Ypulse's Anatasia Goodstein points to a Chicago Tribune article questioning the ethics of viral marketing targeted to teens. While marketers are grasping at straws to reach today's youth, Goodstein further questions the moral nature of some companies such as Girls Intelligence Agency, a teen influencer network that enables on teen to promote product to another, not disclosing its true marketing attention. She calls for full disclosure and honestly - a trait, unfortunately, rare in some marketing circles.
Well we knew it was difficult to work on a media plan with a hangover following a late night, crunk-filled drinking binge but we didn't know it was costing advertisers $50 billion.
Yup, that's the figure deemed by the Advertising Research Foundation' s recent review of dozens of cross media studies to have been mis-spent on advertising. There's a headline in there somewhere. "Get Wasted.
Waste Your Client's Ad Budget."
That $50 billion figure represent 18.8 percent of the total $266 billion U.S. ad spend as estimated by Universal McCann. The ARF says the two biggest causes of wasted media spend are ads carrying the "wrong" message and buys being made with "wrong" timing. ARF suggest after recovering from "morning after" syndrome, you walk right up to your creative director and account director and say, "Dammit, we need to test this creative before it runs!" Yes. Test. What a novel concept.
In fact, ARF says testing creative will knock $10 billion off that wasted ad dollars figure. Try it. It could work.
Yesterday, Reebok launched a national outdoor campaign featuring the Chivas Rayadas Del Guadalajara team and their new uniform.
The ads carry the tagline, "La Nueva Piel De Las Chivas" meaning "New Skin of Chivas." The ads feature players Adolfo "Bofo" Bautista, Salvador Carmona, Alberto Medina, Francisco Palencia and Oswaldo Sanchez. The outdoor campaign will appear in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Loas Angeles, New Jersey, New York, San Antonio and San Diego. There's also a supporting print effort in the November issue of national soccer magazine 90:00.
"By promoting Chivas in the US, Reebok aims to increase nationwide awareness of our alignment with one of the top sports teams in the world," blathered Reebok Director of Latin American Marketing Jorge Dionne. "Through advertising Chivas in key cities with high Latin American populations, Reebok's goal is to boost our brand visibility among a broader audience of soccer fans." Translation: Buy our shoes!
As an extension to its HaveItYourWay promotion, Burger King has teamed with AOL to invade the campus of Arizona State University distributing blank CDs in the school newspaper, The State Press.
The CDs, packaged with a cover that says, "What's Up With This Blank CD" and a pamphlet that says "Mix It Your Way," were distributed as an insert in the school's newspaper yesterday.
The copy read, "It's yours to burn any way you want with free music downloaded from America Online when you buy a hot Original WHOPPER sandwich from BURGER KING. There are over 700,000 songs to choose from, including in-studio performances from Sessions and AOL." It's very likely we'll see this campaign on more college campuses around the country. More images here, here and here. Thanks to ASU grad student Tian for the tip and pictures.
