Hasta La Creative!

The soundtrack to Disney’s animated film topped the chart for a tenth week, while “Happy” held on as top single.

La « Casa Tunquen » a été construite au Chili par des architectes travaillant chez Mas Fernandez. Cette maison de vacances a une terrasse située face à la mer, en hauteur. Au milieu d’un jardin central, on peut trouver le jacuzzi. La construction est disponible en photos et vidéo (signées Nico Saieh) dans la suite.

Here’s a message to CMOs: Consumers don’t trust your ads. In fact, fewer than 25% of U.S. online consumers trust ads in print publications, and the numbers are even worse for digital media. The truth is, campaigns alone just won’t cut it anymore — no matter how good you are at tuning them.

Let’s face it: Your brand is defined by the interactions people have with it. Despite all the activity that you try to catalyze through campaigns, individuals more commonly interact with your brand outside of those carefully orchestrated messages. They may learn about your product or service prior to purchase from a friend. After a purchase, they’ll use your product, connect with others and even organize activities around it. They spread messages by word-of-mouth — positive or negative — and that, whether you like it or not, is your actual brand image.

The context of all those interactions determines whether customers will engage with, and more importantly, transact with your brand again. Marketing’s new remit is to exploit customer context to deliver utility in the moment of need. Think I’m full of hot air? Take McCormick & Co. The 125-year-old manufacturer of herbs and spices created FlavorPrint to do exactly that. FlavorPrint’s promise is simple: If you tell the online tool what you like, what ingredients you have in your pantry, and what your cooking preferences are, it provides tailored recipe recommendations. This works so well that since the site was launched, repeat usage has doubled, users increased the time they spent on the site nine-fold, and McCormick & Co. has seen double-digit growth in spice purchases from FlavorPrint users.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Mobile lovers are more into their phones than each other.

From Adbusters #112: Blueprint for a New World, Part 1: Psycho

BANKSY

I woke up unusually early today—5am—and, instinctively, like a true slave to devices, immediately lunged for my MacBook.

But then … I decided to do something different, to lend my senses to early morning stimuli instead.

Initially, the early morning is still; it assumes a certain reverence. Life stirs slowly, almost reluctantly; sleep is willed into exile. Soon, sounds shatter the hush of morning. A loud, rowdy motorcycle slices through the silence, echoing across city blocks like a long, angry growl.

Voices ascend to the sixth floor weakened to a whisper; from an apartment above, a burst of laughter cascades the balcony and falls as mere chuckles. In stark contrast are shrill, sharp chirps of a thousand swallows.

A streak of orange-colored light declares the coming of the sun; the increasing incandescence thrills me; I feel a sentiment of delight . . .

(TrendHunter.com) These Game of Thrones Mixes are seamless. Who would have thought that famous lines from the movie Mean Girls would fit so perfectly into Game of Thrones? The end result leaves us with these GIFs…

A staggering number of large b-to-b companies are suffering from what we might call inbounditis, a disease that spreads from marketing to sales and attacks the revenue backbone of a company. Inbounditis happens when management seeks a quick fix for sagging revenues by buying lists of potential customers and then attempting to reach them with automated marketing tools to fuel the sales pipeline.

Companies use marketing automation tools like Silverpop, Marketo and Pardot, which can track digital body language of customers. The software enables the end user to see, for example, which companies downloaded a white paper online. The trouble is, this behavior may reflect some interest in your product, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the customer is expecting or would welcome a call from a salesperson. This is where old-fashioned legwork and personal contact come in to make sure that your salesperson is engaging with a company that actually needs and might want your services.

It’s best to generate sales leads that you know have a chance of becoming clients than to clog up your sales staff with names from an automated, uncalibrated process list, which becomes a huge time suck for your sales people. Qualified leads can be generated a number of ways: phone calls email, webinars, direct mail and even marketing automation if done well. It’s not the quantity of leads that counts, which is what you get when you purchase a list, it’s the quality of the leads that matters in the end.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

For brands, the road to standing out in social media can be a slippery slope. But Mazda and JWT Canada collaborated on a pretty interesting marketing journey on Instagram.

Over the course of three months, the carmaker posted images and videos that plotted the course of a Mazda vehicle. But not only was each post meticulously detailed and art directed, they all fit together like puzzle pieces to make a growing scene of a road when viewed as a grid layout on Mazda Canada's mobile Instagram page.

Three posts were added at a time, every week or so, adding one more layer to the three-column grid. The project began Dec. 17 and wrapped up March 28.

