Where Books Come to Life

I really enjoy stop motion animation. Excellent work, really well edited and amazing all around. New Zealand Book Council have already hit over a quarter million views in 2 weeks.




Love how the animations literally spring off the page in this animated spot. There's no denying it's visually impressive.

What's G?

I couldn't figure out just what is so 'G' about this commercial. (I'll get to that in the moment.)



With the economy slowing, now is an opportune time for generating awareness on your brand. Pepsi who owns the majority of Gatorade is aiming to promote a new style for its flagship. With the help of TBWA/Chiat/Day, the drink will remain the same, but it has a new finesse, it is putting an attitude behind it, stepping up on the competition as the brand to drink.

The bottles will support a new label to the packaging. Representing the Large copy 'G' and the brands you know them have taken to new names to the likes of "Bring It" and "Be Tough".

The commercial gets your interest, but falls flat because we're left not knowing what the heck it is! the g in the commercial should stand for geez!!

I see that they want you to ask the question....What is G? But they did not execute the viral ability of the campagin. I found a YouTube channel, but nothing more of this besides an AdWeek article.

Update: Fellow Binger Laura, fellow blogger at BINGenuity sent me this Wall Street Journal article

Consumers are feeling the same way:

"The commercial is great, but it is frustrating when you don't know what they are trying to advertise."

Nintendo Makes YouTube Viral

The question is now that viral marketing is all over YouTube, how do you make YouTube viral? Nintendo Wii use an embedded Flash video or might have gotten cheeky with open source to promote the new Wario Land: Shake It game.

The only problem I had when I wanted to make a blog post, I couldn't stop the video because everything was shaking and couldn't get the embedded code. Plus someone might just think that what they are experiencing is not the Wii, but a virus.

Here is the link to the virus...I mean, video, sorry for the "Shake Up"

The Musical Road

Honda Civic has added a little highway tune for your roadtrip pleasures. If you are out in Lancaster, CA, Honda carved grooves into the road similar to the ones near the edge lines on highways to give you an audible alert when you might be veering off the road. These grooves carved in different widths to make separate tones to comprise the William Tell Overture also known as "The Long Ranger" theme.



Enjoy it now... residents nearby the Civic Musical Road will be having this paved for it is really disrupted. Although this is intriguing for most, the tune will vary due to the speed/tire variety and the such.

More Bang for Your Buck

I attended a Greater Dayton Ad Association Lunch and Learn session this afternoon.



The presenter, Clay Campbell, presented on the topic, "Get Big Results for Your Small Ad Dollars." Clay is currently a partner with Wizard of Ads and a consultant for small business owners.

He came to speak today on how to get more bang for your marketing buck. In short, the discussion surrounded word-of-mouth marketing. He wrote a book covering over 100 ideas and strategies to help get the results from your advertising investment. Many of the techniques he covers was provided by his own trial and error.

One quote that he used, from Johnny Cash, was that "Bad news travels like wildfire, Good news travels slow." The same could be said about WOM. The consumer will exponentially hit at something they dislike compared to that of something good a company may have done.

The 5 main points of his strategy for WOM:
1. Establish a Budget
2. Architectural
3. Generosity
4. Movement
5. Good Ad Copy

To indulge (in brief):
Establish an Ad Budget – 5% of your sales should be saved for marketing. While saving this money it should be decided upfront where to spend that budget.

Architectural, in regards to the design of your building, can help build viral marketing.
Example: Longaberger Basket Company and Harley Davidson Riverboat.

Generosity – Just how Wal-Mart has it's greeters, hiring an friendly, caring person to greet your customers can help build revenue. Clay owns the Kentucky Opry where he hired a sweet, kind woman who would make every person feel warm and at home and because of this, visitors would buy more merchandise. Clay would later state that he considered her pay part of the advertising budget.

Movement – Kinetic Energy to be exact. Japanese Hibachi grills are the prime example. When the chef prepares the food showcasing how handy with a blade and fire, while throwing food into his hat, you know, the whole nine yards of entertainment.

Finally, Copywriting, is a must when creating your ads. This will be discussed in thorough in a latter post.

