Monday, November 17, 2008
Obama's Changing Advertising
At most of the awards shows, the stuff that wins prizes in the digital categories is very often video material of one sort or another. It’s high quality entertainment designed first and foremost to raise awareness. Think of campaigns like Win Nick’s Life for Steinlager. It’s a good old-fashioned TV commercial given a new form online.
We tend to forget that digital is a great direct marketing medium allowing brands not just to talk one-to-one about their products or their offers but to get people to do something.
The Obama campaign hasn’t forgotten. There are some brilliant marketers helping get a Kenyan into the White House and this viral is just one among many inspired ideas. Sooner rather than later someone is going to write a book about it. But not only is Obama going to change the world, we hope, but he is already changing advertising.
The art of DM is in making the message personal and this takes personalisation to extraordinary lengths. Here’s the link if you want to send personalised videos to your friends:
http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/taf.shtml?hp=1
/Patrick Collister/
Out of the box advertising
There is still a role for good old-fashioned flag-waving advertising on the web. You know, the sort of messaging that simply demands your attention.
So, while the more eye-catching ideas these days are the big experiential campaigns, every now and then it’s a pleasure to see nothing more complicated than a banner ad done well.
Here are a couple for you, one for Nintendo’s Wario Land and the other for France’s T-Net.
When writing press ads, young creatives were always taught to try to use the medium to best effect.
Get the reader to turn the page upside down. Or look through it. Or refer to the editorial around it. In other words, do something to engage as well as to inform. That principle has been taken online with these two ads.
Have a look and you’ll see. In both the rules of webpage design have been flouted with the help of a flash overlay. In both, the ad spills out of the box it’s supposed to belong to.
Both have acquired lives of their own beyond the pages they were originally placed on and are reaching hundreds of thousands of new viewers by virtue of nothing more than their creativity.
/Patrick Collister/
So, while the more eye-catching ideas these days are the big experiential campaigns, every now and then it’s a pleasure to see nothing more complicated than a banner ad done well.
Here are a couple for you, one for Nintendo’s Wario Land and the other for France’s T-Net.
When writing press ads, young creatives were always taught to try to use the medium to best effect.
Get the reader to turn the page upside down. Or look through it. Or refer to the editorial around it. In other words, do something to engage as well as to inform. That principle has been taken online with these two ads.
Have a look and you’ll see. In both the rules of webpage design have been flouted with the help of a flash overlay. In both, the ad spills out of the box it’s supposed to belong to.
Both have acquired lives of their own beyond the pages they were originally placed on and are reaching hundreds of thousands of new viewers by virtue of nothing more than their creativity.
/Patrick Collister/
Schlepping to the White House
One of the new rules of communication is we are in a business about communities. How can you get people to come together in groups discuss your brand, to contribute to it and, actually, to become a part of it? What makes it hard for brand owners is to do this successfully you have to stop being control freaks.
Here’s an example. The accountants Deloittes wanted to recruit the brightest young grads to join their firm after university. So, they gave camcorders to some of their own staff and got them to make films about their jobs. What resulted were some charming, funny, interesting little movies which were charming, funny and interesting precisely because the powers-that-be did not lay down guidelines, make rules or tell their people what to do or say.
This isn’t only getting students talking to each other about what a very different sort of firm Deloittes must be, it’s getting people at Deloittes talking to themselves about what a different sort of firm it must be. And there’s a chance that soon it really will be.
Another current example of an online community being created to effect change is at www.thegreatschlep.com.
Because the last US election hinged on Florida, where Al Gore lost (or was robbed, depending on your point of view) of the White House by just 586 votes, Democrats are taking the state very seriously indeed. The idea, in both the viral and the website, is to get young Jews to fly to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Obama.
The campaign uses comedienne Sarah Silverman whose views in the vid are definitely not politically correct. Watch the young black guy sitting beside her. Best line?
“Yes, Barack Hussein Obama is a shitty name but you would expect someone named Manischewitz. Guberman might understand that..”
What’s making this both effective and famous communication is it isn’t filtered.
So it is acquiring a life of its own, helping to create a community large enough to make sure that the one man who might possibly help recalibrate the world gets elected.
/Patrick Collister/
Metropolitan Republic
MTN is a telecoms company in South Africa. They had the idea of reaffirming their right-on values with their young and liberal target audience by declaring that they would contribute 10 Rand for every phone sold on National Women’s Day to POWA, a charity supportive of abused women.
Someone at the agency must have thought, “Hmmm. 10 Rand? That’s only 6.5DKK. Peanuts.”
Then that someone looked at the production budget. Around 82,000 DKK. Not large but equivalent to selling 12,500 phones. And he or she then thought, “Well why don’t we get all the ads done for as little as possible so we can pass on the savings to the people who need the money most.”
That became the idea. To do home-made ads while still billing the client for a more polished product.
So the TV commercial was made in Powerpoint with the music track recorded on a mobile phone (a Samsung, we hope) by the art director, who fancied himself as a musician.
The money saved on camera hire is now paying the healthcare costs of 22 young Mums. And the money saved on actors is paying to help educate 35 girls.
The same principle was extended to all the other marketing activity. Instead of posters on the street, volunteers wandered around with the message on cardboard sheets. The window displays of MTNs shops were similarly hand-drawn.
And everyone emerges from the campaign with a smile. POWA got a heck of a lot more money than they would have done otherwise; Samsung flogged plenty of phones; MTN got famous advertising and an undeserved reputation for being caring-sharing kinda guys (because, let’s face it, 10 Rand per phone is not generous); and the agency, The Jupiter Drawing Room, is winning awards.
Someone at the agency must have thought, “Hmmm. 10 Rand? That’s only 6.5DKK. Peanuts.”
Then that someone looked at the production budget. Around 82,000 DKK. Not large but equivalent to selling 12,500 phones. And he or she then thought, “Well why don’t we get all the ads done for as little as possible so we can pass on the savings to the people who need the money most.”
That became the idea. To do home-made ads while still billing the client for a more polished product.
