The Big Won (www.thebigwon.com) is an online database that ranks agencies and campaigns around the world by the quantity and the quality of awards they win.
A quick poke around the data reveals that there are some outstanding agencies in Denmark. Hjaltelin, Stahl & Co, for instance, won a fair number of Direct awards in 2008 for City Post with ‘Log Cabin’.
In 2009, however, only Robert Boisen and Saatchi & Saatchi Copenhagen feature in The Big Won’s rankings of the best of Direct. Robert Boisen’s “Gas Station” idea for Suzuki won Bronze at Cannes but it could win so much more – if they entered it.
Has the recession hit Danish agencies so hard they can’t afford to enter international shows? Or is it simply that you Danes just don’t care about awards? Or maybe it’s because no-one knows what is direct any longer? Selling fuel at a 30% discount, for instance. It’s not an ad, it hasn’t got a coupon, but it directly helped increase sales of Suzuki cars by 12.5%.
So, take a look at your recent work. It may be more Direct than you think. And enter it for The Caples Awards because Direct is no longer just 'shit that folds' and goes in an envelope. It’s anything that provokes a response.
/Patrick Collister/
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Buying humour
David Ogilvy did not like funny television commercials. He said, “No-one buys from a clown.”
He liked to construct rational messages which drew people in with charm and wit, yes, but which persuaded them to part with their hard-earned cash by giving darned good reasons for doing so.
The trouble is, human beings aren’t really rational.
Ask any husband about his wife. Or any wife about her husband.
People do things for reasons they often can’t explain even to themselves. Often this is because there has been a huge emotional response to a situation; to a person; hey, even to an advertising message.
Coca-Cola was the first mega-brand to tap into this when it got a United Nations of teenagers to sing “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” way back in the 1970’s.
That was advertising with a big mushy heart.
But advertising can work just as effectively when it’s just plain funny.
A commercial that makes you laugh out loud is a brand saying, “We’d like you to like us. And we know we are interrupting you here so we’ll try to be as neighbourly about it as possible.”
So here are a couple of recent neighbourly ads. One from Doug Agency Toronto for the Canadian Short Film Festival and one from Forsman and Bodenfors, Stockholm, for Tele-2.
He liked to construct rational messages which drew people in with charm and wit, yes, but which persuaded them to part with their hard-earned cash by giving darned good reasons for doing so.
The trouble is, human beings aren’t really rational.
Ask any husband about his wife. Or any wife about her husband.
People do things for reasons they often can’t explain even to themselves. Often this is because there has been a huge emotional response to a situation; to a person; hey, even to an advertising message.
Coca-Cola was the first mega-brand to tap into this when it got a United Nations of teenagers to sing “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” way back in the 1970’s.
That was advertising with a big mushy heart.
But advertising can work just as effectively when it’s just plain funny.
A commercial that makes you laugh out loud is a brand saying, “We’d like you to like us. And we know we are interrupting you here so we’ll try to be as neighbourly about it as possible.”
So here are a couple of recent neighbourly ads. One from Doug Agency Toronto for the Canadian Short Film Festival and one from Forsman and Bodenfors, Stockholm, for Tele-2.
Spam on the pavement
We’ve seen more and more advertising take to the streets in recent years. Literally. Guerilla marketing, experiential communications, call it what you will, it is basically what happens when you create some sort of a branded stunt which, you hope, will get the punters to notice you, talk about you and maybe even try you.
Few products come as far down the scale of ‘important to my life’ than kitchen towel. Is it possible to establish a brand in such a low-interest category?
Brawny, another big US kitchen towel maker, had a damn good go with brawnyacademy.com, a series of reality TV documentaries which aired online. And now here’s Bounty trying to create a bit of a stir in New York with a giant cup of coffee spilled and in Los Angeles with a massive melting ice-lolly.
There’s a terrible danger that as agencies pursue what are now called ‘engagement strategies’, all they really do is make a nuisance of themselves.
Even if it’s intended to be playful and fun, if an idea isn’t both relevant and branded it is no more than street spam.
Anyone for tennis?
Technology isn’t just making possible completely new ways of communicating with people, but new ways of making brands become useful friends at the same time.
Take the iPhone app.
Kraft’s iFood application got into Apple’s Top 10 apps at the beginning of the year. Not bad, given that they were charging 99c for it in the USA.
Imagine that, people actually paying to interact with your brand?!
Okay, it’s true that the iPhone has 98% penetration among advertising creative directors and only 4% penetration of the total American mobile market but what Apple did was to force the other cellphone manufacturers into seeing that apps are going to be as important to their businesses going forward as texting was.
So here’s IBM and their agency Ogilvy London creating a stunning new app for visitors to this year’s Wimbledon to download to their mobiles.
As you wander through the crowds, you hear a noise. Point your phone and IBM Seer tells you why the crowd roared, what’s happening, who’s dropped a set etc.
