A roaring lover of money, women, drugs, trees, cars and later in life, poetry, Mr. Dennis built a magazine empire and fortune on being able to spot and exploit budding trends.
Things are looking sunnier than ever for Reading Rainbow.
After the show’s Kickstarter hit its $1 million goal in just 11 hours, the creators set their sights on a new butterfly in the sky: $5 million. With one week left, the Kickstarter is currently at $4 million in pledges from more than 83,000 backers.
We caught up with Reading Rainbow co-founder and CEO Mark Wolfe (who wrote and directed the Kickstarter video) and chief marketing advisor Teri Rousseau to find out how they’ve remained authentic to their brand while reinventing Reading Rainbow for a new generation of digital natives.
AdFreak: Tell me a bit about the brand after Reading Rainbow left public television.
CEO Mark Wolfe with LeVar Burton
Rousseau: The original mission when LeVar and Mark formed RR Kids was to bring back Reading Rainbow for this generation and LeVar very much felt that the way to bring that back was through digital technology. Our original app was for the Kindle Fire and iPad, and it went really well. We had kids reading over 150,000 books a week. It was a top-downloaded app.
Wolfe: I think we’re just lucky that parents are looking for something. Kids want to spend time in front of an electronic device. When television was the medium, kids wanted to be in front of it, and now it’s a tablet. You can’t mitigate that; you just have to utilize that as best as possible. Parents are confronted with so many choices, and not many of them are positive choices.
Rousseau: We recognize we’re competing against the Angry Birds of the world. One of our special elements in the app is our aesthetic. We’ve developed these beautiful islands where you can discover the books on: Animal Island, Awesome People Island (that’s the nonfiction), National Geographic Island. It’s fun to just explore that world and it becomes very game-like. Children want fun. Parents want quality content. That’s a challenge and that’s a challenge to any family brand: making sure you meet the mark with parents and children both. We had to make it very interactive while making sure we maintained the principles of the linear show.
So preserving the credibility of the Reading Rainbow brand was key in the creation of the app?
Marketing advisor Teri Rousseau
Rousseau: We were very careful with our development. We did do focus testing with both kids and parents. Our mission was bringing the brand back for digital and there’s no doubt it resonates with today’s families. At the same time, we didn’t want to disappoint anyone’s memory of what it was.
You had an existing fan base from another generation that you didn’t want to alienate.
Rousseau: Those classic episodes still hold up and are available on iTunes. Teachers still use them in the classroom. But I think the opportunity to bring back such a beloved and icon brand has been a once and a lifetime opportunity. Now know we did it right. We’ve proved that Reading Rainbow works in this new form, and what we needed to do to bring it to the next level was get help from the community.
What’s the next level beyond the app?
Rousseau: We were hearing, “Is it on Android?” and, “Is it in classrooms?” Teachers were finding it themselves and paying for the app out of their own pocket. We needed to figure out a way to bring it to them in their own classrooms, and give access to schools free of charge for those in need.
So you created the Kickstarter campaign, and it’s been wildly successful.
Rousseau: The whole Kickstarter thing has been overwhelming. Beyond our wildest dreams.
Wolfe: We’ve been absolutely surprised by the response, we had a feeling we’d be successful in the campaign, to raise a million dollars because we believed the audience that was most likely to help is the audience in their 20s and 30s that grew up with the show, but we did not by any stretch of the imagination think we’d reach $1 million in 11 hours.
The video seems designed to appeal to more than just the Reading Rainbow fan base. There are also a lot of great nods in there to LeVar’s career on Star Trek.
Wolfe: We wanted to hit as many groups as possible. The Star Trek fan audience is in their 40s, and if you’re a Star Trek fan you appreciate the world of Gene Roddenberry. That world is a meritocracy where you’re rewarded for how you help the team and that’s an audience that appreciates literacy in society.
Beyond the message of Star Trek, LeVar himself seems to be a big advocate for literacy. Would you say this is LeVar’s labor of love?
Rousseau: Absolutely! This is a lifelong mission of his. The brand has been around 30 years. It’s very much his life’s work.