So the TV commercial was made in Powerpoint with the music track recorded on a mobile phone (a Samsung, we hope) by the art director, who fancied himself as a musician.
The money saved on camera hire is now paying the healthcare costs of 22 young Mums. And the money saved on actors is paying to help educate 35 girls.
The same principle was extended to all the other marketing activity. Instead of posters on the street, volunteers wandered around with the message on cardboard sheets. The window displays of MTNs shops were similarly hand-drawn.
And everyone emerges from the campaign with a smile. POWA got a heck of a lot more money than they would have done otherwise; Samsung flogged plenty of phones; MTN got famous advertising and an undeserved reputation for being caring-sharing kinda guys (because, let’s face it, 10 Rand per phone is not generous); and the agency, The Jupiter Drawing Room, is winning awards.
Beer Widgets
Since ad agencies discovered widgets they’ve been creating all sorts of digital bric-a-brac for the brands they manage.
The most useless of them all, in the current climate anyway, is the widget that keeps track on your investments at the bank. Designed in headier days, it was supposed to show you how your money was mounting up rather than draining way.
Those that have worked best have been the genuinely useful widgets. For instance, the Guinness ‘Cantonese Translator’ designed for visitors to the Hong Kong Rugby 7’s tournament. Lost? Need to find your way to a certain bar or hotel? The application lets you find the phrases you need on your mobile phone then translates them into Cantonese. Simply hold your phone to the ear of a native and await a flurry of hand movements to help you on your way. Clever, eh?
But here’s a completely useless widget from another beer brand, Carling. It’s very silly and very ‘sticky’.
It’s generated a lot of chat precisely because it is so pointless.
So, if you want to make friends with your consumers, here are two ways to do it. You can be thoughtful and helpful. Or just give them a laugh.
Good Old Yellow Pages
Around the world anyone who claims to be remotely hip and cool has been devising his/her strategy for getting a hold on one of the new 3G iPhones.
In New Zealand, those clever little folk at Aim Proximity Auckland hit on the beezer wheeze of turning Apple’s hype into a bit of cheap PR for their own client, Yellow Pages.
What they did was to place their own man at the front of the queue outside the Vodafone store. Three days before the iPhone was made available to all those willing to sign up new, punishing contracts, smiling, friendly Jonny Gladwell established territorial rights to be the first Kiwi to get his mitts on one.
The clever part was, to help him get through his three days and three nights outside the store, Yellow Pages put him in touch with everyone who could supply him with what he needed.
From his fluffy jacket (from Kathmandu) to his food (Pizza Hut), the heater (First Party Hire) to the exercise cycle (Fitness Works), not forgetting his earplugs (Radius Pharmacy) when he wanted to sleep and caffeine (Esquires Coffee) when he wanted to keep awake, Yellow Pages were there to to make queuing comfy if not exactly fun.
The idea got huge PR and drove the punters to a website where they could win the ‘phone that Jonny bought –eventually.
Is it a media stunt? Is it a PR idea? Is it direct marketing? Is it just bloody great? The answer is yes.
Have a peep at the site at http://jonny.yellowpagesgroup.co.nz/
/Patrick Collister/
The band’s a brand
If we think we’ve got problems in adland, pity the poor sods in the music industry.
Nine out of ten music lovers download their music free.
So, if your business model is based on the exchange of money for good old-fashioned vinyl, tape or disc, then the internet is your nemesis. Unless you are Radiohead.
Everyone knows the band broke new ground when they released ‘In Rainbows’ last year. They offered it as an online download in return for whatever their fans thought was a fair price.
It turned out that most thought a fair price was absolutely bugger all so the band had to revert to traditional methods of sale and distribution. But they’re nothing if not inventive, because next up they invited their fans to buy their song ‘Nude’ from iTunes in five separate bits. Bass, vocals, guitar, strings and drums, you could mix them any which way you fancy. (And if you do fancy, go to www.Radioheadremix.com/buy.)
A widget allows you to put your version up on your MySpace page, or any other page you run, for that matter, as well as uploading it to the radioheadremix site for others to vote for. Or not.
Now Radiohead’s most recent wheeze is to surrender all rights to the video for their latest single, ‘House of Cards’. 1.6 million people have had a butcher’s at it on Youtube alone and who knows how many have downloaded it for free from the band’s website, www.radiohead.com.
What they are encouraging everyone to do is not just download the vid but download the code behind it. Code because the whole thing’s digital. No camera, no lights, no bacon sarnie. All done on a desktop.
Once you’ve got the code, you can make your own mash-up. All a bit complicated for me but a few braver souls have gone to code.google.com/creative/radiohead and have had a stab at it. You can see some of the results at www.youtube.com/group/houseofcards.
The point is, Radiohead are shifting from band to brand simply by being interesting. And the relationships they are building with all those Radiohead heads out there will, one-day, be worth good money.
Marketers take note.
/Patrick Collister/
A Cunning Stunt
Kiwi émigré in London, Tim Ellingham, did not think much of English beer and asked his mates back home in New Zealand to send him some Speight’s, NZ’s best-selling brew.
Learning of this, Speight’s decided to build a proper Kiwi pub and ship it over to the UK so Tim and his Earls Court buddies could have a decent piss-up.
Or, put another way, Publicis Mojo in Auckland wondered if they couldn’t do something a bit more involving than just make another TV commercial.
The story ran around the world of the five volunteers (among the thousands who applied) aboard the MV. Lida, bringing the ale-house to the mother country.
It’s even on the Motor Boats Monthly website, for heaven’s sake!
As the lads made their way from New Zealand to Samoa, on to Panama, the Bahamas, New York and then London, they blogged and vlogged their experiences. And opened up the pub every evening for an hour!
Okay, so it’s what media planners call ‘a stunt’ but a stunt that reached several million TV viewers when it made the news on both sides of the world; a stunt that has spawned a 60-min TV documentary; that was followed daily on national radio; that got people talking; that drove Speight’s back to number one in the market. A stunt that wouldn’t have worked as well without social media.
The point is, it’s not easy to place messages in social media, but if an idea is intriguing enough, it’s where it gathers momentum through wob. (Word of blog.)
