Is Your Brand This Strong?

As in, does it incite fans to sing about you without you having to pay them to?


... even when you lose and have to stick around the visitor's grounds for a while for safety sake?


Get people passionate about your brand like this, and you've got something.

Google Viral

Part of our prediction with the recent campaign Google launched (see prior post) was that this will create a world of opportunities for others to take the idea and utilize it themselves using Google, of course, as the central character for the action.

To our point, we present the following, which was created by Slate.com, for which an employee's spouse works and discussed said viral idea when she saw the Google Paris spot.

Inspired Work From Google

When you look at the new Yahoo! work, it comes across as ... well ... a little hokey. Sure, it's nice looking, the production is fantastic, etc., but it's a little over the top. Style and no substance.

By contrast, there's the new Google campaign, Search Stories. Innovative, entertaining, and fantastically concepted, they're everything Yahoo! is missing in their own efforts.

In particular, the featured Parisian Love spot is one of the best we've seen in a long time in any category. Beautifully crafted around a simple idea, it's an inspired blend of product, plot, and emotion. Truly fantastic.

Delegation

In reviewing a few videos by large advertising agency owners about some of their business practices, we stumbled onto this one by Adam Goldstein, CEO of Royal Caribbean International.

Although he's talking about internal delegation, it seems the same can be applied to client/agency relationships. Clients want informed people to help them, which involves - among other things - guiding them.

Media As A Source Of Change?

Possibly. And maybe not through the type of thing you'd expect.

For all the negative press that reality shows and the surrounding commercialization of these supposed 'real-life' stories get, it's interesting to see how these shows are viewed in other parts of the world.

And with that, this ...

How To Get Me To Not Buy Microsoft Products

In a lame attempt at coolness, this video has emerged as a part of a viral marketing effort to introduce consumers to the fascinating new Microsoft stores. To their credit, it's been viewed over 740,000 times. Unfortunately for Microsoft, that means a large percentage of 740,000 people who are as impressed with half-hearted 'dancing' as we were.

For the record, I do have a Mac on my desk. Carry it everywhere I go. But I also have a PC. I carry it ... well, when I have to. Actually it looks fairly slick and isn't too bad. But it's not like the other. Functional. Gets the job done, but that's about it ... kind of like the dancing going on here. So in that respect, I guess the video may be spot on.

Here it is. And if you feel like I did after watching, directions to the nearest Apple store can be found here. For a look at one of the original flash mob dancing viral ads (for T-Mobile), click here.



Please tell me they're shouting "mazel tov" and not "Microsoft."

Classic Cingular

When a relative refers to a commercial during a holiday board game, it's gotta be gold. So as an homage to a Cranium clue answered with a nod to an old Cingular spot, here it is ... classic (although not in full, so if anyone has a full version, please let us know).

Oddly enough, there were plenty of pages of people angered over these guys not knowing the lyrics, including ones like this and a Facebook page. Turns out people really do have more time on their hands than it seems.

Ancient Agency Tradition

The holiday season typically rings in an ageless tradition at many old-line agencies ... relaxation.

It's not unusual for many shops to operate with skeleton staffs, or for the truly relaxed ... some actually close completely each year between Christmas and New Years. We're not, so I'm allowed to mock them from afar.

So if you're like us, and you don't have the ability to simply phone it in for the next month or so, I give you a little video inspiration in the way of Ben Harper and Relentless7.

Use it as you're figuring out how to eat the 'we're going to take a break' competitors' collective lunches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt2ftbMjK6M

Brand-By-Brand: The Fast-Food Flow Chart

If you ran into an executive at any of these companies, they'd all argue that they fit in every slot. Everything to everyone, right? In reality, it's just an internal view of a company ... not what the public thinks of them.

This, on the other hand, pretty much nails it ... A veritable blow by blow account of the "fast-food food chain perception spectrum", which I don't think is an actual phrase (any trademark lawyers in the house?).

Click to enlarge.

Brilliant: Volvo S60 Preview Campaign

Beautiful new work in advance of the launch of the Volvo S60, a supposed re-calibration of Volvo design.

The spots are wonderful not just for the subject matter (blind person drawing picture of a car), but because they show someone interacting intimately with the car through touch, in a non-bizarre, weird kind of way. And as in any product purchase, this is an incredibly personal and highly-positive part of the purchasing process (think about non-commodity purchases and how people instinctively touch and hold things they're considering buying when they like them).

Kicked off largely on a Facebook video page, the campaign has a flagship spot, a documentary about the series, and several micro-spots focusing on specific aspects of the car's design.