Throughout the car's "Long Drive Home," the brand includes mentions of followers, videos of sponsored events and references to cultural happenings like Mardi Gras and the Super Bowl. It was then capped off by giving a new Mazda to a fan.

Below, check out a recreation of the layout. (All the images and videos are clickable through to the brand's Instagram pages.) And below that, there's a case study describing the process.

Buckle up and click around. There's some cool stuff in there. 

CREDITS
Client: Mazda Canada
Agency: JWT Canada
Senior Vice President, Creative Director: Ryan Spelliscy
Copywriter: Mandip Salh
Art Director: Tim Zimmerman
Chief Creative and Integration Officer: Brent Choi
Social Media Director: Tony Wong
Community Manager: Alice Greenberg
Account Executive: Catherine Norman
Senior Project Manager: Kristen Neamtz
Animation: CWF3D

« Wish I Was Here » raconte l’histoire d’un père qui ne peut plus payer l’éducation de ses enfants et qui leur fera cours à domicile. Plein d’imagination, ce film a été réalisé par Zach Braff à l’aide de Kickstarter : la sortie est prévue prochainement dans nos salles. Le teaser est à découvrir dans la suite.

Once a staple of getting from here to there, the digital age has forced the travel agent to seek work elsewhere…or has it? Believe it or not, even now when most travel plans can be made independently and online travel agents and travel agencies do still exist! They just look a little bit different now.

Going Solo

Gary Leff, for example, is an independent travel agent who helps people book trips in his spare time. He specializes in helping people use their frequent flier miles to put together great vacations and trips that they might not have been able to design themselves.

Others have taken their professional experience and knowledge and turned it into informational products that people can use to travel better and smarter than they would know how to do on their own. Chris Guillebeau’s How to Be a Travel Ninja, for example, teaches people how to travel affordably and effectively no matter where in the world they want to go.

That’s great and all, but what if you have a standard “run of the mill” travel agency and you want to keep it alive long enough to help fund your kids’ braces (or, better, college educations)?

Cover Your Business’s Bases

Before you can even think about marketing tricks or SEO techniques for raising your brand’s awareness, you need to make sure you have your business basics covered. According to the Houston Chronicle, the US does not require travel agents to have state licensing. There are, however, certificates (like the certification for travel associates and travel counselors) that you should have. Potential customers will want to know they can trust you and having verifiable certifications will help build that trust.

Insurance is another thing that you will need to have. John Noel turned us on to the special insurance that exists solely to protect travel agents. This way if you accidentally book someone on the wrong flight or give them bad information you won’t be out the cost of their trip and you won’t be held liable if a customer gets sick or injured taking a trip that you’ve put together for him. Showing proof of insurance is another step toward building real trust and will set you apart from the hundreds of other people online who are claiming to be travel agents.

Marketing Your Travel Agency

Come up with a really great tagline. Papa Murphy’s tagline is “Love at 425 degrees.” It’s something people remember and applies to their product. Coming up with a great tagline that you can use to brand your business is important whether your marketing is going to be done online or offline.

Use Photos. You are a travel agent. This means that, ostensibly, you’ve been to some really great places and have some really great photos from those places. Use those photos in your articles, blog posts and definitely on your social media pages. People will see the photos and want to know more (plus, when you use your own, you don’t have to pay royalty fees) and be more likely to visit your site.

Make Videos. Making and using videos to promote your business is one of the top ten marketing techniques advocated by Travel Agent Central. Make short videos of your trips and post those trips online. Or, better, get your customers to send you video clips of their own trips and (with their permission of course) edit those clips together into promotional materials for your business. The evocation of jealousy is a powerful motivator when it comes to booking travel.

Really, marketing a travel agency isn’t all that much different than marketing any other type of business. Make sure your business is properly set up, tell people about it in as many direct and creative ways as possible and then reap the rewards. It’ll take time but it’ll happen!

The post Wait, Travel Agencies Still Exist? appeared first on AdPulp.

Ignited is out with an ad for Sanuk Shoes that envisions why simply wearing the brand’s shoes will maintain your comfort even in life’s most uncomfortable situations, like sitting in front of a kid who won’t stop kicking your seat on a nine hour flight.

So why is this ad dumb? First of all, not even the most comfortable shoes will assuage the antics of a crazed kid on a plane. And second, if you’re going to imply that only the guy in the middle is bothered by the kid. and not those sitting next to the guy, you might want to detach the seats from each other before you shoot the commercial.