Grown Up Thinking

Just in time for the holidays, JetBlue has opened a posh boutique in Manhattan’s hip Meatpacking District…but you can’t buy anything there. The store is touting it’s exclusive line of travel products (The Flyer’s Collection) to help you cope with the oh-so arduous task of flying with “the other guys.” The jokester stunt is definitely eye catching. I would totally drop some dough on my personal favorites: the Marshpillow (a pillow made of marshmallow to help you cope with stress, hunger and comfort) and the Yumbro robot (dispensing friendly compliments and Terra Blue Chips. Holla!)

Feel free to pop over and browse the entire collection on 14th Street & 9th Avenue near the Mr Youth offices or check it out online on JetBlue’s Facebook page. Stunt marketing like this is nothing new, of course, but I commend JetBlue for not taking itself too seriously. When brands engage consumers in new and hilarious ways, people certainly take notice. Although my mother can’t buy me anything from this exclusive collection for the holidays, I’ll certainly accept a JetBlue flight (hint, hint).

Foodspotting: way better’n Urban Spoon.

Stella Artois YouTube Channel: Beautiful creative curation from a brand that manages the tricky balance of honoring its roots while still seeming fresh.

Well, let’s face it. The new Stella campaign in its beautiful entirety.

The World’s First Crowdsourced Magazine Cover: would have been even better if it was executed by Good (another crazy obsession of ours).

The Body Image Project: Picking up where Dove left off, and adding a dedicated social media angle. Check our their Twitter handle- great practices in a very short time.

Canon Freeze Tag: how can you NOT love this execution?!?! Besides. It features a great track from the Go Team, a band frequently heard in our cube when we need a boost mid-afternoon.

221B: a splendid use of Facebook Connect to promote the new Sherlock Holmes movie. Dark, compelling, beautifully designed and effective (NOT like Welcome to Fight Club, which we wanted to love but was just totally arbitrary).

Pull a Volkswagen. Create an engaging video from an amazingly simple (yet beautiful and playfully nostalgic) experiential stunt. When combined with a clean microsite & a fun UGC contest, this is the kind of work that gives me the warm fuzzies.

Go to TheFunTheory.com to see how all the parts play (and I DO mean play) together nicely.

Though my own style proclivities veer more closely to the moody (frequently opting for the trifecta of black+booties+tousled hair, like this lovely lady), I found this great interactive-slash-mobile campaign for Ralph Lauren on PSFK today that might have me wearing a rugby shirt faster than you can say “sassy sartorialist.”

The long & short of it: consumers are given the chance to fully customize a Rugby jersey using either a free iPhone application or using a touchscreen window display at the Ralph Lauren store in Greenwich Village. Buy it, share it, post it to Facebook- it’s up to you. Finally, try it on for size by dropping your own photo into the image, and submit it to a public gallery.

Ultimately, it’s a great example of how brands can use mobile to drive to retail in an innovative way while giving fashion-friendly fans the chance to make a statement in fully personalized gear using technology.

We all know how annoying it can be to hear a song in an ad and not be able to find it anywhere. Apparently enough people felt that way about the latest Ritz ad that the brand responded in a very interesting way. Ritz learned through comments on YouTube that consumers were searching for the happy tune featured in the spot, but were unable to find it online.  The brand responded by posting a video stating  that they would turn the 30 second jingle created specifically for the ad into a full-length song if the video achieves 10,000 views on YouTube.  The song will be available on iTunes with all profits going to the artist.

At the time of this blog post, the video had just over 7k views, so it looks like this ditty is destined for a full-length future. Though the whole backsory may be faked by Ritz’s agency and most would argue that 10k views does not a viral video make, this is still a smart way for a brand to use social media as both a messaging and listening tool.  It also goes to show that sometimes the most compelling social media executions are the simplest.  Contrived or not, this one, like the product itself, is like “buttah.”

I’m hard pressed to find anyone who genuinely enjoys a trip to the DMV, being confronted by nosy parental units, or being prodded by a physician (unless we’re talking McDreamy). So, how can companies and causes confront teens with uncomfortable issues outside of these yawn-inducing mediums? Recently, I’ve been dazzled by a few campaigns willing to crank up the kiddies’ Jacuzzi and dive in, sans apologies.

