Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts

Friday, November 14, 2014

A commercial like no other


Would you believe this moving Chinese film urging people to give love another chance and not divorce is . . . a commercial for hair-care products?

China 1, the West 0.

And I hope Procter & Gamble sells a lot of shampoo, because this commercial is powerful way beyond its ability to move product. In America anymore, you'd be more likely to see ads pushing Trojans to newly footloose and fancy free divorcés.

Monday, August 04, 2014

Allen Funt was an amateur

 
You thought the first Jeff Gordon "test drive" ad was good?

Well, here's a sequel that's even better -- mostly because he takes an automotive journalist who was convinced the first ad was a fake, and that Gordon wasn't even behind the wheel, for an expressly non-fake ride of his life. And I'm sure Jalopnik's Travis Okulski saw his life flash before his eyes.

Maybe twice.


RARELY do you find a sequel to anything that lives up to the original. But this Pepsi Max viral commercial by Davie Brown Entertainment/The Marketing Arm matches, then surpasses the original produced by TBWA\Chiat\Day. Don Draper (not to mention Allen Funt) would have thought this was awesome. Which it is.

http://www.nascar.com/en_us/sprint-cup-series/drivers/jeff-gordon.html
Gordon as an ex-con cab driver pulled over by the cops? Epic.

"I can't go back, man. I f***in' can't go back!"

Well, Gordon the "cabbie" can't go back, but I can go back to this video again and again.

And Pepsi certainly has gotten its advertising money's worth over and over again the last few months with this gem. I mean, when you see so many absolutely idiotic commercials -- when you just can't avoid so many idiotic commercials these days -- it's just such a joy to see one done to perfection.

I MIGHT even go buy me some Pepsi Max in appreciation of a job well done.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Go (to) Big Red!

  
If your university is going to do a social-media campaign to create a little buzz and enhance the ol' profile, you just as well have a little fun with it. YOLO!

Wait a sec . . . I'm not sure I used "YOLO" (You Only Live Once) correctly. What University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman is doing here isn't dumb at all. (See the YouTube video. Ol' Harv has a point on that particular catchphrase.)

What's a delightful surprise in these UN-L videos is this: The chancellor, 71, is a funny, funny guy. Not only in front of the camera, but as a writer, too. He rewrote everything that the ad agency and university marketing staff put before him, and if it says it in the Omaha World-Herald, it must be so.

Or good enough for newspaper work.
The “Perls of Knowledge” spots have been tweeted and re-tweeted and re-re-tweeted. The ad campaign has gotten a mountain of free publicity, courtesy of media outlets from Sioux City to San Francisco and from Columbus, Ind., all the way to China.

The jury is out on whether “Perls of Knowledge” will result in more students for UNL — Perlman, when he's not fighting zombies, has vowed to get UNL's current enrollment of 24,207 to a nice round 30,000 in the next four years.

But what seems clear is this: For $40,000, a tiny fraction of the university's marketing budget, UNL has gotten the kind of publicity that most wannabe Carly Raes — and most universities — would kill a whole zombie army for.

“It worked because of (Perlman's) really bitey sarcasm,” says Dan Kohler, UNL's senior assistant director for digital marketing and the aforementioned 27-year-old. “The tone actually speaks well to a younger generation ... and it's packaged in a way that takes a traditional brand and throws it into this very nontraditional environment.”

I figured I would pull back the curtain on “Perls of Knowledge” and learn that the chancellor was just a glorified prop in this digital marketing strategy, a willing and able participant in an experiment hatched and run by people younger than I am.

But the real story is stranger: Perlman himself came up with the general idea. He enlisted allies, including Amber Hunter, UNL's admissions director, and Kohler.

“He had been paying more attention to pop culture, spending more time with the admissions office — we're one of the youngest offices on campus — and asking a lot of questions,” Hunter says. “A lot of this comes from him just trying to understand how we could share something all over the country.”

They brought in Archrival, a Lincoln marketing firm that cultivates an edgy reputation.

Archrival employees and UNL's five-person digital marketing staff together wrote the video's scripts. And then Perlman took those scripts with him on a long, long flight to China. When he came home, he had rewritten every last one.

On taping day, Perlman nailed most of the scripts with one or two takes.

“He's a pretty funny guy,” admits Clint! Runge, Archrival's creative marketing director and a man with a “!” purposefully embedded in his first name.
 THE CHANCELLOR, as I said, is a funny guy. Dryly hilarious, even.

Almost as funny as putting an exclamation point behind your first name. YOLO!

Monday, March 26, 2012

Who needs radio? Not Mad Men


Back when Top-40 radio was in on the national conversation, it could take a song from a TV show and turn it into a hit record.

