Yes I am home for the holidays. I am at my parents house in Pennsylvania digging out of 2 feet of snow and living on my cell phones outlook. I have been tweeting mobile and chatting using my phones chat client… ahh vacation.
The biggest news for me is the fact that Sony has made Playstation Home an open beta. I don’t know if you have been following what Home is, but it is a marketers dream. Basically, Home is a social network similar to Second Life, but more game focused.
While walking around home, and chatting with people online via the built in chat service that came back, I was exposed to ads, placed music, branded games and basically 10 times more ads than I see in the real world. But I stayed.
Playstaion 3, a system that actually loses Sony money every time they sell one, is using Home as a place to sell in game advertisements and create micro transactions. See, if you want to have a cool apartment you either need to get free branded furniture or purchase (99 cents) furniture.
Home represents a natural progression for manufactures to both sell advertisements and engage gamers. It offers gamers a way to connect with other gamers online and offers sponsors a way to engage a traditionally hard demographic. When Sony finally launches home out of Beta expect to see some truly great advertising opportunities… stay logged on in the coming year.
Burger King has taken a good deal of flack lately about their new campaign Burger Virgins. The campaign is pretty simple, a film crew from Burger King went to regions of the world where people who have never seen a hamburger. They filmed the local’s interaction with the burgers and then asked them which burger they liked better, the Whopper or the Big Mac.
You can see the campaign here: http://www.whoppervirgins.com. The company that produced these spots is the same marketing firm that produced they ‘No Whopper’ campaign last year. Burger King is taking heat from groups proclaiming that BK is flaunting food to hungry people in impoverished countries.
Burger King went to great lengths, working with local governments, to find people who have food but who have never seen a hamburger. Still many groups protest the ad campaign and protest Burger King.
While people have the right to protest what they want, the protesters are actually helping promote Burger King’s new campaign. Burger King is getting a good deal of free press surrounding a campaign that in my opinion isn’t that bad.
I have been to close to 40 different countries in my life, have met plenty of people who have never experienced American cuisine. Am I some how denigrating them by putting a hamburger in front of them?
I don’t know, I might be missing something. What is your opinion.
Last night was The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which has become something to look forward as a mainstay of the winter season. But why all the fuss? A handful of gorgeous women flaunting what they have to offer in elaborate VS brand lingerie, that’s why. However, this big event can’t be meant to sell bras can it…so what is it all about? The answer would be selling “sexy.”
Just one simple yet entirely complex word. No one is going to buy a 5 million dollar diamond studded bra and 8 foot wings to wear around the house! But the point of this show isn’t really to focus on the outfits that the models are wearing. It is about the entertainment offered and the sexy models strutting the runway. They are selling a face and a body, not clothing. Would anyone wear a furry Santa outfit out in public? No. It is an eye-catching event that sells what most people really want, a glimpse of glitz and glamor. They are defining a brand as desirable and showing the world what it means to be SEXY.
Victoria Secret has found a way to grow far beyond their actual offering by selling an image of what is sexy and attaching their brand to that. When people think about fashion shows they usually think of skinny models wearing crazy outfits from some couture line striding the catwalk in Milan. Victoria Secret has taken another approach and it has far surpassed any other fashion event, making the fashion show one of the premiere “go to” events for the trendiest and hottest players in the music, fashion and entertainment industries. When people think of Victoria’s Secret, they think sexy, they know sexy.
They are not selling bras through the fashion show, they are reminding the world of desire and style, of glamour and of SEXY.
As we look back on THE most historic election race the world has ever seen, it creates a need deep inside me to ask how each candidate won or lost an election. On the heels of economic meltdown and a war that seems endless, Barack Obama rode in to save the day on a horse he calls interactive marketing.
Reaching out to America’s youth through text messaging, email blasting, social networking sites (Facebook) and others, Obama created a benchmarked campaign on how to win. The simple answer is, put yourself out there any way possible and if you can control the message, great. If not, don’t worry about it.
This election was not won on the back of trains, at town hall meetings or political rallies, it was won in cyberspace. Through vehicles like YouTube and Facebook, Obama captured the heartbeat of a nation and aggressively sent the young voters to the polls. Every presidential candidate has struggled with the same question, how do we get these kids to the polls?
Obama’s answer: make it cool. It was that simple: connect to the youth of a nation by entering their world. With all the work in advertising shifting to interactive marketing, political candidates will now turn to this for salvation. And the beauty of interactive marketing is that it not only connects with a growing demographic, but connects to older generations taking advantage technology.
Now we all know that controlling the message is crucial to a successful campaign but, in this day and age, it is also important to let the message grow some legs of its own. Most of us know of Obama Girl, and though she probably doesn’t offer much to foreign policy, she did get the attention of a country.
It’s viral marketing campaigns and user generated material that sent him straight to the White House. Heck, he even had an iPhone Web App. Interactive marketing took down the Clinton Machine which was once thought of as an impenetrable force.
The most interesting point of all is, though Obama raised record campaign funds, his viral campaign came at nearly no cost to the Obama camp. Now that is what I call ROI…
I find myself at an impasse; I am getting older and older, and not much skinner. To fight this truly unfair waist expansion I have decided to switch to diet soda. Being a Coke baby I of course opted to drink Diet Coke.
While cruising the lanes of my local super-market I stumbled across a kink in my plan: Coke Zero. Knowing nothing of the diet soft drink realm I bought a bottle of both Coke Zero and Diet Coke.
To be honest I taste no difference between the two, their apparent lack of calories in both is also interesting. So you can see my current conundrum right? What diet soft drink do I buy?
Well being a slave to advertising I looked at the ad models of both these products to make my choice. Well seeing the ads that have sprinkled this post what do you think I decided when it came to my soda of choice.
The problem I see is that the stigma of diet soda has become so strong that brands have had to repackage themselves to attract new users. While this is normal for brands, the intensity that Coke Zero is changing its image is amazing.
Look at the coloring of the ads, Coke Zero uses blacks and reds while Diet Coke uses silver and white. Men typically gravitate towards stronger “masculine” colors while women are interested in the in the suave and elegant.
Well I am hooked and I am a Coke Zero user for life . What is your brand?
Yes I am home for the holidays. I am at my parents house in Pennsylvania digging out of 2 feet of snow and living on my cell phones outlook. I have been tweeting mobile and chatting using my phones chat client… ahh vacation.
