Pizza...Brought to You Today By The WSJ

Today, I received an exciting and enticing inter-office email offer that I was unable to ignore:

Leftover Pizza in the Kitchen!

Feeling the usual lunchtime hunger pains, I leaped from my desk and ran to the kitchen in plenty of time to snatch up my very own slice of delicious cheese pizza. While enjoying a break with coworkers, I was suddenly surprised by the packaging of the pizza boxes. Although delivered from popular pizza chain, Mellow Mushroom, the pizza boxes were covered with an advertisement from…The Wall Street Journal? Really? The messaging was: “America has chosen The Wall Street Journal the Nation’s #1 Newspaper,” “We Deliver Unparalleled Content, Unmatched Audience, Quality Solutions,” and “Read It and Eat.”

I wonder if the WSJ is specifically targeting all consumers or specifically business consumers (as the pizzas were delivered to an office building). I think it would be more profitable to target the latter as the content of the paper is business and financial news, which would fit better with corporate consumers. I wonder what the WSJ had to pay to get Mellow Mushroom for this. Hmmmmm…

But, I digress.

What I really would like to discuss is interesting ways brands are trying to reach consumers. I recall a news article from a while back in which a teacher or professor sold advertising space on the bottom of his exams to defer the cost of printing and paper. The WSJ concept is similar, except on a much larger scale. While interactive and traditional media are conventional (for lack of a better term), some brands, like the WSJ are stepping outside ‘traditional’ ways to expose consumers to products.

Daffy’s, a discount apparel retailer, recently played an interactive in cinema advertisement in which live dancers complimented three minute pre-movie commercial. See the ad here:



What I like about this ad is that it is literally spilling over into the audience and is able to really interact with them. The audience was also given coupons (hopefully ones that could be tracked) so that they would further be driven to shop at Daffy’s. What I dislike about the ad is the scope and targeting of consumers. While the ad ran for a full week—I’m sure it was extremely expensive to hire the dance troupe, and unless they can prove the ROI of the ad, I’m not sure if this was a worthwhile venture. Also, the audience was comprised of a diverse group of consumers. It can be assumed that (1) these consumers lived in the same geographic area and most likely shared some socio-demographic traits (although not specific enough to target), and (2) all wanted to see the same film (Amelia). Overall, and interesting, yet expensive and untargeted venture by Daffy’s, but one that is definitely unexpected and generating a lot of buzz.

DeBeers also launched an interesting advertisement last year—an installation piece in Madison Square Park (New York) which a couple would stand underneath a DeBeer’s diamond logo made of mistletoe, and be surrounded by a ring of high speed cameras. The camera would catch a couple sharing a kiss from 360 degrees, and would package the stills into a commercial with the phrase: Two things last longer than time. Love is one of them. A diamond is forever. Thousands of couples showed up to the spectacle and were able to be part of a really cool ad (and remember a moment in time forever). The best way to view come of these ads is to go to YouTube, and search for “DeBeers Unbreakable Kiss.” I liked this campaign because it included real consumers who could be integrated into the overall concept and really interact with the brand.

There are a lot of really cool concepts out there, and unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to cover them all in one article, but hopefully the ads described above exhibit some of the new and innovative ways advertising is evolving. I am excited about the inventive ways companies are trying to go out and reach consumers and interact with them, thusly reaching a broader scope of consumers (who will hopefully become brand loyal consumers). I will definitely be looking to see what’s next!

I’m thinking that although this blog entry might be over for now, that this might be a recurring theme here. If you have any interesting ads that you think I should see—please send them to me at eckramer318@gmail.com.

References:

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=139988
http://thefutureofads.com/when-forever-began-shares-a-moment-for-diamonds

Once Trash, Now Treasure

Trash—it’s inevitably everywhere and there always seems to be more being generated. Here in the United States, the trash concept is simple: we take our trash and recyclables to the curb on our given garbage pickup day and it disappears via the garbage to truck to a landfill or recycling center. However, in Indonesia, trash is a huge issue—lining the street and rivers since the country is too economically impaired to fund municipal projects like trash pickup.

One artist, Ann Wizer, has helped create a special project aimed at not only helping clean Jakarta, Indonesia streets, but also establish well paying jobs, and create some really cool new items out of plastic consumer packaging. XSProject, Wizer’s foundation, keeps trash out of landfills—she hires local trash pickers to collect (usually colorful) branded packages, and repurposes them into usable bags, binders, pillows, and a variety of other products and literally turning one man’s trash into another’s treasure.



While this article isn’t exactly advertising centric, I think that XSProject and other similar groups are creating a solution and spreading awareness about the global trash issue to create functional and trendy items to be sold in the marketplace. While branding is so important to creating awareness among consumers, I think that advertisers have an obligation to be socially and environmentally conscious in regards to product packaging. According to XSProjectGroup.com, “only 1 in 10,000 products are created with the environment in mind,” and “98% of all products are throw out within 6 months of purchase.

