Social Media in Sixty Seconds
February 28, 2009
Michael Brito, a social media strategist at Intel, has done probably the best job to date explaining what social media is about – basic common sense. It’s about being human. This short video, all of one minute and 12 seconds, stars Michael’s daughters and it tells you all you need to know. Kudos to Michael.
From: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MicroPersuasion
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Tesco finally pulls plug on in-store TV network
February 27, 2009
LONDON – Tesco is shutting down its Tesco Screens in-store TV network, five years after the service, which was meant to revolutionise retail marketing, launched.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Ladbrokes.com to sponsor racing channel
February 27, 2009
LONDON – Betting site Ladbrokes.com has signed a six-figure deal to sponsor horse racing television channel Racing UK.
From: http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/RSS/
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Paddy Power launches first TV ad
February 27, 2009
Betting firm Paddy Power is cashing in on the cheapest advertising rates in decades to launch its first TV campaign with a commercial featuring former England footballer Carlton Palmer sharing a bubble bath with a punter.
The first of a series of Paddy Power TV ads, created by ad agency Karmarama, launches this Saturday to take advantage of the Carling Cup final between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur on Sky Sports on Sunday afternoon.
The ad features Palmer, who was chosen after the bookmaker held an online vote asking the public to choose which player from a shortlist of former footballers they would most like to see appear in a bubble bath.
In the ad a man is seen having a romantic candle-lit bath with his partner. She slips under the water and is replaced by the football-kitted Palmer. “Isn’t this nice, just you and Carlton Palmer having a bath?,” he says.
A second ad, featuring former champion jockey Richard Dunwoody on horseback delivering good betting news in the middle of the night to a man in a kitchen, also breaks this weekend.
The Dunwoody ad will be used in the run-up to the Cheltenham Festival on 10 March.
Paddy Power’s TV campaign aims to take a “fun and irreverent look at the worlds of sport and betting” and will run across Sky, Setanta, Channel 4, ITV4 and Channel Five.
A third TV ad featuring former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobelaar will run in August in the run-up to the start of the next Premier League football season.
Grobelaar came second in the online vote to Palmer from a shortlist that included Peter Beardsley, Neville Southall, Viv Anderson and Terry Hurlock.
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From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Did the Cadbury’s ‘eyebrows’ ad make you laugh?
February 27, 2009
Cadbury’s ‘eyebrows’ ad has taken the internet by storm. But did it make you laugh? And did it sell any chocolate?
Yes. Yes. Yes. I know. Advertising is one of capitalism’s most nefarious by-products. It’s the enemy. As an industry, it sucks up bright minds from good universities and – while they could be out lobbying for Greenpeace or something – sticks them in ‘funky’ breakout rooms in Shoreditch loffices (that’s a loft that’s also an office), so that they can come up with new ways to sell air freshener to paranoid home counties housewives.
But, every now and again, the gilded youths with the stupid haircuts produce an advert – nay, a moment – of such lateral, ludicrous genius, that even the most unreconstructed Marxist has to laugh, for fear of being labelled a joyless berk. Let us all, then, once more – as we begin this our fifth, monthly Word of Mouth adland trawl – pay chortling homage to That Cadbury’s One With The Kids With The Eyebrows.
It’s the earnest looks on their faces that does it, I think. That and the bit where the girl starts nonsensically ’scratching’ along, with a balloon, to Freestyle’s early 80’s Miami electro classic, Don’t Stop The Rock. Either way, it’s hilarious.
Fallon, the ad agency creating these A Glass and a Half Full Productions for Cadbury’s, must be feeling very pleased with itself. After its airport-trucks-breakout spot – which, at the time, seemed like some oblique satire on the chaos at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 – and the inexplicable success of the gorilla drummer commercial, this new ‘eyebrows’ ad has, once more, taken the interweb by storm.
It’s been watched over four million times online, has prompted 54 video responses on YouTube, and inspired (if that’s the right word) a deeply unfunny parody, featuring Lilly Allen, on Channel 4’s Sunday Night Project. Cadbury’s, meanwhile, plan to overplay their hand with Jivebrow 09, in which the general public will get to ape the kids and discover whether they are among the 18% of Britons who are, “fully eyebrow ambidextrous”.
