comScore, which closely tracks the online viewing and shopping of 2 million individuals, has found extraordinary “lift” in online video advertising on consumer behavior.
In an interview with Beet.TV, comScore co-founder and chairman Gian Fulgoni says that exposure to online video advertising can lead to a 40 percent increase in buying a product or service.
Ever since Esther Howland recognized Valentine’s Day as a business opportunity in 1948 and started a card-making business, companies have been trying cash in on cupid’s holiday. Each February, Americans spend billions of dollars on cards, chocolates and candied hearts, all looking eerily similar. With an endless procession of advertisers vying for the same market, M&Ms® have tried to separate themselves from the collective din with a new campaign.
We’ve all grown familiar with M&Ms® campaign, featuring the sarcastic red M&M and his kind-hearted, yellow peanut sidekick. In fact, they’ve become pop-culture icons over the years. This Valentine’s Day, M&Ms upped the ante when they introduced the sexy Ms. Green. With her luscious lips, white go-go boots, and batting eyelashes, Ms. Green’s flirtatious character was a perfect choice for the romantic holiday.
This strategy was a smart move by the candy company, as Ms. Green stood out to consumers from the overwhelming seas of red and pink.
“By proclaiming green the new color of love, M&Ms® is spinning a traditional Valentine’s Day treat into something fun and flirty,” stated Michele Kessler, vice president, marketing, Mars Snackfood US.
The Ms. Green campaign went even further online, offering facts, trivia, and the ‘Color of Love Contest,’ where participants could enter to win a romantic trip to Paris. M&M’S® even created a mock press release from Ms. Green.
During the holidays when everything tends to blur together, it’s important for businesses to take an approach like M&Ms and think outside of the candy-coated shell.
“The average consumer is exposed to 600 to 625 potential messages per day (whether noticed of not), where 272 are from TV, radio, magazines and newspapers” - Media Matters, 2007.
Consumers are bombarded by advertising messages from the cradle to the grave. In order to soak through all that background noise, advertisers are forced to take risks with innovative and unconventional advertising. According to the industry magazine, this approach to advertising is on the rise in the US and around the world.
On February 3, 2009, a hoax campaign dubbed Computer Tan was launched to promote awareness of the threat of skin cancer. Within the first 24 hours, the site had attracted 30,000 hits. The concept was a joint effort with Skcin, The Karen Clifford Skin Cancer Society.
Site visitors quickly realize that their tanning session is not what they’d expected. Soon after starting the “free session”, facts and images about skin cancer appear. The message is clear.
The site is expected to run for two weeks. As of February 8 of this year it had attracted 450,000 hits.
“This campaign was designed to engage those most at risk of developing skin disease and those most difficult to talk to via conventional advertising,” Simon Kill, new business director at McCann Erickson said.
Thinking outside the pizza box
In August of 2008, Papa John’s leveraged the public’s fascination with crop circles to market their new whole-wheat crust. An advertisement was cut into a six-acre wheat field in the Denver area, conveniently located along the flight paths near Denver International Airport. The crop circle took three weeks to construct and was completed in time to be viewed by those traveling in for the Democratic National Convention.
“This was an incredible opportunity for me to showcase the beauty of a Colorado wheat field through the style of art I enjoy creating most,” crop-circle creator and artist Stan Herd said. “Fortunately, Papa John’s was willing to allow me to lead the design of the image, which was important to me.”
The advertisement includes red mulch for pepperoni, corn stalks for green peppers, black mulch for black olives, and harvested wheat for the cheese.
Addressing those who are most difficult to reach with conventional advertising is a challenge that many creative agencies are often confronted with. By using innovative techniques, clients and consumers alike can be introduced to a new world of advertising.
For more examples of innovative advertisements, visit the following sites :
Not many people knew what to expect from commercials during Super Bowl XLIII. Who were the advertising winners and losers who bought commercial spots selling at all-time high prices? After the game there were definitely a few champions named.
He’s back! The famous online trading baby came back in E-trade’s spot, and he brought a friend. This spot was ingenious, and this author personally witnessed it make an entire room of college students stop what they were doing and laugh hysterically. E-trade used humor to sell their product, as well as to acknowledge the tough economic times. They accomplished this in the form of talking and (even better), singing babies to advertise a boring subject: investing. Four stars to E-trade for figuring out how to get millions of viewers to shut up and listen about an online trading site. Not an easy task.
