Hasta La Creative!

Continuing their back-to-school Techfitter campaign, Best Buy and CP+B are providing Tim Kong, an aspiring games designer, with the tech he needs to design and code his next action-packed adventures. Previously, Best Buy “techfitted” a marine biology major and an aerospace engineer with a set of Windows 8 gadgets.

This new spot is comparatively less exciting, maybe because stars and oceans are grander than grungy cars and code. Consequently, I wish we had more of a storyline. Is Tim Kong really just going to make a new Grand Theft Auto, or do his interests lie somewhere specific? And in that case, can we hear what he has to say? At this point, he’s a Stock Student who knows how to make a good surprised/awesome face.

But maybe it’s better that he’s a basic video games enthusiast. Many current college kids must relate, and it’s a good thing Best Buy has a spot specifically geared towards forward-thinking, technology-centered students, hence the girl scientist, a guy scientist, and a gamer. If only the campaign lasted longer and their next subject is a fashion girl, conveniently coinciding with Fashion Week. Ah, what could’ve been.

Credits after the jump

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Toronto shop Capital C and Toshiba have teamed for a new online back-to-school campaign meant for silly college guys who need cool technology. Sometimes, these college guys use the technology for school, other times, for play. In “Chicken Prank,” a helpless dormer finds himself wrapped to his bed with chickens on the loose, and to get out of the rut, he waves his feet in front of a touch-controlled monitor. In “Math Notes,” handwritten notes on a tablet lead to an awkward moment of affection between roommates. And in “Black Light,” well, I’ll let you figure that one out on your own.

What’s most interesting about this trio of Toshiba spots is that they are clearly targeting only males. I’m not sure if any female-themed spots about woo girls and sorority hijinks are on the docket, but I’m curious to know why Toshiba is only looking for collegiate males to purchase products for this campaign, especially considering more girls than guys go to college. But, aside from the oversight, the creatives took care of business with some safely effective locker room humor.

Credits and the two other spots after the jump.

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In 2012, a creative director fell into Herman Melville’s 720-page trap and reimagined Ahab as a tow truck driver, madly chasing his white whale, an Audi Quattro. “Sometimes, I actually think it’s mocking me,” Ahab says in a gruff voice, anxiously twisting his thermos as he waits in the arctic tundra.

Said creative director then got distracted by Cetology, but has now resurfaced to produce “Ahab Redux,” in which, obviously, our automotive whale has yet to meet his driver. Ahab has retired on an island “most folks would call paradise,” but he can’t escape his all-wheel drive demon. “There isn’t a road on earth that can stop it.”

Thankfully this ad is a departure from the old winding-mountain-road glamour reel, and I appreciate the attempt at literary allusion. We’re all familiar with Moby Dick, whether we became obsessed like Ahab or SparkNoted its entirety. “Ahab Redux” is a bit of a cop-out due to its repetition, but the general idea probably gives Audi’s target affluent audience a twinge of self-satisfaction: “Oh, I know that story!”

Credits and original Ahab after the jump continued…

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Well this is meta. A new ad, created by North 40 Productions, for the Bavarian village of Leavenworth, WA — which perviously strutted out a collection of bodacious hip hop hotties, along with spokes-creature Woody Goomsba to tout the destination — is out with an ad that has Travelocity’s Gnome and Geico’s Gecko chasing down Goomsba in a James Bond-ish boat chase epic.

Entitled Nutcracker’s Never Die, the ad stars Woody Goomsba in a “riveting” boat chase near downtown Leavenworth filled with gunfire, explosions, and beautiful frauleins. The ad initially promotes several of Leavenworth’s attractions and activities, but soon turns to the boat scene that inspired the video’s title.

In 2011 when the dirndl-clad hip hop hotties appeared in the destination’s ad, Leavenworth’s on-line presence jumped substantially accumulating nearly 500,000 hits on YouTube and, forever, changed up the standard for online tourism marketing across the country.

While we love the use of Gnome and Gecko, the ad itself is rather boring and no where near as interesting or engaging as the original. Just 1,766 views so far. Meta-funny as having a pair of brand ambassadors chase down Woody, we’re going to go out on a limb and posit this trio won’t come close to besting the original’s bevy of bodacious hip hop hotties cavorting in dirndl mini-dresses.

With the upcoming launch of Fox Sports’ potential ESPN rival Fox Sports 1 on August 17, the brand has chosen Pereira & O’Dell New York as lead creative agency for its 24-hour sports network. This move expands a relationship that began in the spring as P&O’D had already been working on a project basis on 1-2 assignments for Fox Sports 1. In a statement, Fox Sports EVP/head of marketing Robert Gottlieb says, “We’ve never brought in an outside creative agency on a continuous basis as we have significant in-house capabilities. With Pereira & O’Dell  we have found a great partner who  can operate as a creative think-tank as we enter the market with Fox Sports 1. We’re thrilled with their  initial work and look forward to what’s    coming down the pipeline.”

What’s coming down the pipeline includes not only work for upcoming Fox Sports 1 shows like Fox Sports Live, Fox Football Daily and Crowd Goes Wild but a big campaign supporting Super Bowl XLVIII, which will take place in New York. While Pereira & O’Dell gets down to work, its newest client is still trying to iron out deals with Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Dish.

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Finally, with help from WPP-owned 171 Partners, HTC is getting creative. For their new “Here’s to Change” global campaign to promote  the HTC One smartphone, the brand has enlisted Robert Downey Jr. as both the star and purveyor of creative input. Engadget suggests that this is new CMO Ben Ho making good on his promise to make HTC’s voice louder.

