DDB China, working with the China Environmental Protection Foundation, created this beautiful campaign on 132 crosswalks across China. The point was to create a striking visual impact about the environmental benefits of walking- and the results were stunning. Afterword, the printed posters were used as billboards across the country.
Continued.... Geoff's rules for being a great marketer:
Be positive
Be generous
Be social
Be unique
If you can afford it, why not show some generosity towards your customers in your marketing? A few good deeds (and some free stuff) can lead to a whole lot of good word of mouth.
Case in point: The BC Moments Campaign this summer. Tourism BC Created the 100 BC Moments website, where you can find travel moments for any interest. To match it, the Tourism BC folks went and created a fantabulous publicity stunt in San Francisco. They set up a gigantic vending machine where people could fill out some information about themselves and their hobbies, and out would pop something related to the trip they could take. Like mountain biking? Here's a free bike!
Feel like going golfing? Here's a free set of clubs!!! Yayyy!!
Another case: 7-Eleven's Dip-a-Drip Campaign in 2011 Last year 7-Eleven gave consumers the chance to vote on and dip a "drip" (an annoying, stereotypical person that you wouldn't want to meet before your morning coffee). From September 19-23 Americans were able to vote which obnoxious person of their cast they would like to see dunked in some water. Then, on September 28th, they could log on to 7-Eleven's Facebook page and virtually control the ball launcher (set up live in Washington, D.C.) to dunk the top candidates.
If you succeeded and dunked them you won a $25 gift card. If you didn't, you could still get the free cup of coffee that 7-Eleven gave out to everyone on September 29th, National Coffee Day (or, as 7-Eleven called it, cofFREE day). 7-Eleven gave something in order to get their word out. They didn't just interrupt with the usual commercials, they gave their customers a chance to play a game and get some frustration out :)
First of all, thank you so much to Geoff Grimble from DDB for taking the time to present your take on marketing for my Marketing Communications class on Wednesday. The presentation was fun, engaging, and informative! Also, thanks for reminding my friend and I to attend the Advertising Club of Edmonton's student event yesterday- it was a good time and I met a lot of professionals with plenty of great industry advice. Geoff's rules for being a great marketer:
Be positive
Be generous
Be social
Be unique
All of these seem fairly straightforward right? Not so fast! Being positive in public interest marketing is actually really hard. If you're focusing on getting people to wear seat belts, for instance, you'll likely come out with the same sorts of things that people always come up with, like this graphic ad:
OR you could think outside the box and go for something positive, like the Embrace Life Campaign
Both are good ads, but which one of them are you more likely to shut off halfway through, or avoid watching?
How about an ad making people think about how they should use public transit in order to help the environment? Sure, you could tell them about all the damage and pollution that is going on in the world, but big overarching problems tend to make people feel overwhelmed and think "how can I make a difference anyway?".
So then we have the Bussen er Cool ad:
If that didn't make you smile, you don't have a single funny bone in your body.
Isn't it nice to watch a public interest ad that actually makes you smile???
Then there's anti-smoking campaigns. Actually, believe it or not you could make them positive! They don't all have to look like this:
Or, take a look at this campaign by the Hearth and Stroke Foundation of BC & Yukon:
At Quittersunite.com, people are encouraged to post videos about their "Smoke Free Lifestyle", outlining how they live their lives with $300 extra per month. It's positive, and focuses on the saved money and enhance lifestyle that quitting can offer people.
I love Andrej Pejic, fashion's top crossdressing supermodel. Say what you will about him being the runway's perpetual media stunt- I love him. Not only is he incredibly brave for doing what he's doing, but he's gorgeous. And his build is absolutely perfect for high fashion (considering that all the clothes are made to fit 5"11 models with no hips or chest whatsoever). Whether it's a good thing that a slender man fits the womanswear model body type better than the women is up for debate of course.
zfashionblog.com
Now... (Drumroll please)... Andrej is modelling super push up bras! Dutch retailer HEMA may have struck gold with this campaign idea. Not only is he a beautiful model, but featuring a man in a bra has really started a buzz about the ad in the advertising and fashion communties. Also isn't it clever saying that these push up bras are so effective that they even give a man a bust?? I wonder how these ads would have fared here in North America though... I'm not sure consumers would have been quite as accepting.