Denny’s first Super Bowl commercial was a funny, yet somewhat dated spot, mimicking a Soprano’s-like atmosphere. Although the HBO mob drama was at its apex five years ago, Denny’s did it right. The smiley face whip cream topping was witty and unexpected. Ensuring a massive turnout after the ad was aired, Denny’s offered free food the Tuesday after the Super Bowl. CNN Money reporter Beth Kowitt wrote an article about Denny’s free breakfast, stating “nationwide, the company expected 1.5 million visitors…but it may have seen more than 2 million.”
Then there was Audi. Last year, the German car company amazed with a spot for their new R8, which gave chills to most viewers. This year they came up with an equally clever ad that battled the competition, namely Mercedes and Lexus, but in a classy way. If you weren’t paying attention at first, you probably wouldn’t even understand the commercial. However, give Audi credit. They did something that is hard to do nowadays: said they were better without being tacky.
Monster.com ran an ad to make people reconsider their current jobs, a hard thing to do when the economy is bad and employee turnover is low. The moose head at the start of the commercial is seemingly nothing more than a decoration in a rich man’s home, until you go to the other side. This was a clever idea that many Americans identify with on a daily basis.
The Doritos crystal ball spot was voted USA Today and Youtube’s number-one ad. Who saw that coming? It shocked people at Super Bowl parties around America. Google, Youtube’s parent company, reported that the day after the big game there was a 4,300 percent increase in their search engine for “Doritos.” Amateurs thought up the idea, and they won $1 million for it. This spot exploited the ever-valuable “word-of-mouth” effect — essential to the success of any Super Bowl ad.
Is there a link between religious ritual and advertising?
Is product placement relevant?
Does sex sell?
These questions have puzzled advertisers and marketers since the dawn of consumerism. Thanks to Martin Lindstrom, we now have answers.
In his newest book Buy-ology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Lindstrom, CEO and chairman of Lindstrom Company and chairman of Buyology Inc., explores these and other marketing myths. The latest must-read for marketers, Buy-ology contains findings from the largest neuromarketing study performed to date. Taking four years and at a cost of $7 million, the results of the study presented in Buy-ology are nothing short of fascinating.
Disappointed by previous studies with little credibility or diversity, Lindstrom was inspired to create his own research study. He aimed to publish a “Bible” of effective marketing techniques, observing nearly 2,000 consumers from all over the world. Lindstrom presented his test subjects with a variety of brand images, advertisements, and other marketing vehicles. Next, using EEG and fMRI machines, he measured their brain activity. The findings of his study reached one overarching conclusion: our perceptions of why we want what we want are wrong.
This revealing insight into the world of consumerism and human desire is now available in Buy-ology. In it, Lindstrom gives specific examples of the flawed perceptions marketers and consumers make every day.
Misconceptions of the effectiveness of smoking labels, product placement and brand image are a few of the topics he touches on. For example, The Surgeon General’s Warning on packs of cigarettes should theoretically help people realize the dangers of smoking, encouraging them to think twice before lighting up. According to Lindstrom’s’s research though, this logic is completely wrong. In fact, Lindstrom and his colleagues found, “that those same cigarette labels intended to curb smoking, reduce cancer, and save lives [has] instead become a killer marketing tool for the tobacco industry.” Lindstrom claims exposure to those same warning labels actually stimulates the area in the smoker’s brain that induces cravings. Want to learn more of his findings? Check out a free chapter of the book now available on the Buy-ology website.
Since its release in October of 2008, Buy-ology has enjoyed a surge in popularity and received tons of press. Recently the book was added to the New York Times Best-sellers List, and Lindstrom has appeared on morning shows like The Today Show. His previous book, BRANDsense, was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top-five marketing books ever published.
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Commercials: check.
Print ads: check.
Press kit: check.
Facebook page: check?
If the idea of using a social networking site like Facebook in a media plan looks unfamiliar, your business could be missing out on one of the newest and best ways to speak to your target audience.
Facebook has not always been seen as a marketing option, let alone a cutting-edge strategy. It was created by a Harvard student who had an idea to allow students on campus to become more familiar with one another. Due to its rapid rise in popularity, Facebook decided to go public in 2006. They then allowed all individuals and groups with a valid email address to access the site. Immediately, the number of users grew and many individuals and businesses began jumping on the Facebook bandwagon.
