“A Magical Amount” by Arnold starts out like a typical Truth ad — with cigarette traps, a bullhorn and a bamboozled-looking group of people — then at some point a unicorn showed up, and then there was singing, and……
(TrendHunter.com) Trend Hunter covered the launch of Veja in 2006, the first organic sneakers made out from organic cotton from Brazil, natural latex from the Amazon Forest and ecological leather. From that time, an enormous number of brands have followed the lead of ecology to sell more; but Veja has kept true to it…
Last November, I spent some time poking around and trying to figure out where the “an average American is exposed to 5000 ad messages” number had come from (see the original post). President of Yankelovich J. Walker Smith, whom I cited as one of the sources, offered his explanation in a comment to the post on Hill Holliday blog:
“Still, it’s interesting to know how these ad exposure estimates are calculated. The oldest such estimate is the one cited by David Shenk in Data Smog. His figure comes from a figure cited in Alvin Toffler’s 1971 book Future Shock. Toffler’s figure came from a conference speech that cited a number calculated by Bill Moran for use in that speech (delivered by his boss) when he was running the research function at Y&R. I know this because I am a friend of Bill’s and he has related this story to me. Bill made a simple calculation. He simply conducted a thought exercise and went through the typical day for a typical person in a typical American big city in the 1960s. How many times would such a person be exposed to some sort of ad, logo or promotion? He came to around 500. It’s that simple, and that’s where this early figure comes from.
Note what is being calculated here. Not the number of ads people pay attention to, but the number of ads that people might pay attention to. It’s exposure opportunities. Obviously, we live lives nowadays in which ever more of the white space around us is crowded with ads. Thus, we have many more opportunities for ad exposure.”
Earlier:
Dissecting Advertising Clutter, Part I
Advertising Clutter in 1759
We always new Jay Mohr was an actor. We never really knew he was a comedian (we gave up on SNL long ago and, more recently, never watched Last Comic Standing). Apparently, appreciates his comic abilities and hooked up…
(TrendHunter.com) Alaska – The perfect name for a chair that looks as cool as the state it is named after. This mirror polished Stainless Steel Armchair is the perfect accompaniment to all the other stainless steel furniture and accessories you have in accumulated your home. Emilio Nanni is the designer behind the fu…
Paul Martecchini, formerly of Yahoo, appears in a video on Brandweek to help brands understand how to play on soc nets.
There’s a lot of what NOT to do, but then Martecchini points to how Addidas rolls.
Martecchini says, “Nobody one wants to join the social network of a corporation. It’s too impersonal.” He believes brands need to let real people do their social networking for them; hence the appeal of Addidas’ approach.
(TrendHunter.com) I love these iconic speakers even though they are truly hideous to look at – and of course a pun in 3D form.
These headless dog speakers are from Buro Vormkrijgers and come in black and white. I have not been able to find out a price, but have been informed they are hideously expensive. I can’t fin…
Wendy’s is ending their 8-month old (and often mocked) “That’s Rightâ„¢” campaign which featured people in red wigs in favor of focusing more on the logo and a new slogan–“It’s waaaay better than fast food. It’s Wendy’s”.
The campaign, which debuted during the season finale of “American Idol” in May, has generated attention, but hasn’t translated into improved sales, the company said.
“It was a love it or hate it kind of spot,” said Bob Holtcamp, Wendy’s vice president of brand marketing.
To send New Year greetings for 2008, the communications team at the dinosaur museum in Brussels sent colleagues and main sponsors a highly original package. Inside was a block of plaster and a hammer & chisel with an invitation to amateur paleontologists to dig, not for the bones of a mighty T-Rex, but to find the museum’s greeting card.
Agency: McCann Erickson Belgium
Account Director: Talia Hendlisz
Creatives: Gregory Defay, Quentin Gascard
Thanks for the pointer, Tanguy
Match.com swears if in six months you don’t live out a love story with someone from its site, you can have six more months of free service to make up for it.
