Only Today. KLM tweets with a Living Alphabet.

September 20th, 2011 • 4 comments Brands, Twitter
Tags: Brands, Campaign, Cool, Funny, Ideas, KLM, Netherlands, Social Influence Marketing, social network, Twitter, visual

KLM tries hard to become the social web’s favorite attacker brand. After staging a bunch of interesting campaign micro-ideas they launched something more complicated today. As Social Times reported a tweet from KLM earlier today said…

The result: live customer service replies that are shaped by a living alaphabet made up of 140 KLM employees. Yes it is live and it reacts to customer tweets but only today (and only as as reaction to a few selected tweets).

Live Reply tweets are being uploaded to KLM’s Youtube Channel and shared on Twitter. So far they’ve sent video tweets to about ten people, but they’ve still got a lot of hours left in the campaign. The example below is one of them…

The whole campaign is funny but completely useless. Anyway, it’s again a great very short-term promotional stunt to spread the word about KLMs social platforms and to position KLM as a social-media-savvy brand. In this regard: Well done, KLM. I am looking forward to the next useless stunt.

This is Art. Miracle Whip creates User-Gen Gold.

August 16th, 2011 • 2 comments Brands, Social
Tags: Brands, Competition, Funny, Miracle Whip, Social Media, special, User gen, WTF, youtube

Imagine a Brainstorming session in this media agency that runs the Kraft Food’s Miracle Whip account. So the big idea is defined as ‘Not for every Relationship’. And that’s probably because the TVC has already been shot.
Next somebody yells for Social Media. And here we go with the mother of all social marketing concepts:

Yes, you read correctly: Miracle Whip asks you to upload your video that tells the story how Miracle Whip affected your relationship. And potentially you can win $25,000. I may have cursed about this study a couple of days ago but I have to agree with IBM – Marketer and Consumer cannot possibly be further away from each other than here.

As you can imagine, the videos that were uploaded belong to the finest in User-gen that the world has seen so far.
Check out the following masterpiece (and all the other channel videos as well) and think twice next time if a couple of banners and a microsite wouldn’t have burned the pile of money as well. Check out the videos here.

Read more »

google Plus. Now for something completely different: Brands.

Juli 5th, 2011 • 1 comment Brands, Social, Tools
Tags: Brands, Business, Ford, google, google plus, Social, Social Networking, Starbucks, Strategy, Trends

High five Jeff Kwiatek. You asked the right question. But to be honest: Even though I want to be the first agency dude leveraging and embracing the hell out of g+ I still don’t know if it’s worth it. Well who knows?

My guess: Nice platform, it is not Facebook. But it’s a too little too late. And the worst thing: They don’t even offer the right tools to enable brands to give consumers the love that they need. Let me quote Jeff Huber, google’s VP of Local and Commerce (via Mike Blumenthal)

And pre-emptively answering a question — yes, we will have (smb) business profile pages on Google+. I can’t announce a launch date yet, but we want to make them *great*, and we’re coding as fast as we can.

Thanks god a couple of people are a bit more visionary. They know what the consumer wants and that is brands of course. Sean Percival has sketched a concept of how future brand pages might look like (exactly like Facebook but a bit uglier). And indeed one brand has already started to build a presence on google Plus: Ford and Ford Europe. Congratulations Scott Monty. First!

As most of us haven’t even got an invite to g+. And the rest of us still tries to figure out why they would need g+ it is highly speculative to talk about the future of brands there. I wonder what google will come up with to convince brands that building a presence there is a good alternative to Facebook other platforms.

Anyway, I am more than interested which brands are going to start experimenting with g+. If you know of some, please leave a comment.

Case Study. ROM – Patriotism won’t feed you.

Juni 22nd, 2011 • Brands, We like
Tags: Campaign, cannes, Cool, CPG, Creativity, Funny, Promotion, ROM, Romania, World

I am really not well known for being a big fan of the Cannes Awards (or any other Award show). But every year I realize there still sometimes beats an ad guy’s heart in me. I just saw the ROM case study for the first time. It has won the Grand Prix for best Promo and Activation. And as far as I can see it is neither stupid nor strategically wrong. I like it.

Genius. Diesel launches Excelbook.

Juni 18th, 2011 • 1 comment Brands, Ideas, We like
Tags: Apps, Brands, Campaign, Cool, Creativity, Diesel, Experimental, Facebook, Fashion, Funny, Ideas, Lifestyle, Media, Tech, Tools, We like

I just stumbled upon this wonderful concept gem: the Diesel Excelbook. Even though its branding value as an application is close to zero it is just one more amendment to the great platform that Diesel created with its Be Stupid philosophy. Simple, fun, stupid…well done Diesel. Check out the video…it is pretty selfexplanatory.

via Digial Buzz Blog

Study. The World’s Top 100 Prestige and Luxury Brands on Facebook.

Juni 9th, 2011 • Brands, Strategy
Tags: Brands, Facebook, List, luxury, prestige, Reports, Social, Social Influence Marketing, Study

Prestige and Luxury brands used to have quite a hard time to deal with this phenomenon called social media. It seemed like a contradiction to what high value brands stood for. Being very exclusive simply did not seem to fit right into this new all connected world in which everyone is included.

Times are a changing and some of the planet’s really iconic (mainstream) brands are amongst the most successful players particularly on Facebook. L2 – a thinktank for luxury brands in New York – along with the guys from Buddy Media just published an extremely interesting piece of research: The L2 Prestige 100®: Facebook IQ measures the aptitude of 100 prestige brands from the Auto, Beauty, Fashion, Watches & Jewelry, and Spirits & Champagnes industries on the world’s fastest growing social media platform.

