Advertising | a thousand cuts :: adam cohen's blog

I Will Not Write About Old Spice

I will resist the urge. Already there are too many write-ups about the inspirational campaign from a social media perspective. I’m going to keep telling myself, “Please don’t write about Old Spice.”

I am not going to share how the social campaign is a brilliant extension of a series of creative and funny TV commercials. I’m not going to point out that the campaign had awareness and life long before the social media play, or how the real-time authoring of content and demonstrated effects could change the game of how advertisers think – not to mention drive the consumption of their earlier commercials. No one wants to know there are already rumors of a sitcom for Isaiah Mustafa, or that the wave of parodies (like this one and this one) is going to give the whole concept legs for quite some time.

I can’t imagine anyone wants to hear about integration of paid and earned media again, or how ending the video effort quickly adds to the mystique and likelihood of a successful follow-up. I’m also not going to call out the people who are asking, “But is it making Old Spice fall off the shelves? Is anyone buying more?” since I’m sure people never ask that about TV commercials the day they first air. No way I’m going to share how brilliant sharing behind the scenes is, nor how I really think it’s brilliant to mix who they reply to between influencers and “normal people” who barely have any followers.

I also won’t tell anyone how their High Endurance deodorant was the fascination of my fraternity in college as the best working product out there, and how word of mouth made it successful. This was long before “social media” back in the days when we had to use modems to connect to AOL 2.0. If I share that I’ll surely date myself. Now it’s possible to get 61 million views on Youtube.

I sincerely hope that people just sit back and enjoy the brilliant piece of work, and stop giving P&G the link love. Who’s with me? (By the way, I’m glad to hear he stopped the oil spill).

Photo credit: khairilfz via Flickr

Brand Fusion: Creative, Search and Media

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and talking about the fusion of social media into other areas of interactive marketing (especially how it is being done at my agency, Rosetta). In some recent discussions I came across this example from Converse, fusing creative, video and paid search marketing (PPC). For anyone who doesn’t have much of an appreciation for paid search, it will blow you away. For those in the industry and have an appreciation for using paid search to drive branding campaigns, this will still blow you away if you haven’t heard about it yet. It’s this kind example that truly exemplifies digital marketing as an art form. To me it’s an amazing blend of insight, creativity and execution. It’s not truly social – yet – but I think there could be more life to the content simply adding sharing features in the videos and giving people chances to comment. Either way it’s still brilliant.

What do you think? Know of any other examples? Watch and drop your thoughts in the comments. (Feed readers please click through to see the video, which was shared with me by Jason Tabeling). You can find the official home page of what’s described in the video at at http://www.thisistheindexpage.com (again, smart).

Converse Domaination from Ross Martin on Vimeo.

How Much is That Doggie in the Window?

Two campaigns caught my eye today that I wanted to capture and share as examples of the sheer brilliance of interactive marketing. The first is a campaign in display advertising from Agency Republic. The technique is to target “parents in routine and manual occupations” to reduce smoking in that audience. Click through the image of the child to see the brief and walkthrough of how it worked, following a parent’s web use if the initial messages were ignored. The campaign was runner up in September’s creative showcase awards.

The second campaign is an interactive billboard – I’ve mentioned before how display advertising is showing signs of life, but this takes it to whole new level. A digital dog interacts with people that merely walk by the window. Here is how it works:

People on the sidewalk are monitored by an IR camera in openFrameworks. In oF each individual person is isolated and assigned a unique id for the duration of their interaction. Each persons’ position and gesture information is continually sent to Unity3d via OSC networking protocol. In Unity, an artificial intelligence system representing the dog forms relationships with the individuals. He chooses which person to pay attention to, is able to move towards them or back away, responds to their gestures and initiates gestures of his own. Based on the interaction he gets excited or bored, friendly or aggressive, which is reflected in his behavior.

Just trust me, the video says it much better. Spotted via neatorama.

Sniff from karolina sobecka on Vimeo.

Display Advertising Shows Signs of Life

I always like to capture ideas and campaigns here that really catch my eye and provide inspiration. Here are two banner ads that challenge the notion that this industry has nothing left in it. They show that the right mix of creativity, humor and humility for the knowledge an end-user has about the space can create a vibrant ad. Most importantly: they engage better than, well any other banner ad I’ve seen. I’d imagine, like me, anyone in the interactive marketing industry would look at both these and say, “I wish I’d thought of that.”

Pringles

First up is an ad from Pringles. I couldn’t click just once. (OK, I know that’s a headnod to the Lay’s campaign, but it’s for potato chips too). I heard about it via AdFreak – key quote:

I appreciate that it isn’t flashing horrible circus colors and promising me a free Xbox or a spyware-laden “virus scan.”

It’s actually quite funny, and no surprise it recently won awards. The one here is embedded – you can click right here and no I don’t get any referrals for your clicks.

Volkswagen

The second ad was covered in Adweek’s TweetFreak a couple weeks ago. This ad for Volkswagen integrates Twitter directly in the ad, scanning recent tweets for terms used and then recommending a car that is right for you. This one is not embedded – click through to a page where you can put in a Twitter ID to see the results.

Of course I like the idea of integrating Twitter in a creative way – it’s trailblazing with new platforms and technologies – but I would be curious to see some of the metrics around both of these campaigns. Any others that strike you as compelling or inspirational?

Bonus: An Offline Ad Can Inspire Too

Proving that technology, location and creativity can create a compelling mix, here’s another Cannes Lion award winner that could inspire loads of guerilla marketing ideas – imagine what Times Square could be like in New York City if all of the ads responded to what happened in front of them. Hat tip to copyranter and @dschutzsmith for sharing.

UPDATE: For a lot more insight on the Pringles ad (not to mention some very useful resources on Pharma and social media) directly from the source agency that created the ad, see the post “What Pharma Can Learn from Pringles” from Jonathan Richman.

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How Much is That Doggie in the Window?

Display Advertising Shows Signs of Life