OK, here we go again. Tonight, you have a choice. You can tune in to President Bush’s State of the Union address. Or you can blow it off and…
A Mental Floss reader found this enigmatic flier about a “missing†alien last seen in Ogden, Utah. But instead of being some guerrilla marketing attempt for a movie or TV show, it’s apparently an ad for a phone-sex line. Hey, maybe that’s just a work number for the alien’s concerned roommate. (Not everyone can get a posh job at a record store like Mindy.) Or maybe there’s a niche market for dirty talk with a 10,800-year-old extraterrestrial: “What’s this? My podmate Florm has arrived into my nocturnal restoration chamber, and she’s brought the chromosomal sampling probe!†The third option (and my personal favorite) is that this is the work of a master marketer who knows how to cash in on the recent popularity of steamy alien-on-human action.
—Posted by David Griner
The Super Bowl's less than a week away, and already it seems there's more anticipation for the battle of 30-second supremacy than the gridiron showdown between the Patriots and the Giants. I'm less interested in the ads themselves and more curious to see which marketers will maximize their time in the spotlight to create a truly sustainable advantage — which is precisely what the leading presidential candidates will be trying to do as we head toward Super Tuesday.
Battering its usual “boo-hoo, we are too racy for Fox” shtick, GoDaddy sent us a celebratory pressie reading something along the lines of, “FINALLY, they’ve approved one of our deliciously naughty spots!”
How long will it take for face recognition technology that has already found its way into inexpensive consumer electronics to be integrated into digital signage?
Check the specs on Sony Cyber-shot T200:
“Because the face makes the photo, Sony has created Face Detection technology that recognizes up to 8 faces in a photo and automatically controls focus, exposure, color and flash to bring out the best in everyone. Unlike some competitive systems, Sony Face Detection makes skin tones look more natural and reduces red-eye with pre-strobe flash.
In Smile Shutter Mode, the DSC-T200 helps you capture more smiles by shooting automatically when your subject laughs, smiles, even grins – only when focus is fixed. You select the person to watch and the expression to catch — your Cyber-shot® camera’s Face Detection system and intelligent Smile Shutter algorithm do the rest!”
We know that the advertising applications are already in the labs: Last year, Microsoft showed off one such billboard.
Earlier:
We’re in year two of our association with the Business Development Institutes’s Diversity in Advertising efforts and want to let you know about two upcoming events.
We don’t like the idea of opening our presents before Christmas day (which is what watching a Super Bowl ad a week in advance is like), but in some cases a premature debut can be a good thing.
That’s the case with Pepsi’s Enable ad, a Super Bowl spot that composes a deaf world we’re invited to watch from the sidelines.
A couple of years ago, I posted a small blurb on Fast Company’s blog about how customer expectations of offline retail are being shaped by their online shopping experiences. Last month, Business Week published an article pretty much to the same effect:
“The Internet hasn’t destroyed brick-and-mortar retailing, as many once feared. But has it ever changed consumer behavior. Across the U.S., stores are playing catch-up with shoppers habituated not only to the speed and convenience of purchasing online but also to the control it gives them.”
Here’s my in-store experience wish list:
1. Cross-selling of relevant and complementary products (if you like this, you will also like that and that)
2. Customer reviews. Somewhat counterintuitively, many product categories will benefit from negative reviews just as well as from the positive ones. Negative reviews help buyers overcome the “paradox of choice” and make up their mind faster instead of abandoning the purchase altogether. Plus, less post-purchase remorse and fewer returns. I would especially love a way to check GameSpot reviews before plunking another $50 for a game.
3. Online ordering + in-store pick-up.
4. Full product info look-up, including the manuals.
5. Bookmarking / “save for later” functionality.
Retailers gotta act quick if they want to have some control over the converging experiences. In a few years, people will be carrying web browsers in their pockets and won’t be needing all this retail innovation. Then they would go to Barnes & Noble to browse books and order the ones they like on Amazon right from the store.
On a related note, I really like the idea behind Target Lists.
LONDON – Haymarket Consumer Media has bought sports photo agency, Back Page Images, building on its existing photographic portfolio.
NEW YORK – The New York Times is being asked by groups of its investors to spend more on snapping up digital companies and sell some other assets to finance a spending spree.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