Remember that how your marketing efforts will be in direct correlations with your ability to increase the reach of your campaigns and the salience of the ad.

Additional cheap ways to add to your Ad budget include:
Press Releases
eNewsletters - Not just to push your advertising on them, but to entice your consumer to pull your consumer to have others subscribe (i.e. entice with a gift certificate for a referral.)
Public Speaking - Toastmasters, Ad associations, etc. are always looking for speakers
Cross Promoting with other businesses - Use clients to help promote both brands
Bartering - trade services, but don't forget to report that with the IRS.

If you are able to read his book or check into his list of websites it would be beneficial for your small business to try and gain more marketing bang.

The World's Biggest Ad

Ran across this website, in creation of the World's Biggest Ad. The company Photolibrary provide creatives with access to over 3 million images and over 2,000 hours of footage.

Using an online product, Ad Builder 1.0, similar to Photoshop, anyone can become part of the construction. In a group advertising effort, to help cross promote interactive TBWA and give designers the ability to use their talents and even select certain images to see who created them.



Using a cool piece of technology, you are taken to what looks like a basic image editor. You can then build your contribution through your web browser with an interactive desktop allowing the user to select from Photolibrary's stock images to compose an ad.

The campaign began July 23rd, the objective is to spread the word to the ad community that royalty-free images offer plenty of scope for creativity. The campaign has raised Photolibrary’s profile in the stock photo/creative industry. (I never heard of them until now.)

This new viral campaign is the next phase. It builds on the pull marketing concept on the web, by directly involving the audience, whether it being mainly designers or creatives, it helps get the consumer involved. Everyone can submit a small section of the ad, and ultimately create the world’s biggest ad.

Tiger Performs First Miracle

Here's a funny viral video from EA Sports. About a year ago a YouTuber uploaded a video of a glitch in Tiger Woods 08. He was able to get Tiger to stand on top of a lake and drive the ball into the hole. In response, EA came out with this viral video to show that what the poster had claimed, is indeed true in real life. View the original video here.

Like a previous post, Calm Before the Storm, It's a clever way for advertisers to use social media sites that have become so popular for viral related content. The best marketing is that in which you can get the consumer involved and what a better way than to pick out a video to showcase a product and to ease into a pull market by having he consumer spread the word. The agency Wieden + Kennedy, Portland came up with the idea to create a video response and launched the ad on Youtube. As of Saturday afternoon, the video had been viewed more than 900,000 times.



A little blasphemous. The company had concerns that the "Jesus shot" phrase used in the original YouTube video, as well as showing Woods walking on water, had the potential to offend some people. However, the feedback from consumers has been uniformly positive.

Summer of Sports

Because of the Summer Olympics and the success of my soccer seasons. I bring you a few sports theme posts today.

First goes to "the beautiful game". European football is at an all time high. My squad is back from a summer tournament where we placed second after finishing first in our division. Now it's time to improve, and what a better way to improve than to recruit.



Appearances aside, this deceptive team of over-aged and beer belly pub players prove their skills in this viral ad for Lucoazde Sport produced by agency M&C Saatchi, London.

Moral: Performance enhancing drugs can help you play like you are twenty again.

Calm Before the Storm

The quick-turnaround for a viral campaign is critical and it usually shows how strong brands can stay current with today's trends. Well not necessarily a trend in this case, but a strong gail of wind forcing a tree to fall to the streets was captured by amateur video. The falling tree almost hit a car. The agency, Colenso 99, took the original footage and recreated the scene of for a Jeep owner "Having fun out there."

99 Auckland explains;
"Last week saw some of the worst storms in recorded history to hit New Zealand and what defined this in the hearts and minds of New Zealanders was viral footage and News coverage of a falling tree almost hitting a car in Nelson, South Island. 99 Auckland thought about the Jeep brand proposition of 'Have fun out there' and what would happen if a Jeep was there? The original footage was sourced, and we recreated the scene of a Jeep owner doing just that, 'Having fun out there.' The viral was sent out a day after the news coverage aired, to maintain relevancy."



This would have been even better if they aired the ad on TV after the news the next day - but such quick media-buy is long gone isn't it?