Key findings are:

• It is still not really about size: many of the brands that have been most effective at acquiring Facebook fans have fallen flat engaging them.
• Push only isn’t cool: Brands which allow their fans to post are more engaged Facebook brands than the 20% which don’t allow it
• Products are winning over promotions: Most engagement rates were achieved through product posts not promotions
• Facebook is still considered as an island: Too few brands integrate the social graph into their digital ecosystem
• F-Commerce? Nah! Only few brands are actively engaged in social commerce on Facebook

In short – if you deal with prestige and or luxury brands on Facebook this is the study to download. Get it here.

Copycats. Intel and Deutsche Post celebrate Me, Me, Me.

Juni 1st, 2011 • 4 comments Brands, Ideas, Social, Trends
Tags: Bouygues Telecom, Brands, Campaign, Copycats, Creativity, DHL, Documentation, Facebook, Ideas, Intel, Life, People, Social Networking, Tools, Trends, visual, World

Sometimes you see a good digital marketing idea and you can bet your ass off that dozens of copycats will pop up a couple of months later. In November 2010 the (then) team around my friend (and new colleague) Branislav launched a (then) new idea for Bouygues Telecom in France: an app that turned your Facebook profile into a real book. 1,000 personalized books were gone within an hour of the promotion’s launch even though the campaign never really became as viral as Old Spice or Shoot the Bear.

Fast Forward 6 months. Deutsche Post DHL launches Social Memories, an application that turns your Facebook Profile into a (surprise, surprise) book. This is how it goes…

The app is here.

Read more »

BMW. The Revenge of the Lonely Copywriter.

Mai 27th, 2011 • Allgemein, Brands, Experimental
Tags: Automotive, Banner, bmw, Cool, Copy, Copywriting, Creativity, Experimental, Funny, Ideas, visual

I don’t know how to call these ads/banners/posters that you see sometime when a copywriter is supposed to write a really long text for once. You know…when you get surprised by a format which is copy, copy, copy and it goes on and on.

It’s one of the saddest ad formats. The copywriter knows nobody is going to read it. He knows his copy is cursed to serve as long typography here. And that is why he is holding an inner monologue in this type of ad format where he consistently speaks to the reader as a copywriter – not necessary as a brand – thanking the reader that he fights his way through his copy. What makes it even sadder: Most often it is indeed great copy.

Check out this banner ad for BMW. It was done by the Canadian agency Cundari and it starts as a 300-by-250-pixel box. And then it expands and expands and expands. When moused over it turns into a 18,000 pixels high monster—that’s 20 feet—with more than 5,500 words of copy going on and on (and on and on).

As usual. The copywriter wrote a great text. But I always feel a certain sadness when I see letters mutating into typo. Great banner idea. But I think after years of working as a copywriter I know what this poor guy went through who wrote that. (via Bannerblog)

.

White Bull Army. Everything that was ever wrong with Ad Awards in just one Video.

Mai 8th, 2011 • 14 comments Brands, Experimental
Tags: Ads, Africa, Agencies, Alcohol, Awards, Beer, Brands, Future Lions, Ideas, Politics, Strategy, Sudan, Viral, visual

A little update to this article: After bashing the video below as “either an extremly sarcastic subtle protest against ignorance in advertising. Or the saddest thing in the industry” I was now contacted by a couple of people who commented that anyone (except me) found it extremely obvious that it is not the saddest things but a very subtle protest. But what is it that this video wants to achieve?

Is it taking the piss out of award videos? Pink Pony does that without touching the Sudanese civil war. Is it supposed to remind us of South Sudan? Not really. So in fact whatever it was that this video wanted to be ironical about – it crossed the line from irony to cynicism.

To make my point I. I don’t give a damn if this is an official award video. I just think it’s extremely tasteless and stands for a very acultural cynicism typical for too many people in this industry. Generate buzz no matter through which method. That’s pathetic.

Follow the rest of the conversation on adland.tv

——————————

Actually everything that was ever wrong with ad awards can be studied in the video below. It is a submission to the Future Lions, a sub-award of the well known Cannes Lions. And it is given to anyone (you can be a private person) who comes up with a hypothetical idea for an existing brand that wasn’t technically possible five years ago.

So the following video showcases a hypothetical idea on how to promote a beer in the soon to be independent state Southern Sudan. Key elements of the story are true. White Bull Lager is in fact the first major locally produced beer in Southern Sudan. But the hypothetical campaign described in the film gave me Inner Mouth Vomit.

It does not just show a deep lack of historical and political understanding – it’s just cynical (even worse than Jung von Matt’s great guerilla stunt that took the piss out of German anti Nuclear protestors…2 months before Fukushima).

Stuff like this is the end result when ignorance meets fake caring. Seriously? This is either an extremly sarcastic subtle protest against ignorance in advertising. Or it is one of the saddest things I have ever seen coming out of the industry. Two million people died in Sudan and some hipster presents beer logos on T-72 tanks to win an award. Oh…the best part: In the end they even dare to dedicate this to the people of South Sudan. Makes me want to kill myself.

Dirt Devil. The Exorcist Revisited.

Mai 4th, 2011 • Ads, Brands
Tags: Brands, Creativity, Dirt Devil, Funny, Germany, Ideas, TV, visual, We like

One of Germany’s best film and media schools is located close to Stuttgart in Ludwigsburg – Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg. The school regularly makes students work on actual projects for actual brands and the following Exorcist spoof commercial for Dirt Devil is just one of them.

I found it pretty funny and a very good, simple TV idea. Well done.

(thx to The Laughing Squid)