However, before we assume this is yet another death knell for TV advertising, the news in the UK is that spending on TV advertising is up. The good old-fashioned commercial still remains the single most important way to reach mass audiences.
Even though they are selling a console game, Halo 3, Microsoft used trad media to launch the game on September 12th last year.
The campaign won the Grand Prix at the Clios this year and more awards are coming.
/Patrick Collister/
My muthafuckin’ phone
People have been talking up mobile marketing for years but there’s been little evidence of any genuinely engaging mobile content - until recently.
In January, Lynx launched their ‘Get in there’ campaign with a host of apps you can download to your phone to make it look like a harmonica, sound like a spray or, best of all, turn it into a ‘fit girl finder’.
You can make your phone click like a geiger counter and pretend it has been programmed to search out only really hot babes. This little bit of instant theatre gives you permission to start chatting up girls. In other words, it helps you ‘get in there’.
This interactivity means the brand has moved from simply telling angst-ridden teenagers it can help to becoming genuinely useful. The brand is repositioning itself as every teenager boy’s good mate.
The Royal Navy has been doing something similar, providing a useful, if unexpected, service with its ‘Get the Message’ viral. The way this works is, you go to www.getthemessage.net and write an e-mail to a friend which then gets delivered in video form. It’s funny to have a message about something completely trivial like ‘see you in the pub at 6’ delivered by a lantern-jawed helicopter pilot. It’s a neat way of telling teenagers that there is a greater breadth of careers in the Navy than they may have supposed but without actually lecturing them about it.
However, the most awarded idea in mobile marketing to date is the campaign for Volkswagen spare parts in Germany. The message sets out to warn teenagers that if they don’t use VW-manufactured parts for their ageing Golfs, then they must expect to pay the consequences.
A viral film was seeded in a number of sites showing an elderly couple having dinner. The cuckoo clock whirrs into action but instead of a cuckoo, out pops a little black rapper who sings ‘Yo muthafuckah, yo.’
The viral sent viewers on to a microsite where they could download the rap as a ringtone. You could argue that that is being useful. Now, when the nation’s youth talk to each other, on buses, trams and trains, around 100,000 phones start muttering ‘yo muthafuckah’ daily.
This is progress.
In January, Lynx launched their ‘Get in there’ campaign with a host of apps you can download to your phone to make it look like a harmonica, sound like a spray or, best of all, turn it into a ‘fit girl finder’.
You can make your phone click like a geiger counter and pretend it has been programmed to search out only really hot babes. This little bit of instant theatre gives you permission to start chatting up girls. In other words, it helps you ‘get in there’.
This interactivity means the brand has moved from simply telling angst-ridden teenagers it can help to becoming genuinely useful. The brand is repositioning itself as every teenager boy’s good mate.
The Royal Navy has been doing something similar, providing a useful, if unexpected, service with its ‘Get the Message’ viral. The way this works is, you go to www.getthemessage.net and write an e-mail to a friend which then gets delivered in video form. It’s funny to have a message about something completely trivial like ‘see you in the pub at 6’ delivered by a lantern-jawed helicopter pilot. It’s a neat way of telling teenagers that there is a greater breadth of careers in the Navy than they may have supposed but without actually lecturing them about it.
However, the most awarded idea in mobile marketing to date is the campaign for Volkswagen spare parts in Germany. The message sets out to warn teenagers that if they don’t use VW-manufactured parts for their ageing Golfs, then they must expect to pay the consequences.
A viral film was seeded in a number of sites showing an elderly couple having dinner. The cuckoo clock whirrs into action but instead of a cuckoo, out pops a little black rapper who sings ‘Yo muthafuckah, yo.’
The viral sent viewers on to a microsite where they could download the rap as a ringtone. You could argue that that is being useful. Now, when the nation’s youth talk to each other, on buses, trams and trains, around 100,000 phones start muttering ‘yo muthafuckah’ daily.
This is progress.
/Patrick Collister/
Where P&G lead, will Reckitt Benckiser follow?
For years P&G relentlessly applied their formula of advertising to each and all their brands.
They found a benefit, turned it into a message and repeated it endlessly. The phrase ‘interruption advertising’ was coined to describe how Ariel, Lenor, Tide, Head and Shoulders and scores more all ran TV commercials that were witless, irritating and which worked.
Why, then, five years ago, did P&G decide to take creativity seriously? The answer is in the speech P.G.Lafley gave to his assembled marketers in 2006 when he said, “We must learn to let go.” The dilemma for the modern marketer, he observed, is that the more in touch you are with your customers, the less control you actually have over your brands. In urging his people to get in touch, he went on to say that P&G must also learn to apply the same principles of R&D to its communications as it does to improving the performance of its products.
“We must experiment”, he said.
The result of all this is that in all the awards shows we monitor at The Big Won, agencies are winning prizes with P&G. So many prizes, in fact, that P&G was Advertiser of the Year at Cannes.
This would have been inconceivable not long ago. It is further evidence that in the new order of media, you have to do more than give people good reasons for buying your products, you have to get them to like what you do as well.
One day Reckitt Benckiser will learn this lesson. But after another year of record sales driven by advertising modelled on the P&G methods of the 1960’s, their top brass will pooh-pooh the notion. The first downturn in their sales figures may see a change of heart.
Inconceivable as it may seem now, perhaps Reckitt’s Cillit Bang will be winning Golds as P&G’s Crest is.
/Patrick Collister/
They found a benefit, turned it into a message and repeated it endlessly. The phrase ‘interruption advertising’ was coined to describe how Ariel, Lenor, Tide, Head and Shoulders and scores more all ran TV commercials that were witless, irritating and which worked.
Why, then, five years ago, did P&G decide to take creativity seriously? The answer is in the speech P.G.Lafley gave to his assembled marketers in 2006 when he said, “We must learn to let go.” The dilemma for the modern marketer, he observed, is that the more in touch you are with your customers, the less control you actually have over your brands. In urging his people to get in touch, he went on to say that P&G must also learn to apply the same principles of R&D to its communications as it does to improving the performance of its products.
