Facebook Marketing

Many brands are looking at new ways to market their products, and social network marketing is a brand new discipline riding the wave of this new revolution. Thus, brands like Nike and Ford have ventured onto Facebook. The idea is to create an application that would provide branded utility for Facebook users. Nike created an application that helped baseketball players find pick-up games and manage leagues. But despite global ambitions, Nike has only attracted 3,400 users per month. Some major criticisms of these apps by major brands is that they are sometimes tied to launch and forget campaigns, some provide little interactivity, some are overly complicated, and often they are little more than advertisements. That tension between product promotion and consumer utility will play a role in the future of this new advertising medium. See AdWeek's full article here.

Suicide in Ads?

The latest print advertisements for Pepsi Max depict on lone animated calorie committing suicide in various graphic ways. Ad Age discusses if this sort of animated suicide is something that is acceptable in ads. And if it is unacceptable, is it still good advertising, due to the buzz it has generated. Up until now, this topic has been fairly taboo, with GM pulling its robot suicide ad just last year. Do even animated attempts at dark humor cross a very significant line into poor taste?

Top Ten Best Advertisements of All Time

When an advertiser releases a campaign, about the best they can hope for is for people to like it, remember it, and hopefully buy the product. Truly great advertising, however, takes on a life of its own. It works its way into pop culture. USA Today conducted a poll to determine what are the best ads of all time. All the great ones are on there: Mean Joe Greene, Budweiser Frogs, Apple's 1984, and many more. Check them out here.

Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing is all about coming up with creative ideas to really grab the attention of consumers. It involves thinking outside of the box of traditional marketing. Adweek has a great feature article about some of the best guerrilla marketing tactics of the year including some pumpkin carving in Times Square. It is sure to get your creativ juices flowing so that you can come up with some creative guerrilla marketing ideas of your own. Here is an example of what guerrilla marketing can look like.

JC Penny

"Give just a little of your self to me. My heart is in the moment. My hands are here to give to you." This little jingle has been hammered into my head recently. I have to admit, it's a catchy tune, and good advertising. When I watch TV, its usually through online sites like Hulu, and as a sponsor of hulu, I get to watch this JC Penny ad a lot. I think that any ad, if watched more than about forty times slowly begins to drive consumers insane. JC Penny's release of this new campaign is here, but I have to say I'm ready for the release of their next one.

November's Most-Recalled Ads

Every advertiser wants to have sticking power. They want their ads to be memorable. Thus, being a most-recalled ad according to Nielson is a prestigious honor, and it shows that they are doing their job. For the month of Novemeber it was Apple who took home this top spot, with its latest installment in the Mac/PC comparison commercials. Check it out here.

Whopper Virgins

Burger King has recently launched a controversial new campaign where they record the real reactions of consumers from obscure corners of the globe as they have their first Whopper. Some claim that indiginous people should not be used to sensationalize a product, but BK has indicated that it wants the ad to be talked about and if that means controversy so be it. I have to say, it bothers me that my area of choice purposely tries to generate controversy to try to sell products. I think there are better ways to sell products, and these sorts of campaigns are mildly disappointing to me. For more on BKs new campaign check out Advertising Age.

Where Advertising comes Alive...

I must apologize to my followers. It has been said that the advertising hasn't com alive in a while, and that has been all too true. Still, get ready. There will be a lot of advertising coming alive very soon. I have been busy with a senior thesis, from which I would like to share some advertising related conclusions pertaining to SMBs (small to medium sized businesses). Mass market advertising gets a lot of attention, and even here, it recieves the biggest focus because of its broad appeal. Still, with the constraints imposed upon SMBs, it is often non-traditional marketing methods that can yeild the biggest return on marketing investment.

