Hasta La Creative!

In one of his first major appearances since returning as Procter & Gamble CEO in May, A.G. Lafley gave a remarkably frank rant today about what went wrong with the company’s beauty business during the question-and-answer segment of his presentation at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference in Boca Raton, Fla. While he provided few details on turnaround plans, part of his answer for beauty and all of P&G is a move back toward the classic brand-management system the company has in some ways moved away from in recent decades.

P&G’s beauty business tripled sales and earnings from 2000 and 2007 just like Apple did in technology. The problem, said Mr. Lafley, is that P&G then “got stuck” at around $20 billion in sales while Apple went on to $150 billion.

“Depending on how you count, we had half-a-dozen leaders” on beauty since 2007, Mr. Lafley said. “Many of them had never spent a minute in the industry. We were enamored with the old GE and P&G development assumption that general management is fungible, and functional management gets developed by moving around every two or three years.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Officials at the network are expressing concern that demand for its live stream of Friday’s game could slow the nation’s office computer networks.

Le photographe italien Elio Pallard considère les nuages comme de vrais paysages de dunes ou de montagnes. Dans sa série « Playing with Clouds », il insère des dromadaires et des alpinistes dans des nuages comme s’il s’agissait d’un désert ou d’une montagne à escalader. Des photos à découvrir dans la suite.

The arms race among top b-to-b brands to acquire, partner with or build the best cloud suite of tools for the CMO is in full swing, with an eye towards creating for them a full customer view utilizing real time data. Here’s a look at who leads the pack, what they’re using, and what the future may hold:

SALESFORCE.COM

Overview: The company’s core product is a cloud-based customer-relationship-management platform. For seven straight years, Salesforce’s CRM has been placed in the “leaders” quadrant for Sales Force Automation by Gartner. The software allows you to track conversations with accounts and contacts, monitor opportunities as they progress through the sales cycle and zero in on sales rep performance.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

DDB and Tribal Worldwide Amsterdam have an interesting social campaign brewing for the beermeisters at Heineken.

Entitled “Share the Sofa,” the campaign invites fans to join star UEFA Champions League players on Twitter for a chat during select games. Players involved include Ruud Gullit, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Owen Hargreaves, Hernan Crespo and Fernando Morientes. Owen Hargreaves was featured recently, with his “Share the Sofa” generating 2,600 tweets and 55.6 million social impressions. Dutch star Patrick Kluivert was the most recent player to be featured, during Tuesday’s Manchester City Vs. Barcelona match.

Fans questions need not be about sports, but can range from “What’s your favorite sandwich?” to just about anything. While it’s easy to be cynical about the overcrowded social media marketing space, this seems like a fun initiative offering fans real insights into their favorite players (even if it’s just their favorite sandwich) with a unique opportunity to ask them just about anything. The initiative makes good sense for Heineken as well, offering a large part of their fan base (those looking for watery beer to guzzle during matches) a unique second screen experience they’ll associate with the brand.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here’s an interesting prank. Claiming it has more vehicles, more employees and more locations “in most countries,” the brand (or so it seems…we have reached out for clarification) decided to have it’s competitors advertise for it.

Boxes were coated with a temperature sensitive paint that originally appeared black but upon warming up during delivery would reveal the message, “DHL is Faster.”

The entire prank was, of course, filmed and placed on YouTube where it is so new, it’s still displaying 301+ views. Time will tell if it catches on and garners the kind of publicity the brand was looking to so cheaply achieve.

And yes, it is suspicious the video is not on the brand’s official YouTube channel. It is, however, on German agency Jung von Matt Neckar’s site.

UPDATE: As we suspected, this is not a brand-approved effort. Well, sort of. DHL confirmed to The Consumerist:

“This was not something that was initiated by DHL. The video was created by an external agency for their own internal competition. We were aware in advance of the intention to use it for this purpose. We were not aware of any plans to share it externally.”

Of course this denial could just be part of the ruse.

If you saw a boy without a coat shivering alone at a bus stop, would you ask if he needed help? Would you lend him your gloves, scarf or jacket?

Commuters do just that for 11-year-old Johannes in this hidden-camera video from SOS Children's Villages Norway, which is seeking to raise awareness and funds to help Syrian children in need. "The goal was to touch upon the fear of becoming numb to crises that don't affect you directly," SOS rep Synne Rønning tells AdFreak.

In the film, shot over several hours on two freezing days in Oslo, the young actor tells adults that his jacket was stolen during a school trip to the city. "We were touched by the many people that got involved, and risked getting cold so Johannes could stay warm," says Rønning, adding that only three of the 25 or so people who shared the bus stop with him didn't try to help.

Indeed, it's moving to see commuters give him their coats and mufflers, especially when it leaves them in short sleeves on a winter day. "We were quite surprised as to what extent people would try to help the boy in trouble," says Rønning. "The campaign has worked as an eye opener—people who watch the campaign ask themselves: What would I do?"

The video, produced by Släger Kommunikasjon and Pure Content, doesn't explicitly address one significant issue—that you're more likely to help someone right in front of you than someone far away whose pain is more abstract. But it does memorably imply that really shouldn't matter.

Plus, it exudes genuine warmth, and that's something sorely missing from most over-the-top hidden-camera ad stunts.

Even as Apple brings more marketing resources in-house, digital agency Rosetta looks to be protecting its relationship with its longtime client with a dedicated Apple group called Level Studios.

The Publicis Groupe-owned shop recently introduced a barebones site at www.level-studios.com that resembles a recruitment tool. It features the line, “The Right Kind of Agency, the Right Kind of Entourage.” Under “Client List,” there’s only the Apple logo. Though Rosetta isn’t mentioned anywhere, contact details include addresses for all of Rosetta’s office locations.

Level is the name of an agency Rosetta acquired in 2010.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Ryan acorda no meio do deserto sem lembrar como foi parar lá. Assim começa “The Forgotten Roadtrip”. Ao rolar a página, você vai desvendando a história, contada através de imagens, frases curtas, efeitos sonoros e pequenos vídeos.

O storytelling “vertical” é usado para promover o novo modelo GLA, da Mercedes-Benz, que mistura esportividade urbana com elelemtos off-road. Um belo exemplo de como fazer as pessoas gastarem um bom tempo em um hotsite novamente. Experimente aqui.

A criação é da agência alemã Jung Von Matt. Assista ao trailer abaixo:

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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