(TrendHunter.com) If you want to introduce more whimsy to your dessert decorating, this watercolor graffiti cake is a feminine place to begin. From the blog Sprinkle Bakes the colorful chocolate cake is a beautiful…
Lots of kids play with barnyard toys, but the reality of factory farms isn’t as rosy.
A new anti-factory-farming campaign takes that probably obvious truth to the extreme, with a series of online mini-games, and an actual block set, featured in a biting—if also smug—product demo parody.
Animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) and agency Nice and Serious created the ad, website and physical toys, which include box-shaped hens, pigs and cows that cram too perfectly together into cages inside a barn. There are even little removable bacon strips.
The whole thing is basically a more square, interactive version of Chipotle’s famous and similarly themed “Back to the Start” campaign, minus Willie Nelson’s killer Coldplay cover and Johnny Kelly’s stunning animation.
The online games are basically farming-themed skins on classics like Whac-a-Mole (in this case, Whack-a-Sick-Chicken-with-Antibiotics, which will become less effective for humans the more they’re used in food). Other gripes include that cramped quarters make animals more prone to sickness, that rainforests are being torn down to make room to grow their feed, and that factory farming methods may result in meat that’s less nutritious (though given what people are willing to stuff in their faces, less delicious might be a more convincing argument).
It also casts labels like “100 percent natural” as misleading—a case that another group has made in more compelling fashion. In fact, CIWF runs into a familiar problem for animal advocacy organizations in that it feels like it’s preaching to the choir, even if its goal is to accrue signatures on a petition.
And sadly, the toys themselves don’t appear to be actually available for purchase—which puts them at a distinct disadvantage to popular competitors like the John Deere Farm Set.
Google’s move to restructure its company, and its brands, is yet another example of how Silicon Valley seems to be rewriting every rule.
The conventional brand wisdom has been simple and seemingly powerful: Build a strong parent brand, invest behind it, and use it with zeal across every audience — employees, investors, customers. Yes, there are many “house-of-brands” strategies, but the trend to build a single, strong parent has been robust and growing, fueled by today’s purpose-driven “human era” culture. Simple brand systems. One singular message.
Companies have increasingly been paring back brands, folding in acquired brands quickly and elevating the corporate purpose as the great uniter. Just two weeks ago, P&G announced it is shedding half its brands. Even the parents of “houses of brands,” such as Unilever, have been growing their prominence through increased endorsement roles and media spend. And technology has been no different — the “keep-it-simple” approach has been the hallmark of innovation leaders lauded by business school faculties for decades. The 3Ms, GEs and IBMs of the worlds have all shown how to successfully manage families of inventive businesses under one strong parent.
It wasn’t long after the ink dried on the Verizon acquisition of AOL before Seth Demsey formed a plan to make the companies’ technology work together.
“I had a team of engineers in my office the day the deal closed,” said the AOL Platforms chief technology officer. “We’re not waiting.”
But as Mr. Demsey, a veteran in the field, seeks additional staff to fuel what he expects to be a continual process of building tools and integrating technologies, the term “data science” on prospective employee’s resume doesn’t always mean what he thinks it should.
Under the deal, production will increase to 35 episodes a year from the current 18, and a spinoff show and another new educational series for children will be created.
88FM is celebrating its 20th anniversary of giving you the best music on the radio by immortalizing our favourite musical instruments, the hairbrush microphone, the pen-drumsticks and the broom-guitar.
Simply, yet cute.
Six years ago in 2009 I went to IZEAfest in Orlando. It was an incredible event which occurred during the height of the birth of social media. It was one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to.
Well, IZEA Founder Ted Murphy is bringing it back in late October at the Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Resort.
If you want to know what it was like in 2009, read this article and this article. Together, they sum up two days of conference awesomeness.
Yes, we were all younger and crazier back then but that just made everything more awesome.
This year, the speaker line up is incredible. If you go, you’ll hear from PayPal Head of Social Media Dave Peck, Discover Head of Brand Partnerships Jake Lestan, Kellogg’s Social Media Manager Justin Godley, The Economist Director of Content Strategy Heather Taylor, WOMMA President Suzanne Fanning, IAB Director of Industry Initiatives Susan Borst, So You Think You Can Dance Season 10 Winner Fik-Shun, Vine Celebrities Rajiv Dhall and Andrew Bazzi, MOMables Founder Laura Fuentes, SimplySadieJane Owner Sadie Jane and so many more.
Oh and let’s not forget headliner Extra TV Host Mario Lopez.
