Secret Design History of 12 Famous Brands

From Fast Company. Very cool.

Update Post: The Power Of The Unexpected

Interesting update to our July 22 post, Passed On: The Power Of The Unexpected. Seems the wedding video featured in the post has gained quite a bit of popularity. (No doubt because of our post, right?)

Since the dancing couple uploaded their Chris Brown inspired wedding entrance on July 19th, the video has received 11+ million (MILLION!) views. The couple has also been asked to appear on Good Morning America, the Today show, and a host of others, although a recent article on CNN chronicles the predicted struggle with their newly found fame. (Can someone say "Susan Boyle"?)

Nevertheless, the rise of their video through pop culture is something traditional television media executives would kill for, although they're hard pressed to find a way to do themselves. Of course, the couple had one advantage over the networks: They did it for fun, not for money. Genuine excitement will trump the manufactured version every time.

One negative note ... the couple disabled YouTube's embedding feature, which really just lame. If you're going to put your video on YouTube, don't get all high and mighty about allowing people (like us) to embed it on our blogs. Besides, we'll just find it somewhere else and embed it anyway, which is exactly what we did below (Thanks, brandokelly).

It's a given that this idea will be copied ad nauseam. If you're at such a wedding, just smile and pretend it's original.

UPDATE TO UPDATE: By clicking on the video below, you'll see that the previously affable Heinz couple has now decided to copyright, seal, protect, and otherwise lock everyone out of sharing their video. Accordingly, our opinion of their effort has followed this path:

1) Video posted: Cool, Fun, Awesome
2) Video having sharing locked: Uncool, but ok because we could get it from someone else.
3) Copyrighting video and eliminating sharing: Lame.

We look forward to not seeing anything from the Heinz family in the future. To view the uber-protected video, click here. Act now. The way it's going, you may need to donate a kidney to view it in the future.

Tinkering School

Saw this on TED. It's about kids, but bears a striking resemblance to the processes of advertising.

An Expression of Joy

We ran across this campaign for the BMW Z4 roadster several months back, when a gatefold of the "making" of the ad popped out of an over-crowded magazine. The premise was dazzling, the setting was cool, the product was slick but not overhyped, and the characters were top-shelf (Dennis Hopper was part of the concepting team).

Through a combination of print, :60 and :30 second spots, a feature on HD Network, and a slick affinity site, www.expressionofjoy.com, BMW's created an uber-cool, ultra-hip brand identity campaign that really engages and promises to keep people's radars up for the Z4 if they're ever in the market for one.

Wanna sell more stuff? Do direct response. But also find a way to tell a story and make your product/service/widget the center of attention in a non-cheesy sales-ploy kind of way. If you build it ... and it's cool, people will come. And they'll engage with your brand. It's up to you to get them to buy after that, but you'll have a much easier time of it than you would if they hadn't hung out with you for a while.

RIP, Gidget

Big loss today. Gidget - no, not the surfing one - the lovable Spanish-speaking, taco-crunching chihuahua made famous in Taco Bell spots has ... one moment ... passed. Second perhaps only to Spuds McKinsey in terms of tv spokesdog pitchmen/women (?), he had everyone saying "Yo Quiero" something and thinking it was funny for a while.

Gidget, RIP good friend. You made a nation believe they actually knew Spanish, if only for a moment.

Passed On: The Power Of The Unexpected

Much thanks to Tom Martin who pointed us to this great blog post on Outspoken Media's site, which we've kindly copied below for your enjoyment. Sure it's not our traditional style to re-post from other sites, but this is a good one. Maybe not a pure advertising post, but one that will get you thinking ... and smiling.

----------------------------------------
The Power of The Unexpected
by Lisa Barone on 07/22/2009

Those of you who find me a bit wordy (looking at you, Whalen) are going to get a break today. I was struggling for an idea for a post all morning. Frustratingly struggling, in fact. I even called some people to vent about it. And then I came across the video embedded below via Twitter.

Watch it. You might cry. You may get up and dance. You may break into instantaneous giggle fits. You may even be slightly horrified. But while you’re watching and tapping your feet, notice the look in the attendees’ eyes. Hear their laughs. Look at the faces of the bride and everyone else involved. Feel what’s happening in that room.

That’s what happens when you do something people aren’t expecting. When you don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the pomp and circumstance of it all. When you finally stop taking yourself so seriously. When you embrace the moment, remember what life used to feel like and go for it.

Your customers will probably expect you to act a certain way today. The same old greetings, the same service, the same old promises, etc. Maybe today you should surprise them. Answer the phone differently. Offer them something extra. Show them another side of you. Let yourself get carried away and swept up.

Most people wouldn’t expect me to post such a short post. What do people expect you NOT to do? Prove them wrong and surprise them into smiles.

