Caffeinated posts from a copywriter/adgrunt. I write about advertising, design, astronomy, cooking, and pretty much anything else that strikes my fancy, including random bits of reference info for work purposes. You may also know me as 'that other gal' who helps run Adland. | make contact | RSS Feed | ATOM

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, culture

Saturday, September 22, 2007
[ Verizon's Test Man Usage Guidelines leaked ]

+ A former Verizon employee sent Consumerist the Wireless "Test Man" Usage Guidelines. Having written style guides and having to have read them, this one is amusing compared to some. Then again, part of that is due to the length of time they've been using this character to represent their brand. Comments under the posting are good too.

I'd love to see other documents like this for other brand icons too - Pillsbury Dough Boy, Michelin Man, Cheerios Honey Bee, etc. ;)

(Hat tip to the good folks at Brandflakesforbreakfast)

Labels: adgruntie, branding, creative, fun

Thursday, September 13, 2007
[ Yellowtail outdoor to light up cities ]

+ A new billboard campaign for Yellowtail wines will appear in 12 cities. "Kit-Cat Klock" features a moving cat-clock where the cat's eyes and bright yellow tail move. This wil be seen in NYC, LA, San Francisco and Chicago. "Firefly" will show the bugs with yellow glowing tails in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Seattle, Cleveland, Miami and New York.

Cramer-Krasselt/Hampel Stefanides, New York, also created a lighted firefly ad that will run in 600,000 copies of Real Simple's November issue. The ads have a pull-tab that sets off a battery that lights four fireflies' tails. Another ad to run in 600,000 copies of the Oct. 22 issue of The New Yorker inserts a temporary tattoo, a yellow-tailed dragon. The ads all use the "Tails you win" tagline for Yellow Tail.

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, branding, campaign, print

[ Wal-mart changes tagline ]

+ Wal-mart introduces new tagline in 19 years - "Save Money. Live Better."

The 30-second TV spots show typical families and explain that on average, Wal-Mart saves families $2,500 a year. Asking shoppers to imagine what their family could do with that savings, one spot shows the family flivver veering off at an exit marked "Orlando." In another, a gruff, pickup-driving Dad makes a U-turn so his teenage son can look at a used car. A third focuses solely on gas prices, with shoppers agreeing that's it's just nuts to pay more for gas if you don't have to. "I'm a lot of things," a man remarks. "But I'm not crazy."

The company says the campaign centers on research from Global Insight, which shows the retailer now saves American families $2,500 each year, up 7.3% from $2,329 in 2004. That works out to more than $900 per person, and the company promises a state-by-state breakdown of savings within a month.

The retailer has created a Web site, SaveMoneyLiveBetter.com, which it plugs at the end of each spot, encouraging shoppers to submit their own savings stories. And it's also put up a "savings ticker" outside its Arkansas headquarters, to show "how much money American families save as a result of Wal-Mart's impact on communities."

While the new ads--the first major Wal-Mart campaign from The Martin Agency since it was hired last January--are warm and appealing, not everyone thinks they'll work.

"This campaign is a 100% guaranteed failure," says branding expert Rob Frankel, whose RobFrankel.Com is based in Encino, Calif. "It's not a brand strategy, it's a price claim. It doesn't do anything to encourage you to be loyal, and it's even insulting--people don't need to be told that it's a good idea to save money."

In fact, he says, emphasizing price adds to Wal-Mart's image problem. "To shop at Wal-Mart is almost the same as admitting you are poor," he says. "As soon as people can figure out a way not to shop at Wal-Mart, they do."

An additional disconnect, he says, is that that people's in-store experience of Wal-Mart won't necessarily mesh with the warm-and-fuzzy feeling created by the ads. "It's like, 'Whoa--you look a lot different in your pictures than when I met ya!"

Labels: ad news, adgruntie, branding

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
[ Ads can only do so much ]

+ At least I know I'm not alone. Read Bob Garfield's experience with Comcast.

Labels: adgruntie, rant

[ AT&T Mobility campaign to launch ]

+ New AT&T Mobility campaign to launch.

