This was brilliantly executed by BBDO New York. I won't add any further commentary to this but take a look for yourself if you haven't checked it out already.
I spent a week as an event volunteer for Social Media Week (SMW) in Sydney which was held September 22-26 at the Beresford Hotel. It was also happened to my uni graduation week, which I missed out on because I made the decision to be at the social media conference instead. It was an engaging week filled with keynotes, panels, workshops and discussions about the constantly evolving rise of social media and its implications on our relationship with it in life, society and business.
So, Google and Nintendo joined together to announce that there is a new job opening at the Google Headquarters, and that role? To be a master, a Pokemon Master! This was surely every kid or young adult's dream. And, this was all a part of an April Fools Day Prank. While most consumers may have been skeptical of any truth to this, of course, it surely didn't stop them from joining in the challenge. Consumers were able to use Google Maps to catch virtual pokemon and share to their friends of how many they have caught.
What a great way to get consumers excited and use their product?
My own image
Okay, so I didn't catch all of the 150 pokemon that were available to catch, but I did catch Charmander! That's my favourite pokemon, along with Psyduck. Lots o' Love, Linda
The infamous selfie from the Oscar's 2014 that Ellen DeGeneres posted onto Twitter that received a lot of attention and over 2 million re-tweets on Twitter, was a part of a marketing stunt for Samsung. The product placement integration was handled by Publicis Groupe who was also responsible for an infamous controversial selfie of President Barrack Obama. Turns out that the Oscar selfie photo was valued between $800 billion and $1 billion, due to its featured celebrities and the amount of sharing of the photo onto social media, which ultimately caused the social network to collapse temporarily.
It is important to realise that slavery still exists in this modern day and age in various forms, regardless of how less barbaric it may appear to be in comparison to how it was in the past.
Developed by DareLondon forHope for Justice, the issue of modern slavery has been brought to light through an online advertising campaign using various media including a videoand still images in the form of film posters, much similar and inspired by Steve McQueen's film, 12 Years a Slave.
The campaign also came about at the right time when the film was receiving a lot of attention, especially with its numerousAcademy Awardsnominations and awards such as Best Picture and Best Actress.
An inspiring campaign "Dance (RED) Saves Lives", that Coke and Red have launched together was a movement to raise awareness of AIDS/HIV in the lead up to World AIDS Day (1st December). What other fun and great way to do this other than through dance, which was the main element to this campaign. It encouraged consumers to join the dance movement and upload their own video in support of the fight for an aids-free generation. It included the official video of Tommy Trash's remix of Empire of the Sun's song "Celebrate", that featured a few infamous dancers that many of the younger demographic have connected with on social media; meanwhile, showing a simple signature dance that consumers can follow and feature in their own music videos, also using the featured song. Harry Shum Jr, Jabbawockeez, Brian Puspos, and Les Twins all in one video, yes! The movement also reached Sydney for the dance music festival "Stereosonic", where live-streaming of the 2-day event was available on danceRED.com.
Ensemble were the geniuses behind the creation of the MagnumPleasure Pop-Up store at Westfield Sydney. With pop-up stores in other cities including New York, Milan, Shanghai and Toronto as part of a global campaign, the 6 week promotion created quite a buzz! I was fortunate to experience this on its final day, even though I had to wait in line for what seemed liked ages. It was definitely worth it! Designing your own magnum ice cream from a range of toppings and then seeing it being created before you is something you can't let pass. I'm sure everyone can relate to the feeling the pop-up store gave, which was making everyone feel like a big kid again at a candy store or close to being at Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. And of course, an experiential marketing campaign cannot do without integrating social elements. IPads were provided on location where consumers were able to share photos of their aesthetically pleasing creations on social media.
Nike's slogan "Just Do It" celebrated its 25th anniversary with their new campaign "Possibilities" featuring LeBron James, Serena Williams, Gerard Pique and Andre Ward.
For the first time, Nike is using their classic tagline as a hashtag (#justdoit) on social media to inspire viewers to participate in Nike+ challenges including Nike+ Running and NikeFuel challenges using the Nike+Running app.
Happy 25th Birthday, you're just as old as I am! Made famous by Dan Wieden (founder of advertising agency, Wieden+Kennedy), the very first advertising campaign in 1988 featured 80 year old, Walt Stack. Clickhereto check it out the original commercial.