Captain & NFL. Apparently Not A Good Mix.

Thanks to Pat French for alerting of this last week.

In case you've missed it, it seems that Captain Morgan has been on a double-top-secret mission to enlist NFL players to strike their trademark pose after a touchdown. In doing so, the Captain has promised a $10,000 donation to the Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund, a non-profit organization which helps retired NFL players.

If not brilliant in the fact that someone actually did it, then certainly worthy of praise for the sheer angle-squeezing details of putting this together. The publicity they've garnered has been huge. And by offering ten-large to a charity for it, they've made the NFL look like a poor sport, even though it's a fraction of what that airtime might cost. Best of all, they've also gone into this expecting backlash, and will no-doube make a meal of this for weeks to come.

The anticipated NFL crackdown came quickly following the game, with the pre-requisite fines and new rules. And the Captain was right there with it's own witty comeback that's only extended the life of the celebration.

We're not huge on aggrandizing personal celebrations in sports, but we've got to hand it to the Captain and Brent Celek of the Eagles for putting this out there. With T.O. not catching passes anymore and Chad OchoDon'tCallMeJohnsonCinco distracted with Twitter, we haven't seen this kind of excitement since He Hate Me hung up his XFL jersey. Bet he's got a little Captain in him.

Everlast Print

Cool stuff from Everlast. Proof that less can indeed be more.

Ten Hundred Million Trillion Billion

Being both an advertising and soccer fan, the latest from EA Sports' FIFA 2010 lept off the screen not only for its United, Barça, and Bastian Schweinsteiger references.

Sport aside, it's a fantastically written, poetic spot that builds on the competitiveness that the video game produces ... as anyone who's beaten down or received a beat-down from their brother/friend/mother/teammate can attest.

Spin Around Paris, Anyone?

Talked to someone on Friday about cars, racing, etc. and for some reason, this popped into my head.

C'était un rendez-vous is an eight minute, single-take 1978 short film by Claude LeLouch featuring a then-cutting-edge gyro camera mounted to a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, as it weaves through Paris in the early morning hours.

Subject of much controversy and even more cinematic rip-offs, Rendez-Vous makes appearances periodically in pop-culture every 3-5 years, the latest as a part of a 2007 Snow Patrol video.

More about the film can be found here.

Seriously, Does It Get Any Better Than This?

Who says Social Media is just a time killer? Not me, says I. Not when this shows up in your email:

Now I can ask that ever-important question ... When's the next Inside Al Capone's Vault?

What A Drive

Had this one stowed away on the computer and stumbled on it in-flight here at 35,000 feet. (technology ... what would we do with out it, other than sleep and rest?)

This is one of the all-time, all-time great spots, because it nails what driving a convertible is all about ... top down, night driving, great tunes, good friends (perhaps a romance on board?), and the realization that the journey is truly the best part.

Banner Ads On The Fly

And now for something completely different ...

I think there's a saying for this: Show me my competitors' ads on a fly and I'll show you my branded over-sized fly swatter.

Fantastic Article from Bart Cleveland

As a small agency, we like to hear from other agencies out there fighting the good fight ... showing up day-in and day-out to do great work that will truly move clients' businesses. We know that we don't have the financial support to dive into the expensive coffee every day, but what we lack in caffeine quality, we more than make up for in tenacity and good ol' fashioned blood, sweat, and tears.

Which brings us to a recent post by Bart Cleveland on AdAge's Small Agency Diary, a fixture on our regular reading list (we've cited Bart's posts before). In it, Cleveland focuses on the past as a teller of future stories. In a nutshell, the biggest and best of today - the Goodbys, the Weidens, the Chiats, the Crispins - they all had to start somewhere and usually that somewhere was a small group of people just trying to make their mark as a 'shop'. But they continued to focus on challenging themselves to raise the bar, rather than waiting for clients to demand it, and in doing so, began to build more than agencies. They built legacies.

OK, all maybe a little over the top, yes. But if you're not wildly passionate about this business, you shouldn't be in it. And what you find more often in smaller shops are people who are crazy about what they do and about what they are helping their clients accomplish. Being small gets you closer to the action and in doing so, you understand the relationship between your job and the rest of the company and see it as more than a means to another month's rent or car payment. You see it as being able to really build something and help people on the other end of the phone build something, too ... whether it's their own businesses or careers.

What the people Cleveland refers to in his post have done so well is to simply 'make it happen', time and time again, creatively and consistently. Sure, they've had some luck along the way, and yes, they are all brilliant people. But they don't have a corner on the market of leading revolutions, and it doesn't mean that there's not a storied future yet untold in smaller agencies out there right now. Like ours and like others.