Since January, AT&T has been promoting the combination with Cingular in a brand campaign carrying the theme “Your world. Delivered.” The new campaign retains the theme as it seeks to portray a “seamless world” in which mobility is the most important element.

The campaign starts with six commercials featuring actors playing characters like a globe-trotting actor, a working mother, a traveling TV reporter and a multi-tasking student. They describe how they are always on the go and need a communications company that can serve them wherever they are.

To underscore the message, the names of cities, states and countries are mashed up, or mixed together, in fanciful combinations, as when the actor declares how AT&T meets his needs as he travels through “HollyyorkazonaSouthAmeriland.”

By the end of September, AT&T plans to open an online store at att.com where consumers can personalize and buy merchandise like T-shirts and mugs bearing their own fanciful renditions of all the places to which they are connected.

The goal of the campaign is to “add meat to the bone, giving consumers more detail about the new AT&T,” Wendy Clark, senior vice president for advertising at AT&T in San Antonio, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

The commercials “tested very well” with consumers before their release, she added, in delivering the message that AT&T is remaking itself “in a mobile-centric way.”

Work for this campaign was done by BBDO NY.

Labels: adgruntie, branding, campaign

Thursday, September 06, 2007
[ Things to read ]

+ Why we need web standard support for HTML emails.

Simplicity from iA notebook: Simple websites are easy to use, easy to understand, nice to look at. In practice, websites are either unusable or ugly and in general filled with too many complicated words. Why do designers have such a hard time to keep it simple?

Labels: online advertising, web, wisdom, work

[ Silverlight launches and some neat banner ads ]

+ Silverlight 1.0 released. Web sites that already use Silverlight include Entertainment Tonight, HSN and World Wrestling Entertainment, Major League Baseball and Disney Interactive.

Twister banner ad - Dude nipple.

Funky Coca Cola banner ad from Spain.

Interesting banner ad for Gilette from Brazil. Although I think I prefer this Schick banner ad which incorporates a game and provides a more interesting interaction.

Nice Ariel "Think Clean" banner

Labels: adgruntie, banner ad, design, online advertising, web, work

Wednesday, September 05, 2007
[ Adding Value for Shoppers ]

+ Add value to reach today's shoppers.

Whether at the grocery store or the mall, shoppers are engaging in "selective shopping behaviors," making it critical for marketers and retailers alike to ensure that when vying for shoppers' attention, they deliver on the obligation to provide something relevant.

Simply put, shopper ROI is all about what shoppers get for giving marketers and retailers their attention.

Think about it. Marketing at the national level can lead shoppers into a store, down an aisle, to a shelf and a brand. But what totals up and translates into a sale at that point? As a shopper stands before a shelf or display case, what prompts him or her and provides the desired reaction? What activates the shopper's senses and results in a good return on his or her investment in terms of time, effort, thought and expenditure? What, in fact, constitutes that shopper's ROI?

More than at any other time in history, shoppers in today's online era may be well educated about a product or service before they even reach the store. Having invested a good deal of time in that education, shoppers look for -- and deserve -- a return on their investment that goes beyond simply the product or service they are buying.

The article continues on to point out 6 leverage points. They include: Price value, Shop-ability, Convenience, Smile for the Mind (an emotional reward), Empathy, and Experience.

Labels: adgruntie, branding

[ Cool Business Cards ]

+ Is your company looking to redo its business cards? Check out this post from tutorialblog.org for some cool ideas, as well as Daily Poetics Business Card Stream at Flickr.

Labels: agency, branding, design, inspiration

[ Removing Online Ads ]

+ Whiting Out the Ads, But at What Cost from the NYTimes talks about a Firefox extension called Adblock Plus which removes "all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No Google ads based on the search terms you have entered."

or now, the opposition to Adblock Plus has been led by small Web sites who want all Firefox users blocked from Internet sites in retaliation. One such advocacy site, whyfirefoxisblocked.com, taunts a Firefox user with the headline, “You’ve reached this page because the site you were trying to visit now blocks the Firefox browser.”

