This guest post is written by Jesse Robson, a freelance writer currently working for Liberty Marketing. When he's not at work Jesse spends most of his free time writing, following pop culture and playing with his golden doodle Max.
Commercials have certainly evolved from the time of your parents and even your parents' parents. If you get TV Land on cable tv, you might have even caught some of the older, retro commercials interspersed between episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and I Dream of Genie.
Yes, things were certainly different back then and all you really needed was a cute mascot, an infectious jingle and an authoritative voice to move product. However, commercials and, really, marketing as a whole have evolved.
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So everyone's got their panties in a twist over the BIC for Her pen situation. It's being called a social media disaster, a debacle and, yes, yet another example of a brand asleep at the social media steering wheel. These are all valid points. But, perhaps, not to the degree we inside the inner circles of marketing would like them to be.
Writing in Advertising Age today, B.L Ochman, who is one of the most astute, bright and wonderfully friendly people on the planet wrote, "Judging by their clueless lack of response, BIC richly deserves its place in the anals of online brand goofs."
Pointing out how many missteps the brand took in this situation, Ochman continued, "Despite the fact that the buzz has been growing for weeks, the brand did not have the foresight to secure @BicForHer on Twitter, where a spoof account has already been launched, nor did they buy the URL www.bicforher.com, which is available for $12.99. A Tumblr blog is chronicling the funniest reviews and blog posts. An ad for BIC for Her launched last week, and is fast picking up derisive comments on YouTube. And through it all, BIC is silent."
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While we won't likely know for a year or so, Avis' tagline shift from "We Try Harder" to "It's Your Space" will either go down as the biggest ad flop in history or the crucial change the brand needed to pull itself back to the number two spot (Recently, it slipped to third behing Hertz and Enterprise).
The tagline, "We Try Harder" was created in 1962 by DDB. And it worked, pulling Avis out of a decade-long slump and into a position of profit.
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While some have said the new BBH-created Axe work - a departure from the agency's brilliant Keifer Sutherland/Susan Glenn spot - is a sad return to the brand's roots where mostly women and sometimes men are reduced to playthings, toys for the horny male middle school mindset.
We say smart move. All the brand has done, and always has done, is celebrate the carnal desire that is ever present between man and woman. It's an innately human desire. It's a fact of life. And no amount of pious, politically correct sugar coating is going to diminish the fact that men and women are, forever, sexual beings that, yes, are sometime vile, vulgar and animalistic in their dealings with one another.
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Well, it's over; the XXX Olympics have come and gone. Two weeks of non-stop athletic competition led to Sunday's Closing Ceremony. After watching the Opening Ceremony with its stunning visual and historical festivities, I was not sure what to expect. Would the Queen do another stunt? Would David Beckham fly a helicopter into the stadium with all of the Spice Girls on board? Would Sir Elton John sing with Bono, U2, and Mick Jagger? Would the Olympic flame be disassembled and taken away in a hot air balloon?
Wow; Britain did the Closing Ceremony right. Motor scooters traversing the stadium, singers on Rolls Royce convertibles, dancers gyrating, Eric Idle with angels, Russell Brand and Fat Boy Slim, Super Models strutting their stuff, Annie Lennox singing, and the Spice Girls - all of them. (With Victoria and David Beckham, is this the first husband, Opening Ceremony, and wife, Closing Ceremony, Olympics?) Everywhere you looked there were British flags - the Union Jack in cloth, on uniforms, in electric lights, and in human form. As you watched the Parade of Athletes, each athlete looked happy, having fun, and enjoying his or her moment in the sun. We watched the athletes, and the athletes watched us, and each other.
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This Olympics-focused editorial series is written by Ronald Urbach, Chairman of law firm Davis & Gilbert LLP and the co-chair of the Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Practice Group at the firm.
The Olympics - I have been watching exciting events, fantastic competition and great stories. This week, I became the roving warrior, on the west coast in meetings. How was I going to stay connected to the Olympics? I became emotionally invested during Week One; I was not going to be happy merely reading the results online.
