Nike’s World Cup Curse and it’s Dutch “Write the Future”

Just looking at the current survivors of the World cup and after yesterday’s semifinal between Spain and Germany, you wouldnb’t be the first to notice just how funny Nike’s (most successful viral ever) “Write the Future” ad looks at the moment. It may even be prophetic,what with the vision of Wayne Rooney in some trailer park with a huge beard, but obviously he won’t be looking at Franck Ribery’s poster, but rather one of the never-seen-in-a-world-cup-final-before Dutch or Spanish players.

After yesterday’s final, Nike has come out with their new “All Dutch” Ad supporting the holland team in the final. Personally, I hope the Spanish win. Here’s Nike’s new ad… “Orange is the colour of Insanity”

There was a spoof of the ad which came out talking about how Nike’s ad’s are the curse of the World Cup where all the players it features seem to mess up/disappoint/fail… and here it is…

And here’s a japanese Spoof which was pretty funny. Reminded me of Kung Fu Hustle in a way :)

How Product Placement Works

Product placement is getting far more blatant in Movies nowadays and you can think up quick examples just from the top of your head like Audi and Iron Man for example or Up In The Air‘s constant jabs with American Airlines. But let’s look a little deeper at the thinking behind it and how far things will go.

Brands are getting involved far earlier in the screen-writing process and interrogating characters and how their brands can fit into their lives, I wonder if it goes as far as introducing character traits which would enable the brand to feature, for example, give the title character a streak of environmental friendliness and let him drive a Toyota Prius. He could’ve been driving a Hummer before, but Toyota’s paying more.

The New York Times had an interesting tale of how this all works and this little snippet I found pretty interesting and just reinforces the point I made above.

“‘You’ve written Gray has a Dodge Ram,’ Mr. Yospe began, discussing a character. ‘Does it have to be a Dodge?’

‘What’s wrong with Dodge? What have you got against Dodge?’ said Mr. Orci, a soft-spoken 36-year-old.

The group began debating. In the script, Gray is described as ‘soldier-fit’ but with ‘psychic damage.’ Could someone like that drive, say, a Lincoln Navigator?”

I wonder if this level of intrinsic involvement from brands will affect the quality of the movies being made. It could border on the ridiculous. But, taking a step back, Brands are ideas in themselves. This point was alluded to earlier with the environmentally friendly guy example. Brands have the innate talent of transferring meaning to anything they are associated with. Think Armani and Gucci and you immediately get the meaning and emotion of glamour, now associate them with a character in a movie and some of that glamour rubs off. Get it? So they do play a role in making meaning far more clear simply because brands have spent years and years of advertising making sure that meaning is drilled solid into our thick skulls.

You can imagine that this is particularly useful in movies who need to convey as much meaning as possible, especially when they try to make movies from books and epically fail, most of the time.

And then you get the movies which actually make fun of the entire process and looks at itself and society in general. Cue The Joneses (trailer below). Just watch it and you’ll get the picture. On a similar note though, if anyone has read Jennifer Government, the movie is in production, I am increasingly curious as to how they are going to portray the brands in the movie as they were ripped apart and portrayed as murderous corporate bastards. Google it. It’s going to be brilliant.

Nike & RZA – Next Level Hip-Hop Advertising

I Love This. It’s a cool mix between hip-hop, basketball and the samurai/kung-fu/manga history which threads through the Wu-tang clan’s, and particularly RZA’s, career history. The music, the manga comic look and the story and tie in very well to the brands values. Mostly I like it because it all just works so well together.

Putting RZA into the mix definitely makes the entire messaging of the ad and the look and feel absolutely surreal but consistent and understandable given the target market which Nike wants to target. I wouldn’t say it was much of a risk, or at least Nike had mitigated the risk fairly well by tying in Basketball into the mix which makes perfect sense in the context it’s playing in the ad itself. basketball has always been involved with Hip-Hop, and this is just a very, very cool remix to drive home the point… along with some Confucian, self-exploratory, kung-fu philosophy thrown in for good measure.