Since going public, Facebook has become the second largest social network on the Web, and one of the fastest-growing sites on the Internet today. If your company is not one of the 60-million members who have been sucked into the Facebook craze, it will be soon.
Many businesses have recognized this trend, and have teamed up with Facebook to reach millions of potential customers. For these tech-savvy businesses, social networking sites have become the ultimate way to directly connect with prospective customers and clients. Facebook allows businesses to create profile pages, establish groups, advertise services and promote blogs—all things that can create exposure and allow business to prosper.
“Social networks present an enormous opportunity—maybe the biggest tech since email,” Jon Schwartz of USA Today said. The New York Times seems to agree. By creating their own Facebook page, The New York Times launched a successful campaign that raised awareness of NYTimes.com as an interactive news center, and allowed the members of the Facebook community to converse with each other on opinions about the recent election. The Times is just one of many businesses reaping the benefits of the Facebook phenomenon; a phenomenon that continues to gain steam.
In addition to The New York Times, Burger King has utilized Facebook to raise brand loyalty and help increase attendance at promotional events. The “Home of the Whopper” created an application to promote their signature burger, called “Whopper Sacrifice,” which encouraged users to “de-friend” ten of their friends on Facebook in order to receive a coupon for a free Whopper sandwich. The campaign was a complete success; in fact, the application was so popular that 233,906 users found themselves “de-friended” in the name of a hamburger. Although Burger King decided to take the Whopper campaign off of Facebook, the exercise reaffirmed Burger King as a major player in the fast food business, while simultaneously increasing brand loyalty.
In a world where technology is rapidly advancing, it is essential for businesses to keep up with trends in order to succeed. Technology has revolutionized the way we do business, and the overwhelming success of social networking sites offers a road map to the future of the industry. In five, ten, or twenty years time, who knows what the standard will be? For now it is clear that sites like Facebook are just the beginning.
On January 20th, the world watched as president-elect Barack Obama took the oath of office and became the 44th President of the United States. A warm moment, for sure, though 1.8 million people witnessed the historic event in person, braving single-digit temperatures. What made these people travel from far and wide, defying harsh winter cold? Was it belief in Obama’s pledge of change and hope? Did the fact that he is our first president of Muslim and African-American descent influence them? Perhaps some just wanted to be there and see it with their own eyes? The common thread to all these reasons? The Obama campaign’s superior advertising strategy.
Regardless of whether or not you supported Obama, few doubt his campaign strategy was one of the most efficient and successful in the nation’s history. Obama’s campaign utilized new media such as the internet and social marketing sites to reach out to potential voters like no campaign ever has.
Bombarding the public with political commercials full of exaggerated accusations and “low-blows” on opponents does not necessarily influence voters. Receiving a flyer-a-day in the mail for a political candidate has much the same effect as the mud-slinging ads. After years of candidates making these marketing mistakes, a new type of campaign strategy emerged. This marketing campaign persuaded nearly two-million people to join Obama at the Capitol on January 20th.
How does one man win an election, break the inauguration attendance record and capture the hearts of people all over the world? One word: interaction. Obama’s advertising campaign focused on a grassroots internet strategy aimed at recruiting voters from across the nation. The strategy began early with an aggressive online recruitment that bested both Hillary Clinton and John McCain in Web presence and fundraising.
This online recruitment took place on my.BarackObama.com, a site that allowed users to participate in an interactive community and be directly involved in helping the campaign. By creating this tight-knit network, Obama created a viral marketing campaign and as word spread, participation soared.
With 90 people on Obama’s internet team, the campaign did not just stop with the interactive site. The team worked on everything from producing videos for popular websites like YouTube, to online PR, to profiling site visitors based on who was most likely to donate. Before Obama’s campaign, a political donation was something many voters had never considered. The web site’s interactive nature encouraged voters to feel more in tune with politics and in turn, more inspired to donate. “Obama ambassadors” gave small amounts of money and shared stories about why, for the first time, they were donating to a political campaign.
