Advertising

Content needs to be fresh, timely and relevant if it is going to succeed in todays cluttered digital world.  Some brands get this, many many brands don’t.  One that does is Oreo’s, we saw that during the Superdomes blackout at the Super Bowl and we see it here with this awesome casestudy called The Oreo Daily Twist.  I urge any marketer involved in content to watch this immediately.

Read more…

Who doesn’t love Coca Cola’s Happiness Project?  It’s one of the all time great creative platforms that time and time again delivers exceptional ideas.  The latest, a Small World Vending Machines again hacks the traditional vending machine creating a cool interactive experience where Coke lovers from different parts of the world connect to unlock some free Coke.  The project hasn’t been launched yet as far as I can tell but expect some it this year.

Read more…

Well plans to, I don’t believe this has actually been attempted yet.  This ‘Search Engine Ad’ is an interesting concept that would take some serious SEO skills to deliver, even just for an hour and likely only for a few people.  That said it’s a truly VW idea, some of the work coming from the auto maker in its partner agencies has been top shelf.  There is the awesome Smileage App which will hopefully become a reality, the VW Street Quest campaign from South Africa and these mad voice activated banners to promote safe driving!

Read more…

Yup, Google have made a talking shoe, aka a smart sneaker with personality that can broadcast its story to the web.  It may seem totally ridiculous but its part of a new arts project - ”Art, Copy, Code” – which aims to breathe a social, life-like experience into everyday objects.

Read more…

Zuck and the Facebook crew have been tinkering again.  This time the Facebook news feed has been placed under the spotlight with a complete redesign.  The reason?  Clutter, and being honest the news feed was a pretty horrible experience.  I never once managed to get my head around why I was expected read stories, top stories and real time stories.  Surely the premise of having 3 separate news feeds bundled together in one was counter intuitive to what Facebook was striving to achieve with its ranking algorithm in putting the most valuable content front and center.  Anyway, the design changes look pretty strong in my opinion, the clutter is gone, the content pops off the page and I’m sure from a user perspective people will begin to enjoy the more streamlined experience.

But what if you are a brand who has spent big coin building out a brand page?  Well on the surface it appears you are f*cked!  Sorry, let me rephrase, your f*cked if you don’t have a big marketing budget ready to spend on pushing you ‘advercontent’ out through the news feed on a daily basis.  This actually feels a little backward, remember when Yahoo! was focusing on monitising the biggest brands via there search engine?  Then Google came along and monitised the long tail and the rest is history.  This feels very similar.  The big brands will invest, the 1000′s of smaller brands most probably won’t. What are your thoughts?  For a publicly listed organisation Facebook certainly likes to keep fussing with its core revenue stream!

Read more…

It’s Super Bowl XVIIXVLXX or something like that.  It’s the USA’s largest sporting event and the annual showcase for the most creative minds in the business.  In the same way the 49’s and Raven will be judged on the pitch creative agancies and brands alike will be judged in the ad breaks, and at $4m US per 30 seconds you better be up to the task.  So in the event you don’t care much for the NFL and just want to get stuck into the advertising here are 10 Super Bowl ads to watch out for.

Samsung – “El Plato Supreme”

Volkswagen – “Get In. Get Happy.”

Coca Cola – “Mirage”

Doritos – “Goat 4 Sale”

Toyota – “Wish Granted”

Pepsi Next – “Party”

Budweiser – “Brotherhood”

Axe Apollo – “Lifeguard”

Go Daddy – “Perfect Match”

Kia – “Space Babies”

Read more…

Here’s a great little summary of remarkable marketing from HubSpots Director of Brand & Buzz, Marta Kagan.  It’s easy to forget some of the exceptional work that has happened in our (advertising) industry.  We are always so focussed on whats next that we miss the opportunity to learn from our past.  My pick is #2, imagine if a client came to you with a budget of $22,000.  What would you do?  Scoff?  Laugh at them? Or go and produce a piece of content that changed popular culture, film making and generated $250,000,000 in revenue?  Yea, exactly, you’d laugh at them!

Read more…

Yep, you read the title right (hopefully), Havana Club are running a mega competition offering 1 lucky winner the chance to travel the world, for 1 year / 12 months / 365 days / 8,765 hours / 525,949 minutes…you get the picture.  Just head over to their Facebook Page or go straight to the App here for your chance to enter.  You’ll need to be prepared to pull together a 60 second video, shamelessly beg, steal and borrow social votes then dress yourself up for a little interview with the head honcho’s, but should you make it through and win you’ll have the absolute prize of a lifetime, the chance to enjoy the Havana Club Gap Year.

Read more…

I love it when a organisation gets behind a good cause.  It makes the world a slightly better place and is certainly a big incentive for many consumers to interact with the brand.  Here is a great example from Durex.  For every tweet using the hashtag #1share1condom (up to 2.5m condoms) Durex will don’t a condom to a charity helping to fight the spread of HIV.  If you haven’t then get tweeting, World AIDS Day is December 1st…or tomorrow!

Read more…

Mercedes-Benz felt a standard TVC wasn’t enough for the launch of its new A-Class so decided to integrate twitter into its campaign and offer viewers a chance to determine the ads outcome. To make the idea work Mercedes shot a series of spots that aired during the X-Factor, after the first ad was aired twitter users could vote for what actions the central characters in the ads should perform next via the hashtag #YOUDRIVE. The next ad was revealed in the following break and so on until the grand finale, when the whole user generated story was shared in one mammouth ad hit! The idea is by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and featured professional driver and a musician Kane Robinson. Check out their YouTube channel to see all the content.