The good news of course is that we now live in a world where being away from a television no longer means having to miss the show. Most of us already carry in our pockets and handbags our principal communication device, our smartphone. But fewer of us are aware that our phone may soon be our principal entertainment and viewing device as well. Already for these Olympics, having a smartphone (and a cable subscription) means having the ability to watch all 302 competitions of all 32 Olympic sports, both as they happen in real time, and in many instances, on demand, in available taped programs.
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 Questionable? Brilliant? This Olympics-focused editorial series is written by Ronald Urbach, Chairman of law firm Davis & Gilbert LLP and the co-chair of the Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Practice Group at the firm.
Much of what we hear as we read the reports of the Olympics is: how many medals? It appears that the media is compelled to quantify success, sort of like an Olympic box score. Is the US leading in the total medal count? Is the US leading in gold medals? How many medals does China have? Will Great Britain, the host country, finally begin to rack up the medals? As I write this article, the US is leading in total overall medals, though not in gold. Great Britain is coming on strong - now in third, and Andy Murray beat Roger Federer for the coveted gold in men's tennis.
But to advertisers and agencies, the medal count pales next to the critical question - who will be the breakout advertising spokesperson of the 2012 Olympics? Will anyone rise to the level of a true advertising superstar?
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This Olympics-focused editorial series is written by Ronald Urbach, Chairman of law firm Davis & Gilbert LLP and the co-chair of the Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Practice Group at the firm.
I don't know about you, but the last time I played badminton was when I was on summer vacation with my kids. We bought the kit at the local hardware store, set it up on the grass and started playing. As we played, not only did we have fun, we got better. This stimulated me to learn a little more about the game: the little birdie thing that we were hitting was called a shuttlecock, and the game itself had been started by bored British military officers in 18th century India.
What does my summer vacation game have to do with the Olympics, advertisers, and agencies? Well, thanks to the South Korean, Indonesian, and Chinese Olympic badminton teams, I now know that badminton is an Olympic sport and has been since 1992. Eight Olympic badminton players from these countries threw their games - in other words, they intentionally tried to lose. Was this a Black Sox Scandal? No. No one was bribed and no one was betting on the matches hoping to personally profit from their actions. What happened was they wanted to lose so that they would face an easier opponent in the later rounds of the competition. Call it strategic losing. Go to YouTube and watch one of the matches - the entire stadium audience recognized what was happening and boos rained down on the athletes. It was bizarre.
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This Olympics-focused editorial series is written by Ronald Urbach, Chairman of law firm Davis & Gilbert LLP and the co-chair of the Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Practice Group at the firm.
How many of you have seen this phrase in advertising on the Olympics broadcast: Official Sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Committee? We have all seen these words before. But take a moment and think about them. What do these words really mean? Who cares what they mean?
Consider the word - "Official." The key authorizing party behind the Olympics has decided that some companies will be in the club and the rest will not. To get in the club, a company has to enter in to a formal sponsorship agreement and pay a substantial fee; and in turn, it gets the right to call itself an Official Sponsor.
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This Olympics-focused editorial series is written by Ronald Urbach, Chairman of law firm Davis & Gilbert LLP and the co-chair of the Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Practice Group at the firm.
It has begun, the Olympics. Even the name sounds grand. For the athletes, it reflects years of overwhelming personal effort and training focused on a singular goal - to win gold. For each country, it's time to fly the flag and show pride. For London, it's the moment where they can show off to the world. For the agencies, advertisers, marketers, media, and the people and businesses that live and work in the ad ecosystem, they see the Olympics from their own unique vantage point.
But for me - a lawyer and head of the preeminent law firm in the advertising industry, and someone who has been living and breathing advertising and marketing his entire professional career, I see things through a very different prism. Over the next two weeks, I am going to give you my thoughts on what I am calling, the Olympics of Advertising.
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