I think that what XSProject is doing is a wonderful service to the people of Jakarta—creating new goods, establishing viable business opportunities, and cleaning up the streets.

To see some examples of their work and to learn more about the project, please visit: http://www.xsprojectgroup.com.

There's No Such Thing As A Free Concert

Two weeks ago, one of my friends invited me to go with her to the Summer Krush tour featuring Dierks Bentley. The show was “free,” and I use the term loosely, as the old adage says—there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and like lunch, this show was not really free.

Sponsored by Samsung and AT&T, the show was scheduled to begin around 8pm. However, the show time came and went, and the only visible activities were the continuous looping of a Samsung Jack commercial on overhead monitors, and an on-stage screen that projected text messages of concert-goers (most to the tune of “I heart Dierks” and “Hi Mom!”). When the MC finally arrived on stage, he chose two random numbers who had texted the screen to win prizes—one person won a Samsung Jack, and the other a Summer Krush electric guitar. Then, Dierks took the stage, and put on a great show.

I think that offering a free concert series is a really innovative way for advertisers, in this case Samsung and AT&T, to bring together a large group of targeted consumers (I estimate Caucasian females between 14 and 30 years old who like country music) and inundate them with a targeted message—in this case, the messaging described the “coolness” of the Samsung Jack, and its text messaging/email/Internet features.

Not only is it a great way to interact with consumers thus strengthening the relationship with them (read: face time with potential buyers), but as a targeted consumer, I am more receptive to listening to their message...especially if there's no hard cost for me. While I do not intend to purchase a Samsung Jack any time soon, I like that Samsung and AT&T are not only reaching out to consumers and becoming more accessible in the marketplace, but also are trying a new strategy to reach consumers that I've never experienced before.

References:

http://www.samsungsummerkrush.com/atlanta.asp
http://www.dierks.com/
http://www.samsung.com/us/
http://pages.samsung.com/ca/jack/eng/

Advertising White Noise – An Experiment

Yesterday, I was inspired by a link that appeared on a friend’s Facebook wall a few weeks ago. Click here to see the experiment (unless you speak German, click below the picture for the English version of the article).

In 2005, Neubaugasse, Vienna participated in an art exhibit called “Delete!” which essentially “deleted” media (“signs, slogans, pictograms, company names and logos“) for a period of two weeks. Advertisements were covered with (what looks like) yellow foil, and causes consumers to examine their everyday world without advertising, and shows us how many messages we are really exposed to on a daily basis. I highly recommend looking through the picture deck on the right side of the link.

According to a excerpt from Marketing Without Advertising by Michael Phillips & Salli Rasberry (available online at the link listed below), “236 billion will be spent this year in the United States on print, radio, online, and broadcast advertising” to cause the average American to view in excess of 5,000 advertising messages daily.

As a mini experiment, I tried to count every single advertisement that I came into contact with. My rules were the same object could not be counted twice (for example, I could not count my cell phone more than one time just because I looked at it multiple times), I could only count messages that were clearly branded (i.e. I only counted the brands of the clothes that I have on, and not count of all of the other brand tags of the clothes in my closet because I didn’t necessarily see them), and it had to be an official logo or advertisement (my seeing a handwritten note about calling a client did not count, while seeing a client’s display ad counted). Needless to say, I decided not to wear my glasses to work, made sure that my pop-up blocker was on, and tried to avoid CNN.com, Pandora, and Facebook.

Before I even got out of bed yesterday morning, I had counted 37 branded items, and by the time I left the house I had counted 74. For safety reasons, I decided not to count advertisements while driving to work, but was already up to 236 visible ads by 9:30 this morning (I get to work at 9am). By 1pm, that number had increased to 693—and these are counting ads that I am cognizant of! I can’t imagine if I really had the time to actually look around and listen for various types of advertisements and count exactly how many messages I’m exposed to regularly.

There are so many different ways that advertisers are able to reach consumers, that a lot of the time the message is lost in advertising white noise. Advertisers need new and exciting ways to cut through all of the other marketing messages to reach consumers and make them remember their brand above all others using a variety of traditional and atypical methods—display, search, print, broadcast as well as word of mouth (including social networking), charitable contributions, microsites/widgets, and other innovative and cool ways for advertisers to touch consumers in a way that will cause consumers to remember their brand, and have that brand be top of mind when they go to make a purchase.

At the end of the day, I had counted 1,492 ads. An experiment worth trying in your own life.

References:

http://www.steinbrener-dempf.com/index.php?article_id=5

Marketing Without Advertising by Michael Phillips & Salli Rasberry
http://www.nolo.com/product.cfm/objectID/5E5BFB9E-A33A-43DB-9D162A6460AA646A/sampleChapter/5/111/277/#summary