Niche marketing with its smalle scope, lower costs, and ability to win is a great strategy for marketers at SMBs. According to Jay Conrad Levinson, Guerrilla Marketing tactics allow SMBs to capitalize on the strengths inherent with being small, and make their marketing more efficient. I would recommend Guerrilla Marketing for those in SMBs, and would encourage some of you to check it out. If you want to find out more about marketing advice for SMBs, follow the link or post a comment, and I can upload my thesis so you can see where all the advertising has been for a while.

Sprint and the Common Man

I don't know if any of you have seen Sprint's new advertising campaign. In these ads, Sprint's CEO comes on camera and just chats about phones. I have found these ads absolutely hilarius, even though they aren't really meant to be. Dan Hesse made just under 4 million dollars last year at Sprint and he wasn't even the CEO. If he earns a comparable salary to Sprint's last CEO he will stand to earn ten times that all told. Still, watch him in this commercial. Here a guy who makes close to a thousand times what I make in a year is pretending to be just one of us. "Can you even believe they still call these things phones with all that they can do," as though the CEO of Sprint doesn't know how to work his blackberry. He's sitting in a diner, no suit, no tie, his sleeves rolled up, as if to say, "look at me. I'm a common man. I'm just like you. These are tough times, but I understand, because I'm like you. Pay no attention to my salary, or to the fact that while you are concerned about losing your house, I'm concerned about losing my yacht. Remeber me Dan Hesse, a common man." I think that's pretty funny.

"Zero" Frustration

Although I enjoy advertising, and I am constantly looking for advertisements that represent what I think is a good ad, I have been bombarded by what may be the most terrible ad ever. I think many of you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Toyota's recent "Saved by Zero" ad. This advertisement is played almost continuously during certain programs, and its repetitiveness makes me want to scream. Still, is someone at Toyota some sort of secret genious for this? I mean it actually does get veiwers attention, its impossible to ignore, and though it violates most rules of advertising, and the reaction has been mostly negative, who knows. Here's a link to the horrible ad if you wanted to do that to yourself.

Another Favorite

In light of the lack of feedback for when Ads Go Bad part 1, I'll be postponing When Ads Go Bad Part 2. Instead, I'd like to share another of my favorite campaigns. I realize that it is a little old, but Coca-Cola's Vitamin Water ads have been awesome. My personal favorite is the 50 Cent ad, but I also loved the Shaq ad, and the Urlacher ad.

Companies Looking to be Infectious...

Companies have seen the success of OfficeMax in their use of viral marketing with "Elf Yourself" or CareerBuilder with their "Monk-E-Mail". In viral marketing you rely on your targets to view and pass on your content to their friends, who pass it on, until you have reached a large amount of consumers with your often interative content. Time Warner is atempting to get in the viral marketing game with their site "Fame Star". This site allows users to create themselves, and then chronicle their rise and subsequent fall from fame- True Hollywood Story style. The idea is to make Time Warner synonymous with entertainment and consumer empowerment, according to a recent AdWeek article.

Funniest Commercials

Although I can't say that I agree with all of them on the list. TBS has put together a list of what they believe are the funniest commercials of the year. If you're bored or just in need of a laugh, several of these are quite funny.

7-Election

7-Eleven is taking advantage of the election season by having their own election. They are selling their coffee in two cups, and letting their consumers choose which they will have. This 7-Election has been accurate in the last two presidential elections, with the George W. Bush coffee cup outselling the Al Gore cup by only one percentage point. As of right now Obama has a commanding lead in the 7-Election poll as McCain is only leading in New Hampshire and North Carolina. Still, as a marketing tactic, this is interesting to say the least. I'm not sure politics is necessarily a safe topic to be mixed with business, but if it generates some hype and possibly drives some sales, then it has probably served its purpose.

The Limited Limitations of PR

Public Relations, although a very different discipline from Advertising, is another topic that is very near to my heart. Although my last PR Professor tried her best to ruin PR for me for life, I have battled my disillusionment, and am now even more appreciative of what good PR can do for an organization. In today's economy, I am even more convinced that good PR can do a lot to diminish the impact of the many crises that companies are facing. PR has a seemingly endless list of the benefits that it can bring. Still, even the best PR can't help some of the more boneheaded of companies.



