Ad Week - Day 4

• Don't let the unequal be the enemy of good"
• Same search different results
• Social reinforces the idea and contributes to polarization

Ad Week - Day 3

• Montreal has something to prove.
• Liquid and linked
• Content creation by brands
• Contextualized by core compentencies
• Social media is content creation. Once you're in you can't get out.
• Social Media is like qucik sand
• Creation of things that create disproportionate value for our brand

Ad Week - Day 2

Here are today's thoughts and don't worry I promise I'll clean them at the end of the week.

• IBM Social Media Guidelines http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
• Social media = democracy
• "Doing work has become the work place"
• You need to be willing to engage
• If you plan your communications you can plan your measurement
• The problem isn't fragmentation, but duplication
• Facebook is consumer centric, Google makes money
• Goals should span all mediums
• Marketers care about goals not methods

Ad Week

This week I am fortunate to be able to attend some of the sessions from the 8th annual Advertising Week. So, instead of posting my usual ad reviews I thought that I would share some of the more interesting ideas. I'm going to put up my notes as is, and I'll round out the thoughts later:

Related to film:

• Audiences are moving to their homes
• Easier to make impulse buys
• Brand as a curator
• Bringing the experience of a festival online
• How do people watch films?

R/GA:

• "Marketing is the business of growth"
• Horizontal growth, vertical growth and now functional growth
• Integrating products and services that ad real value
• Ecosystems of vlaue

McDonald's - Bacon Cheeseburger

It's late so this is going to be a quickie!

Ad by DDB Helsinki

Message: Cheeseburgers now have bacon. It's less than five words, so I like it. Though they forgot to put the McDonald's in...

Execution: Subtle at first, but it looks like a pig. Get it? Get it? Get it? Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, you got it.

Strategy: Make people aware of the new offering.

Success: Probably 50/50. If I had glanced at it I wouldn't have gotten it and wouldn't have cared. But after I looked at it I began to think about it and that made me want a cheeseburger.

Found on Work That Matters

Ikea TV Commercial - The Climber

I chose this ad because it is sleek and pretty and made me want to own a totally impractical kitchen filled with things from Ikea.

Message: Ikea offers more appliances then it did. Not only is the message clear and succinct it makes perfect sense with everything you see before it.

Execution: The ad not only shows off all of its new appliances, but shows it in a cute way. This ad could have been a boring scene where the husband is making dinner in a regular kitchen using only Ikea appliances and the message still would have come across. However this ad uses whimsy to make me want to be there, and more importantly want the things in the ad.

Strategy: Show how many appliance Ikea has to offer.

Success: This ad is the perfect marrying of message and execution. Either element alone would have made the strategy successful, but together they make an enjoyable ad that people want to talk about. Good work  Forsman & Bodenfors! 


Found on Ad Week

New Audi A6 Avant Advertisement

This is the new commercial for the A6 Audi Avant by BBH London. I have to say after watching the commercial I was a little bit weirded out. I mean I get where they were going, but I kept feeling like I was in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by robots.

Message: The message communicated by the ad is clear and concise: the A6 Avant is light and agile. And though the actual message is quite eloquent the actual execution of delivering the message is less than desirable, but I’ll get into that later.

Execution: The execution of the concept is incredibly done, though I don’t actually like the concept. The gasoline and road sign world is hauntingly beautiful and very well rendered. But in the end dripping gasoline and groddie metal isn’t attractive. As creative as the world is I don’t want to be there and by extension my associations with the car aren’t the most positive. I don’t care how agile your car is, all I can think about is being stuck in that metal universe. A place where the fumes from the flowers can get you high and the sky is gray! I mean yes, hummingbirds are agile and I get that. But why couldn’t you do the exact same commercial without the metal makeover, the point would’ve come across just as well and I wouldn’t have the taste of smog in my mouth after watching it. I get that the “traffic motif” gives me the whole car association, but sell me on the idea of agility. I don’t need to be beat over the head with the fact that this is a car ad. The redeeming factor to this concept is that is beautifully done. For a world where the air probably smells like facotry fumes the scenery is beautiful. One little note is that the music in the background makes the message a bit hard to hear. Albeit it might be because the speakers on my computer aren’t the greatest, but I had to watch the ad a couple times before I could pull out all of the words.

Strategy: The strategy for this ad came in three parts: 1) Highlight the new lightweight technology, 2) Convince people that because it is lighter it is also more agile, and 3) Make people interested because agile cars are fun to drive.

Success: I’m going to give this ad a 2/3 pass, because they deliver on goals 1 and 2. Having watched the ad I take away that the car is lighter, and I even buy the whole light=agility thing. Where I think the commercial fails to deliver is in the promise of fun. The world that they show me isn’t fun, it’s kind of gross. I mean the hummingbird is kind of having a good time, maybe? But robo-bird isn’t doing it for me, at least throw me a shot of a happy driver.  But no all I get is the A6 speeding off into the gray distance, probably because it is running away from a robot uprising. 

Found on Campaign