Wolfe: When you get to know him personally, as I have for many years now, he’s authentic. LeVar is the Reading Rainbow guy in real life. His mother was an English teacher, and he was raised with an emphasis on reading.
So it’s that authenticity that shines through in the messaging.
Wolfe: Audiences have such a finely tuned radar for authenticity and for bullshit, and that’s what’s hard for all of us advertisers and filmmakers is to walk that fine line between entertainment and informing them and keep everything authentic, and we hit that sweet spot. And I think that helped the message become clearer and more embraced.
Did it help in the Kickstarter too?
Wolfe: We filmed it at an elementary school and this school gave us free run of their offices. All the teachers, all the parents were excited about doing it, because everyone loves Reading Rainbow. They weren’t just a location; they said please come and please let us be part of something that helps us bring Reading Rainbow back for schools.
And that made the difference to the credibility. It really did seem like you’d just walked into a real school… apparently because you did.
Wolfe: The kids loved it. We were surrounded by love. The principal actually plays the teacher in the video, and she stayed late, till 10 p.m. because we were running late filming. She kept the school open for us. But nobody complained. Administrators, teachers, students, they all stayed late for us and I just think that’s huge. That made it so much fun for everybody. It felt like a group effort, that everyone was pulling for this.
Just like they are with the Kickstarter. Good luck with your $5 million goal.
Wolfe: Thanks. I think you’ll be hearing about it. There’s definitely more to come.
NBC has wrapped its annual upfront negotiations for ad time in the upcoming TV season, the network said.
The dollar value of those commitments was roughly $2.5 billion, a person close to the negotiations estimated. That’s up 11% from a revised estimate of $2.25 billion last summer, according to the person. Original reports from last year pegged NBC’s ad commitments in the 2013 upfront at $2.1 billion.
The company said it had improved its ad rates relative to its rivals. “We are very pleased to have led the market in both rate of change and volume growth this upfront,” NBC Universal CEO Steve Burke said in a statement. “We also have made tremendous progress in correcting our historic monetization gaps. Through significant investments in our programming, the turnaround at NBC and our strategy to approach the market as one portfolio, we are confident that we are well positioned as leaders moving forward.”
Le réalisateur Tom Beard signe le dernier clip de la chanteuse anglaise FKA Twigs pour le remix de sa chanson « Ache » : « Tw-Ache », extrait de son premier album intitulé « LP1 » et qui sortira prochainement. Filmé à Brick Lane dans un hangar, nous voyons FKA Twigs danser de manière sensuelle avec un homme.
(TrendHunter.com) The Aloe Ridge House by Metropole Architects is a scenic hideaway located in the Eden Rock Coastal Forest Estate on the southern coast of Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.
The bountiful home is…
(TrendHunter.com) The Scandivinavia S/S/A/W ‘Free at Last’ editorial channels the languidness of a cat. It is only appropriate, then, that the costars in the photoshoot happen to be a couple of cute…
Além de smartwatches e smartphones, a Samsung parece estar interessada também no ramo de ‘smartbikes’. Uma aluna do programa Samsung Maestros Academy, em parceria com o designer italiano Giovanni Pelizzoli, mostra em um vídeo como poderia ser um conceito desta possível futura bicicleta, que seria controlada pelo smartphone.
Através de comandos na tela do gadget, uma ciclovia pode ser projetada no chão, ajudando a delimitar o espaço que o ciclista deve ocupar, a câmera traseira pode ser acionada, funcionando como uma espécie de retrovisor, e um farol pode ser mantido aceso, ajudando em trajetos noturnos.
Aplicativos projetados para ciclistas também usariam o GPS do celular para indicar rotas para o trajeto feito com a bike. Pena que a ideia da Alice Biotti ainda é só um conceito. Com as bikes se tornando uma alternativa saudável de transporte, uma dessas seria muito bem vinda – ainda que provavelmente com preços bastante altos.
Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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MRY‘s San Francisco office has a new Managing Director.