To imagine what's possible in the future requires some occasional retrospection to put things in context, and Bart's post has done a great job at that. We hope you enjoy it as well.

http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=140015

Na, Na, Na, Na-na-na-na, Then Repeat Six Hundred Times.

If there's one thing that marketers tend to be attracted to, it's a fancy chart or graph. But nine times out of ten, it seems to be only the presenter who understands the logic behind all the lines, arrows, and starbursts.

In honor of that, we thought this was a kind of cool. Not all the words, but the general gist to a song that lasts seemingly forever (thus the repeating "na" at the bottom).

Spiderman Shaun & The Rickshaw of Fun

OK, (1) this guy rocks, and (2) it just goes to show that any business can be made fun, interesting, and cool. Two words: Fran. Chise.




In a related "Long-Tail" type story, the second video features a virtually unknown song from the soundtrack of Marked For Death, a 1990 Steven Segal film (uh, no ... we didn't see it either). After seeing the video, we thought the song was kind of cool, looked it up on the web by Googling some of the lyrics, and then bought it via iTunes. The song is Pick Up The Pace by Young MC (of Bust a Move fame). You can save a step by just downloading it here.

Perception

Interesting piece from a recent TED talk by Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy Group Vice Chairman.

A Classic From eBay

For anyone who ever lost a favorite toy, this one's for you.

Brammo & The Electric Motorcycle

How do you build interest in your new niche product with aspirations to go mainstream while not breaking the bank? Easy. You get creative.

Enter Brammo, one of the first mass-market all electric motorcycles and their affinity website, Shockingbarack.com.

The site, launched in the past month, is a virtual travel diary that threads video, blogs entries, and twitter updates of two Brammo riders retracing the journey of the big car executives from Detroit to Washington back when they went to seek more money from the government to keep them afloat. (one rider is from Brammo, the other from their advertising agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky)

Along the way, they've asked for assistance from 'the people' for everything from couches to sleep on to helping them with their massive fuel/power consumption, estimated to be about $4 for the entire journey from Detroit to DC. The result is an entertaining - and enlightening - glimpse at how the bikes work, the efficiency of an electric motorcycle, and a snapshot of how many people are interested in alternatives to the good ol' internal combustion engine.

The name of the site comes from the ultimate goal of the journey, which is to give Barack Obama one of the cycles. Turns out that's not exactly constitutional, which they've realized along the way. However, they've managed to turn it into an entertaining subplots by appealing to the audience to help them with finding a way to circumvent the rules. As they say in a post, 'where there's a law, there's a loophole.' The trials and tribulations are the charm of the site, and why people keep coming back.

Funny, entertaining, and enlightening, the site is a great way to position Brammo and get some exposure at minimal costs for development.

Walk In The Woods + Designing = Good

Nice recent article from 37 Signals blog about designing and taking some time to look around. Enjoy.

A WALK IN THE WOODS CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER DESIGNER

Jason F.
October 19

This weekend I did a quick Q&A session at LessConf via video. Thanks to Allan from Less Everything for making it all work out.

One of the last questions went something like this: “What sort of things outside of design can make you a better designer? What else can inspire you to be a better designer?”

I’m glad someone asked because I’ve been meaning to talk/write about this for a while.

The answer: Nature. Spend some time outside. Take a walk in the woods. Stroll through a prairie. Visit the desert (especially the Sonoran). Climb a hill. Get down on your knees and look at the grass. Plant a garden. No space? Get some plants or flowers and put them on your desk. And if you’re lucky enough to live near botanical gardens, visit a few times a year during peak seasons.

What you’ll experience are ridiculously good designs. Millions of iterations are folded into what you see. Everything is the product of a million successful tries. The colors and shapes and structures and textures are manifestations of survival. If it’s alive it’s good design.

Then look closer. Check out the subtleties. It’s not just green, it’s a dozen shades of green. That red may be orange from a different angle. Then flip it over. There’s a whole new design lesson on the underside.

Explore the seasons. Spring is especially enlightening for designers. It’s redesign season. From brown and dead and woody to green and alive and soft. Colors burst through, new textures emerge. And it’s not just visual. It’s temporal too. Different things popping at different times and in different ways. Each design is an idea. And each one slightly better than last year.

How does this make you a better designer? For one, just spending time around so many things that work will positively influence your design thinking. Some people like surrounding themselves with beautiful objects, furniture, and art. A walk outside is a better value.