The last time I
remember this happening was in the mid-1990s when Friends debuted on the small (and low-def) screen. And now?What is this "radio" that you speak of?

Don Draper, superb Mad Man ad man that he is, don't need no stinkin' radio to stir the cultural pot. He just needs a TV show, iTunes and social media.

And now, a mere 24 hours after appearing on the HD screen in living rooms across America, the new Mrs. Draper -- otherwise known as actress Jessica Paré -- had taken her remake of the Mad Men-era "Zou Bisou Bisou" to No. 109 on the iTunes "Top Songs" chart with a bullet.

Or at least an
amazing pair of . . . uhhh . . . fishnet stockings.

OH, you also can buy "Zou Bisou Bisou" as a 7-inch vinyl single on the Mad Men website.

From the
Chicago Sun-Times:
Showing a lot of leg — and chutzpah — the new Mrs. Megan Draper (Jessica Pare) delivered a sexy serenade to her husband at his surprise 40th birthday party, purring the early ’60s French pop song “Zou Bisou Bisou.”

The French-Canadian chanteuse’s performance made the unflappable Don Draper blush and his co-workers’ jaws hit the floor, while the Twittersphere lit up and countless viewers were infected with an earworm that sounds like Scooby Dooby Doo.

“At the time, I was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m new on this show and the first thing I have to do is an entire song-and-dance routine for the whole cast of “Mad Men,’’ ’ ” said Pare, who catapulted from a peripheral character last season to center stage in Sunday’s premiere. The two-hour episode drew a series-high 3.5 million viewers, a 21 percent increase over last season’s premiere.
MAINTENANT, MES AMIS, je te prĂ©sente la version 1961 de «Zou Bisou Bisou» par chanteuse anglaise Gillian Hills:


Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Wir fahrn, fahrn, fahrn auf der Superbahn


What this country needs is a good, old-fashioned socialist revolution that's not on behalf of investment banks, multinational corporations or professional sports franchises.

We've had enough of the other socialist revolution -- the one that brought us accountability-free Wall Street bailouts, the military-industrial complex and states fighting over corporations like whores fighting over a john with a big . . . wallet. The one that ushered in the members-only welfare state. The one that treats corporations like people and people like trash. The one that socializes risk and privatizes reward.

You can have that socialist revolution. No . . . wait.
I want that socialist revolution. I'll bet you would enjoy it, too.

But if you promise not to blab it all over, I'd probably settle for something as simple as the American Dream . . . which we all thought well within reach back when we still dared to dream.

OK, here's my bottom line, which still might be a bridge too far in this age of country-club kleptomaniacs and the best government campaign donations can buy: Is it too much to ask that if taxpayers are going to shell out major dollars for giant public-works projects, that government at least maintains the
pretense the work was on the public's behalf?

Take sports arenas and stadiums, for example.
Remember when you could remember their names?

Plastichrome- Superdome  sign 1975

REMEMBER when you could remember which ballpark was in which city?

Remember when you could remember what the one you helped pay for is being called this week?

In this age of steel-and-concrete commercials for corporate interests, we were down to just a handful of stadiums you could figure out. One was the Louisiana Superdome.

The Superdome opened in 1975, when I was in ninth grade. Building it was a stretch for a poor state like Louisiana, and we still didn't have too much we could hang our civic-pride hats on even after the Dome opened. But, by God, we had that.

And what a "that" we had.


It was a marvel in 1975 -- about the only thing you could say was world-class about the Gret Stet back then, other than the food and the music -- and it's a marvel today. And still, it's about the only thing you can say is world-class about the Gret Stet, other than the food and the music.

And it was the LOUISIANA Superdome.
Take that, Mississippi. And did you know you could fit the Houston Astrodome inside the thing?

Take that, Texas.

But the Houston Astrodome is now the vacant and dilapidated Reliant Astrodome.

And the Louisiana Superdome -- the pride of a state, the landmark whose ground was hallowed by great suffering during Katrina and which rose from the muck like a swamp phoenix -- is about to become the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.


Take that, Louisiana. At least you can take small comfort in knowing that German money will be paying billionaire Tom Benson to keep the Saints in New Orleans, and not the cash-strapped state government.

WHAT I WANT to know is this: If a German car company will pay the New Orleans Saints craploads of money to rename the domed stadium built by the people of the Gret Stet of Louisiana, thus keeping the NFL team fat, happy and in town . . .
what else could we get the world's corporate titans to pay for?

For instance, New Orleans is a mess. If any city in America needs a bailout, a makeover and a little domestic nation-building, it's New Orleans. Well, Detroit, too . . . but that's not important now.

Trouble is, Louisiana is still a poor state. And one not particularly inclined, or able, to pull off an urban-renewal project of that magnitude -- especially since Katrina trashed the place.
So, what if we sold naming rights to it?