Successfully Monitoring and Measuring Social Media Campaigns #smwf

I presented this at the Social Media World Forum (#smwf)

The event itself was very enlightening, the insights and perspectives were inspiring. Although, I kept seeing on the #smwf back-channel (that is, the twitter conversations using the hash-tag, just in case you didn’t know) as well as on blog postings that some people were calling the event a re-hash and “saying the same thing as last time”, “not adding value”, etc. I would like to wholeheartedly disagree. There was tremendous value even if it was a re-hash, which I don’t believe it to be.

I think “Social Media Experts” who always attend these events have always heard the propositions and presentations and similar ideas floating around and hence are more akin to believing and seeing the same things over and over again. But there are MANY, MANY others who do not.

Coming from a marketing background and working across many departments, even currently, I know for a fact that in most organisations, even though employees are versed in Facebook and Twitter and whatever, they do not even know where to begin when it comes to applying Social Media for Business purposes.

The message still needs to be spread, no matter how many times it is said. The point these “Experts” need to get is that the message needs to get to the right audience. Yes further and new thinking needs to take place and take the entire Study and Philosophy to the next level, but the foundations need to be built before you start constructing high towers. These people, the organisations and their departments, are the ones eventually funding the entire Social Media enterprise anyway.

This is the context in which I made my presentation… Download it from Slideshare and go through it with the notes for a fuller explanation and understanding :)

Social Media Marketing Win: Marmite Cereal Bars

Was offered this on Facebook recently in that little Advertising block on the right hand side of your screen offering a free marmite cereal bar. So I though ‘What the hell… let’s give it a go.’ Well I got it in the post yesterday and I was impressed by how integrated the whole campaign was in terms of Marmite launching the new innovation. The objectives must certainly have been awareness and trial, with a higher focus on trial of the product since the messaging of the campaign encourages feedback on their new product.

The product itself, well, it falls under the general feeling around Marmite doesn’t it? You either love it or hate it. Well, I do like Marmite in general and the cereal bar is pretty good. It’s not overbearingly marmite, but you get the taste and it fulfils all the passport factors of being a cereal bar.

I don’t know if they’ve done any TV advertising around it, but the Outdoor is fairly ubiquitous in London and very eye-catching and engaging. I especially love the twist and the emotion it creates around even thinking of having a Marmite showergel, Fabric Softener or Perfume. In contrast, the cereal bar looks like a great idea.

Check ‘em out…

Ad Agency: DDB

An overall brilliant marketing campaign which fitted Social Media into its mix and overall strategy pretty brilliantly and was the first FMCG brand to do so. The bars were also sampled at tube stations and other places and the sample bars through facebook were obviously voluntary and you had to put in your address. So instead of Social Media i.e. Facebook Ad units being the main driver it was, in fact, only a part of the campaign for marmite to increase its reach.

Great Idea. Great Work.

Is Brad Pitt a fishfinger? – Brand Design Analysis on Inglourious Basterds

Best Agency Christmas Present I ever received… so far.

"So what the hell does that mean?" is probably going through your head. Well here’s the rub… the Poster design for Inglourious Basterds was akin to having a great shot of a fishfinger on a pack of… well.. fishfingers.  No differentiation, nothing to build the brand. Bland. Blends into the background. Status quo. Following Market conventions… Don’t agree? Let me prove it.

Exhibit A: The Inglourious Basterds Poster (Mainstream)

Exhibit B: The Valkyrie Poster

Spot the difference. None… design-wise anyway. Now you can see Brad Pitt in typical fish-finger style… blending into the background of mediocre poster history.  Why would Tarantino bow down to corporate pressure like this and risk his almost instantaneously recognised style and colouring for mass-produced crap like this?

To be fair… there were incredibly great-looking posters made alongside this one… the issue I have is that the mass-produced poster was the most ubiquitous. Which was a shit move, marketing-wise. I’d fire whoever approved it, and am highly disappointed with Tarantino for condoning it.

Anyway… here’s the great ones…

So there you have it.  On the mass poster, Brad Pitt is a fish-finger. That poster should not have been made, let alone be put up as the main attraction.  The movie was fucking awesome, regardless.

The Idea of Disruption

You cannot outperform a marketplace if you adhere to it’s conventions. – Jean-Marie Dru, CEO TBWA\

Generally when you think disruption… you think destruction, a break that isn’t supposed to be there. I keep thinking of teacher reports saying that he/she’s ‘disruptive in class.’, etc.