International agency vet Kingsley Taylor will oversee all “operations, marketing, business development and account servicing” for MRY West, effective immediately. The new office, which opened several weeks ago with approximately ten staffers in a space shared with other Publicis Shops, serves key clients including Adobe, Neutrogena, StubHub and Visa.
Taylor most recently worked as Director of New Business at L.A.’s David&Goliath, but his roots lie in the United Kingdom, where he spent two years in accounts at Oglivy & Mather before transferring to the agency’s New York office; he later held the Senior Partner, Global Business Director position at Ogilvy Los Angeles.
The release notes that Taylor “also served as a client service director at Mile 9? and “held account management jobs in the U.K. at agencies like WDMP and G2?, working with clients ranging from Qualcomm to British American Tobacco and United Biscuits.
MRY founder/CEO Matt Britton writes:
“Kingsley brings a consultative approach to the business, along with energy, passion and an entrepreneurial style that will build on the great work our group has done out in San Francisco. He is a perfect fit for or culture and exactly who we need to spread the MRY love in the Bay Area.”
Taylor will report directly to Britton.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
230 locations across the country isn’t bad, but dining chain O’Charley’s still has something of a market share issue. On that point, the company recently held a review (previous creative lead Doner chose not to defend but will maintain the media planning and buying responsibilities).
There were three finalists, two of which were not disclosed; Nashville-based Bohan Advertising won the business, and its nearly $10 million in annual advertising revenue.
Bohan and its 74 staffers work on a diverse portfolio including Dollar General, Jos. A Bank (which is currently on another list), Pensacola CVB, Fazoli’s, and the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.
“In the pitch, Bohan executives distinguished themselves by capturing the tone of the brand and presenting ideas that went beyond traditional advertising, said David Ellis, VP of marketing at O’Charley’s. The new shop’s first campaign is expected in the fall.”
The fact that O’Charley’s parent company American Blue Ribbon Holdings is based in Nashville probably didn’t hurt either.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Ads are most beautiful when they speak to us in a language we understand—when they tap into our subconscious and make us feel like they empathize, like they are one of us. When this symbiotic, osmotic communication stream resonates with us in an enveloping, visceral way, we have no choice but to surrender.
I had this experience with a set of beef jerky commercials today.
Perhaps you will, too, if you’ve ever been hungry to the point of irrational thought—hungry to the point that you want to bite the head off of the person next to you, war-paint your face with Cheetos-stained fingers and dance a jig on their grave. When hungry makes the transition to hangry, everyone should stay the hell away.
Check out these pretty perfect spots from Jack Link’s and ad agency Carmichael Lynch, and see if you identify with these poor hanger-affected souls.
I don’t know about you, but you won’t like me when my spirit animal is hangry.
CREDITS
Client: Jack Link’s
Agency: Carmichael Lynch, Minneapolis
Chief Creative Officer: Dave Damman
Executive Creative Director / Copywriter: Marty Senn
Associate Creative Director / Art Director: Brad Harrison
Head of Production: Joe Grundhoefer
Executive Producer: Freddie Richards
Account Director: Jesse Simon
Account Supervisor: Sofya Vannelli
Director: Harold Einstein
Production Company: dummy
Forget about Selfies. Get together and take Friendsies. Be more social and less self-involved. Do it for your friend Lord Somersby and his tasty cider.
In the last 24 hours, how many devices have you used to connect to the Internet? How many websites have you visited? How many apps have you used? And how many messages have you sent and received — personally or professionally — through digital channels? If you’re like most people, it’s almost too many to count. This is your new reality. Every interaction, every communication, every touchpoint creates a digital breadcrumb — a piece of data that can be analyzed and manipulated. The firms that can turn all those breadcrumbs into meaningful insight will dominate.
Big Data Isn’t a Tech Stack
Data now plays a huge role in helping your firm win, serve, and retain customers. To that tune, hardly a day goes by when we’re not bombarded with messages about the “big data platforms” that will solve all of our marketing problems. Let’s be honest though: big data isn’t a suite of new technologies that will solve yesterday’s challenges or a one-and-done solution that can be bought off the shelf.