And just like the 2009 event, the speakers are just part of the fun. There will be an opening party at Disney’s Atlantic Dance Hall, a takeover of Disney’s Hollywood Studios where attendees will have free reign of the park and, if you like, to attend the Creator’s Choice Awards. There will be a closing party at the Swan & Dolphin Lake Terrace and on the last day, a chance to attend the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival.
It was personally the most fun I’ve ever had at a conference as well as an incredible learning experience.
If you’re interested, check out the conference at izeafest.com.
I wasn’t paid to write this but Adrants is a media sponsor and I’ve been offered a free pass so, technically, you could say I was/will be paid. But, honestly, it was a great event the first time I went and, no doubt, it will be great this time around!
Shock Top beer is going down the toilet as part of a new cause-marketing campaign in drought-stricken California. The effort, called “Shock the Drought,” includes branded digital advertising urging water conservation, as well as donations to inventors developing water-saving inventions.
The first project involves an innovation called “Drop-A-Brick 2.0,” which is a modern take on the old tactic of putting a brick in a toilet tank to save water. The contemporary version is made from rubber and improves flushing performance, saving an estimated 50 gallons of water per week, according to Shock Top, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev.
The brand is donating $100,000 to Drop-A-Brick, allowing the inventors to automate manufacturing of the bricks, which are presently made by hand, said Ian Montgomery, co-founder of Drop-A-Brick. He recently worked with San Francisco-based agency BarrettSF to create an awareness campaign. “We want to get as many free bricks out into the community as we can,” Mr. Montgomery said.
(TrendHunter.com) Teen heartthrob Justin Bieber appears all grown up in ‘The Fighter,’ Cosmopolitan Magazine’s September 2015 cover story. The singer poses shirtless and channels a gym rat in the…
Brands can’t be as honest as they might like in dealing with haters on Facebook. But sometimes other Facebook users can do it for them.
That dynamic played out in particularly rogue fashion on Target’s Facebook page this week. As the retailer received a steady stream of nasty comments from people upset about its move toward gender-neutral in-store labeling, Facebook user Mike Melgaard posed as Target with a fake Facebook account—Ask ForHelp, with a bull’s-eye profile pic—and began excoriating the haters with comically sarcastic replies.
He got away with it for about 16 hours, too, commenting on about 50 posts before the fake account was shut down. Here are a few of his greatest hits:
Melgaard tells AdFreak that he was just surfing Facebook on Sunday night when he noticed that Target was moving away from gender-based labels in both the toy and children’s bedding sections.
“Immediately, I knew there would be your typical outraged American spouting emotional reactions on their Facebook page,” he says. “After taking a look, I was literally laughing out loud at my computer. A few more minutes in and it struck me how hilarious it would be to portray myself as a parody customer service rep. So, I did just that, and the rest was history. Honestly, it was like striking comedy gold. Every one of these people gave me the ammunition I needed for a great response.”
A self-described “pot-stirrer,” Melgaard says his stunt was more about the comedy than taking a stance on the issue. “I definitely side with Target and support their decision wholeheartedly,” he says. “That being said, this was, for me, more about the laughs. I absolutely love satirical humor, and I think America could use a little more laughter.”
Target is aware of Melgaard’s behavior but has not yet responded to AdFreak’s inquiries about it. For his part, Melgaard says he probably wasn’t doing the retailer any harm.
“Of course they could get upset,” Melgaard says, “but in this day and age I’m willing to bet their marketing team is intelligent enough to predict people like myself who come along to ‘stir the pot.’ I actually suspect that what I did shone an overall positive spotlight on Target.”
See more of Melgaard’s trolling below.
The pot of money pouring into digital media companies keeps getting bigger.
Less than a year after raising $46.5 million, Vox Media has signed a $200 million investment deal with Comcast’s NBCUniversal. The deal values the parent company of Vox.com, The Verge and Re/code at $1 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News.
NBCUniversal declined to comment beyond a statement released on Wednesday. And Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff declined to discuss the deal’s valuation in an interview with Ad Age. However he did shed a little light on how the two companies plan to work together in the wake of the deal.
(TrendHunter.com) Loryn Brantz recently debuted a set of illustrations that depict the beloved Disney princesses without any makeup. While the iconic cartoon heroines are well known for their bold and colorful…
For years, you had a dream. Your vision was that you were going to leave the company that you worked for since you graduated college and start your own business. In your vision, your business would be large enough to outcompete your former employer and become the No. 1 business in your industry in your hometown. Last […]
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