You’ll also begin building a deeper understanding and appreciation for subtlety. Nature can be loud, but it usually whispers. You’ll also sharpen your observational skills. Great designers are great observers. You’ll learn more about color than any color wheel or book can teach you. Lastly, you’ll clear your mind and fill it back up at the same time. Very few things can achieve a simultaneous refresh and refill.

Take a walk outside and look around.

Honda: Dream The Impossible

If you haven't already seen any of the videos from Honda's Dream The Impossible documentary series, it's well worth taking the time to explore.

The latest is a seven minute short titled Racing Against Time and focuses on the what happens when people (and companies) are put under pressure to deliver. Featuring Tony Hawk, Honda executives, and two-guys-who-did-something-like-directing-or-writing-Star-Trek, it's an inspirational piece which helps build brand recognition and association for Honda and is also worthy of sharing with your own teams if you're ever looking for something different to fire up the troops.

“Honda’s new doc film, ‘Racing Against Time,’ was developed to share our unique corporate culture rooted in racing, and to inspire people to innovate—no matter what the circumstances,” said Barbara Ponce, Manager of Corporate Advertising for American Honda. “Honda’s racing spirit goes far beyond the race track—it’s a unique approach to business that allows us to face and survive difficulties in the marketplace, including the current environmental and economic challenges.”

Every piece in the series follows a similar pattern of challenges, raising the bar, and being pushed to improve. Borrowing from examples ranging from individual personal business challenges to Honda's own racing team's trials and tribulations, it's a truly brilliant piece of marketing that embraces a powerful opportunity that the web is uniquely qualified to deliver - the marriage of advertising and content.

Below is the aforementioned Racing Against Time. Over the next few weeks, we'll post the remainder of the series, but if you can't wait until them, go to http://dreams.honda.com.

A Cool Reason To Fall Down Stairs

A great little side-project/branding work from Volkswagen with their Fun Theory initaitive, discovering ways to make people be - well, better people - by infusing a little fun into the otherwise mundane.

VW has done a great job over the years cultivating a certain image, with which this initiative fits well. Kind of a mystery then, as to why they're looking for a new agency. But that's for another day.

Most important of all, my air-guitar-fashioned seat belt idea might have some life.

Thanks to Pat French of Quality Carriers for spotting this.

Just Because It's Pretty Amazing

Seriously. Amazing.

Marketing On A Shoesting. Yes ... It Can Be Done

More and more articles like the one linked below are popping up around the web ... tales of companies turning focus from advertising initiatives to engagement initiatives. For many agencies, this is downright frightening news and something that they'll probably not want to share openly with their clients.

But you can't stop progress. And despite those who want to keep the status quo, this is progress.

For the agencies and companies who embrace these changes - or even give a nod to the fact that there's a change in the air - the future will be fun and exciting. Like a lot of other businesses, the ad world as we know it will be significantly different in the coming years. And that, frankly, is the fun part. More than any time in the past, the changing ways that people consume information is creating extraordinary ways to create dialogues with consumers as opposed to shouting at them for attention.

But it's not simply about modifying your strategic approach. Agencies in particular must also realize that other parts of their businesses may need re-examining too, from staffing structures to client compensation plans. Although media will still have a place in the mix well into marketers' futures, we see more and more companies recognizing value in non-traditional areas and by tightening the processes surrounding the interest they've already generated in their product or service. In short, reaching the masses will be about diversification and an increased focus on more efficiently turning interest into a sale.

There is a lot of buzz around certain activities on the street now, most of it online. Much of it will remain buzz, but that's not the point. Should your company be on Twitter? Maybe, maybe not. But there's an advantage to simply participating. By doing so, a company or marketer is conditioning itself to be more nimble and broad-minded than others who ignore it. Although the payoffs may not be immediate, they'll definitely create an advantage in the future. Changing your view of what's possible will lead you to opportunities to find new and better ways to accomplish your goals.

Moving forward, capitalizing on even the smallest advantage is how companies will increase market share and keep spending in check at the same time.

Marketing on $700/Year: http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3id3d058ba458918f0c3913b0b6f73ce88?pn=1

Why Agencies Should Exist (And Why Great Ones Do)

''We're not in the business of keeping the media companies alive. We're in the business of connecting with consumers.''

- Trevor Edwards, Nike corporate VP Global Brand & Category Mgmt.
   From a 2007 NY Times article about the changing world of media, agencies and marketers

At The Corner Of Mad Ave. And Sesame St.