“We must experiment”, he said.
The result of all this is that in all the awards shows we monitor at The Big Won, agencies are winning prizes with P&G. So many prizes, in fact, that P&G was Advertiser of the Year at Cannes.
This would have been inconceivable not long ago. It is further evidence that in the new order of media, you have to do more than give people good reasons for buying your products, you have to get them to like what you do as well.
One day Reckitt Benckiser will learn this lesson. But after another year of record sales driven by advertising modelled on the P&G methods of the 1960’s, their top brass will pooh-pooh the notion. The first downturn in their sales figures may see a change of heart.
Inconceivable as it may seem now, perhaps Reckitt’s Cillit Bang will be winning Golds as P&G’s Crest is.
/Patrick Collister/
Terminator
Recently, I’ve been pondering this whole business of ‘the line’ in advertising.
A lot of below-the-line agencies insist that there is no line any longer and they claim to be as able to create brand communications as well as any above-the-line bunch.
It’s a pride thing. It grates to be considered below the salt. Beneath contempt. The underlings of advertising.
It’s also a money thing. There is still a lot of budget sloshing around in advertising and direct marketing agencies would like to get their hands on some of it, especially now the Bellweather Report suggests that as the credit crunch extends out into the world beyond banking and real estate, investment in DM is dropping.
It occurs to me that there most definitely is still a line. But it’s not horizontal. It’s vertical.
What this means is that the line does not separate brand advertising from acquisition and retention strategies, as it used to, it connects them.
The point being, depending on the nature of the task, the line slides. It moves from the strictly rational sort of offer-based message, which has traditionally been the preserve of direct marketing agencies, across to the more engaging sort of video-based content which ad agencies specialise in making.
If you buy the vertical line theory, then agencies are either left-of-line or right of it.
Two of the most interesting beside-the-line agencies in the world are BBDO, New York, which is doing remarkable work across all channels – but building brands. And 20:20 London, which is doing equally remarkable work across all channels but left-of-line, creating, analysing and re-using the data it captures.
This campaign for the TV series ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ drives visitors from media-rich banners to http://www.terminate-a-mate.com. Key in a friend’s mobile number and they get sent a video message warning them the terminator knows who they are and where they are.
This idea is based on a thorough understanding of the core target audience and how digital cleverness like this turns them on.
Results – lots of buzz, lots of videos uploaded to Youtube, and Virgin’s best-ever audience for a TV show.
And big respect to 20:20, a top beside-the-line agency.
Let go of the Foam
The trouble with being brilliant is that sustaining your brilliance gets harder and harder until, well, it just gets too hard. After “Citizen Kane” Orson Welles just gave up and concentrated on sherry commercials. After “Heart of Darkness” what did Francis Ford Coppola do? Well, go to www.ffcpresents.com and you’ll see. He’s taken up cooking.
What about Fallon? The London agency has had a phenomenal run of success, from Sony “Balls” through to “Paint” and “Rabbits” and on to Tate “Tracks”, Skoda “Cake” and the astonishing gorilla.
Now, however, they seem to be in danger of parodying their own ads. Their latest offering for Sony, this time for their cameras, is “Foam”. There is already a lot of blurb about it in cyberspace. When they made “Balls”, both client and agency were unprepared for the explosion of interest online in what they were doing. San Franciscans uploaded images and movies of bouncing balls and even edited their own Sony ads long before the official commercial was aired. Since then, client and agency have made sure their offline and their online communications dovetail in together.
So, we are already aware of the foaming ad, and tens of thousands will have seen it even though it isn’t ‘released’ here until the first week of May. But I’m disappointed in it, I’m afraid. It’s actually rather beautiful to watch – and is rather touching too, appealing to the child within. You can expect to see it at Cannes. But that word ‘it’ is the giveaway. It is one commercial, whereas what I expected from the hype was a more liberated kind of advertising.
I imagined that since Sony had handed out around 200 cameras of one sort or another to the citizens of Miami before releasing 4 millions gallons of fluff, they would all upload their movies and their stills and edit their own ads, hundreds of them. Rather than just one commercial, controlled by the agency creative team sitting in an edit suite in Soho, there would be many, put together by those who were there. And by those who weren’t.
Fallon have let balls, paint and rabbits loose on the street, creating magical events that drew in both real and virtual bystanders in their millions. But they still haven’t quite learned to let go completely. Yet.
/Patrick Collister/
Sony Play-Doh
When Fallon London, filmed the Sony “Balls” commercial, they
were aghast when their ad was broadcast before they had even seen
the first edit. The citizens of San Francisco, watching half a million
balls bouncing down their streets, had used their camera phones
and camcorders to make their own ads for Sony.
When Fallon shot the second ad in the series, “Paint”, they were
better prepared and dripped a series of clues into the blogosphere
about what the idea was and where they planned to film it. So,
when they arrived at the Glasgow block they were about to blow
up, a crowd of 150 awaited them – and an enterprising guy in a van
selling beefburgers. With the third commercial, “Play-Doh”, Sony
are wised up to what marketers now call “social networking”. In
other words, online chat.
Long before “Play-Doh” aired last Friday, they had released plenty
of glimpses of plasticine bunnies hopping around New York.
Type in “Sony Balls” into Google and you get given ove 250,000
pages you can go to. Click in “Sony Bunnies” and there are
950,000. ‘Nuff said.
In the new order TV advertising simply drives viewers to another
medium where they can have a more immersive experience.
So, we aren’t allowed to show you the commercial itself but we can
direct you to www.colourlikenoother.com, where you can be
immersed. And, hey, it’s a good site.
Did you know that carrots were purple until 250 years ago? This
and other interesting colour-related trivia is all yours as and when
you click.
In the meantime, sales of Sony Bravia TV’s continue to soar. After
the “Balls” commercial had run four weeks, it was pulled from 13
markets – because they had run out of tellies to sell.
This campaign makes me proud to be in advertising. And green
with jealousy.
/Patrick Collister/
were aghast when their ad was broadcast before they had even seen
the first edit. The citizens of San Francisco, watching half a million
balls bouncing down their streets, had used their camera phones
and camcorders to make their own ads for Sony.
