AWESOME stationary created for NBC’s action/suspense channel 13th Street by Jung von Matt AG, Germany.
Adlog
Interesting guerilla work done by DDB Brazil for FedEx.
I’ve shared this ad in many of my classes, as it still continues to be one of my favorite examples of great guerilla advertising.
I am a strong believer that Nike’s relatively new commercial featuring Tiger with a voiceover from his father was a GREAT commercial despite its intensity. It provided Tiger the opportunity to face the general public and apologize without necessarily bringing the controversy up again. He provided consumers with a different angle on the issue; through the use of his father’s voice, he harnessed the emotions that he feels and portrayed that to millions of people without saying a single word.
According to Apple:
“iAd is a breakthrough mobile advertising platform from Apple. With it, apps can feature rich media ads that combine the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web. For developers, it means a new, easy-to-implement source of revenue. For advertisers, it creates a new media outlet that offers consumers highly targeted information.”
Sounds too good to be true, right? Without seeing it in action, I have a hard time imagining minuscule ads on my iPhone being as emotionally powerful as Google’s search stories or Nike’s recent commercial featuring Tiger and a voiceover of his father.
However, I can see advertisers taking advantage of the iPhones numerous features to encourage interactivity with consumers. The touch-sensitive glass screen alone could provide endless possibilities for ads; it could allow consumers to physically interact with a brand in a million different ways. Solving puzzles that reveal travel discounts, playing games with candy bars, even using the iPhone’s accelerometer to drink a bottle of Coca-Cola are just some of the new interactions with brands we may be about to see.
But here is my million dollar question: Will this new ad platform become so popular and widely (ab)used that it pisses me off as a veteran iPhone user? I’ve relied on my trusty iPhone every since my first one, the first generation iPhone with the brushed metal back. Not once have I been bombarded with obnoxious ads in any of the apps I have chosen to download. Will the prospective profit be so appealing to developers that it becomes abused, and will it become something we see in every single app, paid or unpaid? I certainly hope not.
The State of Twitter's Advertising Utility and its Future ➔
Twitter saw what seemed like endless, exponential growth last year. However, recent studies show that Twitter’s exponential growth and usage is diminishing.
Regardless, Twitter has proven to become a staple not to be ignored in the marketing and advertising worlds. Since Twitter’s creation, the service has outfitted companies with another outlet of communication; it has provided companies with a channel to create and fortify a personality while also relaying relevant marketing messages.
We’ve all seen how Twitter has been used to deliver press releases, product information, and promotional offers… but Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo, has another idea in mind.
Costolo stated last year that Twitter’s answer to advertising would be “fascinating and “nontraditional”. Whatever tricks Costolo and other might have up their sleeves, there are several problems facing conventional ideas to implement additional advertising on Twitter.
For example, in the given state of the service, it would be difficult to deliver relevant messages to users in their stream of “tweets” without detracting from the current user experience.
The key word is relevance. In my mind, the simplest way to deliver relevant ads would be to develop a system that analyzes what users choose to read and write about through tags, and then deliver content that is similar to keyword tags.
But then again, it is always easier said than done. Only time will tell what Twitter has in store for marketers and the rest of the advertising industry.
It seems like the men’s toiletries industry is taking a new position on their branding… and it’s all about being a man. While many will argue the industry has been doing this forever, I believe it has always been subliminal and never taken as a major position. This major positioning declaration of “being a man” is so simple that I cannot believe (to the best of my knowledge) that it hasn’t been utilized before. What’s even more ironic is that Old Spice had already been taking the same position with a very successful and humorous ad featuring the “man your man could smell like”.
Watch Old Spice’s hilarious commercial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
Given the success of this unique selling position and its popularity with male consumers, how long will it be until all other men’s toiletry brands adopt a similar position… how long will it be before this unique selling position is no longer unique?
Gatorade Drops Sponsorship of Tiger Woods ➔
Anything Tiger did aside… what does this mean for Gatorade? It’s clear that companies choose the pop icons with the most pristine of reputations, but I argue that Tiger would not have benefitted the company any further than he did the previous summer. Tiger has only been representing Gatorade in advertisements since October of 2007, and since then, he has had an unsuccessful product line and only one short-lived campaign. What is obviously a set-back to Tiger is not necessarily a huge loss to Gatorade, as his interest was diminishing prior to the incident anyways.
Video Games score 5% of U.S. Household Entertainment Budget ➔
I personally think this number is huge when you consider the industry is barely 30-35 years old. What’s more amazing to me is of all U.S. households that are consumers of the industry, their spending is nearly double that of all households. This may put more emphasis on sponsorships, endorsements, and advertisements in video games. Also, think about the way popular music has played a role in video games in recent years. May this outstanding growth provide another sturdy media channel for music artists to reach consumers?