So I’m at TBWA/LONDON.  For those who don’t know… they’re an advertising agency, and a pretty good one at that (They have the Apple account, so that says a lot already). Apple’s advertising is brilliant. Well these guys make it. Great, you get the picture.

 So how does Disruption tie into all this?

Disruption is TBWA’s raison d’être. A philosophy integrated into everything about them. So I learnt about this while I was there and I thought it was the best idea I’ve heard in ages.  It’s not a new idea, but I like the packaging, it makes it easier to understand and embrace… here we go…

The Model of Disruption

Disruption is the art of asking better questions, challenging conventional wisdom and overturning assumptions and prejudices that get in the way of imagining new possibilities and visionary ideas.

Disruption is a system for people who hate systems. Similar to the concept of open-source software development, Disruption has evolved and matured as communities around the network use, adapt and reinvent Disruption tools for specific market or client needs.

Thinking differently (There’s Apple again), outside-the-box (cliche), etc. Most of all I like that it’s a process… you have to understand what the prevailing conventions and status quo is before you can move BEYOND it, before you can CHALLENGE it, before you can CHANGE it.  Finding its borders and knocking down the walls. DISRUPTING the underlying patterns and CREATING something new.

So there we are…this is the idea I embraced as one which I will adhere to and act on in everything I do.

<To what end I will apply this process to is another question all together and another set of blog posts. We’ll get to that later.>

Tags: Disruption, TBWA, London, Great Idea, Change, Philosophy

Brilliant Advertising: McDonald’s do Lobsters

I love the way they did this ad. Very creative :) Combines artful photography, functional branding and it communicates the specific targeted message very, very well.

Technorati Tags: McDonalds, Advertising, Cool, Lobster, Creative

Is Advertising Really Pure Evil?

When it comes down to the bare bones of the issue, or is it the beating heart, whatever… the main thing is… they want you to buy more stuff. This is a pretty simple concept and it has been said before, blah, blah, blah. The power play comes in at the juncture where what they’re selling coincides with what you need. The thing which tips the power in the advertisers favour is when they convince you that you need something you don’t. This gets more complicated when you take into account wants versus needs.

Further complicating things is context. The context today is we’ve moved far away from worrying about needs. We WANT STUFF. Lots of Stuff. Shiny, pastel-coloured, Curvy Stuff which will make us happy and able to satisfy our every sense and then do it all again. We also want it all NOW. Instantly. None of this patience shit and waiting for things which are ‘worthwhile’… I know what’s worthwhile because I feel it now and I want it right fucking now.

I don’t believe Advertisers have any sway, not really, in terms of ‘Making us buy more stuff’. They are merely the temptation… WE make the choice. It is within us… the choice of wanting stuff we don’t need and also to want it right now. So is advertising pure evil? No. Advertising is just showing us what is within us… in the end WE choose. I would say that advertising is only evil if that is what we see within ourselves. You don’t have to buy the product and even if you do… do you need it right now?

Advertising is just stimulus and we can either react automatically to whatever whims and desires move us or be a little bit more AWARE of what’s happening around us and choose to RESPOND to stimulus in our own best interest.

Advertising is only really effective because we all only operate on auto-pilot, we set ourselves up with bad habits of wanting things we don’t need and things we want right now. So when it finally flashes before our eyes and ears we simply react. And, if we are all operating on auto-pilot, that makes us less human because the real thing which makes us human is our ability to choose.

You can’t blame the stimulus… advertising is not the enemy… you are.

Philips Cinema: Police vs. Crazed Robber Clowns in Bullet-time!

Philips Cinema has launched this really really cool ad that keeps you mesmerised by it throughout the entire two and some odd minutes it plays for.  The scene is a robbery at a hospital by lunatics dressed as scary-looking clowns (something I think would be very at home in a Batman-Dark Knight scenario).  The entire thing is in bullet-time in which a single moment.

I would have liked a point to the entire story (maybe I’m missing it), but I think the main point is not the content but rather the ad itself.  Obviously because this is an adventure supposedly purporting the beautiful benefits of having a Philips Cinema.

I would definitely say it’s effective advertising. I want a freaking Philips Cinema now.

Check out the ad… be blown away.

Technorati Tags: Philips, Cinema, Clowns, Cops, Shootout, Advertising, Brilliant, Cool

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