White Castle’s conversation-inspiring promotion.

Dining on Slyders®
by candlelight

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

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.

[Restaurant interior photo: Girlieleep]

Vessel conceptual product rendering

Strong Concept + Strong Visualization

Creating a Personalized Beverage

According to their tagline, The Greener Grass.org is “Collaborating to design a better future.” With that and your health in mind, they created the Vessel concept, a system of components and options that would allow you to customize a drink to fit your personal tastes as well as your health and lifestyle needs.

With these three main bases and countless options, it’s about as far removed from today’s mainstream beverage model as you can get.

Bases: Nutrients to fit your lifestyle and demographic needs such as iron and calcium for women, or zinc and saw palmetto for men.

Flavors: Organic extracts to sate your specific tastebuds—everything from chocolate to wheatgrass, mango to mocha, or any imaginable combination in between.

Agents: Active ingredients like vitamins, minerals, and energy boosters for functional benefits—you name it, proteins or taurine, caffeine or ginseng—whatever you need.

The concept includes a reusable Vessel Lexan™ container strategically designed for optimum ingredient agitation.

Making the Concept Count

Programmatic design, packaging and convenience count in brand marketing. Whether or not the Vessel line ever comes to fruition, the concept is far more believable and supportable when visualized as a fully-branded product rendering.

Strong concepts become real through strong visualization.

“I’m always about having the No. 1 shows, albums, fragrances and clothing lines.”
—Diddy

Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs

Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy, Diddy, his many names share one common distinction—accomplished marketeer. And as if to prove it, Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs announced his appointment as Diageo’s Ciroc Vodka Brand Manager and CMO in an Ad Age Q&A interview this week.

The role is “too big for one title,” he told Ad Age, but, he added, “I’ll be taking the lead on all the things traditionally a CMO or a brand manager would do, just doing them my way. Marketing in a way that is truly unique.”

Savvy Product Placement

Having Diddy both vested and invested in Diageo’s marketing objectives transcends typical endorsement relationships. Before Diddy—a product and brand himself—launches his first marketing directive, he’s already a walking talking media channel for the Ciroc Vodka brand. Not your standard brand agent hire.

Assuming the world’s big enough for both Diddy and Diageo to coexist, this could prove to be a very savvy real life product placement.

Read the entire Ad Age article here.

[via: dgirlp | image: 6e]

TUL Pen’s campy graphological decision tree piece.

DDB of Chicago created the TUL Pens Graphological Initiative, a tongue-in-cheek online ad promoting a line of private label pens designed, developed and distributed by OfficeMax.

The Test of TUL

Using graphology as a framework, the piece initially seems clinical as visitors are invited to take a handwriting analysis conducted by host, Dr. Gerard Ackerman, Graphologist.

As humor and the decision tree draw you in, you realize it’s a farce and the doctor isn’t real, but feel compelled to complete the simple test and see what the analysis reveals about you.

Noon

I took the test, writing down the handful of words as directed, and chuckled at Dr. Ackerman’s feigned professional demeanor and delivery as he walked me through the analysis.

3:00 pm

Engrossed in my work, three hours had passed since I’d taken the test. I pushed back from my monitor, stretched my legs and my gaze rested momentarily on my desk where I saw written 5 times:

“I truly need a new pen.”

I’d been told the words contained a cross-section of characters suitable to delivering a proper handwriting analysis, and I’d subconsciously come to believe it. And now, on my desk—in my own handwriting—was an advertising come-on. I smiled in appreciation.

Fun and Informative?

Clever and transparently strategic, there was no overt sales pitch. My responses to a series of questions linked to a “personalized” narrative culminating in a specific pen selected from the TUL line to suit my particular writing style.

Fun enough to forward to a friend, yet amid the humor, a part of you wonders if the analysis is valid, leading a colleague to write:

“While the doctor’s analysis was nonsensical, by the end I was convinced that the pen shown really was the best one for my writing style. I felt special—the pen was selected for me.”

The TUL Pens Graphological Initiative is a well-penned bit of online marketing.

The FiveFingers Classic from Vibram

A slipper, a running shoe, a statement and a glove for your foot, Vibram FiveFingers is a unique line of footwear.

Odd, But Good

Wearing Vibram’s FiveFingers footwear has been likened to the freeing sensation of running barefoot as a child—without the fear of stepping on the occasional sharp object.

Designed by industrial designer Robert Fliri, FiveFingers’ unique orthotics and independent toe movement provide a biomechanical benefit to treks across uneven terrain, and to walking in general.

Versatile

Form-fitting, comfortable and durable, the FiveFingers line covers a gamut of terrain-ready products which have been road tested in the Boston Marathon and nearly every other situation in which you might wear traditional active shoes.

One way to ensure brand differentiation is to offer unique products or services. The FiveFingers line certainly stands apart in the active footwear market space.

Go here for more on the ergonomic benefits of FiveFingers footwear or to see the whole line.