folks and do the same thing that we did with Twist," explains Bogusky. "From their side, [they'll] put in the business dynamics and from our side, [we'll] finish off the branding, and refine the product and packaging."

Bogusky maintains that the agency's work with Twist is the natural evolution of the philosophy that everything is advertising. "Most of us within advertising have grown up with parity products, taking two products that are essentially the same and using marketing to make it appear as if one is a little different than the other," says Bogusky. "I began to theorize that all this learning we've got within marketing, the research and all the understanding of the consumer, shouldn't go after the product, they should be in front of products."

The agency has quietly been building a nascent product innovation department (currently just five people strong) to turn that around. Burger King's coffee line, Joe (featuring different levels of caffeine to fit the chain's "Have It Your Way" tagline) and its Chicken Fries were both CP+B innovations. The agency's purchase of research company Radar has added a company that mines consumer behavior and brand innovation to its offering. "It's got to the point where we'll specifically get briefed on product and packaging," says Bogusky.

While distinctions between product and advertising might seem blurred in the physical world, things get really nebulous in the digital field. "What people considered to be advertising was clear until 10 years ago, but with the rise of personal technology that has drastically changed," says AKQA, San Francisco ECD Rei Inamoto. "When it comes to digital technology, because there is a blur and overlap between the product and the experience, where the messaging ends and the product begins is very grey."

Thus, AKQA now calls itself a strategic entertainment and technology company. "We're not in the business of creating advertising for clients," argues Inamoto, echoing Bogusky and others. "We're in the business of creating ideas that solve clients' problems." Four years ago AKQA was asked by Microsoft to create the then-new Xbox console's interface, working closely with the console's designers Astral Studios, to provide a holistic, integrated product. Increasingly they are consulting with big clients including Microsoft, DirecTV and Sky on blue-sky thinking for the next generation of TV, and the agency has a growing department of experience and interaction designers. "If you want to argue that it's marketing, sure, but defining the product experience as broadly as possible, that can also mean helping the client create the next generation of product."

The most radical proponent of this line of thinking is New York shop Anomaly. It's systematically deconstructed every facet of the half century-old agency model, from problem-solving, to agency hierarchy and remuneration, to the areas where agencies should work. Clients include Virgin America, Coca-Cola and Converse. For Virgin America, its work included creating co-branded bags with Burton and in-flight safety films, revamping ticketing, branding of aircraft and much more.

"If you look back historically large agencies used to produce highly entrepreneurial deals for their clients and invent properties and products," says head of innovation Johnny Vulkan. "All these things are coming around again. These aren't new ideas, they're just things that perhaps fell out of vogue as agencies and clients grew bigger. A conservatism sets in that only gets shaken up when economic shifts happen or technology changes radically. For the last 30 years we might have been able to say it's [about] TV, radio, or posters. Now the answer can be anything."

As well as developing holistic business solutions for brands, Anomaly works with venture capitalists and brand incubators to create products. Take its latest: EOS, a shaving product specifically for women, researched, designed and marketed based on market and consumer insight. That's led to common-sense values: it's a moisturizing cream rather than a drying gel. It's made of all-natural ingredients rather than chemicals. It comes in a soft, ergonomic, tactile and biodegradable bottle rather than a hard, pressurized metal can.

It's an area that Bogusky sees as the next phase in the evolution of agencies, from designing the marketing of a product to designing the product itself. "We're designing sponges," he says. "For me, to lay out all the products at the end of the conceptual stage and say, 'Wow, design can do this to a sponge'... It's pretty limitless. If you can do this to a sponge, you can do pretty much anything."

From Boards

Want a Big Salary? Become a CMO.

AdAge reports that the average, American CMO makes approximately $1.5 million per year.

Better to be at the 10 largest firms surveyed however, as the average CMO gets $4.8 million.

Let's Do Something VIRAL [Part 304,024,924]

Marketers and advertisers of the world: Combining a Handycam with horrible actors and CGI doesn't make something viral. Please stop. Create cool content and I promise I will pass it on.

Or at least create content that LOOKS real.

Corporate Sponsorship Rule #1

Fantastic quote from a recent Godin post:

"Here's my number one fiduciary rule for big brand marketers: The executives involved in approving a sports or entertainment promotion should not be permitted to attend the event."

We all love free swag. But when it costs your company millions to get a sponsorship just for some free tickets, something is wrong.

Groundswell - Worth A Read

In order to prepare for an off site this week with Forrester, I picked up the new book Groundswell and gave it a quick read. My expectations going in were pretty low - I've been on a social technologies/networks/media kick as of late and found that the majority of experts are really just saying the same thing over and over again. Everyone has the same examples of success and failure (my favorite is still willitblend.com) and nobody really offers concrete information on how to work in the space.

