LONDON – Data marketing company Blueberry Wave has expanded its senior team with the appointment of James Dickens and Natasha Parker-Coughlin as account directors and Simon Richards as a developer.
Evey year there are advertisers who don’t want to shell out the big bucks for Super Bowl commercial prices. They try to find ways to associate themselves with the big game – which doesn’t usually make the NFL too happy – which is why there are constant references to “the big game” instead of using the real name of the event.
According to MediaPost, the newest advertiser to take this route is KFC. Their tactic? To try to get a scoring player to perform the so-called chicken dance in the end zone.
The Yum Brands-owned company will pay $260,000 in the name of the dancer to its Colonels Scholars, a charity providing college scholarships. That sum could very well entice a grown football player to flap his wings.
The NFL is not amused. “This has nothing to do with us,” spokesperson Brian McCarthy grumbled. “This is Super Bowl Ambush Marketing 101. Everyone looks to draft off the excitement for the game.”
If KFC succeeds, that quarter million dollars will be chump change compared to the reported $2.7 million going rate for 30 seconds of air time. Rob Frankel, a branding expert based in Los Angeles and no big fan of Yum Brands, says: “If they pull it off right, it could be good. I mean, it’s a motherhood issue, giving money to charity. And it’s not a humiliating thing they’re asking a player to do.”
Frankel says restaurant chain El Pollo Loco (The Crazy Chicken), with units in California, Arizona and Texas, is identified with the chicken dance. “If I were El Pollo Loco,” he joked, “I’d put out press releases, saying to watch the Super Bowl for the player doing our chicken dance and save myself a cool quarter million.”
Rick Maynard, a KFC spokesperson, tells Marketing Daily that the company is reaching out to those players most likely to score during the game to “let them know about the offer.” KFC also is approaching half-time entertainer Tom Petty with the same deal. “There are lots of ways to advertise,” he says. “We think this is unique, and will get people talking about something that might take place during the game itself.” He calls the dance the “domain of bad wedding reception music nationwide,” but still thinks viewers will connect the dots from chickens to flapping wings to KFC hot wings, which is the focus of this promotion.
Just to be safe, KFC has lined up former Atlanta Falcons player Jamal Anderson, who was known for his “Dirty Bird” end zone dance, to be on site prior to what KFC refers to as “the big game.” “We think this is a fun and creative marketing concept that both fans and the media will be interested in, and we’re spreading the word through an online digital campaign,” Maynard says. PR is being handled by Weber Shandwick. The company is also e-mail blasting the nearly million who have signed up to receive news at kfc.com.
KFC is also running a consumer promotion wherein people can upload videos of themselves doing the chicken dance and win “the ultimate big game party,” including a flat-panel TV, a limo to bring in the guests, cheerleaders to fire up the crowd, a spread of KFC and a cleaning service for post-party tidying. Entries are made at showusyourhotwings.com, with the winner announced on Monday.
KFC isn’t the only company we’ll see doing this. In fact, there are probably too many to count that jump on the “Big Game” bandwagon.
Don’t know what this mysterious chicken dance is? Watch the video below from The Lawrence Welk Show where they teach their viewers how to do this god-awful dance.
LONDON – Kia Motors Nigel Unwin has left his post of events, promotions and sponsorship manager to help market rival Korean car marque SsangYong in the UK.
LONDON – Data firm Ai Data Intelligence has appointed Charles Ping, the former head of CRM at Guardian News and Media, as client services director.
LONDON – The Co-operative Group has appointed Generate Sponsorship to review its sponsorship strategy and advise it on how to maximise sports sponsorships.
LONDON – Saatchi & Saatchi has hired Charity Charity as global creative director on its Proctor & Gamble Head & Shoulders account.
LONDON – Channel 4’s new series ‘Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA’ debuted with an impressive 3m viewers last night at 10pm, giving the broadcaster a 78% increase on its slot average.
LONDON – Take a Break, the market-leading women’s weekly, is predicted to drop below the 1,000,000 circulation mark for the first time in 15 years in the forthcoming ABCs.
LONDON – ITV is working on plans to introduce centre ad breaks into its News at Ten broadcasts and wants a single ‘premium’ advertiser to back each programme.
*******BANNERBLOG EXCLUSIVE*******
UPDATE : 9.20PM – 24/1/2007
It’s legit. We’ve done some digging and ‘Determined to Be Different’ is registered trademark # 1211855 of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, lodged by CBA’s Legal Counsel John O’Sullivan on November 23.
There is also a website that will reside at http://www.determinedtobedifferent.com.au/
The DNS servers attached to that domain are .SE – Sweden. We could speculate that this is a possible sign that the website is being developed by a partner/supplier Goodby have used before – the Sweden based North Kingdom. This is pure speculation however.
*******
Is this the first work of the Commonwealth Bank’s new agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners?
Viral? Internal Staff Video? Industry Joke?
Let us know, what you know!
DLD panel on Future City (Part 1)
Last part of the notes i took during Future City, a panel curated by Carson Chan and Johannes Fricke and moderated by Kazys Varnelis. After Richard Saul Wurman, Patrik Schumacher, Charles Renfro, Bjarke Ingels took the stage for a memorable performance. I thought he deserved a whole post because his work is slightly less famous than the one of the other panelists. Besides, i never found the time to blog the works That he and his team were showing at the exhibition New Faces in European Architecture: David Adjaye, Jürgen Mayer H., PLOT=BIG+JDS, SeARCH at the NAI in Maastricht last year.