Want to know where the toilets are? Seer shows you the way, helpfully telling you there’s a half-hour queue at the ladies’.
It pulls in all the twittering of the players and the pundits so you can join the debates. Is Federer on his last legs? (No) Has Andy Murray got what it takes? (No) Is this a really cool tool for tennis nuts to use, which will make them think both admiringly and fondly of Big Blue? (Yes)
Take the iPhone app.
Kraft’s iFood application got into Apple’s Top 10 apps at the beginning of the year. Not bad, given that they were charging 99c for it in the USA.
Imagine that, people actually paying to interact with your brand?!
Okay, it’s true that the iPhone has 98% penetration among advertising creative directors and only 4% penetration of the total American mobile market but what Apple did was to force the other cellphone manufacturers into seeing that apps are going to be as important to their businesses going forward as texting was.
So here’s IBM and their agency Ogilvy London creating a stunning new app for visitors to this year’s Wimbledon to download to their mobiles.
As you wander through the crowds, you hear a noise. Point your phone and IBM Seer tells you why the crowd roared, what’s happening, who’s dropped a set etc.
Want to know where the toilets are? Seer shows you the way, helpfully telling you there’s a half-hour queue at the ladies’.
It pulls in all the twittering of the players and the pundits so you can join the debates. Is Federer on his last legs? (No) Has Andy Murray got what it takes? (No) Is this a really cool tool for tennis nuts to use, which will make them think both admiringly and fondly of Big Blue? (Yes)
What do they know in Cannes?
TV may be fragmenting but it is still capable of delivering massive audiences. Sport, for instance, still gets millions of us tuning in for the big (and even the not-so-big) matches.
Rather than buy an expensive 30-second spot in any of the major Euro 2008 soccer games, what Robert Boisen did for Puma sportswear was to steal those audiences to sell Puma’s X-Ray collection.
Four top players – Mauro Camoranesi, Freddy Ljunberg, Nicholas Anelka and Alexander Frei – were given ‘tattoos’ to wear when they went out to play. Curiosity did the rest. Fans began to notice the tattoos of bones and started searching online for explanations.
Soon they found xrayplayers.com where they were able to get under the players’ skins, literally, finding out hidden stories about their lives and their careers.
Just as the X-Ray range was designed with the inside on the outside, so the idea was to do the same with the stars. Get to know them inside out. More than just a nice bit of brand building, the website was also transactional. You could click on any item the stars were wearing and get a price for it – and buy it online.
A cool idea that turned four players into mobile posters in front of an audience of at least 100 million at a fraction of the cost of a standard TV ad.
So why didn’t it win an award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival last week? It certainly deserved to.
Probably because, these days, to get a Gold at a major advertising show, your submission has to be a brilliant bit of advertising in its own right. At Cannes, you now have to provide a short video explaining the problem, the idea and giving some indication of the results.
Robert Boisen seem to have put all their effort into producing a great campaign for their client rather than into producing a great video for themselves.
Rather than buy an expensive 30-second spot in any of the major Euro 2008 soccer games, what Robert Boisen did for Puma sportswear was to steal those audiences to sell Puma’s X-Ray collection.
Four top players – Mauro Camoranesi, Freddy Ljunberg, Nicholas Anelka and Alexander Frei – were given ‘tattoos’ to wear when they went out to play. Curiosity did the rest. Fans began to notice the tattoos of bones and started searching online for explanations.
Soon they found xrayplayers.com where they were able to get under the players’ skins, literally, finding out hidden stories about their lives and their careers.
Just as the X-Ray range was designed with the inside on the outside, so the idea was to do the same with the stars. Get to know them inside out. More than just a nice bit of brand building, the website was also transactional. You could click on any item the stars were wearing and get a price for it – and buy it online.
A cool idea that turned four players into mobile posters in front of an audience of at least 100 million at a fraction of the cost of a standard TV ad.
So why didn’t it win an award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival last week? It certainly deserved to.
Probably because, these days, to get a Gold at a major advertising show, your submission has to be a brilliant bit of advertising in its own right. At Cannes, you now have to provide a short video explaining the problem, the idea and giving some indication of the results.
Robert Boisen seem to have put all their effort into producing a great campaign for their client rather than into producing a great video for themselves.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
T-Mobile. T-ranscending media.
What we see increasingly in the world of marcomms is the rise and rise of the branded event. It’s advertising that transcends media.
Take the HBO ‘Voyeur’ campaign from BBDO New York. It was a film projected onto a wall which drew people into an online experience, which then got fed back to a wider audience through TV advertising.
It was difficult for awards juries to say exactly what sort of an idea it was so they gave it prizes for Outdoor, Digital, Direct Marketing, TV advertising and Media Innovation.