A few months ago (late May to be exact), I was fortunate to see Johnny Earle present at Vivid Sydney Ideas , Co-Create the Experience. I've been following Johnny since 2010 via Twitter, so I was super excited to see and meet the mastermind of the Johnny Cupcakes brand, all the way from Boston. He was named as Business Week's number one Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008 at the age of 26. He spoke of how he turned a simple idea into the successful business it is today. He spoke how he thinks his concept is strange, but strange is good. Strange is important. And, I can tell you, his entrepreneurial mindset was really inspiring to say the least. And, I certainly learned a lot about marketing during his key note presentation. I came to learn about Johnny Cupcakes in 2010 from Twitter and followed him since then. Of course, at first, I thought it was just a cupcake brand, but it wasn't. It's actually a t-shirt brand, with physical stores decked out to look like bakeries. A lot of his brand awareness came as a result of word-of-mouth. Johnny spoke about how he did not advertise his brand, but the beauty of word-of-mouth of his brand, to his surprise, spread not only domestically but internationally. And this was because of the following;
Packaging
Experience
Keep people talking
Travel
Network
Build a community
Re-invest into the brand
Keep positive
Thrills and surprise
Further important notes I took from this session are:
Approach people you know AND don't know
Leave social circle and meet new people
Don't worry about getting broke
Everyone should have a business card
Do more of what makes you happy!
Johnny Cupcakes Pop-Up Store in Sydney
The little gift he hid under our seats as a 'surprise' strategy.
Meet & Greet! I was tired by this time while carrying heavy textbooks, but I was real happy to meet him!
This moment will go down to one of my highlights of the year. To learn more about Johnny Cupcakes, watch this video;
What's a kid to do when they are abused by an adult? They are vulnerable and wouldn't know what to do, who to tell or where to go.
A clever designed campaign by ad agency, Grey (Spain), for ANAR Foundation(Ayuda A Ninos Y Adolescentes En Riesgo or Help For Children And Adolescents At Risk) was launched in Spain with the aim to increase child abuse awareness and encourage child abuse victims to reach out for help by making a phone call in discreet.
The outdoor poster ads have two seperate messages for two target groups; one aimed at adults and the other aimed at children. Each target message were designed to be visible only for the intended target group, made possible by knowing the average height and using a lenticular lens.
The message made visible to the adult is a general child abuse awareness message. It also displays an image of a clean face of a boy from the adult's point of view.
Whereas, the other message aimed at children displays the same image of the child but clearly appears to have wounds and bruises as a result of violence. The important message of making a phone call along with a number are also displayed and visible only from their point of view.
Being a woman, I know how hard it can be sometimes. I am also very aware of how critical we can be to our own selves. Afterall, we all seem to be our own worst critic and enemy. And most of all, those criticisms all stem from how we perceive ourselves...on theoutside.
There's always some kind of flaw that we pay the most attention to or are most self-conscious about. Ask any girl and she will tell you what they dislike about their image. Even the most gorgeous looking people will pick out some kind of flaw in themselves. I guess it's also hard cause people are always talking about people's looks. We start making comparisons and feel insecure about ourselves because we don't feel that we weigh up to society's standards. This is not to bash on girls but every now and then, I do hear and read harsh comments from other girls saying stuff like "she's not that pretty", "she's ugly", "she's disgustingly skinny", "her teeth are ugly", or "she's got no ass".
Dove is a brand that is always on the mission to inspire women to embrace their own beauty. Agency, Ogilvy & Mather (Brazil) were the geniuses behind Dove's 'Real Beauty Sketches' campaign that went viral after its release more than 2 weeks ago. It's a clever social experiment that challenges how women currently think about themselves and to remind us that we are indeed beautiful the way we are.
Alicia Keys and her team have integrated social media into the marketing of her fifth concert tour, 'Set the World on Fire' as a way of personally connecting with her fans. This included creative uses of Tumblr, crowd-sourcing, Twitter and Behind-the-Scenes clips. Tumblr: Tumblr users were selected to document her tour as it unfolded. This meant that users were encouraged to post content, take photos, create gifs and collages. As a bonus, a photo pass, two show tickets and two meet-and-greet tickets were given to the Tumblr users involved. Keys is also an active user (www.thekeysofalicia.tumblr.com) on Tumblr and is also able to connect with fans by 'liking' and 'reblogging' posts.
Crowd-sourcing: Alicia Keys' "Illuminate Me" video that was played during each show used a crowd-sourcing component. This meant that attendees at each city were given the opportunity to feature in the video at the concert when they submit photos of themselves as part of a "Keep Moving - Your City, Your Video" initiative.
