December 23, 2004
Virgin Catches Viral Marketing Bug
[from mediapost]
by Shankar Gupta
The latest virus going around the office isn't the flu--it's Chrismahanukwanzakah.
The Internet spot, a cartoon jingle from Virgin Mobile USA that dismisses the theological concerns of the holiday season, proclaims: "Whose faith is the right one/that's anybody's guess/what matters most is camera phones for $20 dollars less." Virgin Mobile's product is no-contract cell phones, and the ad tries to draw a connection between not having to commit to a single faith during the holiday season and not having to commit to a single cell phone plan.
The ad is the latest hit in viral ad campaigns, and has been receiving extensive press in major news outlets like the Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Sun-Times, and the Boston Herald. The Web-based part of the campaign is accompanied by TV spots that aired on MTV and affiliated networks, like Comedy Central and SpikeTV, and in-store displays featuring the omni-denominational cast of the ad: A many-armed, sitar-playing Hindu Santa Claus, a dreidel-toting, afro-sporting, gold- toothed, black angel, and a reindeer whose antlers support a Hanukah menorah.
The intent of the Web-based part of the campaign was to harness the buzz that advertisers so covet. Fallon, the company that created the ad for Virgin Mobile, had the intent all along to utilize viral advertising to spread the word about the ad and help brand the Virgin Mobile no-contract phones, in the newly founded tradition of Burger King's SubservientChicken.com.
Posted by richard ting at December 23, 2004, 11:34 AM
December 22, 2004
Come Clean
Check out the Come Clean site.
[read the NYTimes.com article]
Entertaining Web Sites Promote Products Subtly
MARKETERS usually try to slip their names into every conceivable venue - like cellphone screens, bathroom posters and TV shows via product placement. But there are times when an ad that almost disguises its sponsor can be more effective. Many of these ads have taken the form of specialty Web sites, like www.subservientchicken.com, which is intended to entrance visitors with humor, video or games.
Subservient Chicken, perhaps the year's most prominent example, allows visitors to type orders to someone dressed in a chicken costume, who is seen obeying, as if on a live Webcam. The site, a promotion for the TenderCrisp chicken sandwich sold at Burger King, says little about Burger King or the sandwich, although there is a discreet link to the Burger King site.
Other marketers have moved into specialty Web sites, including Alaska Airlines, which operates a parody site at www.skyhighairlines.com, and Best Buy, the retail chain, which is creating specialty sites tied to particular campaigns, products and audiences. At one site, Best Buy depicts a fictional Slothmore Institute (www.slothmore.com), which brags of "enabling greatness through sedentary living."
A note from the institute's fictional founder, Dr. Harvey Funkel, explains. "Here at Slothmore we believe that everyone deserves to achieve one's dreams and aspirations," he says, "especially if one's dream is to never achieve a thing." The idea is that stay-at-home sloths may as well surround themselves with a stereo system, which, incidentally, visitors can check out by clicking on a Best Buy banner ad at the bottom.
Posted by richard ting at December 22, 2004, 07:28 PM
December 09, 2004
New Integrated Campaign for Treo
AKQA has developed an integrated campaign for Treo. The campaign includes online advertising, print, television, outdoor (airport), and a Web site. The Web site launched at the end of November and invites consumers to experience life with a Treo in a choose-your-own-adventure format. Print work appeared in issues of Business 2.0, BusinessWeek, The New Yorker and Hemispheres, and 15-second spots are running during "The Today Show," "The O.C.," "Good Morning America," and "Next Top Model."
Posted by richard ting at December 09, 2004, 11:48 AM
December 08, 2004
Pondering Podvertising Possibilities
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
By Steve Rubel, CooperKatz & Company
Savvy online marketers have a whole new medium to exploit: It's called "podcasting." Could this be the next BMWFilms.com?
You can?t walk 50 feet in a major city without seeing them. You can spot them a mile away by the dual white wires that dangle from their ears. They?re young, technically savvy, loyal, enthusiastic card-carrying members of the burgeoning iPod Nation. They represent an attractive demographic of early adopter influencers that marketers covet. And, thanks to an emerging revolution in online audio content called podcasting, there are all kinds of new and exciting ways to reach them through ?podvertising.?
The iPod is white hot this holiday season. Apple shipped more than two million of the portable audio players in the most recent quarter ending in September. Analysts now estimate that the Cupertino, California-based company will sell another four million devices this quarter alone. A recent Merrill Lynch report even noted that iPod adoption is outpacing the Sony Walkman?s rapid rise during the 1980s.
As the iPod Nation swells, it is spawning a completely new online content medium called podcasting -- a play on the words broadcasting and Web-casting. A podcast is a time-shifted audio program that can be created using a simple microphone-equipped PC. It is distributed to subscribers via RSS. Users who subscribe to a program's feed receive new episodes on their Mac or PC as they are released. The audio file is then subsequently automatically synched to an iPod or equivalent MP3 digital music player, allowing the subscriber to listen to the time-shifted program at their convenience.
Podcasting was hatched last summer by former MTV VJ-turned-entrepreneur Adam Curry. Since then it has been widely evangelized and adopted by the blogging community. In just two months the number of Google results for the term ?podcasting? jumped nearly 1,000 percent, from 5,950 pages in early October to more than 500,000 pages this month. Surprisingly Google still doesn?t even recognize the term (it asks if you mean ?broadcasting?), but don?t take that lack of recognition to mean that the content and audiences aren't there yet.