After co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001, Bjarke Ingels started his own office in 2006: BIG / Bjarke Ingels Group. Their work combines experimentation sustained by specific knowledge, social responsibility and humour. Three of his projects were the focus of his presentation: Superharbour, REN and Kløverkarreen.
The Superharbour project was an attempt to re-invent the role of an architect regarding the constant evolution of seas. It started with a proposal to “re-design Denmark, to re-brand the country”.
Video of the Superharbour project:
The project started with a few facts:
– 40% of the coast line in Denmark is urbanized (compared to only 12% of the whole country), urbanity in the country is defined by the proximity to the sea. 2/3 of the Danes live within 5 km of the sea. But it is harbour and its industries that occupy the best plots of land.
– Containerization. 98% of goods travel on ships. Over time container ships have become bigger ad bigger and they also reach deeper in the ocean. As a result, boats cannot pass between Germany and Finland anymore. Solution envisioned by BIG: bridge the two countries by combining a bridge and a tunnel: the hybrid solution would cost less than building a full-length bridge or tunnel and would create an artificial island.
BIG proposed to use the island (located thus at the intersection between Europe and Scandinavia as well as between the “new” Europe and the rest of the world) as a Baltic super harbour where all the shipping traffic would be concentrated. According to BIG’s analysis, the island would liberate 20 billion euros of prime real estate in Denmark’s 12 biggest cities for new forms of life, instead of pushing people to the periphery of the cities where they want to live. Shaped like a star, the harbour will be organized around piers, each of them focusing its activities on its own program and uses.
People’s Building (aka REN)
Video of the project:
The principle of Yin Yang and the 5 elements of Feng Shui are embedded in the architecture of the Hotel & Conference Center Shanghai (REN)
It actually started as a project for a hotel in Sweden. But the building was never made. Later on, the architects discovered that the shape of the building is the same as the Chinese character ‘Ren’ which means People. The Chinese liked the building as they felt that it “bridges the gap between traditional China and progressive China.”
“The REN Building is a proposal for a hotel, sports and conference center for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The building is conceived as two buildings merging into one. The first building, emerging from the water, is devoted to the activities of the body, and houses the sports and water culture center. The second building emerging from land, is devoted to the spirit and enlightment, and houses the conference center and meeting facilities. The two buildings meet in a 1000 room hotel, a building for living. The building becomes the Chinese sign for ‘The People’, and a recognizable landmark for the World Expo in China.”
Kløverkarréen (aka The Clover Block):
Having followed the debate of the skyrocketing cost of market rate housing in the centre of Copenhagen, the designers of BIG wanted to come up with a new affordable housing proposal which would create 2,000 units. Their initiative came on the heels of Mayoral candidate Ritt Bjerregaard campaign pledge to fund 5,000 units of affordable housing to teachers, firemen, nurse and community service professionals, etc who can’t afford to live in the center anymore. Following their habit of not waiting for a competition to be launched or for a developer to bring the designers a proposal, they started the Kløverkarréen project at their own initiative.
Kløverkarréen is built along the perimeter of a large recreational area, and will house 2,000 residents without losing a single recreational field. It is located closed to public transportation hubs, and to the city centre. The structure would provide generous daylight flats, a wind and noise barrier for people playing football in the recreational field (+ an audience for any match is always on hand), and it would be covered by a rooftop that can be used as a 3 kilometre promenade. BIG dubbed it “the Great Wall of China of housing.”
The new mayor was seduced by the idea, the football clubs who usually train on the field agreed with the idea. However, some people in the neighbourhood did not want to share their green oasis with the less wealthy and opposed the development. A survey was carried and and it emerged that 64% of Copenhagen’s citizens thought the project was a good one. A few months later, it was decided that project would indeed be carried out.
Bjarke Ingels believes that the role of architects is a constantly evolving one, they have the responsibility to make sure that the city evolves in the right direction.
LONDON – Richemont and Coach, two of the largest luxury goods makers, have reported that demand from Japan and the US for Cartier watches, designer handbags and expensive jewellery is slowing, signalling that even the wealthiest consumers are reining in their spending.
ASIA-PACIFIC – Agencies are lining up to challenge incumbent Universal McCann for Intel’s global media buying and planning, in a review that will include Asia-Pacific.
LONDON – CBS-owned free-to-use social music portal Last.FM is attempting to get users to buy more song downloads by limiting how often they can listen to free streams, after signing content deals with Universal, EMI, Warner and BMG.
NORTH AMERICA – HP is set to shortlist three agencies for each of its business units as part of its ongoing global PR review.
LONDON – Sony Ericsson has awarded its global advertising and communications account to McCann Erickson London, and the IPG network has also picked up the business in China, displacing incumbent Saatchi & Saatchi.
LONDON – Ministers have ordered a ground-breaking £75 million advertising campaign, in partnership with the industry, in an attempt to create a cultural shift to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis.
LONDON – The Ministry of Defence is on the hunt for an agency to handle the £5 million direct marketing account for the Army.
LONDON – Just one week after its official launch, Adam & Eve has netted its first account, the £3 million Cadbury Biscuits business.
LONDON – Acquisition activity by some of the world’s major marketing groups could grind to a halt amid fears that this week’s stock market turmoil heralds a global recession.
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