Other similar ideas were Shackleton’s ‘Monument’ for the Spanish Association of Gynaecologists and Fallon’s ‘Foam’ for Sony cameras. These are ideas that start with live events which become online content, inviting people in to both share and grow the experience.
The first campaign of this sort that we’ve seen this year is from the UK, the T-Mobile Liverpool Street extravaganza. On Monday January 19th, 316 actors and T-Mobile staff sprang into life at the railway station and began a Fame Academy routine that startled and entertained the few legitimate train passengers who were milling around. The whole flashmob routine was filmed and broadcast as a commercial the next day, taking over an entire break on Channel 4.
Already on Youtube the movie has had over 1 million views. There are also clips captured by punters who were there on their camera-phones. And now at Liverpool Street station the digital poster sites there are playing those clips back to the people who created them. What’s more, the new campaign theme of ‘Life’s for sharing’ has now been sold into their own people, who were actively encouraged to be a part of the event.
Clever stuff from Paul Silburn, the creative tyro at Saatchi & Saatchi, London.
Take the HBO ‘Voyeur’ campaign from BBDO New York. It was a film projected onto a wall which drew people into an online experience, which then got fed back to a wider audience through TV advertising.
It was difficult for awards juries to say exactly what sort of an idea it was so they gave it prizes for Outdoor, Digital, Direct Marketing, TV advertising and Media Innovation.
Other similar ideas were Shackleton’s ‘Monument’ for the Spanish Association of Gynaecologists and Fallon’s ‘Foam’ for Sony cameras. These are ideas that start with live events which become online content, inviting people in to both share and grow the experience.
The first campaign of this sort that we’ve seen this year is from the UK, the T-Mobile Liverpool Street extravaganza. On Monday January 19th, 316 actors and T-Mobile staff sprang into life at the railway station and began a Fame Academy routine that startled and entertained the few legitimate train passengers who were milling around. The whole flashmob routine was filmed and broadcast as a commercial the next day, taking over an entire break on Channel 4.
Already on Youtube the movie has had over 1 million views. There are also clips captured by punters who were there on their camera-phones. And now at Liverpool Street station the digital poster sites there are playing those clips back to the people who created them. What’s more, the new campaign theme of ‘Life’s for sharing’ has now been sold into their own people, who were actively encouraged to be a part of the event.
Clever stuff from Paul Silburn, the creative tyro at Saatchi & Saatchi, London.
How observant are you?
No-one is entirely sure what makes a piece of video go viral. Some agencies think it’s got to be a bit naughty (the boys behind the Fleggaard video) and some think it’s got to be entertaining:
Most, however, simply can’t predict what will happen. Russell Davies, the brilliant commentator on all things cyber (russelldavies.typead.com) has written that many companies would be better off hiring more people to talk to consumers one to one than running ad campaigns on TV.
And Transport for London seem to have been listening. They seem to have someone on the payroll whose job it is to surf the net, plugging TfL’s latest video wherever he goes. His job is to go out and make audiences. Which is interesting.
He’s cheaper than a network spot and he seems to be doing his job pretty well. So on his behalf, have a look at the video here and then go to www.dothetest.com.
Here you will find a piece of film that has gone wildly viral not just thanks to Martin Uttley but because it is amazing.
Most, however, simply can’t predict what will happen. Russell Davies, the brilliant commentator on all things cyber (russelldavies.typead.com) has written that many companies would be better off hiring more people to talk to consumers one to one than running ad campaigns on TV.
And Transport for London seem to have been listening. They seem to have someone on the payroll whose job it is to surf the net, plugging TfL’s latest video wherever he goes. His job is to go out and make audiences. Which is interesting.
He’s cheaper than a network spot and he seems to be doing his job pretty well. So on his behalf, have a look at the video here and then go to www.dothetest.com.
Here you will find a piece of film that has gone wildly viral not just thanks to Martin Uttley but because it is amazing.
The joy of shaving
Recently we were working on a project that involved shaving. A casual search in Youtube came up with this gem made by Lee Rubenstein.
Compare and contrast with Gillette’s recent TV ad. Roger Federer, Tiger Woods and Thierry Henry poncing around in black suits. Campaign Magazine in the UK voted it Turkey of the Year.
The amateur film has more wit, more surprise and more point than the spot that cost a million.
If an ad is rubbish, there’s every chance people will believe the product is rubbish too.
We are getting used to what used to be trusted brands becoming untrustworthy. Mercedes make cars that fall over, Ford make cars that have to be recalled because they crash, Nestle milk substitutes turn out to be harmful to babies. Cadbury’s CEO, Todd Stitzer, really thought that salmonella in his chocolate was not a problem.
What saved his brand from ruin was a gorilla on drums. Gillette need to find some charm as well. At the moment, every ad they run reveals the heartlessness of the organisation. In response, people are turning to brands that appear to have some sort of integrity. King of Shaves, for instance.
