A Source Of Inspiration

The hell with planning, account meetings and business smalltalk. What we really need is some fast decisions to pick the latest buzz and deliver some great advertising on top of it.

Credits

After the latest TCM post, now I found this one by Axe.
And don’t forget last year’s most successful direct sales campaign, about Julien Lopetegui, a Spanish football star who fainted during a TV news broadcast. Banco Gallego and agency Shackleton picked the story and a few days later a print campaign was out, inviting consumers to visit porquesedesmaylopetegui.com (offline) and find out why Lopetegui had fainted.

Agencies and marketeers are having a hard time keeping up with the speed of information, but those who are fortunate enough to tune their messages to consumer’s buzz have a better chance of being listened.

Source: The Planning Lab

And for something completely different, a quick one that has been around on my del.icio.us bookmarks.

While the WGA holds the strike, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) does a home run.

Agency: Vitruvio Leo Burnett (Spain)
Source: CCSP

This commercial from Vodafone UK, scrapped at Motiongrapher, visually depicts one of my most recurring thoughts this year.

Brands have been missing the largest platform of all: mobile.

;) ok, David Lynch thinks different.

Blurring the digital lifestyle

The gap between offline and online has narrowed in 2007, blurring the difference between consumers and users. The so called web 2.0 has reached mainstream, with regular users adopting Rich Internet Applications like online word processors or flocking to virtual worlds. The convergent consumer created a online hub for work and entertainment that nurtured the growth of technologies that enabled the creation and distribuition of immersive experiences.

Online Platforms

The digital lifestyle was also adopted by other platforms, with the iPhone becoming one of the main icons of convergence in 2007, a landmark in technology and a mobile device sales champion. Also in mobile, Google took a major step away from the desktop, with the Android platform, converging the interest of companies, developers and consumers. Other technologies, such as multi-touch devices, with research from PerceptivePixel for Microsoft Surface or the hack on the Wii remote, envisioned the need to integrate offline experiences with online.

Will it blend?

Even one of the most famous online videos of 2007 had convergence in mind, reminding us that the power of word-of-mouth is still the most effective forms of marketing and that advertising should be seen as a conversation igniter about products and services, and not a trespasser on consumers’ lives.

More consumer power

As consumers felt empowered, the need for defining their digital self grew stronger, with a louder online voice. Consumers are now brand ambassadors or become part of online communities, with social networks creating major buzz in 2007, Facebook beeing the rising star.
With great power comes great responsibility, and new concerns arose regarding digital privacy, an important on the main online advertising deal of the year: Google buying DoubleClick.

Online moves

Other online advertising moves were made by companies like Hitwise, aQuantitative, Nielsen or Compete, with innovations on services and metrics provided, questioning even more the obsolete model of traditional media. Google, despite too many product launches (Street View, Knols), etc, etc) has strengthened their lead on search advertising, and also bought RSS advertising network Feedburner. But there’s life beyond Mountain View, with Yahoo, Live.com and Ask.com showing that they’re still around, with some refreshing competition from niche search by Wikia, Spock or Mahalo).

A small, small world

Media convergence creates an apparently smaller world, that set stage to new forms of publishing like microblogging (Twitter) or tumblelogs (Tumblr), and promote a more imediate and objective communication. With the dividing line between online and offline-online blurring, more creative campaigns are set to connect these two realities: the promos for The Simpsons movie or the Year Zero ARG campaign for Nine Inch Nails were amongst the most memorable marketing moments of 2007.

Something to remember

Finally, in Portugal, a promising year in tech and new media events, with e-Mkt 2007, TakeOff and Barcamp in Coimbra, and a big November with Sapo Codebits plus the news of OFFF 2008 in Lisbon. In blogs, the launch of blog networks Tubarão Esquilo and Prt.sc were a sign that Portuguese online media is shaping up, perhaps encouraged with the growing interest of brands on social media, as for instance with the Rexona blog. In fact, Rexona has also one of my favorite international campaigns at “Quien es Fermin“, joining “Good Things Should Never End” and “Get The Glass” at my top online marketing campaigns of 2007.

No 2008 predictions, please

I won’t do the usual 2008 predictions, despite my pretty good hints last year. Instead, I’ll ask you to reflect on this: more than blogeratti or geeks, it’s regular consumers that will set the trends, and they will keep visiting MySpace, wondering around on souvenir shops and eating Oreo pizzas. No matter how strange and un-convergent that seems to “us”.

This article will soon be available in Portuguese, at blog network Prt.sc

(Reposted from Osocio.org)

From Canada, an update on the workplace safety campaign by WSIB (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario).

The ad invites us to visit the website prevent-it.ca, where users can learn more about workplace safety.

The recent addition on the website uses the desktop metaphor as a quick access to many resources on workplace safety, such as rights and responsibilities, downloads or WSIB videos.  Or you could play the prevent-it challenge, a linear narrative where we must spot the hazards on the workplace, with helpful tips on safety.

If you’ve enjoyed the site, there’s plenty of sharing tools to spread the message.

Advertiser:
WSIB

Agency:

DraftFCB Toronto

Great advertising is back, with the cream of the crop of social advertising, on a fantastic relaunch by Marc van Gurp and his new team (where i’m now proudly included).

Osocio features a new branding and a complete redesign, with several additions such as NGO’s profiles, latest news and agenda or a dictionary on social advertising terms, wraps the previous outstanding content, with advertising that inspires us all.

