Came across this interesting post from Dave Trott’s blog at Brand Republic – Why advertising doesn’t work. He recounts the experience of Robert Townsend, the CEO of Avis in the ’60s, with regard to advertising. As we know, Avis’ classic, ‘We are No.2, we try harder’ created by DDB is considered a classic that helped build the Avis brand. Apparently, DDB was chosen because the Avis CEO asked ‘a dozen agencies, which were the two…
This must rank as one of the boldest ideas for a campaign. FirstBank, Colorado claim that ‘They care about small business’. Instead of it being merely a claim and making a warm, fuzzy TV commercial about it, they created billboards promoting real small business enterprises. So, a piano teacher, baby sitter and wedding singer get their numbers promoted on billboards. Good idea or potential pain in the neck for those businesses with crank calls galore?…
Along with Pedigree’s Adoption Drive, this one must mark as one of the best examples of a brand going beyond advertising to drive preference. IAMS in Australia created these branded frisbees to drive home the proposition of strong dogs. Copyranter says this is social media. True, in a way. Via Direct Daily.
Coca Cola Schweppes released this ad this month in The Times, UK and had to withdraw it soon. The reason: the Mexican embassy objected to it. Via The Inspiration Room Daily. According to Coca-Cola, “The essence of the Schweppes ‘Experience Matters’ campaign is celebrating the very British tradition of satire. The cartoons are designed to bring a smile to an otherwise gloomy news agenda and reflect topical issues in the news”. I guess tongue-in-cheek British…
Happened to see the ad for Virgin Mobile’s vJazz, which touts unlimited music downloads for one year, as its selling proposition. What I recall though, is a young man hitting on an older woman. The ad is likely to be popular among certain youngsters and get the laughs among a typical kind. The kind who write moronic, lewd, anonymous comments over at YouTube. The Aunty has a Facebook fan page (15 fans as of now)…
Way back in the early ’90s, one of my regular haunts in Mumbai was a small book shop on D N Road, in the Fountain area. Just down the Bata shop there was a virtual hole in the wall, selling magazines mostly. The manager (maybe attendant) could have fitted well in a grocery shop too. But he knew everything there was to know about magazines. I used to visit the shop regularly hunting for The…
I often wonder about the Creative Brief of campaigns that I see abroad. The one’s that I like, that is. Is it all in the brief or does the spark happen in the Creative? Do they have brainstorming sessions? What ‘thought starter’ or direction led to the creative piece? Sometimes I attempt to write out the one-line proposition or the essence myself. Helps me improve my own Creative Briefs, me thinks. Here’s one such campaign…
Pitching is part of agency business. And all agencies are fully aware of the pitfalls and speculative nature of a pitch. Yet, the proverbial pie in the sky is motivation enough for pitches to thrive. Sometimes an idea that is central to a client’s business – the core philosophy, brand name & logo are sought for through an agency pitch. And you may very well have a situation where the client implements the brand name…
I am unabashed fan of The New York Times – at least the online version of it. They have now released version 2.0 of the Times Reader, which is a great replica of the offline edition on your computer. It runs of Adobe’s AIR platform (the earlier versions ran on Microsoft’s Silverlight) so it runs on Windows, Mac & Linux. The navigation and interface is classic NYT – clean, great fonts and lots of content.…
AdAge reports that in the Mac vs. PC battle, Microsoft is winning in value perception. Based on daily interviews of 5,000 people, BrandIndex found the 18-34 age group gave Apple its highest rating in late winter, when it notched a value score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (a score of zero means that people are giving equal amounts of positive and negative feedback about a brand). But its score began to…