Even after the hype of the World Cup 2010 is dying down, viewers still find themselves humming that catchy K’Naan song. Renown for its ever-innovative marketing campaigns, Coca-Cola has done it again by turning “Wavin’ Flag,” hitting the scene during the Vancouver Olympics, into a walking, singing Coca-Cola commercial during the World Cup by adjusting the melody ever so slightly.
Reaching #1 on the music charts in over 17 countries, Coke has essentially gotten their signature sonic logo stuck in the heads of millions of consumers worldwide, which will last long after the end of the World Cup. It is their largest ever integrated marketing campaign to date and considered much more effective than merely paying an artist to mention their brand in a song.
So if the K’Naan song happens to be playing while you’re eating meal, it is no coincidence that all you want is a Coke.
Sometimes you are so involved in a project that you forget to step back and ask yourself, “Self, we both know this looks fly, but does what I just made make any sense?” and sometimes the answer is no. We have all been there.
Dan Hopper writes, “A friend of mine sent me the banner ad, which I’ve been staring at for the last ninety minutes alternately laughing at it and curling up in a hyper-confused, existential panic. Vote for my favorite video? Of Adam Carolla and Klondikes? Who? Cars? String?”
I’m just going to go on record and say that I don’t understand Sketcher’s Shape-Ups. Apparently, nor does anyone else because according to a story on USAToday.com disputes about whether they work or not, are safe or not, are cool looking or not, etc., have yielded no definitive answers either way.
It doesn’t matter where I side on this really because I don’t know enough about these to make an accurate assessment, but I will say that Joe Montana is part of their marketing and Joe knows sneakers.
You know, the type of ads that literally scream at you to look at them, confuse you, blare sounds from areas unknown (which then let your coworkers know you aren’t working), etc.
The ads will integrate HD video content and aim to continue to provide viewers advertising content, now with integrated editorial content. I’m all for innovating the simple and old-school banner ad a bit, but making ads bigger, more intrusive and more disruptive isn’t the answer from my perspective.
As the story points out briefly, internet users don’t respond well to these types of ads, so I’m not sure making the ads bigger and more disruptive is the answer. The word after all is disruptive (root word; disrupt) and thanks to dictionary.com, I can say with certainty that associating an ad with any of these feelings might not leave the viewer feeling to good:
1. to cause disorder or turmoil in
2. to destroy, usually temporarily, the normal continuance or unity of; interrupt
3. to break apart: to disrupt a connection
I regularly review recent ads and videos from all over the country (if you don’t already, check out/subscribe to Out to Launch, a witty blog full of soon-to-be or recently launched campaigns, promotions, sites, etc.) so as I went through the list of the Cannes Ad Festival winners of 2009-10, I was surprised to run into only a few spots I had seen before.
So in the past few weeks apparently a wide spread, seemingly (but also much disputed) consumer-generated drinking game popped up and started gaining lots of viral traction online. The interesting thing about it though is not so much the game itself, but more the many questions that surrounded it.
Known only as Bros Icing Bros (which lived online at this website before being shut down this week), the core focus of the game was the sweet malt beverage, Smirnoff Ice.
The game was quite simple as the entire premise was that if someone approached you with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice and you didn’t have one of your own to fend off the attack, you’d be ‘Iced’ and have to get down on one knee and consume the bottle of Smirnoff that your attacker approached you with. Given the need to have your own ammo to arm yourself against these sniper like attacks and the apparent desire by many college students to ‘Ice’ their friends, cases of Smirnoff began moving fast from the shelves, leading some to believe that it was merely a viral marketing ploy by Smirnoff’s parent company Diageo, known for successful viral marketing campaigns, to move products.
Move products it apparently did, but many people, myself included, doubted that it was a viral marketing ploy by the company because it was essentially one huge binge drinking game. It was very hard to understand why the company, viral marketing campaign or not, would want to be associated with a.) binge drinking and b.) people essentially using the product to make fun of the product. Individuals interviewed in some articles made this clear when they would indicated one wouldn’t want be iced because Smirnoff Ice is a “pretty terrible” drink.
Well, answers came yesterday as Diageo apparently confirmed that the past few weeks of games and the online site www.BrosIcingBros.com were not part of a marketing campaign. The site is down, saying only “We had a good run Bros…”
Right now, the Bro the started the whole thing, apparently only known as ‘Joe’, may or may not be in hot water for copyright/trademark issues stemming from the game and the site.
Should be interesting to see how it all plays out.