[Thanks to Kasia Fink and Kate Morris for tweeting the link to the video and for making me smile to the point of tears.]
----------------------------------------

Spot on, Lisa.

The Story of Just Do It

The origination of a great line... as told by Dan Wieden of Wieden & Kennedy fame, as in guys-who-created-Nike fame.

Big fan of Nike's advertising and always have been, but I've never known where the line Just Do It comes from, perhaps one of the most well known slogans, mantras, taglines of all times. That is, I didn't know where it came from until I saw this:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1315793539?bclid=1278020807&bctid=24387615001

Quick side story: A guy I used to work for told me about a young designer/copywriter who came in to interview for a job. His portfolio was amazing, and included some of the earliest and most iconic Nike work. When the interviewer asked the guy if he really did all of the Nike work, the designer simply replied, "No, but I could have if I was working there at the time." Classic comeback and one that the interviewer actually thought highly of, given the originality and guts (or stupidity) of the entire episode.

So now you know where the eponomous Nike tagline came from. And at your next party, you can be the bigshot know-it-all. Just make sure you know who Gary Gillmore was.

The Good and Not So Good Follow-Ups

First the bad news because it's short, although not so sweet. Remember the post we did about a clever Madsen Bicycles giveaway? Yeah, we lost. Oh well, guess we can have that intern stop standing at the bike rack reserving the spot all day.

Now for the good.

How about this campaign extension from the Heineken Let A Stranger Take You Home spot we posted about in June? Turns out someone noticed that over 300,000 people watched the ad on YouTube and suddenly people were belting out Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" song, which is featured in it.

Not content to simply pat themselves on their back for small-screen excellence, a follow-up "behind the scenes" video was released two months later on YouTube, which is accessable from the green promotional bar that now appears on the spot. But that's not all.

Users watching the "making" video can then send a text and receive a custom ringtone that the Biz created for the effort, playing off the lyrics of the original song.

We tried it. It was kind of botched up, but we eventually got the ring tone. Even so, it was cool to see how it all worked, and a nice illustration of how something can be extended into new areas. Our only beef is that a key lyric on the ringtone was changed to include the brand name. Guess you can't win 'em all.

OK, So One More MJ Post.

With our "MJ Made Me Buy A Mac" post, we thought we had completed our obligatory tribute to the King of Pop. But no, we're not finished. Not after glassesgeek turned us on to the Eternal Moonwalk website with his recent post on Twitter. It's cool. Real cool.

Want to create buzz? Well, this is how it's done. But to integrate your product will be a little trickier ... although certainly possible.

We do have to warn viewers that once you start watching, you'll be locked in for a while. It's mesmerizing. And in answer to the eternal question, "Who's bad?" Apparently a lot of people around the world. At moonwalking. Us too, but it's fun, so who cares?

All oohs and ahhs aside, once again we're shown how unbelievably effective the web is at creating a destination for people to spend time and actually engage in something. Too bad our Rick James Eternal Hair Braid never caught on.

Michael Jackson Made Me Buy A Mac

Seems obligatory to have some kind of Michael Jackson post following the King of Pop's untimely passing. Guess we'll follow the herd and put ours up, fashionably late. So here it is, related right back to marketing and advertising.

Everyone of a certain generation remembers huddling around MTV when they actually played music videos anxiously waiting for the hourly airing of Thriller. And every guy who grew up in the hair-band era remembers how cool it was that Eddie Van Halen was playing guitar on the Beat It track while hoping he wasn't going to dance in the video because ... well, that wouldn't be very Van Halen-ish of him.

I remember all those things, but what I remember most is that MJ enticed me - practically forced me - to buy my first Mac.

Seems like yesterday. I was walking home from work in Manhattan where I lived at the time. Ducked into an electronics store and there it was. The first generation iMac. Shiny. With a subwoofer. On a pedestal. Blasting ... blaring ... Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal.

Sounds lame now, but at the time this kind of in-store product promotion was unheard of. A computer was something that sat lifelessly on a long shelf of nearly identical off-white plastic casings with a lame sticker on the monitor coldly stating performance statistics like how many gigahoozies were inside.

But the iMac. It was ... well, cool. Everyone in the store had to pass by it. Twice. Everyone stared at it like it was from outer space. Because it practically was. And in unison, we all nodded our heads as it faithfully cranked ... boomed ... Smooth Criminal again and again. We couldn't get enough. And suddenly we all were thinking how great it would be to be moonwalking to Smooth Criminal in our very own tiny New York apartments on our very own iMac.

Like I'm sure a lot of others did, I stopped by the store again the next day, picked up their catalog (Interwhat?) and made what would become the first of many Mac purchases. As soon as I could figure out how to get Napster to work, I was living the sweet life we all envisioned that day in the store, this time with MJ's music filling the corners of my shoebox-sized, ridiculously-priced apartment. Funny, it still sounded pretty good at home, but nothing like it did that day we all decided we had to have that computer and that song. Amazing how much the environment can change a marginal song into a masterpiece.

