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Why did Belgian ad agencies go on strike this week?
Nineteen advertising agencies including JWT, Ogilvy, BBDO and Saatchi in Belgium launched a virtual strike this week to try and change the number of agencies asked to pitch any piece of new business. This has been an increasing problem worldwide and it was most publicly exposed in the Zappos pitch last year that ballooned to over 100 agencies. For that pitch the agency Ignited used Google Analytics to calculated that Zappos viewed only five pages of its 25-page submission with an average page-view time of 14 seconds. This type of behavior should never happen and in the 1990’s the UAB and ACC developed a charter to define the rules for agency pitches and it was signed by all the big agencies. The virtual strike is being done to try and draw attention back to that document and get it back to being the rules of the road. The strike is being executed as a letter that is broken up into 19 pieces and displayed across the websites of the 19 different agencies. You can see the whole thing by starting here. I love seeing the industry come together to make a statement like this and I hope it has an effect.
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IKEA turns Facebook into their own showroom
IKEA has come up with an innovative digital campaign that turned one of Facebook’s basic functions into a promotional tool that they used to promote the opening of their newest store in Malmo, Sweden. The campaign started with a profile of the store’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson who then uploaded pictures of the store’s showrooms to his photo album and any “friends” who tagged the products with their names then won those items. The word quickly spread through Facebook and users started embedding links and images in their profiles and news feeds. So with nothing more than some photos and a great idea they got thousands of consumers to willingly promote IKEA and its new store.
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Orange smartly uses social media to create Friend-o-Meter
The U.K. mobile provider Orange has created one of the most interesting uses of Facebook and Twitter connect that I have seen recently. To promote the launch of the social media focused Motorola DEXT mobile phone they have created a site that quizzes you on ten questions to see how well you know your friends on Facebook and Twitter. The way they use the data is really smart as the questions aren’t the obvious ones you would expect and use things like friends upcoming events events, like and dislikes to create challenging questions that will really test how well you know people (I only got a 45%). You leave the experience thinking that maybe you need to be better connected to those sites and that information which us exactly the point of the experience. Since Facebook seems to be unable or unwilling to give advertisers the tools to be able to create meaningful experiences on their site then this direction may be able to save them from themselves.
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Mountain Dew Crowdsources Agency Review and Selection
PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew is taking a new tact on their agency review for their $100 million-plus business by letting consumers pick the winner. A contest beginning this month will allow any agency, independent film company or individual to submit 12-second clips outlining their ideas for marketing three new Mountain Dew products. Consumers will then vote for the top talent, whom will be awarded the business. This is not their first venture into the area of crowd sourcing as the three new products names Distortion, Whiteout and Typhoon were created by consumers through Dewmocracy a Facebook-based initiative designed to open up product development to consumers. And when you look at the number it is obvious that this tactic is working for them as the Dewmocracy brands accounted for 25 million cases in sales last year which equates to nearly two hundred million dollars.
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Burger King wants the truth from Tony Stewart
Crispin Porter created a nice online extension of their Tony Stewart School of Endorsements TV spot (see below) with BK Finds Out The Truth About Tony microste. The site is a video stream of a polygraph test that was given to Nascar driver Tony Stewart as he answers consumer submitted questions about he is he really loves his primary endorsement – Burger King and the Whopper. I have always believed that advertising needs to work out from a core concept and that the interactive extension of a campaign should take advantage of the medium and not just be a straight port of the offline creative. When you watch the TV spot and experience the site you clearly see that was the case here and the benefits of this approach are obvious. The total video is about an hour long and you will have to watch it to see the final results for yourself.
It is also a small thing but orange home bar that runs down the left edge of the site that opens to the content of the BK.com home page is a really elegant way to keep micro sites like this one from developing into individual islands that are disconnected from the main brand site.
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A book cover designers opinion of the Amazon Kindle
I have long felt that the Kindle is a device where typography goes to die and I though book cover designer Charles Brock’s video of his opinion of the device was too funny and well done not to share.
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AXE uses fresh techniques to create Day & Night ads
No one has been able to continue to re-invent the concept of ’sex sells’ better than Axe deodorant that past few years. Their latest campaign called Day & Night is the first one I can remember that uses technology in a new and really smart way. The first execution is a print ad where you have to text ‘AXE’ to specific number but you have to do it after 9pm. In return for the text AXE sends you the missing part of the ad. Hold your phone over the ad and you have the whole picture.
The second execution is an outdoor poster where the bottom half of the image is obscured during the day by a polarized film. At night poster is back light so the bottom portion of the image can be seen through the polarized film.
Even more important than the smart use of technology is that fact that the ads create an impression that will make you not only remember them but either take action to see the rest of the print ad or seek out the outdoor ads. It also makes you take that action at night which I am sure is based on behavior of their core audience demographics. 9pm is a media grazing phase and will be able to focus on the experience not distracted by work and before young guys would be heading out to clubs and bars. I hope they keep up this new direction of moving beyond the bikini clad TV spot to do more work like this.
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Kidrobot creates NYC QR code hunt
Kidrobot has always been pretty savy about using social media to influence their customers and launch new toys. They used MySpace to launch a special Peecol figure where very small numbers of a special figure would be available for free at strange locations like a Chinese take-out stand if you knew the location and secret word you got through MySpace. This morning they launched a new content to hype the launch of their latest Dunny toys where contestants search New York City from today through Friday for secret Dunny Hunt QR codes to build your a virtual collection of up to 22 Dunny Series 2009 virtual toys. They have posted a crude site with the rules, leaderboard and 7 starter locations to get you going. Twitter updates will provide new clues throughout the game. It will be interesting to see if people are willing to run all over the city searching for the codes and spend the time to collect the virtual toys and if they do how quickly people find all the Dunnys and if they will are willing to share their locations. It is something that I would love to try out, and I am a huge Kidrobot collector, but I just don’t have the free time to even go to one of the seven locations where I know there is a code. To be 14 with all the free time in the world again…
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OK GO is reincarnated as HP printers
Recent Kingston University design graduates Tom Wrigglesworth and Matt Robinson took 8 ink jet printers and channeled the energy and viral success of the band OK GO to create this award-winning student video. The video was created in response to D&AD Student Awards brief set by Hewlett Packard asked students to “Present an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive”. The simplicity and success of the concept comes from that fact that product and creativity are the only hero’s of the video. Having owned a printer like this in the past I now want to how many ink cartridges it took to make it.
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Great outdoor campaign for Lost Children
I don’t see really great outdoor campaigns that often but this one got my attention. It is running right now in Melbourne for the Australian Childhood Foundation for their ongoing campaign Stop Child Abuse Now. They used a child size mannequins to represent children suffering neglect and then a billposter was pasted over the top of the figure so only the feet and legs could be seen. It is simple, it is attention getting and it’s a powerful visual that gets the message across in a way you will remember.
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