When Fallon shot the second ad in the series, “Paint”, they were
better prepared and dripped a series of clues into the blogosphere
about what the idea was and where they planned to film it. So,
when they arrived at the Glasgow block they were about to blow
up, a crowd of 150 awaited them – and an enterprising guy in a van
selling beefburgers. With the third commercial, “Play-Doh”, Sony
are wised up to what marketers now call “social networking”. In
other words, online chat.
Long before “Play-Doh” aired last Friday, they had released plenty
of glimpses of plasticine bunnies hopping around New York.
Type in “Sony Balls” into Google and you get given ove 250,000
pages you can go to. Click in “Sony Bunnies” and there are
950,000. ‘Nuff said.
In the new order TV advertising simply drives viewers to another
medium where they can have a more immersive experience.
So, we aren’t allowed to show you the commercial itself but we can
direct you to www.colourlikenoother.com, where you can be
immersed. And, hey, it’s a good site.
Did you know that carrots were purple until 250 years ago? This
and other interesting colour-related trivia is all yours as and when
you click.
In the meantime, sales of Sony Bravia TV’s continue to soar. After
the “Balls” commercial had run four weeks, it was pulled from 13
markets – because they had run out of tellies to sell.
This campaign makes me proud to be in advertising. And green
with jealousy.
/Patrick Collister/
Smirnoff
The digeratii say the great thing about the internet is it encourages
Everybody to be creative. Make a video and post it on YouTube and
you too can become a web-star for a day or two. Now sites like
revver.com are telling Everybody, if your vid is a corker, we’ll share
the advertising revenue from your page fifty/fifty. Be creative and
kerchinggg!
Everybody has recently made a commercial for Doritos that ran in
the middle of the Superbowl. She also made a commercial for Dove
that ran in the first break of the Oscars. The trouble with
Everybody is that in 99.9% of cases, he (and she) is utterly,
unredeemably talentless. Most of the home-made movies on
YouTube are dross.
It hasn’t put off the Department of Transport, though. Rather than
ask an agency to help them create noticeable advertising to warn
kids to look out when they cross the road, they’ve gone to a bunch
of teenagers. One has written an ad showing the ghosts of kids who
didn’t make it. Ghosts? Gosh. How original. Well, back in the 18th
century, maybe. Certainly something of a cliché by 1994 when the
DoT spent £2.5m on the same idea.
It’s mad. People don’t much like advertising at the best of times so
why serve them up commercials that are even tackier than the ones
the professionals make? It takes ten years at least for the best
people in the best agencies to acquire their skills.
Having the idea is only half the battle. Then it has to be executed in
such a way it impresses itself indelibly on the mind of the viewer.
Just to show you what adland’s finest can do, when encouraged to
do their best by those few clients who value their agencies, here’s a
Smirnoff commercial.
Everybody could not do this. Not ever.
/Patrick Collister/
Everybody to be creative. Make a video and post it on YouTube and
you too can become a web-star for a day or two. Now sites like
revver.com are telling Everybody, if your vid is a corker, we’ll share
the advertising revenue from your page fifty/fifty. Be creative and
kerchinggg!
Everybody has recently made a commercial for Doritos that ran in
the middle of the Superbowl. She also made a commercial for Dove
that ran in the first break of the Oscars. The trouble with
Everybody is that in 99.9% of cases, he (and she) is utterly,
unredeemably talentless. Most of the home-made movies on
YouTube are dross.
It hasn’t put off the Department of Transport, though. Rather than
ask an agency to help them create noticeable advertising to warn
kids to look out when they cross the road, they’ve gone to a bunch
of teenagers. One has written an ad showing the ghosts of kids who
didn’t make it. Ghosts? Gosh. How original. Well, back in the 18th
century, maybe. Certainly something of a cliché by 1994 when the
DoT spent £2.5m on the same idea.
It’s mad. People don’t much like advertising at the best of times so
why serve them up commercials that are even tackier than the ones
the professionals make? It takes ten years at least for the best
people in the best agencies to acquire their skills.
Having the idea is only half the battle. Then it has to be executed in
such a way it impresses itself indelibly on the mind of the viewer.
Just to show you what adland’s finest can do, when encouraged to
do their best by those few clients who value their agencies, here’s a
Smirnoff commercial.
Everybody could not do this. Not ever.
/Patrick Collister/
Cadbury’s Gorilla
If you're one of the few who hasn't yet seen Cadbury's gorilla viral,
here it is - the first interesting commercial to come out of
Bournville since the 1960s.
There is a theory that if you're a brand leader you can't afford to
run risky advertising (for risky read interesting, entertaining,
witty). Certainly Cadbury have been massively risk averse until
now.
What sparked the change of direction? Was it, perhaps, that after
so much awful publicity they realised they had better start trying to
make friends, and quickly?
You will remember that as well as a glass-and-a-half of milk,
Cadbury's products were found also to contain salmonella. When
news of this seeped out, with supreme corporate arrogance, they
ignored the problem until the PR backlash persuaded senior
managers to start eating humble pie.
The real risk for Cadbury was that if they didn't do something
radical, their image might remain forever tarnished.
The viral was written and directed by a creative phenomenon
called Juan Cabral. A year ago he became the first person to win
two Grand Prix at Cannes, for television with Sony Balls, and for
posters with a campaign for the Tate Gallery. Almost everything he
touches turns to gold.
Hailing from Argentina, he's not yet 30. No doubt rival agencies
are already waving wads of cash at him, promising the earth should
he care to defect from Fallon London.
Perhaps the real star is the client who both briefed for and bought
this ad. While the brand risked little in trying to get beyond the
salmonella disaster, the individual who signed off on it risked
ridicule, even the sack. Fortunately, he or she is a glass-and-a-half
full type. Bravo.
/Patrick Collister/
here it is - the first interesting commercial to come out of
Bournville since the 1960s.
There is a theory that if you're a brand leader you can't afford to
run risky advertising (for risky read interesting, entertaining,
witty). Certainly Cadbury have been massively risk averse until
now.
