Monday, September 19, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Product placement in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
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Product placement in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
In an ironic twist, brands pay for product placements in a movie that demonizes product placements.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Powerful Insight on Brand Journalism and Chrysler from Bob Garfield
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Powerful Insight on Brand Journalism and Chrysler from Bob Garfield
In this post from Bob Garfield, we see two errors in social media usage: one is from a brand and another from an employee. Chrysler fired an employee who tweeted this: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive." Despite a stated commitment to social media, Chrysler's action suggests it isn't committed to real dialogue or to the spontaneity of social media conversations. The employee made a mistake too - by not taking the added care to ensure that what he posted was what he wanted associated with his own digital footprint. As the saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right.
- Just as SXSW was getting underway, Chrysler had cut ties to a social-media contractor after one of its employees hit send on the following tweet: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive."
- The junior employee behind the message, 28-year-old Scott Bartosiewicz, explained that he had meant to send it from his personal account, but clicked the wrong box on his Twitter deck. Perhaps that is why Chrysler, instead of stoning him to death, merely fired him.
- "The company has invested greatly, not only financially, but philosophically ... in supporting Detroit and the U.S. auto industry," Chrysler spokesman Ed Garsten told the Associated Press, "and we simply couldn't tolerate any messaging -- whether or not there was an obscenity -- that was denigrating to Detroit."
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Yeah, what an apostate that Bartosiewicz is. In a city wracked with unemployment, crime, poverty, corruption, racism and intractable urban decay, discussion of driving habits is a blasphemy that takes it too far. And an ad campaign that uses rapper Eminem to personify the city's raw grit could not possibly make room for a witty molecule of road rage.
That's why, whether in Austin or Motown, "Brand Journalism" is such an awful misnomer. I find it ironic that marketers are charged with conducting conversations and no one knows how to tell the fucking truth.
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The End of an Era: No More CP&B and the King
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The End of an Era: No More CP&B and the King
In this post, AdFreak presents Crispin's 15 best campaigns for Burger King. Enjoy the memories as you travel down seven years of Burger King's best advertising.
Friday, March 4, 2011
How to create fascinating SlideShare presentations: Tips from Sally Hogshead
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How to create fascinating SlideShare presentations: Tips from Sally Hogshead
Sally knows presentations. And you can too once you follow her 6 steps for creating effective presentations.
Students who use these tips in preparing their next class presentation will qualify for a gold star award. -
- 1. Start with a strong core concept. As with any presentation, it all starts with the idea. (Duh.) To translate into a great SlideShare, your concept must be robust enough to merit 15 or 20 pages of description, yet simple enough to be contained within a succinct, one-minute-ish presentation.
- 2. Spend extra time to find un-lame visuals. Reject the stock photography clichés. Refuse to give in to the hackneyed metaphors. (Yeah, this means no more stock photos of men holding briefcases running across a finish line). Find images that not only feel fresh and vibrant, but also strategically accentuate your point.
- 3. Don’t always use images that are “see-say.” Your images shouldn' literally re-state your point, but rather, add depth and meaning. For instance, when talking about a “fork in the road” …don’t actually show a photo of a fork in the road. To do this, don’t simply search on the stock site for a literal interpretation of your concept, or the site will be more than happy to serve up more lame puns like “fork in the road.” Rather than using search keywords “fork in the road,” get a little more conceptual, and search for words such as “decisions” or “choices” or “complexity.”
- 4. Take a moment to craft your typography. You don’t have to go crazy with mad design skills, but don’t just cut and paste your unformatted text from a Word doc. Take a moment to check line breaks and basic placement on the page. Since your SlideShare won’t have music or spoken words, your text bears greater responsibility of visually communicating the tone and emotion of your idea.
- 5. Establish a pattern, then disrupt it. I like to establish a consistent visual pattern in the first few pages of a SlideShare, then add energy and surprise by breaking the pattern.
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. Almost done! Now wrap it up with a call to action. At the end of your SlideShare, your viewer should want to learn more. (After all, you’ve just fascinated them!) Let them know what action you intend them to take, followed by a page of your contact info. I ended this SlideShare with a tempting, but not in-your-face, call to action:
Whether you realize it or not, you’re already using these seven triggers. The question is, are you using the right triggers, in the right way, to get your desired result? This book will show you.