The success of the Obama campaign has made Barack Obama not only our President, but a brand unto himself. To wit: Following the election, a hair salon in Chicago changed its name from Ossama’s to Obama’s, while a woman in the accessory business is making everything from rhinestone Obama sunglasses to Obama logo necklaces. The transformation of Obama from political figure to brand status is hard to ignore. Most credit the success of “branding” Obama to the integration of new media and a high level of voter participation.
There is no doubt that Obama’s campaign strategy, with heavy emphasis on the internet and the idea of voter participation, helped pave the way to that chilly afternoon on January 20th. Few who watched on that day thought of him as an advertising success. However, without his grassroots campaign and integration of new marketing strategies, Obama may not have emerged victorious. What will political campaigns hold in the future? Will political candidates follow in Obama’s footsteps? Or will they implement an even more innovative, successful strategy themselves? We’ll all have to wait and see.
About the Film
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.
Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day. The film was shot in high-definition on location in the United States, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium.
Interviewees in Helvetica include some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world, including Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Wim Crouwel, Hermann Zapf, Neville Brody, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, David Carson, Paula Scher, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Experimental Jetset, Michael C. Place, Norm, Alfred Hoffmann, Mike Parker, Bruno Steinert, Otmar Hoefer, Leslie Savan, Rick Poynor, and Lars Müller.
Helvetica had its World Premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2007. The film subsequently toured film festivals, special events, and art house cinemas worldwide, playing in over 300 cities in 40 countries. It received its television premiere on BBC1 in November 2007, and will be broadcast on PBS as part of the Emmy award-winning series Independent Lens in fall 2008. The film was nominated for a 2008 Independent Spirit Award in the “Truer Than Fiction” category, and was shortlisted for the Design Museum London’s “Designs of the Year” Award. An excerpt of the film was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
About the Typeface
Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Edüard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. In the late 1950s, the European design world saw a revival of older sans-serif typefaces such as the German face Akzidenz Grotesk. Haas’ director Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to their line. The result was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica, derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, when Haas’ German parent companies Stempel and Linotype began marketing the font internationally in 1961.
Introduced amidst a wave of popularity of Swiss design, and fueled by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica quickly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and myriad other uses worldwide. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984 only further cemented its ubiquity.
http://www.helveticafilm.com/crouwel.clip.html
Remember when a political party used to hold a convention to select its candidates for national office? Of course you don’t. Today, the candidates are already selected long before the convention starts. Then what is the function of a national convention?
Public relations.
More than 40 million Americans watched Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. That’s a larger audience than the Olympics drew on any given night and even larger than the season finale of “American Idol.” As an indication of the real function of a political convention, consider that some 14,000 journalists traveled to Denver to cover the activities of only 3,000 delegates.
Why did China spend an estimated $44 billion to hold the 2008 Summer Olympics, including an estimated $350 million for the opening ceremonies alone?
PR.
There’s enormous PR potential in international events repeated on a regular basis. One has to feel sympathy for Greece, the inventor of the Olympics, the host of the games for more than 1,100 years, and the site in 1896 of the first modern games. The country should have had the foresight to trademark the Olympics name and to hold the games on a regular basis.
Every country, every state, every city, every company should consider the long-term potential of sponsoring events that generate PR.
Lavish spending not a must
They need not be particularly expensive, either. Since 1933, Rockefeller Center in New York has sponsored its annual Christmas tree lighting, which always generates a raft of favorable stories. In 1964, the tree-lighting ceremony became an annual TV special.
Lighting a Christmas tree is a big PR story? Sure, if the tree is enormous and you are the first entity to use the concept to capture the media’s attention.
PR and advertising are in a symbiotic relationship. Before you launch an advertising war, you should first engage in a PR battle.
“America’s best truck” is the headline of a recent Chevrolet advertisement. That, in itself, is not going to motivate many buyers to switch from a Ford 150 or a Dodge Ram to a Chevy Silverado. But the copy reinforces the headline by documenting Chevy’s PR successes:
Creating effective advertising is extremely difficult in today’s overcommunicated society. It’s not just the volume of advertising ($285 billion this year), but the inherent lack of credibility in the message. Nobody is going to believe that Chevrolet is “America’s best truck” just because General Motors says so.
PR provides the credibility that makes your advertising much more effective.
PR’s targets multiply
For millions of smaller companies, PR today is grunt work. You have to approach individual media outlets with pitches tailored to their audiences. Advertising is mass communication; PR is one-to-one communication.