Thanks to Pat French at Quality Carriers who sent this over after he found his son watching it. Sounds like someone may have a future in advertising, although if his parents are fans of Mad Men, they may steer him into something more civilized like becoming a bookie or a loan shark.

Schweppes Short Film Festival

There's a lot of talent out there. No doubt about it. And Schweppes has found a way to help foster it, share it, and do a little subtle product promoting with it.

The Schweppes Short Film Festival is a great way to generate interest through high quality work. And it doesn't do something cheesy like require that the product be featured in every scene and the centerpiece of the story.

One bit of direction the five makers of the films were given was that the movies were to be short, for the web, and contain a "Schhhh Moment." The featured film here - Signs - was one of the biggest hits, and according to viral video statistics was at one point in the top 5 of all viral videos viewed on YouTube. Not bad.

Although the idea is for Schweppes Europe, I'm going to go get a bottle just for the sake of the effort they put into it. Great stuff.


Find more videos like this on AdGabber

The World and Its Usual Stuff - Just Much Cooler

From Audi and Neue Digitale/Razorfish, an interactive 'build-it' tool that practically forces you to love the car you're considering. Sends shivers down your spine when you think about how shopping and the world will change in the coming years.

Starbucks Via - We're Clearing Shelf Space For This

We heard that the only person able to get a complete Starbucks barista kit installed in their home was Tommy Lee. And we don't really have the nerve for that many tattoos or that much makeup, so we're going to have to settle for the next best thing, Starbucks' new Via instant coffee.

Not even on the market for a day, we've already received two jittery thumbs-up from Stopper, our resident coffee guru. Now our challenge will be providing enough hot water to keep him well stocked to percolate.

If you can find some, give it a spin while watching their new ad which is linked below. Frankly, we found it kind of marginal until they threw in the part about the town hall. Well-timed humor.

View the ad here: http://adage.com/brightcove/single.php?title=42488764001

When Cool Becomes Sellable

Great article on washingtonpost.com today. Cool conversation about the emergence of a former niche product into a stylish, in-demand product that will fetch a premium price from people who have no practical use for it: a 'fixie' bike.

In case you're like pretty much everyone else out there and don't know what a 'fixie' is, it's more or less a stripped-down, non-freewheel, non-braked bicycle with a fixed gear setting, which means you have one option ... forward.

The fixie was originally designed as a racing bike for velodromes and served a very particular purpose. Since then, it's emerged as a practical and fashionable bike for city messengers, which if you've ever lived in New York, you've no-doubt been exposed to in an uncomfortably close call or two.

Now, it seems to be taking on hipster-urban-cool status, driven largely by the clean-but-gritty looks of a bike absent of wires, derailleurs, and massive sprockets. In short, it looks really cool. But the use? A little tough on the knees, and doesn't lend itself to dreamy coasts through the meadow ala Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy in Manhattan's Central Park.

Nevertheless, it's showing how a product can lean on its urban-chicness to create a market where none existed. Companies such as Specialized (who bought Globe Bicycles) and Urban Outfitters are hopping on the fixie bandwagon, and are getting top dollar for it, selling the bikes for $500+.

Just goes to show that the right image for a product can mean big bucks. Marketing isn't always about great taglines and money-shots. Sometimes it's more important to let the product create its own message, and then let it take off from there.

Of course, it's just a matter of time until this becomes uncool. But before then, there stands to be a lot of money made by separating people from their money for brakeless, gearless, knee-busting bikes.

The article can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/27/AR2009092703241.html

Bonus points for incorporating the phrase "jump the shark" into the writing.

Happy Birthday, Guinness

Just catching the tail end of the 24th, which is the 250th birthday of Guinness. We figured we couldn't miss it, given that one of our owners is Irish, and that it's a crime in many parts of the world not to honor Guinness in some way on this day.

That being said, here's to the dark, frothy brew that's spawned a million stories and some pretty fantastic advertising, as well. Two of the all-time greatest are below for your weekend consumption, both directed by Jonathan Glazer and both icons in broadcast advertising.

Enjoy, and belated Happy Arthur's Day!

The Future Looks Pretty Slick

Rumor has it that when Coca-Cola asked the designers of their new-generation fountain machines to come up with something new, that they also told them they wanted it to look and feel like a Ferrari.

Seems like someone was listening.

Introducing the new Coca-Cola fountain vending machine, which slickly puts 100 flavors at your fingertips and will no doubt cause longer lines as people marvel over the selection and design. To read more, click here.

Of significant importance is that the machine is also data-linked directly into Coke HQ, so that they number crunchers can get an understanding of trends and adjust flavor offers accordingly. Not a bad system to do new flavor tests on either, huh?

