Grown Up Thinking

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.

I live without a television, insisting instead on watching shows and movies (both old favorites and newer flops I get suckered into viewing) on my trusty desktop. Lamentable, I know, but I am still privvy to the sometimes not-so-wonderful world of traditional advertising.

Namely, the dreaded Saved by Zero campaign for Toyota.

This article in AdAge and blog post on Marketing with Meaning explore how repetition of TV ads are leading to negative shares in the minds of consumers.

Hate to say we told you so, but the extraordinary thing here is the vehemence of the backlash against Saved By Zero that has been swarming 2.0 communities like Facebook and inspiring brilliant parodies like this on Youtube.

All I can say is One Thing Leads to Another.

*note: may all who recognize that blasted jingle bask in my numerous Fixx references. Be on your way.

A great site for Sprint that beautifully illustrates the Consumer 2.0 insight that bite-sized communications dominate.

Plug Into Now compiles small fragments of information onto one easily manageable page that changes dynamically and can be downloaded for use on Facebook, Myspace, and iGoogle. It’s admittedly quite mesmerizing (and the soothing voice doesn’t hurt either).

Visit Plug In Now.

Almost since its inception Pepsi has marketed itself as a youth oriented brand.  The constant “choice of a new generation”, the “other” cola has always been endorsed by the hottest celebrities of the moment and integrated into the lifestyles of young people through sports, music and pop culture.  Yet, the choices made by the “new generation” of 2008 are far different from those of past “new generations” so Pepsi is addressing the issue with a multi-tiered revamping of all beverages in the Pepsi Co. family, most notably streamlining and modernizing the names and logos of some of their most iconic products.   

(more…)

So, much has been said about Joe Six-Pack and the newly famous Joe the Plumber but convenient store chain 7-11 actually conceived of an ingenious promotion to use Joe to predict the election. In this case, a cup of joe. The idea is quite simple, 7-11 created red coffee cups with McCain’s name on them and blue cups with Obama’s. They then track the cups that their customers are selecting on a nationwide map on their 7-Election.com web site, which even allows consumers to view results by state. Even more remarkable, the results of this poll were within 1% of actual results in 2000 and identical to final results of the 2004 election. Guess Joe really does play a big role in this year’s election.

HBO’s new hit show True Blood, a show about vampires, just got renewed for a second season. The show was no doubt spurred by an innovative marketing campaign that took a lot of chances and is now reaping the rewards. Rather than a traditional approach of plastering showtimes and trailers in attempt to broadly reach as many potential viewers as possible, True Blood chose to focus on creating deeper engagements built around intrigue and buzz.

And what better subject to create an illusion of mystery around but vampires? HBO created a fake blood based beverage, vampire dating site and vampire blog all of which have a surreal feel causing the viewer to at least pause and think and most likely discuss with friends. Just as Vampires infiltrate and integrate with human lives, True Blood infiltrated the crowded consumer consciousness and is now likely integrated in many viewers’ lives.