Brastemp, a Brazilian electronics brand shows how you can be interactive with radio. The campaign was so successful that it was replicated in Portugal by a couple of radios.
The spot, that aired simultaneously in 11 major radio stations in the capital city, suggested: “Right now, millions of people at their cars, listening to the radio. All serious, sleepy, until an inspiration changes everything. We invite you to smile to the driver next to you. If he heard it, he’ll smile back …. See? Inspiration changes everything and life becomes just likeee… a Brastemp. “
If you’re curious what conference I’m talking about, start by visiting http://www.switchconf.com/ . Too busy? Well, in a nutshell, it’s a 2 day event bringing together passionate people with different backgrounds to discuss and share ideas about innovation, entrepreneurship, science and technology.
Ricardo Sousa and his talented young team rolls out the 2011 edition in Oporto (Portugal), the next 16th and 17th of April, and yours truly was kindly invited to speak a few minutes on the subject of advertising, fire and jogging. Now that you’re curious, are you attending SWITCH Conference? If yes, give me a nudge as i’d really love to chat with you. Not networking. Hate that word. See ya in a few days then. Go buy your ticket, now.
Economics and demographics tell us that young people are no longer a terribly attractive target for most marketers. Over 75% of the wealth of the country is in the hands of people over 50. And yet our advertising and marketing strategies today, if anything, are more focused on youth and youth culture.
Tricky title by using NSFW on perfectly safe content.
I have nothing against using shortcuts to create buzz, but something felt fishy (and it wasn’t the bear) on this campaign. After spending 5 minutes of my time entertained with the videos, i couldn’t remember the brand’s name. Even considering my short attention span as a Twitter user, that observation kept being reinforced after reading the comments by my friends, all of them praising the campaign but almost none mentioning the brand.
Last Saturday, instead of spending a lazy afternoon on the sofa, i decided to send a brief survey to my Facebook and Twitter friends. Only 50 answers were good enough, since being many of them ad people, they surely paid more attention to the brand than the regular Joe.
What I found out confirmed my suspicion that a great majority of people didn’t recall the exact name of the brand sponsoring the YouTube takeover.
This might be just anecdotal data, but it was enough to reinforce my conviction that using tactics is not enough, specially when your target consumer doesn’t even remember your brand’s name. Or quoting David Ogilvy:
A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.
P.S. Perhaps reading too much Ad Contrarian isn’t doing any good to my bad temper regarding these quick fixes.
On my way to work each morning, i drive by an artificial geyser installed on the seashore near Oeiras. Just watch the tilt-shift video below to check the sparkling ideia by the folks at Black Milk Media:
The geyser at Paço de Arcos was transformed into an installation in the shape of a bottle of Schweppes. Black Milk Media was the media agency responsible for activating this project that not only will advertise the brand Schweppes but will allow for maintenance and cleanup of the geyser for 12 months, in partnership with Câmara Municipal de Oeiras and Parish of Paço de Arcos. This process took about 10 hours and envolved a transport truck and a helicopter to move the installation of 500 kilos.
Ever since Tim Tim O’Reilly’s essay Work on Stuff That Matters over one year ago, and being so close with social marketing as a blogger at Osocio.org, i’m always on the lookout for marketing campaigns that go beyond the shallow one-hit tactics.
From the writings of Umair Haque at HBR on Betterness and the value of Social Enterprise to shift on marketing budgets like the recent Pepsi Refresh Project (that is now commiting additional funds to the Gulf), it feels as if the financial crisis brought a renewed interest in corporate responsalibility and ethics in business.
One of the most remarkable examples of this trend is the joint project between Levi’s and the burrough of Braddock, Pennsylvania. You can get acquainted with the town’s hardship by watching Mayor John Fetterman on the talk below at PopTech, where he shares the story of a city with not much hope a few years ago.
Levi’s and ad agency Wieden Kennedy also became a part of this tale of city reinvention, when creating their campaign Levi’s Ready To Work, built around the spirit and hope of Braddock.
The TV, Outdoor and Print materials are much more than meets the eye; all the people you see in it are residents of Braddock.
You can discover the stories behind the communities inspiring the rebirth of the town on the YouTube channel, and almost feel the spirit of pioneers so dear to the brand. Even if i’m not sure how much Levi’$ is committed on helping Braddock, it’s a shame the channel doesn’t get more reach.
More about the reinvention of Braddock on David Streitfeld’s article on the NYTimes, last February. Hint: good journalism is usually a great source of inspiration for relevant marketing campaigns.
On a related note, fill in the blanks on Bogusky’s interview where he tries to get his genuine voice back.
Whatever that means. At least they don’t have a flashturbated website, and Evan wants to Be Fucking Awesome. And they have skull pictures and are hiring.
Rejoice ad people. You can now get your own Mad Men (the Tv series) avatar at MadMenYourself.com.
A classy way for AMC to promote the third season, which starts Aug. 16., letting you customize your character from body to accessories (a bow ties for the gents, a fur stole for the ladies) with lovely illustrations by Dyna Moe.
UPDATE 2: It’s now [June, 30] live at beta.cpbgroup.com UPDATE: CP+B has kindly let me know that they’ve temporarily cloaked the site, as it’s not quite ready for prime time. Stay tuned the next few hours.
When @boguskyannounced CP+B was about to release their new site, the curious Armando had to sneak at the rather obvious url beta.cpbgroup.com, thus finding the new version of the agency’s Internet presence.
Crispin, Porter + Bogusky is now aggregating all the content related to the agency, from employees tweets to references on blogs (let’s see if they pick this post), from Flickr accounts to their Wikipedia entry, and huge doses of Youtube commercials by the agency.
The agency applies the same principle to their client work. Here’s the page screenshot for Microsoft (shame for not having a permalink):
For now they released only 8 client pages, but i got curious again and peeked at the source code and a few more are planned . Props for massive jQuery usage.
Nothing really groundbreaking, kind like PopUrls, but a reminder that the days of “immersive” Flash experiences are almost ending, at least in digital agencies land (see also Barbarian, Juxt Interactive, EVB and Big Spaceship). It’s all about multiple digital touchpoints and real time, these days.
. Props for massive jQuery usage.