Forget the lame ‘Donate Life’ pamphlet at the DMV. The Trillium Gift of Life Network has launched RecycleMe.org, where you’ll find an attractive, well-intentioned young chap in his birthday suit, urging you to open him up and check him out. Click on any of his glistening organs and he’ll tell you why someone will need them more than you someday.

ThatsNotCool.com is creating awareness about the need for respect and boundaries in the digital space by giving teens the tools to stop bad behavior.  Now, instead of replying to every invasive, incessant text from a pushy partner, teens can send a ‘callout card’ that fires back: “You’re Much More Attractive When You’re Not Textually Harassing Me.”

MTV’s cryptic TV spots featuring celebrities hyping the mysterious “GYT” piqued my curiosity. WTF is GYT? Gay Young Thing? Green Your Technology? This crafty campaign is sure to GKT (Get Kids Talking) about topics DTD (Difficult To Discuss), even if they do it through code, which is (let’s face it) how most teens communicate these days anyway.

The triumph here is these companies’ success in reaching their young and sometimes apathetic audience through a message that is strong yet accessible. By creating an active dialogue with youth via the messaging channels they use most frequently, organizations and causes will be able to hit issues that are usually off the radar for most teens.

Taking cues from both the Champion Hoodie Remix contest and the current trend of food personalization (including granola, chocolate and even tea), Dunkin Donuts launched a contest this week that challenges people across the country to create their own donut for the chance to win $12,000 and to get their tasty treat produced. Just more proof on how customization really is king.

More and more companies these days are leveraging the enormous power of social networking to make a meaningful impact on their consumers, all the while boosting their brands with some positive buzz. I was impressed recently when Tide pitted a slew of companies against one another in a vintage tee selling competition. All tees sold benefitted the Tide Loads of Hope program which helps communities hit by natural disasters. With the help of Twitter and Facebook, over 2,000 tees were sold in just under 4 hours. Merging the power of social networking along with buzz-worthy creativity not only allowed Tide to get a major PR boost but also helped to instill the brand’s image with a very valuable message of hope, optimism and giving back. (Hey, I bought a green one.) In case you wanna plunk a cool 20 bucks down for a good cause, you can grab your own vintage tee here.

Tide Loads of Hope is much more than just t-shirts, of course. Over the past three years, the prominent mobile laundry program has traveled to cities in need and washed over 35,000 loads of laundry for over 20,000 families including victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Southern California Wildfires, the Iowa floods, and most recently for Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike.

Now who’s gonna do MY laundry?

BTW, thanks for the tip, Coolhunting!

Few things in the 2.0 era have received so much buzz so quickly as Skittle’s recent social media effort. I logged on to Twitter yesterday to a literal hashstorm of all things Skittles. I realize people get excited about candy, but this was ridiculous. What was going on? Obviously I did what any responsible digital marketing  professional would do–I went to Skittles.com.

Something wasn’t right–why did Skittles.com take me to Twitter’s search page with a little branded overlay on the top left?  Where’s the flashed out, high res animated page loader? Where’s the ambiguously organized homepage with different content engagement opportunities?  All I could see were different users’ tweets about Skittles. I clicked around the overlay, and was taken to….Facebook? This was something entirely new.

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We know from our own experiences that the more you give, the more you get. This is true in our personal lives and this is also true in advertising. In traditional advertising, ads that give the audience some type of reward for watching, like entertainment value or some type of personal benefit, tend to do very well and ads that offer nothing to the audience tend to be ignored (check out this hilariously boring Tax Masters commercial). This is equally true for nontraditional and social-network advertising.

Recently, the comedy troupe, Monty Python, uploaded all of their skits online for free with the hopes that people will buy their movies. The videos spread virally and the results were an astounding 2,300 percent increase in sales.

Starbucks is another company that has been a leader in this new trend with their free cup of coffee for everyone who voted on Election Day and more recently, a free cup for everyone who pledges five hours of community service. The Pledge 5 campaign has not only created a huge buzz with over 1.3 million service hours pledged, but it has also branded themselves as a socially responsible company in a very genuine way.

Mr Youth has done its part to help define this rule with the Neutrogena Wave campaign. High school students nationwide were incentivized through a Facebook application to go to the Wave’s website, watch commercials, download a coupon, and tell their friends about the Wave. The school that had the most people actively participate won a free concert. 25 percent of all high schools participated and the Wave has since become the fourth most popular product on Amazon.com for facial skincare products – proving that ‘tis better to give than to receive, but best to do both.