Twitter: Using the hashtag #AliciaDedicates on Twitter, fans tweet their section, row and seat number for the opportunity to have a song personally dedicated to them by Keys. Click the link to view the campaign video since it's an unlisted video on YouTube. Behind-the-Scenes Clips: Videos were also released on YouTube prior to the tour to create anticipation of her tour. Eg:Rehearsals Part 1. I believe these ideas are clever and creative ways for a recording artist to collaborate with fans utilising social media to facilitate with the marketing of upcoming tours. For more information on the projects, click here. Lots o' Love, Linda
When it comes to Coca-Cola, you either love it or hate it. You either love or hate the drinks; or you simply love or hate the brand itself. Personally, I'm a proud member of Team Coca Cola. And, most of their campaigns? Love them.
Please put any cynical thoughts aside for once, and enjoy this Coca-Cola commercial that hopefully inspires us all to "Let's Go Crazy" and do good deeds.
While I was not particularly following the event closely or interested in the grid iron game itself, I would still like to congratulate the Baltimore Ravens for their Super Bowl XLVII win! Being a marketing student, it's hard to let this pass without being interested in what the "Brand Bowl" had to offer and how the audience responded this year. Of course, much of the talk about the Super Bowl, especially on social media (specifically Twitter), was about Beyonce's half-time show performance. In case you haven't caught up, she did put on a marvelous show with a surprise appearance of the girls from Destiny's Child (Kelly and Michelle). They all looked stunning! Check it out!
Another thing that made this year's Super Bowl memorable was the sudden power outage. I can imagine it being so exciting to be at the Super Bowl to witness the black out! Even though it was only half the lights, but still exciting and enough for people to mention it on social media.
On top of that, Oreo quickly responded (after approval) with the following tweet which then spread very quickly:
The process of what happened behind the scenes is briefly provided in this article.
I have yet to watch all of the commercials, but here are a few that I enjoyed from what I've seen so far. The ones posted on my previous post are also in my list of favourites.
From my observation of the Super Bowl ads, the majority of the brands have integrated hashtags with their commercials. I found this article "2013 Superbowl Ads Favour URLS, Hashtags - Not Facebook" by Jeremiah Owyang very informative about this year's Super Bowl ads integration with technology. It's useful data to think about for future marketing campaigns.
Rise of the hashtags? Not only are hashtags useful on Twitter, but it's also useful for content discovery on other social media platforms such as Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. Perhaps, a weakness for Facebook? Lots o' Love, Linda
Okay, so the big game is not far away. What do I mean by the big game? The big game in America; The Super Bowl XLVII! And we all know what that means; big game, big names, big show, big audience and big budget commercials.
With an expected audience of 110 million people from all over the world, it's no wonder companies spend around $3.8 million USD for 30 seconds of air-time. And on top of that, the commercials may be the highlight by most of that audience (ahem, that could be myself).
While the Baltimore Ravens vs San Francisco 49ers game is just around the corner, we all have the chance to view some of the Super Bowl teasers and full commercials online days or even weeks before the kick-off.
Why are companies doing this? Won't this ruin the element of surprise and anticipation? Maybe, but according to Fortune, Suzie Reider of YouTube, says that Super Bowl ads that were pre-released ahead of the game averaged 9.1 million viewers in 2012. Whereas, an average of 1.3 million viewers were received for the ads that were released on the day of the game. With that in mind and the help of social media as a word-of-mouth platform, it would be a winner to release teasers and ads before game day. I also love that some of these commercials are embracing the "hashtags" so the audience may join in the online conversation. Here are some of this year's Super Bowl pre-releases: Milk Moustache: Got Milk?
Ahead of the release of Monsters, Inc. 2 - Monsters University,DisneyPixar have launched a college site for us to have a glimpse on what this university is all about. If you search up Monsters University on Google, the college site is the first listing. And, upon browsing through this site, it looks pretty legit. It's no lie to say that the Monsters University site puts my own university's site to shame.
It's got all the content any stakeholder would look for on a university site such as events; programs and majors; academic calendar and admission details just to name a few. There's even an online store where actual MU apparel may be purchased! How awesome is that? The attention to detail is impressive!
I don't know if it's cause I'm a sucker for Pixar but this promotional tactic is pretty genius! Just as genius as the Lots o' Huggin' Bear Commercial (circa 1983) and Japanese commercialwhich were released to promote Toy Story 3! The new Monsters, Inc. film is due to release on June 21st, 2013 but if you're in Australia like myself, we can check this out from June 20th.
Looking forward to this. Check out the movie trailer. And then check out the MU Commercial for prospective students. Lots o' Love, Linda
