In the above Nike spot, Roger harbors a secret “attack” coach, played by New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords). The ad draws inspiration from Cato vs. Clouseau surprise attack scenes in Pink Panther films.
While Darby plays an offbeat, albeit moderately skillful Cato, Federer simply plays himself - a coolly amused international superstar, content to indulge his odd, yet welcome house guest.
For a good clean feeling, no matter what, we offer up this serial Wrigley’s Orbit® gum spot. Smacking wads of Orbit, this threesome pushes nearly every FCC boundary, yet never broaches one.
Add the signature Orbit brand sign-off: hand-held, frame-centered package; Vanessa, the onlooking, ever-white-bright and ĂĽber-perky narrator with package-matching scarf; a tagline reinforcement finish; and this one’s a wrap.
Viral. Free. Fun.
At last count Orbit has enjoyed 1,967,514 brand impression-delivered views of this video on YouTube alone—part of what’s propelled Orbit to a top five chewing gum brand. Now that’s meteoric viral distribution. And for brand agents, that’s just good clean fun—key word, fun.
This street sign isn’t advertising a 4-star restaurant, it’s a 24-hour White Castle that serves miniature hamburgers called Slyders®. A regional player, they consistently rank among the Top 100 U.S. foodservice companies, serving over 500 million burgers a year.
White Castle is running a serious business, but not too serious.
Love is in the Ambiance
A kitsch castle motif and hamburger joint ambiance doesn’t register as a romantic destination for most couples. Nor does dining on steamy Slyders® in a stainless-steel and plastic-laminate setting on candlelit, linen-draped tables. Which is exactly why White Castle’s charming Valentine’s Day promotion works.
Not your typical White Castle experience: waiters, flowers, candlelight and tablecloths.
Embrace Yourself
From a strategic marketing standpoint, White Castle understands and embraces their market space and brand persona—and are willing to leverage it by poking fun at themselves. This promotion transcends a one-way communication, inviting consumers to interact with the brand—sharing a little levity with others at White Castle’s expense.
Instigating Viral-ability
The promotion’s self-effacing humor became an opportunity for consumer-generated online viral buzz. The Brainstorm employee who took the picture emailed it to 3 people; two within Brainstorm and one in Oregon. Several weeks later she received the image back in an email from a former co-worker, unrelated in any tangible way to the original recipients with the subject ‘Valentine’s Day dinner plans?’ Who knows how far it traveled or how many people saw it?
Share the Love
Socially shared experiences both on and offline begin with transparency, relevance, and often wit. Inspiring people to talk positively about your brand requires involvement and reaching out to engage.
Street Advertising Services: A greener, cleaner approach to guerrilla branding
“We wanted to apply a technique that was not just eye-catching and effective but also friendly to the environment. What could be more natural than water?”
—Kristian Jeffrey, SAS Founder
Profit from Filth
Street Advertising Services (SAS) of Britain offers a greener, cleaner approach to guerrilla branding. Using water, stencils and pressure washers, SAS cleans pavement in the dead of night, creating street art advertisements for companies like British Petroleum and K2r (see above).
Simple, direct and probably a great deal of fun on the installation side, it’s word-of-mouth (WOM) via foot. Remarkable.
Is Google’s OpenSocial the new Microsoft Windows of Social Networking?
Campy but Good
Google announced the launch of OpenSocial—their set of standardized application programming interfaces (APIs)—at “Campfire One” last Thursday.
Thrilled Social Network developers attending the event laud the benefits in the highlight video above (4:15). See the full event here (57:23).
S’More of a Good Thing
And why not be happy? Those developers are now aligned with Google and Google’s next big thing, and they also join a growing list of prominent OpenSocial online networks and supporters with whom to collaborate, including:
Their combined reach equates to over 200 million subscribers.
Roasting Distribution
Most importantly, OpenSocial promises developers a way to optimize development costs through the creation of a common platform available (thus far) only to OpenSocial affiliates.
A single source development platform means more rapid distribution and greater reach since developers can now build one app for multiple social networks, eliminating the need to create multiple network-specific applications.
Passing on the Hot Dogs
Conspicuously missing from the list of Google OpenSocial faithful was social media darling, Facebook. Facebook passed up a $1 billion offer from Yahoo last year, then a week ago sold a 1.6% stake to Microsoft for $240 million, inflating Facebook’s value to an estimated $15 billion.
Google’s OpenSocial countermeasure is expected to significantly reduce that estimate.
If OpenSocial delivers as promised and becomes the global de facto standard for social network development, Facebook may one day need to face compliance just to remain relative and viable. Probably not what Microsoft or Facebook had in mind when they inked the deal late last month.
Branded Just Right
All of which bodes well for for brand marketers, advertisers, developers and users. OpenSocial’s standards and conventions should drive streamlined creation, processing, access and distribution of messaging, bringing deeper reach and measurably greater returns for marketers.
Of course, sometimes standardization translates to stifling and stale—we’ll see. But the commercial benefits of ubiquitous and proprietary standardization are hard to deny.
Here’s a free Mac app allowing you to call up, via customized abbreviations, any text string you copy and paste frequently. Best of all the text is placed pre-formatted - returns, bullets and all. It’s become a staple here at Brainstorm. You can download your own at app4mac.
If you can get past the vapid brand identity and UI, PimpMyNews, the talking social news site, is an interesting concept. The site will read your RSS feeds to you over your mp3 player, iPhone, etc. or computer.
[via: PR-Squared]
NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet, a holiday product parody, promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.”
Robert Scoble explores the notion in this BusinessWeek piece re: the running debate over where we’re headed with aging, albeit ubiquitous, email paradigms versus spam-free Tweets.
[via: Scobleizer]
Track the Hive’s Buzz
Aggregate the aggregators at Popurls.com—simultaneously follow the most current posts from all the top sites like Digg, Newsvine, YouTube and Flickr. Or, “find your favorite thing,” over at Buzzfeed.
Peter Bruhn’s Swedish type foundry is preparing a new freshet of fonts to flow forth and flourish among us—according to Typographi and Bruhn himself.
[via: Sheer Brick]
Can’t see how your two soda bottles a day are impacting the environment? Chris Jordan’s images will help you visualize it. View his amazing statistical depictions at Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait.
Okay this would just be a goofy flash-based Spirograph-esque toy if it didn’t generate downloadable .svg (Scalable Vector Graphic) files—which it does. Pattern enthusiasts, meet Qbesq.
Enter at your own risk. A proof of concept that design does matter. Havenworks.com hailed on Digg recently as perhaps, “…the most poorly designed website in the world!”
Tags: Featured, Marketing, Advertising, Sports Marketing
