Hasta La Creative!

Who Is Hosting This, a hosting site rating site with its own viral marketing desires, is out with an infographic entitled 5 Reasons Your Awesome Content Isn’t Going Viral.

The infographic takes a look at what makes content shareworthy and sites what can detract from that such as lack of emotional appeal, bad timing, poor design, poor distribution and more.

The words we use are important. Words convey meaning.

Right now, I am looking for the words to convey how much I love this ass-kicking, fact-kicking session from Gary Vaynerchuk, head of Vayner Media.

In the video, a person asks Vaynerchuk how to meet “relevant people” at South By Southwest. Gary Vee rightly does the questioner and the larger world a great service by breaking down what’s wrong with the thinking that misinformed the question.

“When I hear people categorize others human beings as ‘relevant’ it makes want to vomit on myself,” he says.

Vaynerchuk is a humanist and it takes a humanist with brass balls to endow brands (and the company’s behind them) with the necessary degrees of humanity that will make them palatable to the real life people we sometimes refer to as consumers.

In a new article about sales on Medium, Vaynerchuk notes, “I pay attention to what people do and look for patterns. I think of conversion in an emotional more than an analytical way.”

In other words, sales and business is personal. At all levels, business is an exchange between people. It can be an equitable exchange or something less. When it’s something less, may today’s digitally-empowered consumers have mercy on your brand’s soul.

Vaynerchuk sees sales (and the taking care of customers that enables it) as art. A sale is something he creates and he believes in masterpieces. To get there, he uses leading questions “to reverse-engineer your needs and provide the insight that I could deliver on.”

At the heart of Gary Vee’s offering, and the reason for his charm and success, we do not find the social media tactic de jour. His message is about the fundamentals and the need for applying them in life and in business. Be a good person/business. Offer to help. And continually serve and grow your relationships.

The post Gary Vee Rocks The Mic, Wins AdPulp’s International Humanitarian Award appeared first on AdPulp.

Taking an out of context, you-had-to-be-there approach to promoting Colonial Williamsburg, The Martin Agency is out with two new commercials which aim to highlight the destination’s many attractions which, when explained out of context, can be a bit off putting.

If you were walking past your neighbor’s house and you asked them how their vacation was and they answered, “there were gunshots, explosions, angry mobs – it was fantastic,” you might scratch your head a bit. But that’s exactly what these ads are going for. Because Colonial Williamsburg is not your typical vacation destination.

Which is why these spots, interspersed with imagery of what you’d actually experience if you visited, work so well.

BBDO New York‘s latest series for General Electric (almost) travels to the globe’s most  remote corners to remind viewers that the company isn’t just responsible for creating trivection ovens and six-second video loops.

With “World Firsts”, the agency uses three disparate stories of isolated communities to illustrate GE’s ability to bring the benefits of the digital world to those living on its margins.

The first spot in the series of three concerns the challenges of delivering medical technologies to one of Japan’s most remote inhabited islands:

After the jump, the second spot plays on the same outsider themes (while lightly referencing World Cup fever) in relaying the tale of a young boy’s first big trip and his love of all things football.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New York-based production company O Positive announced today the addition of director Rodrigo Garcia-Saiz to their roster for commercial representation in North America and internationally.

“I am an enormous fan of O Positive,” Garcia-Saiz said. “Talking with Jim [Jenkins] and David [Shane], I felt as if I knew them. They really love their work and enjoy their families; we share a similar vibe. Plus, they do some of the best work out there. I appreciate that O Positive is a small company where I can really focus and do great work.”

Garcia-Saiz has a steady track record of award-winning work, including a Cannes Gold Lion win for AMIS “Office” (Ogilvy & Mather Mexico), and the Bronze Lion-winning horror parody “Executed” for Gandhi Bookstores and anti-bullying spot “Playground.” After attending film school at University of Mexico’s prestigious El CUEC, Garcia-Saiz flexed his cinematic muscle at Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s production company as a commercial AD, before forming his own Mexico City production company, Central Films. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Oh the amusement you can find on Reddit. One Reddit user, Tsja87, has offered up a rant that aims to tear down the very purpose of advertising calling it a pointless career choice.

He/She writes, “Is it just me, or can any idiot work in the advertising industry. Every advertisement is the same mostly, and I see no need for a company to hire creative to do something they could easily do themselves. Why do advertising agencies even exist? It requires no knowledge, and getting your degree in such a thing is absurd, my close friend is an advertising major at Baylor university, and my god, it’s like their teaching common sense to people who don’t have any. Sorry for posting this in this board, but some of have to feel the same way. I just finished watching the pitch on AMC, Jesus Christ, it ain’t no mad men, but plenty of people trying to be, and apparently, that’s all you need.”

Predictably — this being posted in an advertising sub Reddit, many are defending the profession with one commenter twisting things a bit and writing, “Basketball is a joke. All they do is throw a ball in a hoop and get paid millions. Any idiot can do that”

Check out the rest of the comments and leave yours.

Works by the magazine’s artists are the centerpiece of an advertising campaign for the New Yorker Festival, set for October.

AMV BBDO’s new campaign for Currys & PC World, entitled “Football? What Football?”  — their first work for the brand — manages to be World Cup-themed without ever mentioning the words “World Cup” (although at one point they come pretty close). The new broadcast spots for the UK’s largest specialist electrical retailing and services company each feature a hopelessly transparent man attempting to (not so) slyly suggest to his significant other that they should buy a new television, positing the purchase as selfless, and certainly having nothing to do with the impending 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

The approach is clever, examining the types of subtle and not-so-subtle manipulations partners in relationships make surrounding expensive purchases. In my favorite of the spots, “Pride and Sensibility,” a man tells his wife, over dinner, that him and his friends watched that “Pride and Sensibility” program and it really looked great on his buddy’s widescreen TV. He’s not nearly so slick as he thinks he is, and his significant other’s incredulous facial expressions really bring the spot together as he almost mentions the World Cup and claims the new TV is for “that castle program” she likes so much.

The other spots follow a similar formula, finding humor in a man suggesting to his wife that her gardening programs would look great on a new television, and a father attempting to justify the purchase as a way to better enjoy upcoming penguin documentaries to his daughter while a disbelieving mother looks on. It’s the kind of approach that works because of its relatability, with humor that is at once universal and distinctly British coming from true to life scenarios. The broadcast campaign launched on the first, along with accompanying 30 second ads appearing on sports radio. Stick around for credits and the other two spots after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.