Looking forward to Fanta Limonada. It will save us a trip to Europe just to get one.

Digital Ad Spending Continues To Grow

Interesting news out of WPP company GroupM (no relationship to GROUP1201). Their latest report offers a glimpse into the growth of worldwide online spending, which they expect to grow to 15% of overall ad spend.

What's interesting is not just that this growth is coming from search and other non-display online advertising, or that display advertising itself is not growing on pace with other online marketing strategies. The really fascinating thing is that this study takes into account overall spending of marketers, which as a group, is incredibly large.

So, for smaller advertisers who don't have budgets of say $1 billion+ per year like General Motors, this percentage growth is likely to be even higher than 15% of overall spend. The other thing not mentioned here is that online advertising has traditionally been less expensive, when display advertising is compared to its offline relatives, print and broadcast. We suspect that this revenue discrepancy is also the reason for the 15% not being higher (trading a $10,000 print ad for a $3,000 online ad does not significantly shift the overall percentage of a $100,000,000 budget).

All in all, an interesting report. We'd like to see what the tactical shift is for general advertising, however it can be expressed (units of some sort). Although this is insightful news, I'm not sure if the monetary shift gives due justice to the larger change taking place.

At the very least, it should send a message to marketers still clinging to the notion that online is a future opportunity and not one for today.

A summary of the study can be read here: http://tinyurl.com/mqzueh

One of the Top 3 of All Time

The technology has changed, but this spot from AT&T is still awesome. Absolutely fantastic.

The High Life Revisited

Miller High Life has earned a lot of attention over the past year with its well-received and entertaining spots featuring the lovable High Life delivery guy. In particular, the company's 1-second spot in last year's Super Bowl and all the hype/press coverage surrounding it was an instant hit.

But the work leading up to that spot has been equally impressive, although not as acclaimed. As such, we give you a quick retrospective on spots over the past few years from one of the best beer advertisers in the market.

Enjoy.

You Build It: Vitamin Water & Facebook

In a move that shouts "we completely understand how social media works," Vitamin Water is turning to its fans to help develop an upcoming flavor.

Fan participation of course is not new, but this time it goes way beyond what's been done before, while throwing in a little attitude, humor, and celebrity that makes it truly refreshing.

Here's the 10,000 foot view: Through a combination of social media mechanisms and user input, a new flavor will be born. You name it. You design it. You write the copy for it. Then, you and everyone else on the planet drinks it and your mom gets to send cases of it to her friends asking what drink their kids designed.

The winner will be chosen by none other than 50 Cent and Carrie Underwood, which is an added bonus for all you gangster-country-rap fans.

Looks like a lot of the action doesn't start until 9/14 on the site, but check it out anyway: http://apps.facebook.com/flavorcreator/

OK, This Is Just Funny. Very Funny.

Agency Differentiation

As usual, Bart Cleveland has nailed it with another entry on AdAge's Small Agency Diary. In his most recent post, Cleveland communicates the importance of differentiation - true differentiation - in an industry that is sometimes seen to possess an overabundance of commoditized thinking and a lack of innovation.

More specifically, he outlines the premise that differentiation is about more than cleverly packaging an agency and its services for mass consumption. It's about finding a path for your agency, understanding the values of your clients and prospects, determining whether you can truly help them, keeping to your strategic vision, dedicating yourself to constant innovation in support of it, and being willing to take risks which may include turning down business not suited for your long-term goals. All in all, not an easy thing, but well worth it.

Read the article here: http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=138887

Perspective

Great new spot for HBO, using the theme of changing perspectives. Interesting.



And while we're in the perspective realm ... stumbled on this a few weeks ago. Amazing what a little editing can do to change things.

Johnny Walker: The Walk

What an ad should be.

via shots.net

Great Saab Spot. Seriously.

Gotta be honest here. We thought Saab was pretty much dead. But apparently we're wrong, or at least we were not giving it enough credit.

Even more refreshing ... a bright, imagination-fueled spot from Saab and an even better website. Cool, interactive, well-scored and dare we say plucky, the web presentation may be just enough to make you change your perspective on the ol' Born From Jets image, which was cool at first, but ran its course quickly.

The spot is below, but make sure you check out the website. Click on all the hot-spots. Listen to the tune. Tell people who look at you funny to mind their own business. It's worth a ten-minute time out and you'll be all the better for it because you'll have a nice tune ringing in your head the rest of the day.

Just Plain Funny

For anyone looking for that perfect voice mail message.