I don't know about you, but I think Exxon-Mobil, La., has a certain
je ne sais quoi. You think the advertising value is worth, say, $10 billion for 10 years?

C'mon down! And don't forget to visit the Exxon Extra French Quarter and put a tiger in your tank!

Or how about Apple? The hip factor alone should make Crescent City naming rights attractive to the ubercool tech colossus.
Apple, La. Short . . . sweet . . . has pizazz.

Wait! Wait! Three words:
The Drunken Apple. Now, that's a good 30-percent funner than the Big Apple.

PERHAPS I could get used to this selling-your-soul thing.

Maybe Corporate America
even could be persuaded to help out Louisiana with its finances. I think that if we could come up with the perfect naming-rights deal, it just might give the ol' coffers quite the stimulus package.

By jove . . .
I think I've got it!

The Trojan Magnum State Capitol

Thursday, March 10, 2011

If you're not lame, don't act it

Flyover by Archrival from Nebraska Entrepreneur on Vimeo.


The tragedy of Nebraska is that people in some of the lamest places on earth think the Cornhusker state is lamer.

"Flyover country," they call us.

Our usual response is to act all insecure. Act like it's reasonable they'd think that. Like they're not stereotype-addled morons for being surprised that everything's up to date in . . . Omaha. And Lincoln.

Even Grand Island.

The guys at Archrival marketing in Lincoln have had about enough of that crap. In this video, they suggest a makeover.


ONE CAVEAT, though. The Archrival folks bring up the state's 2011 license plate as a marketing disaster, saying professional designers could have done better and saved the state the humiliation of a completely botched contest to pick the "winning" design.

What folks need to realize is that "professionals" can suck just as badly as anyone --
and cost a lot more. Also remember that, in designers, we're dealing with "creatives." You get what you get. Sometimes, it's Charlie Sheen.

Here, I present Exhibit A, part of the "design community's" protest over the suckage of the plate. I bring this up, because
Clint! Runge and Charles Hull make it sound like the "design community" single-handedly saved us from bumper Armageddon. (I also bring this up because Runge puts an exclamation point behind his first name. Really?)

The "creatives" saved us from nothing. The "dull" old newspaper journalists at the Omaha World-Herald saved us from the abomination of stamped-tin desolation by reporting on the vote-rigging and demanding to see the state's data. The pols quickly got with the program.

Remember, it's all about excellence, not necessarily professionalism for professionalism's sake.

BUT ALL THAT is kind of beside the point, because the larger point of the presentation is dead on. In this world (and our postmodern economy), intellectual capital is destiny, perception is reality . . . and outsiders' perceptions of Nebraska fundamentally conflict with most Nebraskans' day-to-day reality.

If you want the world to beat a path to your door, don't be lame at marketing.

Monday, August 04, 2008

You know marketolatry has gone too far. . . .


John, Paul, George and Ringo have nothing on Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana.

And, if John Lennon was right and the Beatles were, back in the day, more popular than Jesus Christ. . . .


SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Mrs. Favog and I attended a 6-year-old girl's birthday party. A 6-year-old who loves, naturellement
, Hannah Montana.

Among the loot the child raked in:

* A Hannah Montana doll.
* A Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus CD.
* A Hannah Montana backpack.
* A Hannah Montana notebook.
* A Hannah Montana singing pen.
* A Hannah Montana "activity pack."
* Hannah Montana pencils, sticky notes, etc., etc., etc.


WHEN I WAS 6, the Beatles were all the rage. But even a cultural force like the Fab Four was easier
to escape than the marketing apocalypse behind the 15-year-old daughter of Mr. Achy Breaky Heart.

Is there any point to American culture -- at least anymore -- other than pimping the latest disposable teen star to the toddler-to-tween demographic? And then selling the kiddies Jägerbombs and
NuvaRings once they -- like fallen tween angel Britney Spears -- achieve puberty . . . and communion with their inner skank?

Sunday, as I struggled with acute Hannah Montana overload, I mused what it does to a teen-ager's head -- even if she did have the advantage (unlike some noted train wrecks) of not being raised by money-grubbing hillbillies -- to walk into a store and see shelves and shelves of . . . herself.

Commodified and idolized.

Personally, I don't think there are enough shrinks in the world to deal with that kind of interpersonal train wreck. Particularly after the applause stops, and all manner of commodified you ends up in the deep-discount bin.

Or worse, at the 99¢ Only Store.


There's only thing more ridiculous than our worshiping some all-powerful deity Who died on a cross and can have His body and blood, soul and divinity become one with a wafer of unleavened bread and a chalice of wine so His creation might feed on Him.

That would be what we worship in His place.