One thing does bug me though. Who audits whether this actually sells any Dairy Milk? Personally, I’ll eat anything that can even loosely be described as chocolate, from the most bitter, fruity single estate, single bean 99% cocoa bar, to those fake “smarties” that you can buy on the market. So I’m not averse to the product, nor am I arrogant enough to assume that I’m immune to the subtle brainwashing at work here – the embedding of Cadbury’s in my subconscious. But, when I bought some Cadbury’s Buttons on Saturday was it all to do with the ‘eyebrows’?
I doubt it. In fact, thinking back, I don’t think that the ‘eyebrows’ ad has altered my shopping habits one bit. Could all this expense and creativity be having absolutely no effect on a significant percentage of the public? People like Shining Tribe, a poster on YouTube, who – even if he / she, crucially, missed the news about the buy-out – stresses: “Well done Cadbury! A memorable and funny ad, love it! Hate your chocolate though … give me the tasty Green & Blacks brand any day!!”
Who knows? But, I will say this, if Cadbury’s want to chuck £3.7m down the drain in order to keep us entertained, we should be thankful. Because the other people out there who are trying to sell us chocolate are boring me to death. The KitKat, ‘Working Like A Machine’ ad, for instance, is almost as depressing, in real time, as working on a supermarket check-out.
As for the Twix ‘optical illusion’ commercial. It does say halfway through, “two biscuits dipped in caramel and chocolate”, doesn’t it? And not “two biscuits double-dipped in lysergic acid“? In which case, what in God’s name is all that supposed to be about?
If you’re going to get ‘crazy’, it has to be funnier or more notably bizarre than that. Otherwise, don’t bother. My idea for the next Twix ad? A grumpy northern baldy intoning solemnly to camera: “Twix, quite good with a brew.” I’ll do it for £10,000. I think that’s reasonable.
Otherwise, can I appeal to Twix to bring the US Get The Girl campaign to our screens? A genuinely funny interactive four-parter about a guy trying to chat-up a right-on New Yorker at a party, it contains at least one immortal line worthy of Seinfeld: “Blogging? I love blogging. Hey Bruce … this guy wants to go back to his apartment and blog about the media and society’s ills … Do you wanna join us?”
On which post-modern note, I shall leave you to ponder some important questions. Honestly, do you feel – could you admit? – that food adverts influence your shopping? Is chocolate really better than sex? And can you wriggle your eyebrows independently?
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Tim Hayward: Gary Rhodes Flora Buttery ads banned
February 27, 2009
The celebrity chef’s much-derided Flora Buttery margarine ads have been banned. Did anyone actually believe that it’s better than butter?
I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for Gary Rhodes. I think of him as an unacknowledged innovator and breaker of new ground. Where big sweary Gordon and cheeky little Jamie took cohorts of TV producers and PR people to turn them into cartoon self-parodies, Rhodes did it first and on his own. Yes it was Gary whose ridiculous hair and comprehensive arsenal of verbal and physical tics set the pattern that the others were to follow.
He’s cut off the hair now, of course and with it seems to have lost some of his former puissance. His London restaurants rarely trouble the critics, he has opened in Grenada, Dubai and surrealy, two new restaurants at opposite ends of a microscopic and somnolent Dorset town. Recently he scraped the bottom of the crystal barrel with an appearance on Strictly Come and Eat Spiders at my Celebrity Wife Fat Camp. Doubtless to financially cement this complex retirement portfolio, he’s also been advertising margarine.
Ever since minced cow udders were first soaked in caustic soda to produce a grey slab of butter substitute, the industry has pursued the grail of butteriness. They’ve convinced us that butter itself is an evil filth which, on consumption, immediately gravitates to the aorta to form a solid and lethal plug. They’ve convinced a slavering public that hard, cold butter is not merely an inconvenience, but a social faux pas of the same order as furry teeth and stinking oxters. They’ve sold hard on the notion that failing to dose the family regularly with ‘healthy spreads’ reduces any mother to the status of mouth-breathing slattern and borderline abuser and they’ve got us believing that Italian peasants have active sex lives well into their nineties, simply because they’ve been necking pints of marg since the Renaissance. I hope to God it’s passed you by, but there’s a yellow fats* war going on out there; the marg that wins is the one that tastes most ‘buttery’ and this is where Gary comes in.