Posted by richard ting at December 08, 2004, 12:22 PM
December 06, 2004
MySpace.com -- Pitch to Online Crowd Mixes Pop Stars and Personals
[from nytimes.com]
The home page of MySpace, a Web site for social networking, features a profile of the teenage idol Hilary Duff. Yes, her music is there, and so is marketing for a Procter & Gamble deodorant.
By NAT IVES
PROCTER & GAMBLE, the country's largest advertiser and an eager pursuer of new marketing methods, has begun an experimental promotion for its Secret Sparkle deodorant using music stars' personal profiles on a social networking Web site. Under the deal, the MySpace.com home page features a profile of the singer Hilary Duff accompanied by logos for Secret Sparkle, an extension of the Secret brand that went on sale a year and a half ago.
Those who view Ms. Duff's profile can try to win an iPod in the "Secret 'Discover the Secret Strength of Today's Hottest Rising Music Stars' Sweepstakes," and sign up for more information on Secret Sparkle, other Procter & Gamble products or Ms. Duff. The promotion will feature a succession of other artists and their MySpace profiles until it concludes at the end of this month. The promotion, narrow in focus and low key by design, is in some ways the opposite of a Super Bowl commercial, the expensive epitome of traditional advertising. But P.& G. has decided that mass marketing will keep losing effectiveness as media choices and consumer control grow, so it has made charting new paths to consumers a priority.
"This is the first time we've tried this," said Michelle Vaeth, a communications director at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. "We really hope it works, because we recognize that MySpace.com is a growing and important player in the social networking Internet space." Social networking sites, particularly those friendly to music fans, are a growing destination for the company's target audience. "We have to be where they are in this online world," Ms. Vaeth said.
The Secret Sparkle promotion represents some firsts for MySpace as well, although the site has collected most of its revenue from advertising almost since its inception in September 2003. "Procter & Gamble is a new advertiser for us," said Chris De Wolfe, chief executive at MySpace in Los Angeles. And while celebrities had been permitted to use MySpace to promote themselves and their work, the campaign with P.& G. is the first instance of the Web site's combining consumer product advertising with a celebrity listing, Mr. De Wolfe said.
If P.& G. considers the effort a success, it could mean much more ad revenue from packaged goods companies for social networking sites like Friendster, Multiply and MySpace as well as business-oriented networking sites like Ryze. Marketers hope these sites will make it easier to start and track communication about brands among friends and contacts. People who register on sites like MySpace and Friendster can set up a home page with photos, a profile and links to others in their social networks. Users can browse for friends, dates, partners for activities or contacts of all kinds and invite them to join the users' personal networks as "friends."
"As the peer-to-peer marketing takes over, word spreads very quickly throughout the site," Mr. De Wolfe said. "My thousand friends see Hilary's profile and see the branding and request to be her friend."
Advertisers are clearly intrigued, if unsure how best to use the sites. The diverse group of marketers using banner ads on MySpace includes the Consumer Research Corporation, DesignerBag4Free.com, Radio Shack, Verizon Wireless and WinSweepstakes.net.
Since June, the MySpace Music section has allowed performers or their record labels to create profiles and offer downloads of their songs, streaming videos and other material. R.E.M., for one, promoted its newest album by posting it on MySpace Music for free listening for two weeks in September. And over the summer, MySpace promoted movie releases by being host to profiles for "Ron Burgundy," the character played by Will Ferrell in "Anchorman," and "Jason Bourne," the Matt Damon character in "The Bourne Supremacy."
Friendster also sells banners and boxes on its pages, which currently display ads for companies like Cingular, the College Loan Corporation, the Kissimmee-St. Cloud Convention and Visitors Bureau, and T-Mobile. Target recently used Friendster to support one element of its holiday campaign, free recorded wake-up calls from the likes of Heidi Klum and Darth Vader that shoppers could request on the Target Web site. Target posted "profiles" of the callers on Friendster.
As with many things online, though, there is the potential for confusion. In addition to millions of real profiles of real people, users have posted countless fake profiles. A search for "Hilary Duff" on MySpace produced 99 profiles under her name, including one that describes a 22-year-old man in Yakima, Wash. Then there are profiles operated by publicity executives at Hollywood Records, Ms. Duff's label, part of the Walt Disney Company. Even this reporter, who travels in decidedly unfamous circles, was able to secure the apparent friendship of Ms. Duff on MySpace in a matter of hours.
Posted by richard ting at December 06, 2004, 01:04 PM
December 01, 2004
New J&J Baby EyeWonder Ad
In-Game Video Ad with Zoom and send to Friend
Posted by richard ting at December 01, 2004, 03:44 PM
Discover Card Snowball Fight
Check out the new online multi-user snowball game by Barbarian Group/Goodby Silverstein. Fun stuff.
When you get to the site click on Holiday Games.
Posted by richard ting at December 01, 2004, 02:35 PM
Rbk Streets
[from Trendcentral]
Rbk Streets: Reebok recently launched this interactive website where consumers can play games, as well as learn more about Rbk personalities, footwear and apparel. Aspiring musicians can also submit demos in MP3 format to the 50 Cent studio, which will be reviewed by the real 50 Cent. If you play on Rbk Streets, you might just earn enough Street Cred to win some major prizes.
Personally, I like the 'city' environment idea and using the cityscape as a navigation. I've seen this before on IBM's Software City and Nike's Battlegrounds, but I can't stand the overly 'ghetto-fied' or 'urban-fied' visual aesthetic. It just feels so gimmicky and outdated. Anyway, let Reebok keep their ghetto-bling-campaigns. I think Nike's trying to message their audiences on a slightly more sophisticated level.