What sparked the change of direction? Was it, perhaps, that after
so much awful publicity they realised they had better start trying to
make friends, and quickly?
You will remember that as well as a glass-and-a-half of milk,
Cadbury's products were found also to contain salmonella. When
news of this seeped out, with supreme corporate arrogance, they
ignored the problem until the PR backlash persuaded senior
managers to start eating humble pie.
The real risk for Cadbury was that if they didn't do something
radical, their image might remain forever tarnished.
The viral was written and directed by a creative phenomenon
called Juan Cabral. A year ago he became the first person to win
two Grand Prix at Cannes, for television with Sony Balls, and for
posters with a campaign for the Tate Gallery. Almost everything he
touches turns to gold.
Hailing from Argentina, he's not yet 30. No doubt rival agencies
are already waving wads of cash at him, promising the earth should
he care to defect from Fallon London.
Perhaps the real star is the client who both briefed for and bought
this ad. While the brand risked little in trying to get beyond the
salmonella disaster, the individual who signed off on it risked
ridicule, even the sack. Fortunately, he or she is a glass-and-a-half
full type. Bravo.
/Patrick Collister/
Lynx - Get in There!
At the centre of every teenager’s life is their mobile phone so it is
unsurprising that adland has been exploring new ways of using the
phone as an advertising platform. The trouble is, most mobile-based marketing has been creatively uninspiring. Until now.
BBH’s new campaign for Lynx is a brilliant example of how to use
the mobile phone to create and share brand experiences.
The premise is, a lot of lads need help chatting up girls and Lynx
can help them. The new website offers a series of helpful hints with
videos of guys demonstrating each.
So, one clip demonstrates ‘The Sympathy Fall’. Guy sees girl. Guy
walks into lamp-post, tree, any available solid object. Ouch. Girl is
sympathetic. Guy explains he was dazzled by her beauty. She gives
phone number. Thank you Lynx.
Key to the site are the free apps you can download. My favourite is
the ‘Fit Girl Finder’. It turns your phone into a Geiger counter.
Using the keys on the handset, you can make it click energetically
as you point it towards a girl or click falteringly when you point it
at the old geezer in the corner. Obviously, she’s hot and he’s not.
And that gives you the opportunity to, well, get in there.
The harmonica app makes it look as if you’re playing your phone or
there’s the spray sound effect. Waft your mobile under your arms,
between your legs etc, and it sounds as if you’re getting yourself
Lynxed up.
Silly, but it starts a conversation. At least, it did for BBH’s Head of
Mobile, Peter Sells, when he tried it in a Soho restaurant.
Did he pull? He would not say.
This is a great example of the agency redefining Lynx users not as
‘targets’ to aim messages at but as potential participants in the life
of the brand. Terrific.
/Patrick Collister/
unsurprising that adland has been exploring new ways of using the
phone as an advertising platform. The trouble is, most mobile-based marketing has been creatively uninspiring. Until now.
BBH’s new campaign for Lynx is a brilliant example of how to use
the mobile phone to create and share brand experiences.
The premise is, a lot of lads need help chatting up girls and Lynx
can help them. The new website offers a series of helpful hints with
videos of guys demonstrating each.
So, one clip demonstrates ‘The Sympathy Fall’. Guy sees girl. Guy
walks into lamp-post, tree, any available solid object. Ouch. Girl is
sympathetic. Guy explains he was dazzled by her beauty. She gives
phone number. Thank you Lynx.
Key to the site are the free apps you can download. My favourite is
the ‘Fit Girl Finder’. It turns your phone into a Geiger counter.
Using the keys on the handset, you can make it click energetically
as you point it towards a girl or click falteringly when you point it
at the old geezer in the corner. Obviously, she’s hot and he’s not.
And that gives you the opportunity to, well, get in there.
The harmonica app makes it look as if you’re playing your phone or
there’s the spray sound effect. Waft your mobile under your arms,
between your legs etc, and it sounds as if you’re getting yourself
Lynxed up.
Silly, but it starts a conversation. At least, it did for BBH’s Head of
Mobile, Peter Sells, when he tried it in a Soho restaurant.
Did he pull? He would not say.
This is a great example of the agency redefining Lynx users not as
‘targets’ to aim messages at but as potential participants in the life
of the brand. Terrific.
/Patrick Collister/
Tele2 Dog
Last week, CEO of Cadbury Schweppes Todd Stitzer revealed
better-than-expected financial results for the UK company.
Briefing the press, he said, "For the Chinese, 2007 was the year of
the pig. For Cadbury, it was the year of the gorilla.”
He went on to admit that he couldn’t quite fathom how the
drumming primate had done so much to revive the fortunes of his
ailing chocolate brand. "I am a 55-year-old person who has lived
through a different advertising experience ... In the end, I trusted
in the young and talented people who came up with the idea."
Sometimes we forget that brilliant advertising needs a bold client
to buy it. Full credit then to Cadbury marketing director Phil
Rumbol for (a) buying the idea from Fallon himself before (b)
having the bottle to sell it to his board.
No entirely rational human being could have done it. Which brings
me to the Tele2 dog.
Tele2 is a Swedish telecomms company, who have no obvious
reason for putting up a site such as this except that people will love
it – especially younger people, who comprise the bulk of their
audience.
The trouble is, there are just too many brands around today. As a
result, there’s been a rise in what you might call brand shagging.
Take a brand for everything it’s got and then dump it and move on
to another.
The fact remains, though, that if a brand is likeable, amusing, good
company, then when it does come down to expressing your
preferences, you’ll choose a friend. You might even be knowingly
irrational when you make that choice. For instance, Innocent
smoothies are about 60p more expensive than PJ’s but I could no
more drink PJ’s than I could sulphuric acid.
But I like Innocent. And you know what? I like Tele2 too.
/Patrick Collister/
better-than-expected financial results for the UK company.
Briefing the press, he said, "For the Chinese, 2007 was the year of
the pig. For Cadbury, it was the year of the gorilla.”