HQ recently had the opportunity to leverage our digital marketing and brand design strengths to pitch and ultimately win the agency of record assignment for the Cincinnati based, Buffalo Wings and Rings restaurant chain. What’s even better is the fact that we will continue to leverage our passion for all things food to help build this nation-wide, 54 restaurant business (and who doesn’t like wings?).
For 2010, our efforts will be focused on developing an integrated campaign utilizing social media, loyalty, customer advocacy as well as both traditional and non-traditional media launching later this summer. Our recent return from the Buffalo Wings & Rings annual franchisee meeting in New Orleans, LA gave us a great chance to hear directly from the dedicated front line teams of owners throughout the US.
“Buffalo Wings & Rings is a different kind of restaurant brand centered on catching up and connecting,” says Roger David, CEO of BWR. “Families and friends choose us because of the unique BWR experience. We want our marketing to reflect and build on that experience and sense of engagement. As a leader in experiential marketing, consumer connection and new media technologies, HyperQuake is well positioned to help us.”
Thanks Roger and the entire Buffalo Wings & Rings team. We look forward to helping build your business and our own knowledge of your 45 wing sauce/heat combos in the future.
So, apparently despite being an burger lover, I missed the news back in October that to mark the release of Windows 7 in Taiwan, Windows and Burger King were teaming up to help the Taiwanese answer the question “Where’s the beef?” They were doing this through selling 7 patty burgers, for 7 days only, to the first 30 people at Taiwan Burger King, during the release of Windows 7 of course.
Forget your sweet tooth, feed your meat tooth
Apparently, the answer to that question is that all the beef is in this mega burger that I shudder to even write this blog about. I know that the Cattleman’s Beef Board and National Cattleman’s Beef Association have helped remind us that beef is in many ways, “What’s for dinner”, but I think this story makes clear that in this case, beef is what’s for breakfast, brunch, lunch, linner, dinner and all your daily snacks…
Thanks to the fine crew @ahamburgertoday on Twitter, I stumbled upon this story last night and my mind still can’t recover.
I get the idea behind the marketing tag-team that Windows and BK came up with here, but I just can’t comprehend why anyone would want to let their body take on this challenge. Again, this coming from a hamburger fan. I am a little bummed though that they didn’t unleash this on the United States.
I think it would do well at those BK Whopper Bars that are coming to South Beach in Miami, that we wrote about a few months back. Don’t you?
It was inevitable that this was going to happen someday, but it’s also kind of a bummer.
The beauty of Twitter to me has always been that it’s organic and allowed me to connect with friends, colleagues, bands and brands in unique ways.
Even as a follower of certain companies & brands, I never felt like I was being shouted at to ‘LOOK HERE! BUY THIS! CLICK NOW!’, but more that I was able to engage with someone from the brand directly in a digital conversation if I wanted to. Essentially I felt like I was getting a sneak peak at what was going on with the brand from a day to day perspective. Of course, not all brands using Twitter follow a model that embodies putting unique content out there for followers, some purely do just yell at people to buy their stuff. That’s a whole other story, but this advertising model could only enable that more.
That said, I’m not sure if the new Twitter advertising model is going to make its users very happy. The model will start out small apparently, but will closely mirror Google’s paid search advertising structure. So, when you go to look for Sue Smith on Twitter, you’ll find an ad for “Sue Smith drinks Joe’s Cola. Click here!” Well, maybe it won’t be that blatant, who knows, but that’s the model.
According to a story in the Wall Street Journal: “Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams and co-founder Biz Stone have been publicly lukewarm about advertising, suggesting it could irritate users,” so only time will tell how this is going to go.
Based on that statement alone, this should be interesting…
Bold move because, boy, none of that feedback was nice; evident in the market research footage the brand shared. For fast food, chain style pizza, a buyer can only expect so much, but I’m not going to say the feedback the brand got (and showed in recent commercials) wasn’t accurate.
That said however, I respect what they’ve done by putting themselves out there and I gotta say the next evolution of that campaign, which shows the creative targeting and ultimate success with the ‘pizza hold-outs’ was pretty genius.
Supposedly everything they did in terms of trying to get the attention of 3 holdouts that wouldn’t try the new pizza after giving feedback to the brand, is accurate and true; this consisted of pretty much a full-on individualized ad campaign of the wackiest sorts targeted to each holdout in their town. Kooky yes, but talk about commitment to getting these guys to try it. The idea to capture it all in the process, also smart thinking.
It’s all documented via a quick reality style video that’s part of the social media campaign to promote everything.