Whenever you find a great campaign, contact me or post a link to my del.icio.us (for:thedlab) so we could keep Outlust the best website on social advertising (not the Zuckerberg kind). Or join us on Twitter or at Facebook groups Social Advertising and Osocio.

So here’s what Osocio is all about:

Osocio is dedicated to social advertising and non-profit campaigns. It’s the place where marketing and activism collide. Formerly known as the Houtlust Blog, Osocio is the central online hub for advertisers, ad agencies, grassroots, activists, social entrepreneurs, and good Samaritans from around the globe.

Despite there being hundreds of other ad blogs on the web, Houtlust stood out by focusing exclusively on social advertising. Unlike commercial advertising, which only attempts to influence purchase decisions, non-profit ads seeks to connect us with other human beings. Social advertising has an uncanny power to make us stop, think and then take action to help a person, or a group of people, who we don’t even know, who might be from a foreign culture, living thousands of miles away. And for that reason we celebrate these ads, study them and discuss them at length. We hope you will too.

Created by Marc van Gurp in October 2005, Houtlust began as a personal collection of non-profit ads. Originally the site was only written in Dutch, with no thoughts of a wider audience. But the demand for an English version quickly grew. The tiny niche blog got bigger and bigger. And it wasn’t long before Houtlust became known as the authoritative reference of non-profit advertising for the ad industry and socially minded people everywhere.

In the spring of 2007 discussions started on how to take Houtlust to the next level. Interactive agency Onstuimig and branding agency Alef de Jong were quick to volunteer their services to help with the re-brand and re-launch of new website. The result of this cooperation is where you are now: Osocio.

Osocio is more then a blog. It’s a complete resource for all things in the world of non-profit and social messaging. It’s a platform for global and local social issues, both large and small. It’s a community of social thinkers and marketing do-gooders.

While Houtlust was curated by one person (Marc van Gurp), Osocio has several contributors, each of whom are specialists in a specific field of the diverse non-profit sector. We are glad to welcome these experts to the Osocio team (see below).

Of course, we have our own ideas on how to make the world a better place. However, Osocio promises to never push any political agenda of its own. The campaigns we publish in no way directly express our personal stance on a specific issue. Our focus is solely on the communication of social messages.

If you feel you can collaborate in any shape or form, please contact us. We’re always keen on new social campaigns. So please send us the non-profit marketing you’ve been working on, or the work of your agency, along with news, links or tips.

A couple of essential readings, you should buy into:

• Dale Dougherty, Web 2.0 and Advertising: Do We See Eye to Eye?

  An essential post with the questions that advertisers and web 2.0 companies are having regarding each other.

  questions of both technology and media companies to find out what advertisers mean by relevance. She says she’d like to see advertising for new cars, even though she doesn’t own a car and doesn’t drive. She’s not in the market for a car but she’s interested in learning more about new cars through their advertising. How would an advertiser know about that preference, and would they care to know?

  If sites or services become too commercialized, or as users catch on that the content is really a commercial in disguise, then they can choose to go elsewhere. They can shift their attention to a new site. I hope the threat of user migration is enough to keep Web 2.0 sites honest, and counteract the aggressive tendencies of advertisers.

• Hugh McLeod, author of Gaping Void, revisits its Global Microbrand.
  

  and posts more brilliant cartoons:

  
  Source: Gaping Void

• Customer 2.0 straight from Microsoft’s IT EA Team

  It is not just about aligning to the business… it is about aligning with the business to the same end goal: the customer.

• Fast Company explains why Did the Web Help Kanye Outsell 50 Cent?

  The media blitz sparked by 50 Cent’s threat to retire only illustrates the growing advantage that the Internet, once seen as a threat, now offers to the recording industry. “There’s been a change in the past couple of years. New media was the underdeveloped stepchild. Now it’s first on the marketing plan”

• Is the ad network dead?

  , or how networks are expanding, not retracting.

  For all the planners and buyers who struggled to understand the difference between ad networks over the past couple of years, the change will mean the end of sameness. For all the web publishers who strung networks together in order to extract a living, it will mean the end of anonymity. We are having something of a renaissance online and the harbinger of change is the network.

• What marketers think

  
  Source: emarketer

• Word of Mouth is big.

  Total WoM marketing expenditures are projected to climb at a compound annual rate of 30.4% in the 2006-2011 period to $3.70 billion as brand marketers take advantage of dedicated WoM marketing strategies for improved return on investment (ROI),

The big trend here seems to be the need for a closer relationship to customers, allowing them to narrow their profiles, choosing the way that brands reach them, and through new channels that favor conversations. Seems simple, right ? Some people even call it marketing.

Having just read The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda, it was a strange coincidence that he’s announcing the Reebok TimeTanium Limited Edition, available at RbkCustom.

The design on the shoe surface was generated by his code, also printed on the outsole. A colorful product design made for those who feel that a shoe is a personal item.

In his book, Maeda makes a point on the role of emotion, that often surpasses our efforts to simplify things. It’s our natural instinct to look for products that we feel emotionally connected, are unique or have character.

Product personalization is now ordinary, with examples spanning from popular shows like Pimp My Ride or the recently launched Zune Originals.

The mass customization trend is stronger in online marketing, with widgets for social network profiles, facebook apps, and personal aggregators. Similarly, sites like Etsy allow users to pick unique items that relate to their personality.

With the recent launch of Google’s Android, the open mobile platform, developers and users can now create their own applications, and apply the same web principles to their cell phones. Again, pimping their product.