He went on to admit that he couldn’t quite fathom how the
drumming primate had done so much to revive the fortunes of his
ailing chocolate brand. "I am a 55-year-old person who has lived
through a different advertising experience ... In the end, I trusted
in the young and talented people who came up with the idea."
Sometimes we forget that brilliant advertising needs a bold client
to buy it. Full credit then to Cadbury marketing director Phil
Rumbol for (a) buying the idea from Fallon himself before (b)
having the bottle to sell it to his board.
No entirely rational human being could have done it. Which brings
me to the Tele2 dog.
Tele2 is a Swedish telecomms company, who have no obvious
reason for putting up a site such as this except that people will love
it – especially younger people, who comprise the bulk of their
audience.
The trouble is, there are just too many brands around today. As a
result, there’s been a rise in what you might call brand shagging.
Take a brand for everything it’s got and then dump it and move on
to another.
The fact remains, though, that if a brand is likeable, amusing, good
company, then when it does come down to expressing your
preferences, you’ll choose a friend. You might even be knowingly
irrational when you make that choice. For instance, Innocent
smoothies are about 60p more expensive than PJ’s but I could no
more drink PJ’s than I could sulphuric acid.
But I like Innocent. And you know what? I like Tele2 too.
/Patrick Collister/
The Triumph Rocket III
The new Triumph Rocket III is ridiculous. Why not sit astride a
rhinosceros? It will provide the same sort of excitement. May even
be quieter too.
Triumph got the name right. This machine does exactly what it
says on the tin. Its 2.3 litre engine will propel you from 0 to
oblivion in seconds.
How do you set about advertising such a monster? If you tell
people anything about its insane power, the killjoys will come after
you with big sticks. Already the advertising code of practice forbids
car-makers from using speed as a selling point. And, on top of
that, there are rumblings in the European parliament about
banning all car advertising entirely. Nasty things that pollute and
kill.
Don’t forget, these are the people who also spend their time issuing
directives about the appropriate curvature of imported bananas.
What E3 Media, Triumph’s agency, have done in commissioning
the film from RubberRepublic is turn to positioning strategy No.
32, the Disarm Through Charm route.
You deflect your critics by poking fun at yourself. If the bike is over
the top then the advertising should be equally silly. It’s a ‘we know
that you know that we know’ sort of tactic. Bikers will get it
immediately and appreciate the irony. The message is cute though
the intentions behind it are anything but.
The film itself is a pastiche, taking the mickey out of countless
corporate videos with the oh so serious voice-over droning on
about how the Rocket is built and tested. But hang on a minute.
What are they doing spooning what looks like jam into the cylinder
heads? And why does every bike need to watch “Blackadder” before
going out onto the test track?
It’s how the engineers at Triumph give the Rocket its character.
English, eccentric and, I should imagine, at 160mph on the
Guildford bypass, fantastic fun.
/Patrick Collister/
rhinosceros? It will provide the same sort of excitement. May even
be quieter too.
Triumph got the name right. This machine does exactly what it
says on the tin. Its 2.3 litre engine will propel you from 0 to
oblivion in seconds.
How do you set about advertising such a monster? If you tell
people anything about its insane power, the killjoys will come after
you with big sticks. Already the advertising code of practice forbids
car-makers from using speed as a selling point. And, on top of
that, there are rumblings in the European parliament about
banning all car advertising entirely. Nasty things that pollute and
kill.
Don’t forget, these are the people who also spend their time issuing
directives about the appropriate curvature of imported bananas.
What E3 Media, Triumph’s agency, have done in commissioning
the film from RubberRepublic is turn to positioning strategy No.
32, the Disarm Through Charm route.
You deflect your critics by poking fun at yourself. If the bike is over
the top then the advertising should be equally silly. It’s a ‘we know
that you know that we know’ sort of tactic. Bikers will get it
immediately and appreciate the irony. The message is cute though
the intentions behind it are anything but.
The film itself is a pastiche, taking the mickey out of countless
corporate videos with the oh so serious voice-over droning on
about how the Rocket is built and tested. But hang on a minute.
What are they doing spooning what looks like jam into the cylinder
heads? And why does every bike need to watch “Blackadder” before
going out onto the test track?
It’s how the engineers at Triumph give the Rocket its character.
English, eccentric and, I should imagine, at 160mph on the
Guildford bypass, fantastic fun.
/Patrick Collister/
Martin Scorsese & Freixenet
I was in an agency earlier this week and mentioned this
entertaining idea for Freixenet to the creative director.
“We had an idea just like it,” he exclaimed, as if he’d been robbed.
The only trouble is his idea didn’t have a client to buy it whereas
somewhere in Spain, someone did say yes to the concept of Martin
Scorsese shooting the fragments of a Hitchcock movie script that
revolved, loosely, around a key and a bottle of cava. And it can’t
have been easy to buy, either.
For starters, Martin Scorsese wouldn’t have come cheap. And for
another thing, there are no guarantees that something like this will
actually work. Most clients rely on TV advertising because if you
take the size of the audiences and do various sums with the
number of times they will see the ad, then you can predict its
results. Which is a comfort.
Putting a film on the internet and hoping word of mouth will get
people to view it is altogether more risky.
So, whoever you are, Mr. Yes-Let’s-Run-With-It, I salute you for
briefing your agency to think differently and for then actually going
ahead with recommendation.
Coming just as 2007 is about to exit stage right, it is the year’s best
example of branded entertainment. I urge you to go
scorsesefilmfreixenet.com to view the whole 7-minute film.
Scorsese’s performance is terrific. I love his line, “We’re on a
mission”. And the filmic tributes to Hitchcock are a delight.
It’s tribute movie meets mockumentary meets advertising and it is
gloriously effervescent.
Will it win awards? I doubt it, because it doesn’t fit into any of the
categories of most awards shows. Still, I name the marketer who
inspired JWT Madrid to create this film The First Post’s Client of
the Year.
Someone, crack open a bottle of bubbly.
/Patrick Collister/
Nike & Kanye West
Here's a new initiative from Nike in an attempt to influence and be particapatory in the street culture:
Rob Stone runs Cornerstone in New York, a company that
specialises in bringing music and marketing together so both profit
from the association.