So I came across this ad for electronic cigarettes, originally from a Rolling Stones magazine. Obviously it's saying that sleeping with an overweight girl is something you should be ashamed of (but you're a man so you aren't, HAHA!). If you think about it, the issue of obesity in all its forms is almost uniformly cut out of advertising, unless it has to do with making you feel like you should improve (oh those never-ending Jenny Craig commercials). But it's certainly not something that is ever joked about, like the "useless husband" stereotype. Actually, overweight guys are kind of acceptable on TV (I'm thinking King of Queens, According to Jim) but you will NEVER see a fat woman with a handsome guy. I hate that fat, immature husband and smoking wife trope.
Is it clever to associate your product with something that men find stereotypically shameful (as seen in all the TV shows EVER)? Maybe they figure that some guys find electric cigs embarassing anyway, since they're a little less manly than the real thing (you would never see Clint Eastwood with an electronic cigarette clamped between his teeth), so may as well try to make it work for the product. I think the message of the ad is something like "Well sure, you'd normally regret sleeping with a "fat chick" but when all is said and done, you still got laid". The marketers are implying that you should do what feels good or is good for you (like smoking an electronic cigarette) regardless of what your friends say.
Still. Does this image really make guys interested in the product at all? I don't really think it would. It's going for humour but I don't think it's the right kind.
Do you think using scare tactics is a great way to get customers? It's definitely a way to get their attention anyway.
Last year ADT, a company selling home security systems, launched a "brilliant" marketing campaign in Santiago, Chile. Spring loaded boxes were folded and slipped under doors then, inside the home, these boxes would spring into shape, appearing as though they had been left behind by someone inside the house. On the front of the box was the statement "Breaking into your apartment is easier than you think" next to the ADT logo.
This was obviously pretty risky, but was it effective? Most home security companies tend to take the same road- advertising like life insurance companies and just trying to be somber enough to get attention. But consumers who don't think they are at risk are pretty likely to just tune out the message. This way at least, there was no getting around the ad, since it was sitting pretty glaringly behind the consumers' front door.
But is it a breach of privacy? Could it have made consumers feel threatened for more than the obvious reason- that they were at risk of burglary? While I do think that this campaign was ingeniously creative, I'd like to make a note that this probably scared a lot of people. If it were me, I'd be frightened at the thought of a company entering my private sphere, although I know they do it in much less obtrusive ways. There's a lack of thought about subtlety here.
So, the big news here in Edmonton is the below advertisement, from Fluid Hair Salon. It was actually created and launched a year ago, but was only caught by bloggers and made big in the last couple days. Since then, women's rights groups in the city have been up in arms, and it's not hard to see why.
A well-coiffed woman sits on a chair in front of a frightening Dexter-type man, sporting a nasty looking black eye. The caption "Look good in all you do" implies, sort of, that as long as she looks good eventually, with a shiny new necklace, abuse is just fine. It's a risky and dark ad, and I personally don't think that a salon should be touching this subject with a 10 foot pole, but that's just me.
However, up until now I'll admit that I wasn't that interested or insulted by this little controversy. It was a very misled "artsy" ad that never really got big before now, and in a way it actually does some good by bringing needed attention to the issue of domestic violence.
What actually got me intrigued is that somewhere out there, someone was mad enough to vandalize the salon. Here are a couple pics from CBC:
"This is art that is wrongly named violence; that was violence wrongly named art!"
So, what do you do when you've tied your brand to your country's brand, and your country isn't looking so good at the moment? You trick people into showing their nationalistic side, just like this Romanian chocolate bar:
I agree that this campaign was a great way for Rom to increase awareness of their product, but do you think that sparking outrage this way will give them lasting attention? They gambled with the goodwill of the public, and it seems to have paid off for now...
Why escalator marketing you ask? Because it's so easy! Marketing that's dynamic and full of movement gets attention, and escalators are moving anyway, so you may as well just put some stickers on it. Plus, it's definitely under-used and full of creative opportunities. Unfortunately, 99% of this kind of marketing lacks any kind of creativity- mainly just companies making a picture with the front of the steps, or pasting an ad on the side. But here are a few who are being a little more interesting:
From 2008, this guerrilla marketing campaign for Juice Salon was a fun way of using escalator steps- each step had a different hairstyle matching up with a fixed face on the bottom. It's a shame that this idea really couldn't work for a female ad (at least, not a very diverse one), but I know it would still get my attention.
