There have been many advertising stunts that surprise passersby with inanimate talking object. Conoco, with help fron Venables Bell & Partners, used that approach in Denver to "celebrate how Conoco helps people get out there and do the things they love to do."
The agency placed a Conoco-branded car in a public space, loaded it with all sorts of outdoor gear and had it speak with people as they passed by. After some witty banter, the car voice would invite people to take any item of their choosing from the car as a gift.
Not a bad stunt. After all, who doesn't like free stuff?
more »
We love the oddity of this BBDO New York-created work for Snickers. Pirouetting off the classic Headless Horseman motif made popular in the Legend of Sleepy Hallow, the agency created the Horseless Headsman. Voiced rather brilliantly by Ezra Buzzington, the Horseless Headsman stumbles upon a group of trick or treaters in an attempt to scare them.
Ever jaded, these kids just don't get it. As much as our Horseless Headsman attempts to send a chill through the spine of these youngsters, it is to no avail. They ask, "How is that even scary?"
more »
AMV BBDO has released a rather epic commercial for Guinness that features a rogue cloud that gains sentience and begins a journey from the sea to the city. On his travels, the cloud becomes witness to human life and, in the end, helps put out a fire with an on-command thunder shower.
more »
As part of a project at The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Andrew Spitz and Kat Zorina developed an Instagram-based campaign for VELUX windows. Working with the knowledge that when people look up through a VELUX skylight, the have to stand a certain way. The pair called this "the VELUX pose."
To capture the VELUX pose, Spitz and Zorina crafted a device that would hold an iPhone to that people would have to look up at it. They then placed the device on the streets of Copenhagen and took pictures of people. Those whose pictures were taken could then use a connected iPad to upload images to their Instagram account and tag then with #theveluxpose. Currently, there are 55 images with that hashtag on Instagram.
We can envision a campaign like this getting some fairly decent traction with more devices and more resource. We're sure Spitz and Zorina would love to help.
more »
Competitive creative research has always been an important element when developing online creative. Finding that competitive information, though, is often tedious. MixRank has launched a product that makes it easy to find your competitor's online ads and other online sources that drive traffic to their site. The service can also determine which ads have worked and which haven't providing insight which can be used to craft more effective ads.
Check out this interview with MixRank Co-Founder Illya Lichtenstein. In the interview, Lichtenstein explains the service and how it can help brands develop more effective online ads and determine what their competition is doing online.
more »
On a panel today at the IAB MIXX Conference during Advertising this week in New York, Facebook Director of Pricing and Measurement Brad Smallwood likened social media to the early days of TV which had no method of measurement until Arthur Nielsen introduced the rating point in 1950. He went on to argue that online marketers should focus on this system placing increased emphasis on reach and frequency rather than clicks.
As Todd Wasserman reports in Mashable, "Smallwood cited research from Nielsen (the company, not the founder) that showed a 0.07% correlation between high click-through rates and actual sales. Smallwood also rolled out some new data from a study conducted with Datalogix that found 99% of sales generated from online branding ad campaign came from consumers who saw ads, but didn't interact with them."
Read more of Todd's report here.
To hype the latest version of the video game, Resident Evil, London's Smithfield Meat Market was transformed into, well, a human meat market. Butchers at the meat market formed animal meat into meat products that looked like human body parts. The entire store was transformed into a human meat market. Check out the video below.
Proceeds from human body part sales will go to benefit the Limbless Association, a non-profit group that supports people who have lost their limbs.
more »
A new campaign from the brand whose sole mission is to make women's boobs look bigger than they really are, Wonderbra, is out with a new Digitas-created campaign. Print and outdoor ads, which debut tomorrow, will feature a fully clothed Adriana Cernanova. An app, entitled The Wonderbra Decoder, will detect a QR code on the ad and reveal what she is wearing underneath. All the usual social sharing options will be present as well.
Of the campaign, Wonderbra UK Marketing Manager Martina Alexander said, "We are showing Adriana in her clothes, including simple jeans and T-shirt, and through our new and unique app consumers can reveal the Wonderbra behind the look. It's really female friendly and links to the outfit which was important to us."
Martina, we're quite sure this app will be very male friendly as well.
more »
Kicking off the ninth (can you believe it?) Advertising Week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, at its IAB MIXX Conference, has released new research conducted by the Harvard Business School that found the ad-supported internet is responsible for 5.1 million U.S. jobs. The sector increased 100 percent over the past four years and contributed $530 billion to the U.S. economy in 2011, double that of 2007. In addition, the sector accounted for 3.7 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.
The report shows New York and California as home to the headquarters of the largest number of U.S. internet firms. This, of course, is due to the prominence of Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley as digital business hubs. In addition, Washington, Massachusetts, and Illinois are the next three most digital-friendly states. In total, nine states are the sites of headquarters that account for 72 percent of attributed employment, although the jobs themselves were dispersed across other states in the union:
more »
|