The ads – which, let’s not forget feature a man once considered one of our most promising chefs driving a van topped with a giant styrofoam crumpet – have claimed that Flora Buttery (seed oils and buttermilk) is more popular than Lurpak Lighter Spreadable (blended butter and vegetable oil), have been found by the Advertising Standards Authority to mislead viewers and have been taken off air.
Our own Tony Naylor neatly skewered the flaw in the ad’s logic a while back:
… when you look at the facts behind Flora’s claims about Buttery’s popularity that the whole thing is revealed as a quite hilarious charade.
Do you know what the stats were? Out of a mere 200 people, 48% preferred Flora Buttery; 45% Lurpak Lighter Spreadable; 7% had no preference. So, discounting the 14 people who couldn’t care less, a whopping 3% preferred Flora Buttery. As resounding victories go, it’s right up there with George Bush assuming the presidency on a handful of hanging chads.
So the ASA judgement is, on the face of it, about a straight case of unsupportable claims by over-eager advertisers in a tough market. But for me, never a huge consumer of yellow fats, it’s all about the tragic central figure of Rhodes. I just can’t drag my eyes from the spectacle of a lifetime professional cook – whose cuisine, according to his Wikipedia biog, is distinguished by its use of butter – shilling the distinction between a margy butter and a buttery marg.
For months we’ve had the edifying spectacle of an elderly dog on a pavement choosing between two heaps of vomit. The ASA have just done everyone a favour and shot it.
*’Yellow Fats’ is the term marketing people use for the non-butter spreads sector. Lovely, huh?
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising/rss
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Ads in Google News Turn it into a PR Playground
February 27, 2009
The Google News team blogs that contextual ads are now running alongside of news search results…
"What this means is that when you enter a query like iPhone or Kindle into the Google News search box, you'll see text ads alongside your News search results–similar to what you see on regular Google searches or Google Book Search."
Read between the lines and guess what that really means: Google News is now a PR playground. Given the relative ease of launching a simple Google Adwords campaign we're going to see a lot of companies – some legit, others not – buying up real estate on Google News solely for influence, not clicks. Google may bounce these ads if they don't perform – time will tell.
It's already happening. Here's a case in point. Last week an eagle-eyed reader alerted SEO blogger Barry Schwartz that one advertiser tried to use Google News sponsored links as a way spread fake news – in this case a false rumor that President Obama was killed. The ad, Schwartz notes, was pulled down. But you can bet there will be more. And clearly some people saw it.
From: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MicroPersuasion
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Five Digital Trends to Watch for 2009
February 27, 2009
In my role as Director of Insights for Edelman Digital I am writing monthly white papers for clients on key trends. Sometimes we will release these broadly. For the first one, I drew on members of the Edelman team, as well as third party research, to highlight five digital trends to watch for 2009. Each includes specific recommended actions.
Even though the economy is slowing, all signs show that audiences are still spending a lot more time on the web. Marketers need to invest to meet them there.
However, what’s changed today they are smarter about where they focus their time, dollars and energy. Experimentation is giving way to tactics that deliver ROI. These include public engagement, search and social networking — three themes that connect the major macro trends.
There are five trends covered in this white paper…
Satisfaction Guaranteed - Customer care and PR are blending as consumers use social media to demand service
Media Reforestation - The media is in a constant state of reinvention as it transitions
from atoms to bits
Less is the New More – Overload takes its toll. Gorging on media is out. Selective
ignorance and friends as filters are in
Corporate All-Stars – Workers flock to social media to build their personal brands,
yet offer employers an effective and credible way to market
in the downturn
The Power of Pull - Where push once ruled, it’s now equally important to create
digital content that people discover through search
You can download the full paper here(PDF)
or simply browse or read it below. I look forward to hearing your feedback.
From: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MicroPersuasion
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British views canvassed on HD-TV plan
February 27, 2009
A successor to Freeview, which could launch for £100 by 2010, would bring on-demand viewing from services like BBC iPlayer and ITVPlayer off the PC and into the living room
From: http://www.ft.com/rss/companies/media
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Social Media in Sixty Seconds
February 27, 2009
Michael Brito, a social media strategist at Intel, has done probably the best job to date explaining what social media is about – basic common sense. It's about being human. This short video, all of one minute and 12 seconds, stars Michael's daughters and it tells you all you need to know. Kudos to Michael.
From: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MicroPersuasion
Go to Source