7 posts tagged “advertising”
An Indian mobile service provider, Aircel, recently did some very clever and whacky guerilla advertising in Mumbai, India. The company created and erected a giant outdoor billboard that had a branded boat vessel on it with the tagline: "In case of emergency, cut rope".
Why is this so clever? Mumbai is known for its monsoon season this time of year. Would it be likely that a scenario like this pop up where a boat was needed to get people to safety? Well, yes.
Not only was this an innovative way to promote Aircel as well as a media-stealing publicity stunt to generate word of mouth for the brand in a high traffic area, but it also received widespread media attention as an actual emergency arose which lead to someone needing to cut the rope and make use out of the vessel.
Springwise reports that on July 15, monsoon floods made the Milan Subway virtually impassable. "The rope was cut on Aircel's billboard, the boat was released, and stranded pedestrians were ferried to safety."
What a clever outdoor campaign. It's just a shame that this wasn't executed by the local Government of the day!
A big thanks to Julian for pulling together the latest blog list - Advertising Young Minds: The Top 27 blogs of people under 27.
Happy to see that I have been bumped up the ranks a few spots from number 25 to number 19 this year. Now I just need to keep up my end of the bargain and make sure that I allocate a decent amount of time to keeping my blog updated.
I promise in between renovating a house and planning a wedding to make ample time to do my blog and my fellow readers well.
Watch this space my friends!
All the best,
Lex
A fellow work colleague, Emilio Robles, shared a strange yet interesting ad with me.
Check out this new Cadbury advertising campaign which is sure to raise some eyebrows!
I read an interesting post on Marketing Pilgrim today about how clients are wanting advertising agencies to be able to provide non traditional methods of advertising in order to reach customers. This requirement is an obvious one.
In the past 12 months alone, we have seen a huge shift online with online video and social networking sites, and more consumers are frequenting these types of sites (example, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Go Fish, Revver etc...). It is therefore understandable that marketers want their advertising agencies to focus in this space and on traditional advertising such as print, radio and televisions advertising.
Online advertising is typically cheaper than the cost of traditional advertising and methods for evaluation and measurement of internet advertising campaigns is easier thanks to today's tools that measure eyeballs, daily reach, traffic reach and so forth. It is also the home to social networking sites, forums and discussion rooms where we are today about to conduct and gather research about our clients target markets.
But just like all comms campaigns, an integrated approach is needed in order to ensure effectiveness and an increased likelihood of campaign success. For example, a PR campaign today for a client should naturally have both offline (traditional PR) and online strategies and go hand in hand. Without this online element, we are shutting out a global pool of potential customers. We need to make sure that we are present wherever consumers are, and more than ever, the statistics are pointing to them being online.
There is a lot of heated discussion around Sony's latest Bravia television advertisement - the one with the cute little colourful rabbits - let's call it Bunny Bravia.
I think the ad is great and I also loved the previous Sony Bravia ad with the vibrant and colourful balls bouncing down the street to the wonderful tune by Jose Gonsalez.
It turns out that we just might be adoring creative that is not rightfully Sony's own. It looks as though Fallon and Passion Pictures, the creative partners that Sony hired to come up with the concept and shoot the ad, completely ripped off the work of husband-and-wife team of artists, Kozue and Dan Kitchens (a.k.a Kozyndan). See image below:
The situation gets even more heated because apparently a few years back, Passion Pictures was in touch with Kozyndan to request that they send some samples of their work across. No follow up was ever conducted - that is until, walla, the Bunny Bravia ad appeared.
Sony has released a statement, which appeared in a recent Gizmodo post, to the affect that the television advertisement's concept, creative and animation is is not based on any pre-existing artwork such as that of Kozyndan. The rest of the statement is as follows:
"Sony Europe, its agency Fallon, production company Gorgeous, and animation company Passion Pictures, assert that the wave, whale and bunnies were arrived at without reference to these artists. In the original script, the rabbits were one of many creatures to cavort around a cityscape. In fact, the location was only finalised shortly before the shoot. The final creative, led by Juan Cabral at Fallon and director Frank Budgen at Gorgeous, was chosen to champion the brand and best reflect 'colour.like.no.other'. Sony enjoys working with experienced and talented creatives and all involvement in a campaign is always credited."
In response to to Sony's statement, Kozyndan published a post on its blog. Check it out here.
I urge you take a look at the Kozyndan artwork and then watch the Sony Bravia ad.
Do you think this is a creative coincidence or is it blatant plagiarism?
I was mucking around on the net and came across a blog called PronetAdvertising. The author had a really simple way of explaining the difference between Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising and Branding.
For any of you out there that struggle with extremely long and complicated definitions of each of the focuses or are still just unclear as to what exactly it is that those on the dark side to you do, then the following simple images are probably the easiest way for you to interpret it for yourself. I don't think the disciplines have been simplified in this way before so I wanted to share it with you.
These images are also hosted on Ads of The World.
I think the new social media tools that exist such as YouTube, MySpace, online video sites, blogging, wikis etc..., if used correctly, will give those in the Marketing and Public Relations industries the opportunity to move closer towards the branding discipline - where emerging technologies are providing agencies with the ability to form online communities over common interests for their clients, big companies will not need to flog how great they are through their PR agencies because instead consumers will be talking about their brands and not their intermediary agencies, opening direct dialogue between the consumer and the company will enhance the credibility/ reputation of the companies - all of which will hopefully result in the public talking amongst themselves about the brands.
I believe this is what will help build better brands and what will make true impact on the clients bottom dollar!
I have seen some very clever advertising campaigns over the past couple of years, from the launch of Stella McCartney's street range for Adidas (where she took the concept of disruptive guerrilla marketing to new heights by installing large plastic boxes close to traffic on the streets - with models inside practicing yoga while dressed in the new range) to the antics of Calvin Klein and the invention of the world's first live billboard.
One thing all these activities have in common is that they turn heads. The latest to launch are the portable Red Cross billboards in the US that use clever photography, the art of optical illusion and are all strategically placed. The Cool Hunter mentions that onlookers are taking pictures of the billboards and posting, uploading and sharing them online wirh friends.
These sorts of advertising campaigns are having strong implications for brands. Consumers these days are acting as brand ambassadors by spreading the campaign to a wider audience through blog sites and photo sharing sites such as Flickr.