Last year, around $470 billion was spent on advertising that was somewhere between okay and appalling. That’s $470 billion which might actually be undermining the very brands that have been investing in communications.
At Adcademy we applaud creativity. Not because it’s nice to have but because
In these times of consumer opt-out it is essential. Creative brands want to touch people by sharing stuff – even if it’s just sharing a laugh.
Lee Rubenstein is a giver. Gillette, however, are on the take.
Compare and contrast with Gillette’s recent TV ad. Roger Federer, Tiger Woods and Thierry Henry poncing around in black suits. Campaign Magazine in the UK voted it Turkey of the Year.
The amateur film has more wit, more surprise and more point than the spot that cost a million.
If an ad is rubbish, there’s every chance people will believe the product is rubbish too.
We are getting used to what used to be trusted brands becoming untrustworthy. Mercedes make cars that fall over, Ford make cars that have to be recalled because they crash, Nestle milk substitutes turn out to be harmful to babies. Cadbury’s CEO, Todd Stitzer, really thought that salmonella in his chocolate was not a problem.
What saved his brand from ruin was a gorilla on drums. Gillette need to find some charm as well. At the moment, every ad they run reveals the heartlessness of the organisation. In response, people are turning to brands that appear to have some sort of integrity. King of Shaves, for instance.
Last year, around $470 billion was spent on advertising that was somewhere between okay and appalling. That’s $470 billion which might actually be undermining the very brands that have been investing in communications.
At Adcademy we applaud creativity. Not because it’s nice to have but because
In these times of consumer opt-out it is essential. Creative brands want to touch people by sharing stuff – even if it’s just sharing a laugh.
Lee Rubenstein is a giver. Gillette, however, are on the take.
AKQA's genius jingle
Most agency Christmas cards are crap.
This is usually because the approval process is unbelievably painful. More people get involved than would do on the client side buying even a major TV campaign.
For agencies desperate to show what they can do, it’s a creative opportunity wasted.
Last year, Shackleton, Madrid, managed to win awards around the world with their card.
They figured that their clients would either want a traditional ham or they’d like something shiny and tecchy. So they decided to give them both. The i-Ham, a brilliant pastiche of Apple design and finest Spanish porker.
This year, the one electronic card that stands out above a largely disappointing inbox, is AKQA’s offering. I hope it leads to some nice presents at The Big Awards, Cannes, etc.
This is usually because the approval process is unbelievably painful. More people get involved than would do on the client side buying even a major TV campaign.
For agencies desperate to show what they can do, it’s a creative opportunity wasted.
Last year, Shackleton, Madrid, managed to win awards around the world with their card.
They figured that their clients would either want a traditional ham or they’d like something shiny and tecchy. So they decided to give them both. The i-Ham, a brilliant pastiche of Apple design and finest Spanish porker.
This year, the one electronic card that stands out above a largely disappointing inbox, is AKQA’s offering. I hope it leads to some nice presents at The Big Awards, Cannes, etc.
Suck on this from Orange
How do you get guys who are into football to sign up for your results service? Turn to a rugby player, obviously.
Orange in France, through agency Buzzman, created a viral film in which French rugby legend Sebastian Chabal lines up to kick a goal. As you watch the video, suddenly Chabal stops and reaches into his pocket for his mobile ‘phone. To your amazement, it is YOUR mobile that he is calling.
“I have doubts,” Chabal tells you. “Help me by telling me where I should direct my kick.” You are shown how to use the numbers on your phone to direct him. Kapow.
And then you think it’s so cool you mail it on to a dozen of your friends, thus allowing Orange to capture over 1 million names, e-mail addresses and ‘phone numbers.
Incidentally, if you press the number 5 to help Chabal score, he doesn’t do what you might expect him to. This really intriguing use of mobile marketing to sell a mobile service was a worthy winner of the Grand Cristal du Marketing at the Meribel Advertising Festival and is a pointer to things to come. Respect to Buzzman.
Orange in France, through agency Buzzman, created a viral film in which French rugby legend Sebastian Chabal lines up to kick a goal. As you watch the video, suddenly Chabal stops and reaches into his pocket for his mobile ‘phone. To your amazement, it is YOUR mobile that he is calling.
“I have doubts,” Chabal tells you. “Help me by telling me where I should direct my kick.” You are shown how to use the numbers on your phone to direct him. Kapow.
And then you think it’s so cool you mail it on to a dozen of your friends, thus allowing Orange to capture over 1 million names, e-mail addresses and ‘phone numbers.
Incidentally, if you press the number 5 to help Chabal score, he doesn’t do what you might expect him to. This really intriguing use of mobile marketing to sell a mobile service was a worthy winner of the Grand Cristal du Marketing at the Meribel Advertising Festival and is a pointer to things to come. Respect to Buzzman.
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