Hasta La Creative!

In the past several years, native advertising has risen to the top of the online marketing conversation. And, for the most part, it’s done so because other forms of online advertising have failed miserably. But native advertising, for all its popularity and success, has brought with it a very dark side; the blurring of editorial church and state.

To some, this blurring is no big deal. To others — the smart ones, it is the downfall of society as we know it. Some approaches to native advertising have resulted in worthwhile, informative, education and helpful content readers can consider valuable. Other native advertising efforts — sadly, most — have resulted in poorly written, spammy, listicle, brochure-like content that irks, annoys and just plain sucks.

What if there were a way to do native advertising where the content used to advertise were truly native? And by that, I mean it was created irrespective of influence from anyone remotely involved with the topic on the content? In other words, it’s not an ad.

So if it’s not an ad, how, then, could it still be native advertising? Well it’s something different really; promoted content. Yea, yea. Promoted content is nothing new but a company called inPowered has added a bit of a twist.

inPowered marries brands with already existing, expert-written content that wasn’t created because some brand paid to have it created. You know, good old-fashioned editorial.

inPowered has a super fancy technology that seeks out and identifies existing content as it relates to any brand, product or topic and ranks the experts who wrote the content. Experts are ranked on consistency – consistent focus on a particular topic, depth – insightful, educational, helpful content that isn’t a regurgitated press release and validation – how often the content is shared. In all, inPowered tracks 50 million article a month qualifying 50,000 subject matter experts across 10,000 topics.

Brands can then come to inPowered and be matched with the expert in their area of interest. That content is then connected to the brand with automagically created, programmatically placed ads which appear across ad networks and social networks.

In terms of success metrics and in order to weed out the clickbait effect prevalent in other promoted content models, inPowered ads only “count” and are paid for if the content the ads point to is actually read (measured by at least 15 seconds spent with the content) or shared (out to social networks like Facebook and Twitter).

It’s really a very simple and effective ad model. Basically, it’s an engine that identifies already existing content a brand would find beneficial and gives that brand a mechanism to direct that content towards those most likely to act on the content.

Team Detroit teamed up with production company The Work to troll some unsuspecting guys with this prankvertising stunt for Ford Mustang, setting them up on a date with professional stunt driver Prestin Persson.

After leaving a restaurant with each of the guys and getting into her Mustang, Persson plays the ditz, pretending to not really know how to drive a stick shift. One guy even suggests he can show her what the car can really do. In fact, most of the guys engage in some pretty cringe-worthy bragging before Persson flips into stunt driver mode and the guys alternately hold on for dear life or shout in excitement. At the end of the spot, Persson reveals her identity and that the men were in fact, filmed for a Mustang commercial.

If you’re tired of prankvertising, “Speed Dating” isn’t going to do anything to change your mind, although it does offer something at least a little bit different within the format. Persson plays her part well, convincingly seeming to struggle with the vehicle one minute and then — as one gentleman put it — whipping the shit out of the car with a grin on her face. “I guess you’re showing me how to drive this thing, aren’t you?” the guy from earlier admits. It’s pretty satisfying to see Persson make him eat crow (and humble a few of the other guys as well), but the spot, which clocks in at over three minutes, could have used some tighter editing.

Industry veteran Shane Ogilvie, who spent the last three years as ECD at Toronto’s Zulu Alpha Kilo, has left that shop to co-found his own business with former Zulu Executive Planning Director Shari Walczak.

Their venture, The Garden North America, will function as a self-described “new breed of creative company.” What does that mean?

The key, it seems, is flexibility. The agency wants potential clients to know that it can do traditional advertising…but it can also do lots of other stuff too.

As the release puts it, “Anything can grow in a garden.” From Ogilvie himself:

“Our output will be different for every company because it will be based on their individual needs…could be a brand repositioning or social strategy, or it could involve operational design or customer experience innovations. Because the process starts further upstream, the possibilities are endless.”

Rather than hire in-house teams to do that work, The Garden will outsource it:

“Ogilvie and Walczak say The Garden will employ a unique model wherein teams of experts will be custom built and brought in to address specific problems.”

Ogilvie writes from experience: after starting his career at Holmes and Lee (now Reason Partners), he spent more than six years as a senior copywriter and ACD at DDB Canada, working on Capital One, State Farm, Budweiser, Subaru, and various other accounts; Grey Canada later hired him as a creative director.

At Zulu, Ogilvie’s ECD credit appeared on recent campaigns created for Corona, Audi, and Coke Zero.

Walczak also brings two decades of agency experience to the new role: prior to joining Zulu in 2012 as executive strategy director, she was strategic planning director at fellow Toronto shop john st.; previous titles include VP/GM/senior brand strategist at Cossette and account-based roles at Leo Burnett’s Toronto office.

The Garden has not signed formal agreements with any clients at the moment, but its principals are “currently working with several companies who have shown interest in the new model,” so we should have updates soon.

I’ve met many agency CEOs and founders in my time. And if there’s one thing they all have in common, it’s that none of them know what they’re doing. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s simply that every agency is different and its principals always bring different skills the mix. There’s no […]

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Media, Promo, Direct Marketing
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At Poopy Cat we have cats living in the office permanently. This way we can develop, test and improve our concepts in close collaboration with the end-user. They make our employees and visitors smile and they provide enchanting ‘aaawww’ moments.

Cats want their hard working humans’ undivided attention. If not serviced immediately this may result in serious consequences… Meowing thru calls, screen blocking, keyboard naps, all examples of distracting and unprofessional cat behavior! At the end of the day though, we love the crazy catmosphere at our office and we would not want it any other way!

We decided to make a short video of a regular office day to show cat lovers around the world how awesome cats can be in an office environment! A day at Poopy Cat, enjoy…

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