Monday, January 17, 2005

:: adgruntie :: Marmite, Heineken, PVRs, and Outsourcing

+ Tribal DDB has launched a new Marmite web site to support the new TV campaign.
Tribal DDB designed Marmite.com around the 8-year old, ‘love/hate’ campaign developed by DDB London: the site’s landing page offers consumers the choice of entering either the ‘love marmite’ site or the ‘hate marmite’ site. [snip] The two sites offer specifically themed content around the ‘love’ or ‘hate’ idea: while the ‘love’ site offers different ways to enjoy Marmite, the ‘hate’ site provides joke recipes and cartoon graphics of people being sick.


+ Brad Pitt will be in a Heineken ad airing during the Super Bowl.
He is the latest A-lister to take the once-taboo job of U.S. TV pitchman, teaming with "Fight Club" director David Fincher to shoot a spot for brewmeister Heineken.

The ad, which will air Super Bowl Sunday, shows Pitt buying a six-pack of Heineken and being chased through the streets by paparazzi - who are really after the beer.

Heineken confirmed that it had a Fincher-directed spot ready to go in major markets on Super Bowl Sunday. The company wouldn't confirm that Pitt was involved, but ad sources said the "Ocean's Twelve" actor already filmed the spot.


+ As was mentioned in the comments, Media Bulletin reports "Personal video recorders are costing the UK advertising industry over £30m a year, according to a new report, reviewing US and UK TV viewing trends by audience connection company, The Big Picture."
Simon Andrews, founding partner of The Big Picture and a former Delaney Lund Knox Warren executive, said: "Viewers are fed up with being mugged by advertising everywhere they look."
He said that brands needed to provide content that was chosen by consumers.
"Be that [content] ad-funded programmes, mobile applications and content and broadband content that people seek out and spend serious time with. You don't get the big numbers you do with old-fashioned mass marketing but you replace quantity with quality," he said.
Ding ding ding! It's not about finding other alternatives, it's about boosting up the content of advertising. It's going to take smart creative to break through this hurdle.

One of the things to remember, is that even without the PVRs, people still use a amazing thing called a remote control to avoid seeing commercials. I know I've mentioned this before. Ad-avoidance is not new. It's just easier.

+ New ad agency embraces outsourcing. How vile. It's bad enough as it is, we don't need to be taking jobs away from people in the ad biz in the US. There's no way this can be good for the economy, no matter how much money it will suppsoedly save companies.

There are sites out there that already have created this as an issue for advertising, which was not that long ago just a tech and consumer relations (help lines, etc) problem. There is a fine line between how they describe their use of talent from around the world, and just having offices in countries where the currency equivalence to US dollars is so drastic that it, in my opinion, is taking advantage of the people in those countries. Beyond the fact that it is also taking jobs away from workers in the US.

This also brings into account the difference in cultures and the reasons why many ad agencies have branches in each country to tailor a campaign to what makes sense for the cultures there. The overall message is the same for the most part, but what works in say, India, might not work in the US. Even McDonald's and Dove are keen to this fact- not usually airing the same ads in different countries because of cultural differences and sensibilities.

I'd also like to point out that on their web site they do not use the words "outsourcing" but find nice fluffy words to talk around it. But their press release firmly uses that word.

Knowing what brands are going to be joining forces with this ad agency will definitely help me to sort out which brands I purchase in the future- yes, I will not buy them, and I'll tell everyone else not to buy them either. Which includes their first client - Swiss boutique watchmaker, Alfred Hammel as well as companies that helped them to test their model, including MetLife, Johnson & Johnson and DIRECTV. Sorry folks, you just lost another consumer.

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