IKEA & Verdana, Say It Aint So

Think something 'small' like typography doesn't matter? Then ask the fine people at Swedish furniture seller IKEA if they've received any feedback from their customers on their recent change from the highly stylistic Futura to the Microsoft-created Verdana font.

Why companies do something like this is a mystery, particularly when type plays such a huge role in the company's image (all-text logo, massive billboards, promo call-outs in catalogs, etc.). I'm sure the thought is that it may be an outrage at first, but eventually everyone will forget about it and move on. And honestly, they probably will, with a bit of exposure in the media because of it.

But in IKEA's case, it may really matter. A brand that's built on whimsical style and a half-serious treatment of itself begins to become mainstream when it uses mainstream typography. Have they become the new General Furniture Outlet? Will they can the blue stores and cram them into strip malls? Will I still be able to smell those Swedish sticky buns from a mile away?

Who knows, but the design community is right in their statement that the change to such a common font sends signals that the company is destined to assume a more common path, which runs counter to the reason people go there in the first place.

Don't get us wrong. We use Verdana ourselves for certain projects. It's not evil. But it doesn't work for IKEA . You can get a cheap lamp anywhere. But you can't get one with IKEA's panache. Take that away - one letter at a time - and you change the image of your company.

Our man Don Stoppenbach was responsible for bringing this to our attention. Charming, smart, fontastic.
Well done, Stopper.

Agency New Business Perspective

Great piece this week by Milan Martin in Advertising Age's Small Agency Diary about new business and the importance of understanding clients, their values, their culture, and how those things align with your business.

We've been fortunate enough to win a few accounts over the last couple of weeks. It's been hard work and well earned. More importantly, we've been fortunate enough to win business that's good for the agency and the client because we see a lot of the same business and cultural values in them as we do in ourselves. Just like with our existing clients.

As infered in the article, not all business is good business. If you're not on the same page with a client and they're not on the same page with you, it really is doomed. Doing great work requires being in the trenches. Sometimes it's tough. Things get heated. Looking down the lines and finding you're fighting alongside someone who doesn't understand you or even care to understand you is cause for throwing up a white flag and moving on to the next battle. Best for all parties to understand that up front, right?

Milan's article can be read here: http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=138609

Lil' Bit of Awesomeness

Likely no advertising value whatsoever in this post, so file under "cool stuff" unless you're in the promotions business for head-driven instruments.

This was just really cool. Enjoy.

Think Creativity Doesn't Matter? Think Again.

Stumbled on this last week and thought it was a perfect counter for all the things that lack creativity, thought, and imagination.

Such things run wild in the world today, where design and presentation are relegated to the low-end of business or seen as a frivolity. What's amazing is that this train of thought is entirely counter-productive. As in, why would you spend all of your resources, executive time, hard-costs and other associated money developing a product or service, only to throw a minimum effort behind presenting the culmination of all these efforts?

You shouldn't. In the end, it will cost you more than it saves you. And with that, we give you this.

Chips & Sophomoric Humor. Perfect Combination.

Because nobody really takes themselves too seriously when they're scarfing down a bag of chips, this spot for New Zealand's SKOF may make perfect sense.

Flatulence jokes tend to go far in some crowds, but I'm going to guess they're not angling to become the preferred chip of boardroom lunch-in meetings. Then again, we don't live in New Zealand so who knows.

The spot is a part of a larger campaign that's quite hilarious and feeds a user-submitted video application on their website featuring borderline "talents" of SKOF eaters.

In addition to Ping Pong there's also professionally produced spots like Straightjacket Snooker and Spitball Sniper. Extra points for the uber-appropriate tagline, "Hold Nothing Back."

Give 100%, Get More? What A Deal

Although understandably never able to find their footing like Nike, Adidas has given it a good run in their advertising over the years.

Although our favorite is the now-defunct "Impossible Is Nothing" campaign (poster shown here which sits in my office), they've continued to do good work which unfortunately tends to constantly be overshadowed by their bigger, more famous competitor.

The new campaign? If you give 100%, Adidas will contribute more to your performance. Legally. Kind of like that guy that Barry Bonds gets his "medicine" from, right?

Anyway, great ad and worthy of some attention and containing a lot of star power (albeit mostly international and not as well known in the US, other than Dwight Howard). We're looking forward to seeing the rest of the campaign.

If form follows, there will be continued focus on sport-specific campaigns featured on broadcasts and at events relating to those sports. What Adidas lacks in general market advertising, they more than make up on local levels.

Ya Don't Say

Interesting article in this week's AdWeek about a study from Dynamic Logic regarding the effectiveness of certain size online ads. Whether this concerns your particular business or not, the bigger message is: test, test, test.