Google’s Nest Labs is rolling out a program to encourage companies to develop devices and services that will work with the Nest digital thermostat and other products.
Whirlpool Corp., Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz and garage-door maker Chamberlain Group Inc. have signed on as partners, Nest said. By connecting washing machines, cars and garage doors with Nest, users can control the temperature and energy use within their residences, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in a statement.
The initiative is part of a wider push to make houses and everyday devices more connected and intelligent. Apple is building home-automation features into its iOS mobile software and startups have introduced devices to control lighting, security and other devices in the home. Nest and Google’s venture arm are teaming up with venture investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to create the “Thoughtful Things Fund” to back new ideas for connected homes, Nest said.
This Cannes Lions article was written by Murray Newlands
A panel of experts was assembled last week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, who gave us their take on marketing to Millennials in 2014.
Entitled “Brand Purpose, Millennials and the Epic Creative that Engages Them,” the panel included Quinn Kilbury, brand director for Newcastle Brown Ale at Heineken; Christina Smedley, VP of global brand and communications at PayPal; Bonin Bough, VP of global media and consumer engagement at Mondelez; and Scott Beaudoin, global practice director of corporate and brand citizenship for MSLGroup.
John Mescall, executive creative director of McCann Australia, was the standout expert from the panel. Mescall is best known as the man who came up with “Dumb Ways to Die” for Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia. His campaign holds the achievement of most-awarded campaign in the history of Cannes, winning multiple Lions in 2013.
Takeaways From The Panel
The panel, of course, agreed that brands must resonate with their target audience and have a realistic understanding of societal needs in order to have the kinds of conversations deemed to be relevant by millennial consumers.
In order to engage with Millennials, it was noted that brands must be willing to loosen up and give up control, which is a scary idea for most brands.
“We have so many marketing constructs that come from the old adage of control. But you’ve got more power than you’ve ever had in the history of marketing, thanks to social platforms, but to exercise that power, you must relinquish control,” said Mescall.
The Millennial market values peer-to-peer conversations, so allowing Millennials to control the conversation can help boost engagement. Being newsworthy and creative are also important when engaging with Millennials.
The panel argued that people talking about your brand absolutely equates to sales, pointing to this year’s PR Grand Prix winner, “The Scarecrow” from Chipotle as an example of how earned media can generate conversations and sales.
You don’t necessarily have to be young to understand Millennials, you just have to be willing to understand and be a part of youth culture. Standing for something is important to Millennials, but the panel believed not every brand has to stand for something, they just have to be honest, according to Kilbury.
Added Kilbury, “You have to be newsworthy, too. People have to choose between cute kittens, Justin Beiber and your brand. It’s got to be a super creative idea.”
We ran into Giant Media Founder and VP David Segura who, commenting on the panel, said, “Staying ‘loose’ and fun is probably the best way to encourage sharing of your marketing message. If the audience sees an authentically funny video, they’ll help boost your ROI with every ‘share’ and ‘like’ on social media.”
In conclusion, the panel left the audience with a challenge to have ambitious goals and go after. Use technology as your friend, and try to “matter to the world.”
Data On-boarding, sometimes referred to as data on-ramping, is the transfer of data gathered offline to the digital realm. This offline-to-online data process is known as “on-boarding” in the industry. Companies like LiveRamp and Datalogix match offline databases from in-store transactions or customer-service call interactions to online data, often making the connection by using registration information gathered by travel, dating or news sites, or gaming system partners. They can also link cookies representing a user’s visitation to a partner site to information in CRM databases. Advertisers use on-boarding services to market to current customers, create look-alike models for ad targeting, or to measure effectiveness of online campaigns on in-store sales.
Bob Intarakumhang, senior manager for digital analytics at Allstate on Data Onboarding:
“Relying purely on an online signal to inform how your marketing efforts are driving business for you is a very incomplete picture,” said Mr. Intarakumhang. He led the charge at the insurance firm to begin moving customer data to the web from Allstate’s transactional, call-center and agent databases.
