‘Let your mind wander’ cinema ad aims for curious readers left cold by Economist’s traditional red-poster campaigns

The Economist is launching a radical new brand strategy with its first cinema ad in eight years – a 70 second commercial featuring a high-wire walker.

In a move aimed at boosting the Economist’s circulation, the campaign is targeted at people who do not read the magazine but are “intellectually curious”.

The dramatic advert, “Red Wires”, features wire-walker Florent Blondeau walking through a city on a series of high wires coloured red. Each wire represent different thoughts and ideas inspired by reading The Economist.

A new Economist slogan, “Let your mind wander”, is also being introduced with the high-wire campaign. The Economist said that the high-wire walker represents the “thrill that stimulated minds enjoy”.

The advert will appear in cinemas in Bristol, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and London from Friday, running before screenings of Public Enemies and Inglourious Basterds. The 70-second version will appear on Channel 4 News on the Sunday.

Regular readers of the magazine loved the Economist’s traditional poster adverts but they did not connect with non-readers, according to the Economist’s UK publisher, Yvonne Ossman. “The brand left them cold,” she said.

The magazine has a history of maintaining its marketing during recessions and it is thought to have spend under £1m on the campaign in an effort to attract more readers.

According to the Economist’s research, there are more than 3 million people in the UK with “high levels of curiosity” about the world. But the magazine sells 186,995 copies each week here.

The research focused on psychographics rather than demographics. “It was less about your job title, more about your mindset,” Ossman said.

“We could have stayed with the previous campaign for many years. We are doing well. I personally think that that’s when you change. When you have to do something, that’s a little bit knee-jerk,” she added.

Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, the Economist’s long-standing ad agency, created the new campaign. “Red Wires” was directed by Tom Carty. Media planning and buying was handled by PHD.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

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Robert Scoble is back to blogging, investing more time and attention this week there as opposed to Twitter and Friendfeed. He linked to me this week, which sparked my curiosity and encouraged me to dig into my Google Analytics archives to see a) how my traffic drivers have changed and b) what, if any, broader trends can be discerned.

For the purpose of this experiment I looked at two times when one of the web’s most influential voices - then and now - linked to me: his post from earlier this week and another from December 27, 2006. While not entirely scientific, what they have in common is that a) Robert put the link at the top of the post and that b) both came during holiday weeks when web traffic typically slows. (In theory, to really test this I should track referrals from Scoble’s Friendfeed/Twitter accounts - I suspect that they drive tons of traffic. However, that’s hard to do given the way the sites are structured. Perhaps we can use Bitly stats to run a test)

Here’s are my three takeaways from this little experiment (I am discounting the links from my old blog to this new one. It’s an anomaly since I just switched) …

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The Coke Zero Hero has pulled! He has totally pulled this hot babe - that’s what heroes do - and they’ve probably had sex! WOW! Sex with a hot babe? Heroic! She then goes to have a shower; and that’s when her parents show up at the flat! Time for the Coke Zero Hero (who, it should be noted, has a distinctly unheroic bumfluff moustache) to do his thing! His “thing”, it turns out, is not to hurriedly tidy up the flat then politely answer the door and engage in awkward-but-essentially-friendly conversation with the young lady’s parents; or get the message to her that her folks are here. No, it’s to summon an entire SWAT unit, who blast in through the windows, speed-make the bed, defumigate the pad, muzzle the barking dog and then extricate lover boy in their helicopters, giving him just enough time to make a spectacularly smug “I’ll call you” sign to his new lady friend before he’s whisked off through a blizzard of inexplicable explosions. Now, call us harsh, but what has this twerp done to merit being called a hero? If he’s too scared to even attempt social interaction with his new squeeze’s parents, too lazy to affect the basic tidying up of a studio flat, and can’t even grow a proper moustache, he’s not exactly going to give Batman sleepless nights, is he? And what’s with the shattered windows? More to the point, what’s with the exploding buildings? Coke Zero man isn’t a hero; he’s the living embodiment of feckless, irresponsible, scrounging Britain. Who just happens to have his own private SWAT unit. If he does call, hot babe, don’t answer; you can do better.

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Morecambe and Wise’s Positive Thinking song used to offer potential VW buyers an ‘infectious burst of optimism’

Volkswagen is bucking the recessionary gloom with a musical TV advert set to Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise’s Positive Thinking song.

The TV ad, which VW describes as an “infectious burst of optimism”, comes as the car industry struggles with a 54% year-on-year drop in production while hard-up consumers back off on making big ticket purchases during the downturn.

Volkswagen took the unusual step of making an upbeat ad amid dire financial times – and chose the song that Morecambe and Wise used to sing over the end credits on their TV programme in 1970s.

The TV ad, created by DDB London, opens with an office worker losing his job. Instead of being downbeat he breaks into song as he walks past closing shops and real estate agents going out of business, on his way to his VW Passat.

The ad closes with the man driving toward a light at the end of a tunnel, watched by a bunch of sheep bobbing along to the music despite being transported to the butchers.

The TV ad breaks tonight and will also run in cinemas nationwide. It ends with the strapline “One thing you can be sure of”.

The car sector cut its ad spend on all media by 19% in the year to the end of April, according to figures from the Nielsen Company.

Car production in the first five months of the year totalled 319,022 – a drop of 54% on the same period last year.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

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Here’s a fun little find for a Friday. If you have a Google Profile and you’re logged in to your Google account, search for the word me. Your profile will come up as the top result. This is great if you get amnesia.

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I keep a massive list on my computer called “Discovery.” These are products and services I am evaluating both for potential Edelman use as well as to satisfy my own personal insatiable curiosity for new technology. I thought I would use the lifestream to open this up a bit.

Here’s what I am checking out this week: Google Wave Preview, Slinkset, feedly, Evernote (particularly their new sharing features), Remember the Milk, Trendr, Chartbeat and an early beta of Mindmeister for the iPhone.

I am most intrigued by Google Wave (for more, see Gina’s preview). I received an invite last night. However, I don’t see anyway in the sandbox to invite others. Are any of you in the the sandbox? Maybe we can connect to each other to experiment.

What else is cool that I should be checking out? My “Discovery” gallery for this week follows.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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The web is slowly moving from an architecture of pages, to one that
looks like a stream. Such models favor immediacy over reflection.

This was something John Borthwick from betaworks and I discussed this morning over breakfast. It's definitely front and center in his mind. Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Tumblr and Posterous are all platforms that embrace the stream metaphor. Blogs, RSS, static news stories are remnants from the era of pages.

The stream is where the web is going. Does this mean thoughtful
analysis is dead? No. However, the ubiquity of the stream and the tools
to filter it, the increasing consumption of content on mobile devices
and finite attention spans means there's a greater focus today on
immediacy than reflection. This was a major factor in why I shifted how
I publish and embraced a tool that lets me contribute more in a
streamed format, yet still have a home base on the web.

Perhaps I am wrong, but it feels like those who are most critical
of the transition from blogging to lifestreaming perhaps are not ready
to embrace such a format. Maybe there's room for everything. What's
your view?

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