There is an alternative. Do something that attracts media attention.
Atlantic City invented the Miss America contest not to select the most beautiful women in America, but to promote Atlantic City as a tourist destination.
Macy’s invented the Thanksgiving Day parade not to give thanks for a bountiful harvest, but to promote the Macy’s department-store brand. This annual event must have been one reason for the conversion of 62 Marshall Field’s stores to the Macy’s name after the 2005 acquisition of May Department Stores (owner of Marshall Field’s) by Federated Department Stores, now Macy’s.
“PR first, advertising second” has been our mantra for a number of years. But PR can often be more effective if it’s based on “doing something” rather than just “saying something.”
Singapore’s vague claim
Singapore, for example, has launched a branding program with a traditional theme, “Uniquely Singapore,” an idea that is not only devoid of PR potential, but also one that has little meaning for the average consumer.
Every city, every state, every country is unique. Why is Singapore unique and what could the city-state do to communicate its uniqueness?
It turns out that Singapore is unique. More people (86% of the population) in Singapore live in high-rise apartments than in any other city in the world. “Singapore should market itself as city of the future,” was the headline in a local business newspaper, referring to a marketing approach I had suggested to a reporter.
“City of the future”? In an era of energy shortages and $100-a-barrel oil, it would make a lot of sense for people to move from single-family homes to high-rise apartments, a development that is sure to come.
Compare Singapore with the U.S. Here the numbers are reversed: 87% live in single-family homes. Only 2.5% live in apartment houses with five or more units.
Now compare energy costs (I’m using the most recent statistics from the Department of Energy from 2001): The average single-family home in America spent $1,697 a year in energy costs vs. $803 for the average apartment unit.
Move everybody into high-rises and cut energy costs in half.
I don’t think that’s so outrageous. Yesterday, farms. Today, single-family homes. Tomorrow, high-rise apartments.
City of the future. That’s the idea. But the “do something” is different. Singapore could hold an annual global forum on urban architecture that would attract not only some of the world’s most famous architects, but also some of the world’s most famous media.
Look ahead
Like advertising, PR needs to think long-term. It takes a while for a good PR concept to develop traction. The first modern-day Olympics attracted only 300 athletes from 13 countries. The Beijing Olympics attracted more than 10,000 athletes from 205 countries. (There are 192 members of the United Nations.)
When you launch a PR program, your first thought should be, “What can we do?”
Actions speak louder than words.
~ ~ ~
Published: September 02, 2008
In addition to his monthly AdAge.com column, Al and his daughter and partner Laura Ries host a weekly video report at www.RiesReport.com.
The JLS Production team has just wrapped up post production on a marketing demo for Doug Crytzer, president of American Adventure Sports, and is presently working on promotion for a televised adventure racing series produced by AAS for ‘09.
This video re-establishes our creative and production capabilities in yet another market, and I can only imagine how the impact of this new client will shape our future.
By far the best part of creating the demo was the production. We traveled down to Nags Head, NC with a crew of 12 to film the Blackbeard Adventure Race in early September. At this time Adventure racing was new to us, and we had only a vague idea of what to expect. Man were we in for a treat….
8 Mile beach run, 8 miles kayaking, 25 mountain biking, orienteering through the woods, and even an 80 foot repel off the roof of the hotel. You can only imagine how this was a filmmaker’s dream.
We got to work with some great equipment, such as an underwater camera housing for our Panasonic HVX200, and VIO POV.1 Helmet Cameras which surprised us with their image quality.
Overall the shoot was a success, and was followed with an exciting post production process in which Dan McBride worked his magic to create a foot stomping demo that leaves you wanting more.
The video is being used to market potential cities and vendors, to sponsor and host a complete adventure race series in ‘09. Along with further video production for a sales effort, the JLS team will also look to cover the races and create hour long television shows to capture the emotion of these superb athletes as they combat in an urban gauntlet developed by the mind of Doug Crytzer.
I can’t wait for perspective sponsors, participants, and fans to see this video, because its high intensity face melting moxie makes you want to get out and try it for yourself. I’m a prime example, as I head to Ohiopyle this weekend for a training academy with Doug; and you can bet that I will be bringing the helmet cams.