“The record business is in trouble,” he says, “But music is thriving.”
The big problem is how to make money out of it, given that about
90% of all music is now downloaded or shared for free?
Well, the only people who seem to have any money these days are
brand owners so the music industry has been finding new and
interesting ways of relieving them of some of it.
Sting’s ‘Desert Rose’ video was a Jaguar ad; Fergie of the Blackeyed
Peas has been commissioned to write a song for a fashionwear
store and Puff Diddy sang ‘Pass the Courvoisier’ but never before
has a branded song been nominated for a Grammy.
Yet that’s what has just happened with ‘Better Than I’ve Ever
Been’. Art and commerce have met in a hip-hop song
masterminded by Cornerstone, featuring rap-meisters Kanye West,
Naz, Rakim and NRS-One, who take it in turns to push the song
along.
If you watch the vid, you may notice a pair of Nikes getting spray-
painted onto a wall and you may hear the lyric about Nike Air
Force Ones, “the hustler shoe/That I am accustomed to.”
The song celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of Air Force Ones
as well as promoting the new, improved versions.
Kanye West may well be “better than I’ve ever been”, but so too are
the shoes. Has this jingle in disguise done anything for Nike?
It’s already had over 3,000 plays on radio and a million Youtube
viewings.
As a result Nike are said to be considereing launching their own
record label. Clearly, bro’, they do think there’s some value to
creating their own audiences rather than buying someone else’s.
/Patrick Collister/
Rob Stone runs Cornerstone in New York, a company that
specialises in bringing music and marketing together so both profit
from the association.
“The record business is in trouble,” he says, “But music is thriving.”
The big problem is how to make money out of it, given that about
90% of all music is now downloaded or shared for free?
Well, the only people who seem to have any money these days are
brand owners so the music industry has been finding new and
interesting ways of relieving them of some of it.
Sting’s ‘Desert Rose’ video was a Jaguar ad; Fergie of the Blackeyed
Peas has been commissioned to write a song for a fashionwear
store and Puff Diddy sang ‘Pass the Courvoisier’ but never before
has a branded song been nominated for a Grammy.
Yet that’s what has just happened with ‘Better Than I’ve Ever
Been’. Art and commerce have met in a hip-hop song
masterminded by Cornerstone, featuring rap-meisters Kanye West,
Naz, Rakim and NRS-One, who take it in turns to push the song
along.
If you watch the vid, you may notice a pair of Nikes getting spray-
painted onto a wall and you may hear the lyric about Nike Air
Force Ones, “the hustler shoe/That I am accustomed to.”
The song celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of Air Force Ones
as well as promoting the new, improved versions.
Kanye West may well be “better than I’ve ever been”, but so too are
the shoes. Has this jingle in disguise done anything for Nike?
It’s already had over 3,000 plays on radio and a million Youtube
viewings.
As a result Nike are said to be considereing launching their own
record label. Clearly, bro’, they do think there’s some value to
creating their own audiences rather than buying someone else’s.
/Patrick Collister/
Barack Obama and The Black Eyed Peas
“When you have the mo, you go.” That’s what Josh Lynam said in
one of the episodes of The West Wing and right now, in the fight
for presidential nomination, momentum is most definitely with
Barack Obama.
This video of a song written by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and
directed by Jesse Dylan, son of Bob, is further evidence that Hillary
Clinton is falling off the pace. What i.am has done is to take
Obama’s speech, when, actually, he lost the New Hampshire
primary and make him sound like a winner. He’s turned a passage
of the speech into the lyrics of a simple song, which he, and several
others, then sing in synch with Obama’s spoken words.
It’s a powerful piece of communication for several reasons.
Firstly, it is one man’s personal idea about what Obama means for
the future of America. Obama himself had nothing to do with it.
The dead hand of a committee could not take the idea and mutilate
it. So, slick though it is, the film has both an artistic and political
integrity about it.
Secondly, it’s inclusive. It says nothing more complicated than
‘Together we can change things around here’ but says it in a way
that is non-confrontational. Thirdly, it is a powerful endorsement
of Obama by some pretty hip characters. True I only recognised
Scarlett Johansson but the more youthful of you will probably also
identify John Legend, Kate Walsh and basketball star Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar.
Compare and contrast these with Hillary Clinton’s ageing celebs,
Madonna, Steven Spielberg and Jack Nicholson.
One-day, Obama’s team will look back and see this video as the
nudge that toppled the vote their man’s way.
It is a triumph of style over substance, selling no more than a
feeling. But what a feeling. A feeling that this is the next President
of the United States.
/Patrick Collister/
one of the episodes of The West Wing and right now, in the fight
for presidential nomination, momentum is most definitely with
Barack Obama.
This video of a song written by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and
directed by Jesse Dylan, son of Bob, is further evidence that Hillary
Clinton is falling off the pace. What i.am has done is to take
Obama’s speech, when, actually, he lost the New Hampshire
primary and make him sound like a winner. He’s turned a passage
of the speech into the lyrics of a simple song, which he, and several
others, then sing in synch with Obama’s spoken words.
It’s a powerful piece of communication for several reasons.
Firstly, it is one man’s personal idea about what Obama means for
the future of America. Obama himself had nothing to do with it.
The dead hand of a committee could not take the idea and mutilate
it. So, slick though it is, the film has both an artistic and political
integrity about it.
Secondly, it’s inclusive. It says nothing more complicated than
‘Together we can change things around here’ but says it in a way
that is non-confrontational. Thirdly, it is a powerful endorsement
of Obama by some pretty hip characters. True I only recognised
Scarlett Johansson but the more youthful of you will probably also
identify John Legend, Kate Walsh and basketball star Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar.
Compare and contrast these with Hillary Clinton’s ageing celebs,
Madonna, Steven Spielberg and Jack Nicholson.
One-day, Obama’s team will look back and see this video as the
nudge that toppled the vote their man’s way.
It is a triumph of style over substance, selling no more than a
feeling. But what a feeling. A feeling that this is the next President
of the United States.
/Patrick Collister/
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