Either way, moonwalk in peace, Michael.

What Did He Just Say?

Props to Tom Martin for his recent piece on agencies jumping on the online bandwagon for purposes of selling rather than getting results for clients.

In the unexpededly-named, but completely apropos-titled post, What Ad Agencies Can Learn From Hookers and Virgins, Martin dives into a topic that we frankly find to be an epidemic scurge within the industry today ... agencies that are focused on the sell above the delivery of their product.

First let me say that everyone in the industry has promised something they've never done before. Anyone who says they haven't is lying. Lyyying. "We think it would be cool to have monkeys riding an underwater ferris wheel with our logo in the middle," says client. "Uh, sure ... no problem," says agency.

OK, so we've all pushed the boundaries. But as Martin points out, this old-world agency approach is no longer possible on the web. As in, you can't fake being engaged in new media like Twitter, Facebook, etc. "We'd like to build your presence on Twitter," says agency. "Uh, sure ... no problem," says client, adding "let's take a look at your page first." "Gee, it's getting late," says agency who has no Twitter presence (or worse ... one entry that says Here's our first Tweet! Yay for us!)

From an agency perspective, the article is right on: Be honest. If you don't know the difference between Retweeting and Tagging, come clean. Chances are they know less than you do, and you'll all look like heroes for moving into new territory.

But the more important and implied point is that agencies need to immerse themselves in new technology. Live in the world your client will one day want you to build for them. And live in it today ... from the start. Waiting until the next-next is adopted by your grandmother means you're late to the party.

It's the best of both worlds ... you actually learn how to get the best for your client in the new media world while not having to tap dance around your level of knowledge. And hey ... it's fun and it's your job. How great is that?

Not coincidentally, there's also a similar article on the AdAge main site this week about agencies missing the boat on Twitter. Must be a hot topic this week! Read the article here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got an appointment to have a few monkeys fit with diving bells for that ferris wheel project.

Tour De Fat

From the Colorado based New Belgium Brewing Company comes an innovative cause marketing campaign designed to promote beer and burn off the associated calories.

OK, maybe these two things don't go together perfectly, but we'll give them props for doing good things for charity.

Through Labor Day, the company will be giving away a bike a day, as well as hosting an eleven city bike tour which will promote environmentally friendly communting and helping charity. Although the giveaway promotion is free, the Tour De Fat isn't.

From AdAge.com: The Tour de Fat has raised more than $1 million for bicycle nonprofits since it began in 2000. It was honored this year at the Cause Marketing Forum's Cause Marketing Halo Awards, winning the gold award for best environmental/wildlife campaign.

Sounds like everyone's a winner all around. Even better, they also make a great product - Fat Tire - that has previously been the beverage du jour on Colorado skiing trips for yours truly. We'll keep supporting them and their cause. And registering for the new bike as many times as we can get away with.

Read the AdAge article here: http://adage.com/goodworks/post?article_id=137619

PS - they also have a sweet website, featuring the giveaway bikes that employees get as a one year anniversary gift. Nice.

Just Do It, K2

It's another July 4th weekend, which for Atlantans means one thing ... The Peachtree Road Race. And once again, the biggest 10K n the world is set to be dominated by 1201's very own Kara Rutledge (known around these parts as K2).

In the spirit of the race, we look to give a little inspiration by way of Nike and Steve Prefontaine, the running legend who is at the heart and soul of the athletic gear giant.

Pre still remains an iconic figure within the track world for his numerous records set before his untimely James Dean-like death late at night on an Oregon road in 1975. But what continues to live is his presence and influence on the best known sports company on Earth.

In Prefontaine, Nike's soul was first brought to life ... brash, arrogant, determined, unorthodox, and highly successful. Where many companies might look to an athlete or celebrity to simply shill for them, Nike recognized in Prefontaine and his University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman something original and true. Commitment to breaking away from the establishment in order to move their athletic cause forward. And like the company, they were completely dedicated to achieving the very best each time they went out to compete.

Although a central piece of Nike's beginnings, Pre came and went before the advent of Nike's revolutionary television advertising. But you can find him in everything from Nike t-shirts and "signature" running shoes (yours truly has a pair of Oregon green & yellow kicks), as well as print and merchandising materials that make sure the company keeps its heritage always within reach.

K2 ... we'll be looking for you to be running like the wind - er, like Pre - on Saturday, and we'll be watching from our usual vantage point at the half-mile mark. Our attempt to custom make shoes for you ala Bowerman and Prefontaine failed because the waffle iron seems to be missing, but we'll try again next year. If you're looking for a quick "get me ready to mop up the competition" ad, check out this one or this one.

"A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts."
- Steve Prefontaine