On Being Positive

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:

1. Be positive
2. Be generous
3. Be social
4. 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.

Try being positive!

On Gangnam Style

Heyyyy sexy lady! Op-op-op-op Oppa Gangnam Style!

If you haven't seen this hilarious, mega popular South Korean pop video, featuring invisible horses and dancing in buses yet, here's my gift for you:

Although, if you haven't seen it, where have you been?? It has over 220 million hits as we speak.

It's even on the radio here now, which has to be a first (non English music on the mainstream radio in NORTH AMERICA?!).

I'm really happy that it made it mainstream, because Nicki Minaj is starting to make my ears bleed. 

And why are we so insular with our media anyway? Why are foreign movies only shown in tiny hipster theaters? Or maybe it's just our universal hate for subtitles when dubbed versions aren't available. My parents recently tried to watch Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with their friends, only to find they'd accidentally rented the Swedish version. It wasn't worth it to read the subtitles- "so much work!!", so they played cards instead. (But Mom, this one's worth the reading...)

Not only is this a great leap for foreign media, but it's an indicator of how far we've come bringing viral into the "traditional" world. Psy (the artist from above), was even on Saturday Night Live this week :)

He danced out from behind a wall in a Lids store (for some reason). I'd show the video here too, but all the ones I seem to find "can't be shown in my region". Bah

On the Dolphin Jetpack

Before I get back to serious blogging, I'd really like to show you all the Dolphin Jetpack, the coolest thing that I have seen in a long time. I mean, look at it! All I can think about when I watched this video was Iron Man.

And it's only $6600! I mean that's a sizable chunk for a student, but for something like this that's amazing!

On American ROM- Advertising with Nationalism

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...

On Advertisements Worth Watching

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.


Balls, a commercial created by director Nicolai Fuglsig for the launch of the BRAVIA brand, did everything it was supposed to do. It captivated with the beauty of 250,000 real rubber balls bouncing down the streets of San Francisco. Plus, the song was perfect- Heartbeats, from José González's debut album Veneer. Some interesting practical points of the whole operation- it took 50,000 balls for the first shot, there was a team of 50 interns that had to gather up the balls for each retake, and there were a serious of golfball nets set up at the ends of the street to catch the extra balls. Yes the commercial was big. Yes it was expensive. And yes, it got the attention that the company needed for it's brand.

On the Peace and Love Festival!!!

Hey! It's been almost a week since I posted! Terrible! But I've been away at the Peace and Love music festival the last 4 days, so that's one excuse anyway. The weather wasn't too hot, which was fantastic (there is nothing worse for me than wandering around for hours in the sun and 35°). 


One thing I have to ask though after the festival is what is it with everyone wearing rubber boots??? I was told that it's a fad... but really?

Boots like this in 25° clear weather. Confusing. Unless of course they were thinking ahead about the alcohol and organic sludge that appeared throughout the festival grounds.....

I came across some fantastic bands at the festival. Here are videos from my top 4 favourites :)

Tikkle Me- Electronic Indie Pop (?)
They make PRECISELY the kind of music I love. I was so excited when I venue hopped and found them!


the Amplifetes- 60's psychedelia electro pop
After Tikkle Me I wandered into a club style venue and found these guys. The singer is all personality isn't he?? I can't help but love someone with that much hair.


the Original High Fives- reggae pop
These guys were playing randomly in a space between venues. They played SO much better than many of the artists on the stages, and certainly deserved a stage of their own. Plus they had a crazy dreadlocked fan-friend that riled the whole crowd into fanatic dancing, and that was fantastic fun.


Crash Nomada- gypsy punk
When I read in the guidebook that there was a gypsy punk band playing, I knew I had to go. Their live performance was so energetic and fun.

The festival was fun, but the best music definitely came from the smaller (or not technically official) venues. Bob Dylan... is getting too old to play his music. I didn't even recognize Knockin' on Heaven's Door until nearly halfway through. Deadmau5 had a great light show... but we left early because he was playing nothing but a monotonous beat. I didn't see the Kings of Leon, but I heard that they're going downhill. The only major artist that I enjoyed was 30 Seconds to Mars, but they still lacked energy for some reason. So, I'm very glad that I did a bit of venue hopping :)

On Midsommar

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...

On Marketing Psychology- Are we in control of our decisions?

Dan Ariely- are we in control of our decisions?

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! Here are some Dad Ads!

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.

more at canadianclubwhiskey.com

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!