Posted by truecreek on April 21, 2010 under More Dam News | 
By Ken Bruno
After a long winter and a grim recession luxury-faucet maker Brizo wants to give consumers “a license to dream.” Online videos and print ads created by Young & Laramore for Brizo’s high-end, touch-sensitive Talo, Venuto and Virage faucets feature vivid colors that morph into butterflies, flowers, mermaids and fish.
New ad campaigns suggest marketers are eager to shake off the gloom of tough economic times–and they hope consumers will do the same. While some economists aren’t sure the tough times are history, advertisers don’t seem to care. Companies are rolling out carefree ads that use humor, colorful images and upbeat language to get consumers to lighten up–and open up their wallets.
“What you make people feel is as important as what you make,” goes the voice-over in a commercial from BMW of North America’s “Story of Joy” ad campaign, which includes print ads featuring happy-looking adults, kids and dogs with headlines that lead off with “Joy is …” The campaign was created by GSD&M Idea City.
Procter & Gamble even seems to thumb its nose at money-pinching buyers of personal care products in ads for Old Spice. In TV spots, Isaiah Mustafa taunts women with recession-induced goodie withdrawal by offering “two tickets to that thing you love,” before the tickets turn into diamonds. Spots featuring Mustafa and his treats have racked up more than 8 million views since they broke in February.
Fun and games? Those are reappearing in ads. Interpublic agency Deutsch L.A.’s playful campaign for Volkswagen “Punch Dub,” invites consumers to play an updated version of the game “Punch Buggy,” in which the first person to spot a VW slugs his or her friend on the arm. Stevie Wonder and 30 Rock’s Tracy Morgan even get in on the game in ads.
Microsoft even promotes the idea of carefree travel in ads for the launch of its new mobile phone brand, Kin. In “The Journey,” by AgencyTwoFifteen, Rosa Salazar, a lollipop-loving Brooklyn comedian, hits the road to meet as many of her 824 social networking friends as possible.
Consumers and marketers were in the dumps last year when total U.S. advertising expenditures fell 12.3% in 2009 to $125.3 billion, compared with 2008, says ad tracker Kantar Media in New York but some agency executives say marketers are willing to spend again.
“There is a market turn toward the positive,” says Deutsch N.Y. Chief Creative Officer Greg DiNoto. “That’s a smart marketing strategy for any brand when you’re emerging from a recession.” Brands need to be associated with winning.”
A few advertisers hope upbeat taglines will do the trick. Amway’s latest campaign, one with an estimated $25 million behind it, features the tagline “The Power of Positivity.” Ads, created by Omnicom’s Element 79, feature friendly farmers and helpful neighbors and suggest that Amway is a company doing its part by creating jobs for those affected by the recession.
More here.
Posted by truecreek on March 23, 2010 under More Dam News |
AP NEW YORK — The amount of time people spend on the computer while watching TV is going up sharply.
The Nielsen Co. said Monday that people who multitask this way spent an average of three and a half hours doing so in December. That’s up sharply from the two hours, 29 minutes that Nielsen reported only six months earlier.
The percentage of TV viewers who do this isn’t going up that fast. That increased by 57 percent to 59 percent during the same period. But those who are doing it spend much more time at it.
Television executives have pointed to this trend to help explain why big events like the Oscars, Grammys and pro football playoffs have been doing so well in the ratings – people watching and making comments to their friends through social Web sites like Twitter and Facebook.
More about TV, computer use multitasking up sharply: Nielsen here.
Posted by truecreek on January 13, 2010 under More Dam News |
Aiming to please too many different types of customers can be a fatal flaw. Focus on your core audience and don’t waste money on the rest.
By Steve McKee
Do a quick exercise: Take a minute and jot down three types of customers your company doesn’t want. Oh, and this is important: You can’t choose people like shoplifters or “sale-hoppers”—the kind of customers that no business wants.
If you’re like most business leaders, identifying customers you don’t want isn’t easy, especially in times like these. But it can be helpful to consider which of your customers are least important, if for no other reason than to help you focus on the most important ones.
We’re all familiar with the old saying, “you can’t be all things to all people.” Yet in business, too often that’s what we end up trying to be. General Motors is a prime example (and look where it got them). There was a time when each GM nameplate was narrowly targeted toward a certain demographic, leaving other company brands to serve their own slice of customers. But over the past several decades, as each GM brand expanded its lineup to serve as many different customers as possible—sports cars for the sporty, minivans for young families, trucks for working people—they ended up stepping on each other’s toes.
Consider one of those famous brands now slated for the scrap heap: Pontiac. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, Pontiac was defined by drool-inducing muscle cars such as the GTO, Firebird, and TransAm. The Pontiac brand meant power, styling and cool. Its appeal wasn’t for everyone, but it was powerful for some. Since that time, however, Pontiac has introduced a host of new models like the Trans Sport (a minivan), Sunfire (a compact car), Aztek (an SUV crossover), and Vibe (a hatchback). It’s unclear who, exactly, Pontiac has not been trying to serve, which is another way of saying it’s been aiming to please too many masters. And soon Pontiac will be gone, as will several other once-proud brands in the GM stable.
It could be that Wal-Mart (WMT) will learn from the GM example. The company has been attracting a lot more upscale customers of late, for obvious reasons. In the first quarter of 2009, 17% of Wal-Mart’s retail visits were from new customers, and they spent 40% more in the store than the average shopper. Will the company accept their business? You bet—branding is about whose business you’ll seek, not whose you’ll take. But if Wal-Mart begins catering more to those customers’ needs at the expense of its core target of “people who live paycheck to paycheck,” it will be making a mistake.
More about Customers Your Company Doesn’t Want here.
Posted by truecreek on November 10, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Stephen Shankland
Google said Tuesday it will subsidize free wireless network access in 47 airports from now until January 15–and indefinitely in the airports of Burbank, Calif., and Seattle.
The promotion, in cooperation with Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, and Airport Marketing Income, is the latest effort to use free Wi-Fi to boost a brand. Among others: Yahoo is sponsoring Wi-Fi in Times Square in New York, and Google is sponsoring Internet access on Virgin America flights during the holidays.
Among the larger participating airports are those in Houston, Boston, Miami, Las Vegas, Nashville, San Diego, Baltimore, and St. Louis. A full list of the airports is at Google’s free holiday Wi-Fi site.
The move, though not cheap, is probably smart. Plenty of business travelers have a laptop and time to kill, and today’s consumers are increasingly likely to be equipped with laptops, iPod Touches, or other devices that can use wireless Internet access. Google is spending some money for an opportunity to give a lot of people the warm fuzzies when they encounter the Google brand.
And in the big picture, Google gets to show people what the world might be like if there were more high-speed wireless Internet access–something the company has been aggressively lobbying for in Washington, D.C. Many people are used to wireless networking in their homes, but it’s a different matter on the road.
There are downsides, though, too. Having been to dozens of conferences where the wireless Net access collapses as soon as the keynote speech begins, I’m acutely aware that providing large-scale wireless Internet access is technically demanding–and people get unhappy when a promised benefit evaporates. And public, anonymous places such as airports and urban population centers are great spots for hackers to launch main-in-the-middle attacks by offering “Free Wi-Fi,” so exercise caution when logging on to these networks.