Days after asking for $85 billion from the government, AIG planned to host an executive retreat in Monarch Beach, CA. Are you kidding me? SNL's response to this gaffe was paricularly hilarius. Still, an important aspect of PR is crisis management. AIG, Wachovia, and other companies in such dire straits need their management team to realize that in order for their PR people to have something to work with, they need to buckle down make some changes to start performing financially. PR Week discusses the damage that has been done to these companies, and the actions that must be taken from a PR perspective to help rebuild their companies image.

'Tis the Season...

'Twas election season and all through the nation
Not a person was in agreement in any vocation.
The stocks were plummeting without a care,
In hopes that some candidate could soon repair...

Yes, that's right it's that time of year again, election season. Now, normally I wouldn't give time or energy to discuss politics in a forum such as this, but seeing as something like this only comes around once every four years, I figured I'd give it a go.

I don't know about you, but, as a marketer, I am infuriated by political ads. They are filled with half-truths, whole lies, and negative content that in the business world would be advertising suicide. Still, today's trends have opened up new advertising mediums that politicians are utilizing to try to get a leg up in this election.

Both candidates are using web marketing and newer marketing technologies to try to reach a new generation of voters. Obama has been doing a particularly good job of this according to the L.A. Times. He sent out a text message to 2.9 million people announcing his running mate Joe Biden. With his large advertising budget, he has also led much of the spending online especially on display ads. McCain, however, has invested very heavily in search engine ads such as Google Adwords. Another interesting trend is the use of social networking sites. Although Obama is the clear leader on Facebook, McCain holds the advantage on Linked In. Obama and McCain have adopted differing strategies for web advertising, and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out in November, and in future elections.

When Ads Go Bad...part one

The other day a co-worker and I were having a conversation about advertising. In advertising, it seems, that often the ads that are most memorable are the ones that push the boundaries of what's acceptable. This is probably why we have so many racy ads on TV and in print. Still, the stories of ads that go too far are many and often more than a little humorous. My co-worker pointed out that one ad that probably went too far was put out by Nike. The ad in question involved a chainsaw wielding murderer, a female, and some Nike running shoes. Although I didn't remember ever seeing it on air (probably because it was pulled right away), I've found it here. For all young marketers out there, it is probably a good general rule to just keep the chainsaws out of your advertising (unless you're selling chainsaws, and even then use common sense).

AOL also has a great article about some other "ads gone bad". Nike cracks this list as well with its hyperjump ads. Other notables include Go Daddy from Super Bowl shame, and Hardees which has a long history of using sex to sell burgers. Many of these ads have had very short runs, as consumer complaints forced the companies to pull the ads. Check these out, and if you can think of any other memorable ads that have gone bad, I'll feature them in When Ads Go Bad...part two.

New Balance: Love/Hate

New Balance has long been considered a great walking shoe. It has designed superior shoes for those who want to keep in shape doing less intense physical activities. But with New Balance's release of their next generation of running shoe, they have launched a new advertising campaign to show that these are not your mother's running shoes. Indeed New Balance's new ad campaign capitalizing on the love/hate relationship many runners experience was very insightful, and more than a little bit humorous.

As a runer myself, it made me consider my brand loyalty. I have always been an Asics guy myself, but I must admit I felt like they understood me with their portrayal of ones relationship with running. I think as far as the advertising goes, it was a campaign that was well done, but I'd be anxious to hear what others reations to this ad are. For non-runners, did it appeal to you as well?

Welcome to Kellen's Corner

Welcome to Kellen's Corner, a virtual place where advertising comes alive. I'll be sharing all of the best, worst, and especially interesting advertisements from around the world. You can look forward to a new featured ad every week with special bonus ads from time to time. We'll also take a look at some of the implications of the ads, and what they mean for the companies sponsoring them. I hope you'll find this journey through the most exciting area of marketing as interesting as I do.