Dead in Cannes
The hashtag #deadincannes started when a message about FCB Health Chief Creative Officer Rich Levy’s phone dying got lost in translation a bit and was reinterpreted by a Grand Hotel employee as “Rich Levy is dead.” The FCB Health team took to streets, dropping like flies. Next year it will be a toss up between #dismemberedincannes and #canneszombies, the agency said.
The reason why people would want to live there is that most of them work for the biggest metallurgical and mines complex in the world continue
(TrendHunter.com) Japan-based company PFU Limited came up with a way to eliminate the middle man with its recently unveiled SnapLite smart scanner. Instead of having to take a picture, get it developed, scan it onto…
As trocas de mensagens no Snapchat já não estão mais tão efêmeras assim. A rede social revelou recentemente que as ‘Stories’, nova função do serviço que foi disponibilizada no fim do ano passado, vem sendo muito mais usada do que os tradicionais ‘snaps’.
A diferença entre os dois modelos de compartilhamento é que os ‘snaps’ duram bem pouco, de 1 a 10 segundos, enquanto as ‘stories’ são conjuntos de fotos e vídeos que ficam disponíveis para visualização por 24 horas, tempo bem maior se comparado com o máximo permitido para ver um snap.
Segundo o Snapchat, mais de um bilhão de stories são visualizadas todos os dias, bem mais do que as 500 milhões que eram vistas 2 meses atrás, o que demonstra a rápida aceitação da novidade. É interessante destacar que as stories podem ser vistas apenas pelos seus amigos do Snapchat, a não ser que você queira deixa-las públicas para qualquer pessoa que o adicionar. Ou seja, de certo modo, os Snapchatters ganham uma timeline privada, que pode ser ‘tornada pública’ para qualquer seguidor, se ele assim desejar.
As stories também são uma oportunidade para marcas, que podem sugerir a concentração de snaps de um evento em um mesmo lugar – o que me lembra as hashtags do Twitter, no quesito ‘organização de conteúdos’ – como o que foi feito durante o último final de semana, durante o Eletric Daisy Carnival de Las Vegas. Na ‘Our EDC Story’, os snapchatters podiam mostrar suas impressões do festival em um canal público, que podia ser acessado por qualquer usuário, ao postar fotos e vídeos diretamente do local.
Esse, inclusive, pode ser um primeiro passo do Snapchat para se tornar algo muito maior do que um aplicativo de mensagens privadas. Ao permitir que pessoas que não se conhecem compartilhem e gerem conteúdo em tempo real, esse canal pode se transformar em um ambiente muito mais instantâneo, multimídia e organizado do que seguir uma hashtag no Twitter, por exemplo. Fica a esperança de que os sinais de rede celular aguentem o compartilhamento de imagens e vídeos, e que a moderação desses canais de stories possa manter o ambiente livre de conteúdos explícitos.
Se a iniciativa experimental com o Eletric Daisy Carnival der certo, com certeza podemos esperar uma movimentação maior do Snapchat em outros eventos no futuro.
Será que vamos trocar a alegria dos comentários em 140 caracteres no Twitter por ‘salas de bate papo’ interativas no Snapchat? É esperar para ver.
Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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O jogo que garantiu ao Brasil o primeiro lugar do grupo, na partida contra Camarões, foi o assunto de mais de 6,1 milhões de tuítes, segundo dados do próprio Twitter.
O momento com mais tuítes por minuto foi o gol de Fred, que depois de uma atuação bem fraca nos outros jogos, entrou em campo com um novo estilo, ostentando um bigode, o que também foi assunto na rede social.
Neymar, responsável por 2 dos 4 gols do Brasil na partida, foi o jogador mais mencionado.
Com a Copa do Mundo chegando já nas oitavas de final, o Twitter também divulgou quais foram as partidas mais tuitadas até o momento – destaque para o jogo de abertura, entre Brasil e Croácia, com 12,2 milhões de tuítes, seguido por Brasil e México, com 8,95 milhões, e Alemanha versus Portugal, com 8,9 milhões de tuítes.
Ou os brasileiros são fãs de assistir os jogos acompanhando e comentando na segunda tela, ou os jogos do Brasil realmente movimentam a torcida.
Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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