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Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Don't Fear Creativity; Embrace It; Elizabeth Gilbert Inspires
In this TED presentation, Elizabeth Gilbert speaks openly about the creative process and approaches to creativity. She also acknowledges the FEAR of creating - and of not creating. We all face this fear, some more often than others. We can't let fear stop us from creating.
Listen and watch as Elizabeth Gilbert inspires us to move into our own creative spaces.
Listen and watch as Elizabeth Gilbert inspires us to move into our own creative spaces.
Fail: Poor Question and Response Designs in Marketing Research
Students - we've been talking about question design and response options in class recently. Granted, much can go wrong as we try to develop the perfect question and response categories. But here we have an example from Alison (at the human element.co.uk) that really shows how wrong things can go. I repost below from her blog with her analysis of what's gone wrong.
"And this is where my brain exploded" Posted by Alison MacLeod on Feb 18, 2011 in Rants, Usability | View Comments
"Half-way through a serious-minded survey on Internet use by a terribly reputable research provider, I reach this question. Reproduced here in its entirety.
Quick, at the back, HOW MANY problems can you spot with this question? …
1. Asking two questions in one
2. Giving twenty-five options
3. Many of the options don’t relate to the questions (how can ‘listening to a podcast’ be classified as ‘sharing’ or ‘expressing an opinion’??)
4. Let’s just say that this reveals a very peculiar mental model of internet use
5. Twenty-five options.
The memory load is just astounding – you have to hold 2 questions and 25 options in your mind. I had forgotten the first couple by the time I got to the middle. What’s more, it’s not that my memory is failing. My utter lack of recall is supported by science. "
What went wrong with ads shown during the Oscars?
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MediaPost Publications JCPenney's Oscar Ads Bomb, Per Ace Metrix 03/02/2011
Research from Ace Metrix suggests that ads showing during the Oscars broadcast were disappointing on many levels.
Despite the big ad buy, brands overall didn't use the opportunity to engage consumers beyond the 30 second commercial. Ace Metrix scored commercials on persuasion, watchability, desire, relevance, and likeability. The scores suggest that agencies and brands should do more testing prior to producing and broadcasting commercials. -
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The JCP ads failed for a number of reasons, Ace Metrix's Daboll tells Marketing Daily. Ace Metrix scores ads across a number of criteria to come up with the total Ace Score, and these ads did poorly across almost every one, especially in "persuasion," "watchability," "desire," "relevance," and "likeability."
Specifically, on average, their "desire scores" (meaning that the ad made consumers want the product), were 80 points below the norm for all ads in the Ace Metrix database (a good barometer for a national program). "This was despite the fact that a couple of the JCP ads scored above norm in 'change,' indicating that the ads caused people to change their view on JCP," he says.
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Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Is your brand lost on Facebook?
Because most users view Top News rather than Recent News in their newsfeeds, brand messages are less visible. This is because Top News shows the news feed of those with whom each user interacts with most frequently. If you like a brand but don't continue to interact with the brand's page, the brand messages won't show up in your news feed.
This is good for Facebook users who want to see the most relevant updates in their feeds. But its bad for brands who are trying to engage people in a dialogue. At least it is a limitation until the dialogue is there.
Facebook's answer for brands - sponsored stories. Reactions? How will you feel about seeing paid ad placements in your news feed?
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- As you might have heard, Facebook recently announced the launch of sponsored stories, a new ad product that will allow marketers to insert certain user updates into paid advertisements.
This is yet another blurring of the line between paid and earned media. But its another signal that because brands are stumbling in their quest to be heard on the world's most popular social network
- Facebook actually attempted to correct this with the recent rollout of the "Top News" vs. "Recent News" system. "Top News" features the news and updates from your friends that Facebook's secret Edgerank algorithm thinks you will be most interested in. And since it is the default view of a user's Facebook page, a brand's presence within a user's "Top News" is as good as gold
- "Recent News," on the other hand, is fast becoming the spam folder of Facebook. This is where you will find an overflow of updates from "friends" with whom you rarely interact or whose news simply isn't that popular. More and more, this is where branded updates are appearing.
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