For Online Display, Less Can Be More
Aug 20, 2009
- Mike Shields

NEW YORK When it comes to effective Web ads, integration is more powerful than "in your face," at least according to a new report issued by digital marketing researcher Dynamic Logic.

The new report claims that smaller display ads, which appear within a Web page's content, are often more impactful than larger, more intrusive ads that surround content for driving traditional brand metrics such as awareness and purchase intent. Specifically, Dynamic Logic found that in analyzing 2,390 display campaigns over three years, half banners (234 x 60 units) and rectangles (180 x 150) -- placements that are often included in media buys simply to bring down the overall CPM -- were more effective than larger, pricier placements such as leader-boards and skyscrapers.

That finding flies in the face of the current trend among Web publishers and advertisers, who are pushing toward larger, more interruptive online advertising as a way to funnel brand dollars away from TV. Currently, both the Online Publishers Association and the company ShortTail Media are testing several new oversized online ads.

But Dynamic Logic, which for over a decade has researched online ad campaign effectiveness, says that where an ad is placed may be more important than how big it is. "It will be interesting to see how the new, larger ad formats that publishers are beginning to debut will rank next to the more traditional online ad formats," said Ken Mallon, Dynamic Logic's senior vice president of custom solutions. "Based on the current data, bigger doesn't always mean better, but these new ad formats are quite unique, and we look forward to testing them."

Regardless, the researcher found that creative quality and level of sophistication are also key. For example, among the 2,000-plus campaigns it analyzed, rich media ads that featured video excelled in most branding categories, including awareness, brand favorability and purchase intent. Meanwhile, basic Flash ads, perhaps the most common form of display advertising, consistently achieved the lowest scores, per Dynamic Logic's research.

EA Sports: Push

As if the new Madden 10 football game from EA Sports isn't frighteningly realistic enough, now we have the spot promoting it. This type of thing is never gonna happen, but the reality lies in the fact that we've all had that moment where the guy on our team is running the rock and gets stopped a half yard shy of a touchdown or first down, and we all wish we could jump in and help move the pile.

Ironically, this hasn't been a huge problem with WR Larry Fitzgerald, featured here. But we have to guess that if he went up against the Steelers every week, he'd definitely need all the help he could get.

Mad Men: The Return

In cased you missed it, or have been hanging out on a remote island in the south pacific somewhere, Sunday night marked the return of Mad Men, AMC's smash hit about the good-time days of the ad industry and all the seedy extras that apparently are the norm at the fictional agency of Sterling Cooper.

We gotta be honest here. It was a little slow getting off the ground when we first tuned into Season 1. But since then, it's become a favorite. Questionable characters. Heavy day-drinking and smoking. Inappropriate office and marital behavior. For something like this, you usually have to tune into any of the seven thousand reality shows currently airing on tv. But Mad Men pulls it off with something better: characters you can't help but feel for and hope that they'll figure out their issues.

To really get you in the swing of things, the show has created a brilliantly viral companion website, capitalizing on the popularity of the clothes and style of the show. If you haven't seen someone's "Mad Men Yourself" profile picture, you'll certainly be seeing one soon enough. Great way to promote the show and get people to immerse with the tone and style of the show.

Check it out here: http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/

Additional time waster: Want to know which Mad Men character you are? Take this insightful test (I'll send $5 to anyone who gives this to a candidate during an interview). http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/whichmadman

On Personal Brands, Part II, But Funnier

Last week, we posted about personal brands and linked to some reading material we give away at 1201 whenever someone joins the company. We also spotlighted The Hardest Working Man in Show Business ... Soul Brother Number One ... James Brown, as the poster-child for cultivating and maintaining a strong personal brand.

We'd like to amend our entry and submit to you the one, the only, Mr. Chuck Norris: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com

A friend sent us this link (thanks, Pat Connick). Never has a suggestion been more quickly turned into a post than this one. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll continue to respect Chuck Norris appropriately.

While you're there, you can also build your own menacing t-shirt, which means you can kind of be like Chuck Norris, but nothing like Chuck Norris. We can all dream.

Voice-Over Also Makes A Great Ringtone

Rates highly on the scale of funniest commercials of all time. Particularly hilarious when the stain gets belligerent at the end. Take 30 seconds from your day and enjoy. You deserve it.

An Ad Movie? Shouldn't It Be Sponsored?

Just when you thought you couldn't get enough advertising, comes Art & Copy, a new documentary featuring the titans of creativity. We can't wait.