Awesome idea for advertising for the Simpsons Movie. Unfortunately, a quick poke around the internet shows nobody seems to have actually seen this escalator in person, so I'm not sure if it's just a concept. Either way, it would be fun!
There's something about really big replicas of little things that always entertains me! Maybe I'll do another blog post on it. Oh also, using colours/lines that already exist in the environment (in this case the lines on the escalator steps) is another sure-fire way to get me interested- I think it's something to do with connecting the impossible and unusual with the mundane.
It's time that marketing stopped interrupting people's entertainment, and instead became entertainment.
To stay relevant, marketing has to be something that people are interested in and willing to watch. Some marketers understand that, but most don't.
To illustrate the point I'm including here some of my favourite dramatic and artistic advertisements.
Launched in 2008, Go On Lad is an advertisement by the agency Miles Calcraft Birginshaw Duffy, made for Hovis bread in the UK. It's brilliance comes from its flawless phasing through 122 years of British history, through the gravity of the wars, inspiring speeches from Churchill, the devastation afterward, then each era of Brit fashion. Changing trends, clothing, technology.. it has it all! It is a beautifully made spot.
Hey! I survived Midsommar in Sweden, although I can't say I was feeling so hot on Saturday and Sunday. All in all though, this is one holiday that should be imported to Canada :)
On to marketing- here's a new guerrilla marketing campaign by Gillette that I stumbled upon. Thousands of these towels have been set around parks in Germany so far this summer, all with these holes in them to let grass poke through in interesting places. The ad agency (BBDO Proximity) have announced happily that most of them were stolen pretty quickly.
What do you think? Personally I think they're pretty creative, and letting people steal them gets them talking to their friends and showing off their new, unique towels wherever they use them, spreading the reach of the campaign. But also, if they were stolen so quickly, how many people got the chance to see them in the beginning?
I'm a fan of course, because I love guerrilla marketing in all its forms.
It´s Midsummer here in Sweden! It´s as big as Christmas but it seems to be mainly an excuse to drink. Since I´m off to enjoy a midsummer bbq I leave you with another video (cop out I know), but I promise to write a real post soon!
This an IKEA commercial for Germany, making fun of the poor Swedes. Apparently this was banned...
Don´t have too much time today, so I leave you with one of my FAVOURITE videos on some marketing/psychology tricks. If you really can´t watch the whole thing, start from 11:10 because that´s where he really begins explaining the inferiority option (aka presenting something that is an inferior option of Object A instantly makes Object A more attractive.)
Happy Father´s Day! In honour of this, I might just get down to business and write about marketing (the point of this whole blog after all). Here is my favourite marketing campaign based around fathers.
You knew this one was coming didn´t you? While this Canadian Club whiskey ad is 3 years old now, it´s the very best example I know of capitalizing on the age and tradition of a brand in a new and fresh way. Even more luckily, it was timed perfectly with the start of Mad Men and a rise in interest in that time period.
Canadian Club realised they were looking old and stodgy, that young men weren´t interested in whiskey and whiskey martinis like they were in the 60´s and 70´s. The years of James Bond stylishly drinking martinis in rock glasses, while making eyes at busty ladies, is past. And while I´d say CC wasn´t able to make martinis a whole lot less of a menacing word for guys, they did make their brand seem pretty damn cool. Instead of pulling the usual "we're not your dad´s insert oldies product here", they decided to capitalise on the dad you never knew, the cool dad, the player dad. They also played up the manly men stereotype of the 60´s- martini a girl´s drink? No way!
Plus, these ads are a lot of fun to play with. People started making their own (not all of them very flattering, but many very funny). Needless to say, the ads spread all over the place.
and many more of various levels of inappropriateness here
Edit:
Thought I´d just add this campy version of the exact opposite campaign by oldsmobile. This is from the late 80´s - "not your father´s oldsmobile". Except apparently it was, with all the same old problems. So this is an example of not just turning your back on your valuable tradition, but pretending to be something you´re not. Bad, bad marketers!
