Cheese Label Music Criticism
Photo by Lisa Fain
According to the Advertising Age Songs for Soap blog, one of the magazine’s assistant editor discovered a container of cheese with Van Halen song lyrics instead of the ingredients. This was taken to mean that Van Halen, or at least the song “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love” is cheesy.
Simple Words
With all the clutter in our lives, marketers and other communicators are reducing the number of words shown to us so that they can get our attention. A short, simple message is more easily understood, absorbed, processed and filed away. This is especially true if we are distracted and paying attention to many things at once.
There is a great new sign on the door of the Caribou Coffee shop across the street from my office. Facing out, so you read it walking into the store, it says Breathe in. This simple act reminds coffee lovers of one reason they come to coffee places. They love the smell of coffee. And smell is the sense that has the most powerful memory associations. Maybe the smell of coffee reminds you of a lazy Sunday morning reading the paper, or a great trip to a bed and breakfast to where you woke up to the smell of someone else making coffee.
And the sign did not say Smell, but it said Breathe in. Since most of us breathe through our nose, and can’t help smelling the coffee, this further associates the coffee smell, and it’s memories, with a natural response and action. Maybe I am reading too much into this, but I thought it was very effective.
The other side of the sign, which you see as you leave the store, says Breathe out. This lets you know that this current experience is over and you are going back to your life.
Another example of a short, simple message that tries to grab our attention appeared on the back of a bus. Triangle Transit, a bus service that poorly connects Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, got new buses a few months ago with a snazzy new paint scheme. On the back is a rectangular LED panel that illuminates when the brake lights, also LEDs, come on. The panel says STOP. As if four brightly-lit brake lights are not enough, the manufacturers of the bus have added this carefully worded safety device. With so many people talking on cell phones, or doing who knows what, while driving, there is a need to increase the alert level.
This is like when the third brake light was added to cars in the back window. We needed something new to call our attention to the fact that the car in front of us was stopping. And we are more distracted now than ever. What other words are coming next?
Amnesty International Calls Out China
Here is a new print campaign created by TBWA/Paris for Amnesty International that calls out China on its human rights records by showing graphic torture photos representing Olympic events. The copy reads “After the Olympic Games, the fight for human rights must go on.” These are pretty powerful images, but they probably don’t change anyone’s opinion about anything.
from Ads of the World
Swimming
Weightlifting
Archery
Original “Who’s on the Button?” Political Ad
As the presidential race continues, and the candidates continue to spend money on commercials (and web videos) questioning each other’s experience and decision-making process, here is a look back at a similar ad from 1964. The Daisy ad, as it is known, ran only 1 time in September 1964. The concept and production are simple and straight-forward, but pretty heavy-handed. Political advertising has never been about subtlety.
Here is a complete website dedicated to its story.
Ad Agencies Need to Change
Here’s an article from Brandweek quoting a new report from Forrester Research about the coming changes in the advertising industry, taking into account the importance of social media and the way consumers use information.
Forrester Research believes today’s ad agencies are not well-structured to take on tomorrow’s marketing challenges, needing to move from making messages to establishing community connections.
Vote for Favorite Super Bowl Ads with Twitter
Check out this post from Jeremiah Owyang, or just follow these instructions to participate in Twitter voting for Super Bowl ads.
1) Sign up: Get a twitter account, got that? Good.
2) Send your vote to @superbowlads: When we’re watching the game in real time, simply send a reply to superbowlads. I created this Twitter account just for this virtual event. Reply to the superbowlads account, name the commerical, and give it a rating of 1-5 stars, 5 being the best.
examples:
“@superbowlads That Pepsi commercial was funny 4 stars”
“@superbowlads The Hillary Clinton advertisement was bunko 2 stars”
“@superbowlads Bud-wise-er, that was so 10 years ago, weak. 1 star”
3) See what others rated: You can then see everyone who’s rated the ads by doing a search on any of the Twitter search tools, I like Terraminds. See this example, it’s showing all the people who have replied to superbowlads.
Super Bowl Drives Web Traffic
from USA Today:
Multitasking viewers start before the game ends: As the fourth quarter was winding down last year, the 22 Super Bowl advertisers with major websites already were drawing 782,679 visitors a minute, according to Akamai Technologies, an Internet traffic specialty firm.
And here’s a link to USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Section