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, the co-authors of Groundswell, provide a text book analysis of social technologies and give key examples of strategies that can be designed to suit any brands needs.

What I really enjoy about the novel (still getting through it), is that they have their head around one key fact: think about your consumers first, not the latest technology trend.

By using social technologies, you can find out insights about your consumers that you can't get anywhere else. Shocking (I know), but when you actually think about how your target uses social media (do they create content, engage with it, or just read it?) it can help you determine the best way to approach them.

All in all, it's an easy read but a worthwhile one.

Google's URL Database [It's Big]

Valleywag recently reported that Google's search database now has over 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) URL's for a user to search. What's interesting about the article, however, is that it notes that Google search does not represent searching the entire internet - it only represents URL's that Google has found and archived.

Brilliant Outdoor

Can you think of a better idea for a Guide dog campaign?

Found on Copyranter.

Missing the Point

As most of you know, clients want help understanding how they can be effective in social media. It's the "hot" topic right now and one that probably isn't going away anytime soon. We've written a few posts on social media but in my blog searching today I came across a great quote from David Armano (VP of Critical Mass) that is worth thinking about:

"Old habits die hard. While consumers are out there spending countless hours on social networks, file sharing applications, chat, community sites, buying stuff, selling stuff and using multiple devices, some of us tradigital old fogies are still reaching for our beloved toolbox of the past in the hopes of getting their attention. While online user behavior tells us that people respond well to simplicity, we labor to create complexity in the form of experimental navigation and sites that take forever to load. When YouTube arrived on the scene, we responded by putting our TV spots on them or -- better yet -- creating spots that looked like they were made by amateurs. Little did we know that the real action happens in the comments. Have we thought about talking back to people or are we really just interested in telling our stories?"

It's one thing to start a conversation or let people talk to you but it's another thing to actively engage, debate and discuss what your brand is and what it stands for.

From Logic.

Canada's Top 10 TV Shows [Last Week]

Seriously? This seems like a sad state of affairs when "So You Think You Can Dance" is number 1 and 2 in the ranking. Must be a slow, slow summer.

At least the news made the top 10...

1 So You Think You Can Dance (CTV, Tuesday)—1,506,000

2 So You Think You Can Dance (CTV, Wednesday)—1,473,000

3 Canadian Idol (CTV, Monday-Tuesday)—1,265,000

4 CTV Evening News (CTV, Monday-Friday)—1,145,000

5 CSI: New York (CTV, Wednesday)—1,027,000

6 Law and Order: CI (CTV, Tuesday)—1,014,000

7 Wipeout (Global, Tuesday)—919,000

8 House (Global, Monday)—913,000

9 Sunday Evening Movie (CBC, Sunday)—912,000

10 Bones (Global, Monday)—861,000

From Marketing.

Rebranding

I know, I know, The Dark Knight has been out for over a couple of days but I couldn't help but posting about the new #1 Blockbuster movie in History.

There's nothing quite like a dead brand. Batman sucked. The origins were great and the first few movies were alright (Batman / Batman Returns) but then things started to get ugly. Batman films started to suck. Bad.

Throw in pop culture, horrible acting and over-the-top characters and you've watered down a brand that used to stand for something.

People still went to the films. Hell, every Batman release was huge. But they weren't considered good anymore. They were just the type of movie you go when nothing - literally nothing - else was on.

Then Christopher Nolan came along. And Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman and a slew of other great actors. Suddenly, the brand is reborn. The same core elements are there but the story is different. It's better and more attractive.

People become interested again. Because a few people in Holleywood (with a couple hundred million) decided to make a change.

Cut to today. The Dark Knight opens to a weekend gross of $155 million - best ever. The film is fantastic, shows are sold out over a week after launch and people can't get enough.

Now think about what it was like convincing most studio execs to relaunch the series. How many people said it's already been done and that it couldn't be saved? How many of those execs didn't want to get involved, didn't want to risk producing a tired story?

Making the decision that something - no matter how bad it's become - is worth saving is tough. But when things work out, the results can be pretty sweet.

Excellent User Experience - The Open Championships

I am officially on 5 days of relaxation. This morning I woke up and turned on the Open Championships to see how my selections in the office pool are doing.

After about 10 minutes of waiting to see the full leaderboard I grabbed my laptop and went to the website where I was surprised by a great site with a wonderful user experience.

Golf has changed a lot over the last 10-15 years. Design, technology & innovation have had an incredible impact on the game, equipment, courses and now it is showing that they are applying it to how they market and communicate themselves.

The site does a wonderful job of including audio, video, blogs, use of google maps to look at players countries of origin, real-time leaderboards and real-time broadcast of the championships streamed on your computer. It is also screen reader compliant and full of other surprises.

Great job to the agency or team that created this site.

Some Nice Creative [Sadly, Not Brand Related]