So far, we’ve got RDJ as mysterious, self-important “Subversive Thinking,” a man with Terry Richardson glasses and a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He flies in a helicopter and enjoys high-fives. He wears a puce-colored tie. We meet him in HTC’s first teasers: “Big Things Ahead,” “Prelude to Change,” and “The Arrival.” The entire “Change” campaign should run 24 to 36 months, with the first 2-minute spot debuting Thursday. And with any luck, our main man will be quirkily cooing to that cat.

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This column has been pinballing around my head for the past few months. I’m curious about hashtags. I’m under the impression that although everyone knows what a hashtag looks like, not many people pay attention to Twitter statistics beyond Follower counts. And now that every commercial – online or televised – comes with a hashtag, many of which seem perfunctory, I want to make an inexact science a bit more exact by evaluating basic Internet data and applying it to our coverage for the previous week.

Twitter clearly has value. Celebrities of varying degrees get paid silly amounts of money for sponsored tweets (sidebar: did you know that Melissa Joan Hart makes $9,100 for some of her tweets? That’s more obnoxious than silly). With money and brand equity to be had in the Twitter economy, every company can now slap a hashtag onto a visual ad and pretend to know what it’s doing. Remember when Newsweek ran with #MuslimRage? Or McDonald’s unintentionally eviscerating itself with #McDStories? Twitter can be tricky for the lazy and oblivious.

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It looks like our tipsters from up north were on to something as sources familiar with the matter confirm that the relationship between Union and Tourism Toronto “has come to a close.” Union of course is the Toronto-based, MDC-backed agency that was formerly known as CP+B Toronto. The now-defunct latter agency’s relationship with Tourism Toronto dates back to 2010 and subsequently resulted in campaigns such as the holiday-themed “Torontoland.”

Those on the Spy line tell us that Tourism Toronto remained one of Union’s biggest accounts, though, as perhaps the tell-tale sign, the brand no longer appears on the agency’s client list, which currently includes notable names such as Best Buy, Kraft and Pfizer. From what sources tell us, Tourism Toronto isn’t going to replace Union as of now, but we’ll let you know if we hear more.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you’re not familiar with American motorcycle history, you may never have heard of Indian Motorcycle. Up through World War II, Indian Motorcycle was a popular motorcycle brand. In 1953 it went out of business leaving the just one American bike maker standing, Harley-Davidson.

In 2011, Polaris Industries purchased the dormant brand in 2011 and introduced its first new bike in 50 years with the 2014 Indian Chief.

The brand hired Colle + McVoy to relaunch the brand and the agency reached out to History Channel to create branded content in the form of Bike Week, a multi-media week that would celebrate the history of motorcycling and highlight the new 2014 Indian Chief.

Along with promotional vignettes featuring History Channel’s American Pickers host Mike Wolfe, the agency created a :60 which debuted during the show this past Monday.

Supporting the branded content play and the commercial, is print and collateral.

The :60 is motorcycle porn and features a small group of Indian Chief riders who encounter a larger group of Harley Davidson riders who, after the required stare down, invite them to cross their path. We’re not quite sure this is exactly how it would play out in real life but for a commercial, it suffices.

We live in the social age. Along with the amazing ability to connect to friends and family within seconds, business owners can sometimes feel like they live under constant pressure to be responsive. One bad review blown out of proportion can spiral out of control, leading to a social nightmare with dire consequences for your company’s brand. One way to increase user satisfaction is to be more transparent about who you are and what you offer.

Offer customers methods to contact you, give them a voice on your site and let them speak for your services. Start asking customers for testimonials and looking at what data you can publish to increase your credibility.

Customer Reviews

Google Alerts is a free service you can use to track what other people are saying about your website or your brand across the Web. Have alerts delivered to your email that search for keywords you define so that you can monitor competitors as well. When you find review data, contact the customer and ask if you can publish his or her review. Offer them space on your website and let them know you’ll quote them by name in a special section for customer reviews.

Tools like the Brand.com reviews widget allow customers to leave instant feedback on your site. A five-star ranking system gives visitors a quick view of the quality of services you offer. Testimonials with customer names also grant a little extra clout to professions in which an individual review could be more meaningful.

Asking for feedback is the only way for you to know what your audience wants to see. It’s true that not everyone will respond, but a short survey can teach you a lot about how your customers perceive your website.

Page View Data

Page view data is always a tricky metric because no one is ever sure how much is enough. You don’t need to publish actual page views to show that your content is engaging. There are many ways to judge your traffic: Facebook friends, Alexa rank, search engine rank, and volume of competition being only a few free ways that are simple to find.

What’s better is for you to show the quality of your traffic. If your articles only have a 25% bounce rate, that’s an amazing statistic that you should flaunt everywhere possible. What advertiser does not want the attention of a highly engaged audience? Look at your statistics and figure out what you can publish that will help sell the idea that your page is a peak destination in your niche.

Social Signals

Besides your friend count, a Klout score linked to your Twitter account will help give a better indication of your reach. Look at how many mentions and retweets your stories get, and focus on pushing content out to the most vocal users on Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook Insights also provide extra data to you like your potential reach for a particular post. Look at your most popular posts and try to highlight what makes users want to talk about you so that you can tailor future work accordingly.

Making Valuable Commitments

Commitments to user protection during the payment process phase is not a feature, it’s more like a foundation for trust. Commitment to use personal data responsibly, or listing ways in which you will use user data shows you care about the people that visit your page. Look into commitments you can make, like “Do Not Track,” or “Non-Intrusive Ads” that respect the time your users invest with your business.

One of the best things you can do is to give users more control over their data. Don’t bury unsubscribe options, but try to look at why users leave your email list. Ask for feedback, display reviews both negative and positive. Invite the kind of discussion that makes your product better onto your website.

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