The page includes the following argument: “While blanket ad blocking in general is still theft, the real problem is Adblock Plus’s unwillingness to allow individual site owners the freedom to block people using their plug-in. Blocking Firefox is the only alternative.”

Mr. Palant, writing on a blog related to the project (adblockplus.org/blog/), lashed out at those kinds of arguments.

"There is only one reliable way to make sure your ads aren’t blocked — make sure the users don't want to block them," he wrote. "Don't forget about the users. Use ads in a way that doesn't degrade their experience."

That last quote is of course, the ideal. But sites like CNN and others have no control over the creativity of the ads which are placed on their sites.

Placing the ads on the website servers is a backwards move. There's a reason why that went out of "best practices" (ugh, shoot me for using that term) years ago. But to say it's stealing or whatever is stupid.

But overall it definitely does raise some interesting questions that will have to be figured out, not only for online advertising, but for all digital media.

Labels: adgruntie, online advertising, web, work

Tuesday, September 04, 2007
[ Social Networks, Beer and Razors ]

+When Brands Need Buddies - Connecting with social networkers can be easy-peasy or a PR.

Colleen DeCourcy, chief experience officer of advertising agency JWT, is likewise critical of efforts that rely on consumers to create ads. She says the future of advertising lies in managing what she calls the "grid" of touchpoints that exist on the Internet. She adds that agencies would do well to hire "digital anthropologists" who are skilled at understanding that grid and working within it.

"Consumer-generated content, as the litmus test for success in online advertising material, is on the way out," she says.

Of course, not everyone agrees. Kevin Nalty, a marketing executive at a pharmaceutical firm and amateur filmmaker whose Punk'd-style YouTube clips led to a deal with Mentos and a seat on the creative advisory board of xlntads (a consumer-generated advertising platform), says user-created ads aren't going anywhere for a while. "It has taken big agencies a decade to build up expertise around page search," he says. Following this logic, there should be a market for consumer-generated advertising for at least the next five to 10 years, he adds.

A-B follows brewers like Samuel Adams as it launches its seasonal Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale, which will be available on tap and in 6-packs. It's the first in A-B's series of seasonal beers, which also includes Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale, Spring Heat Spiced Wheat and Beach Bum Blonde Ale.

Remington's Pick-Up Line Contest Tags New Shaver Launch.

which has just launched a new shaver for young men called Code, is running a contest designed to save the young men (and women) of the world from the worst of them.

Remington's best and worst pick-up lines ever contest is the latest entry in personal-care theater--a long line of ads that use shaving products to help men either a) attract young women or b) fend them off. (Remember Hai Karate?)

The current leaders in the race for young men's attention include Unilever's Axe, with its wild "Boom Chicka Wah Wah" ads, Procter & Gamble's TAG with its "You've been warned" positioning, and Philips Norelco with its viral videos promoting, um, manscaping.

Remington, marketed by Spectrum Brands, hopes to capture some of that buzz. It says the Code electric shaver is the first-ever specifically engineered for a younger man's face, and "features a dual-stage cutting system that handles multiple-day growth and gives guys a close, comfortable shave that will leave women swooning."

Guys can enter their best and worst lines at getthecode.com. At the end of the contest, which runs through Sept. 30, the top 10 most voted-on pick-up lines will be selected to win a new Remington Code shaver and 10 personalized T-shirts featuring their winning pick-up line and a matching illustration. Since the launch a week ago, the site has generated about 100,000 visits, and more than 12,000 votes.

Labels: adgruntie, branding, campaign, online advertising, promotion, web, work

Monday, September 03, 2007
[ New shorthand and online advertising ]

+ Next Generation of Online Shorthand. Includes items such as:
* GI — Google it
* FCAO — five conversations at once
* IIOYT — is it on YouTube?
* DYFH — did you Facebook him/her?
* BIOI — buy it on iTunes
* CMOS — call me on Skype
* GGNUDP — gotta go, no unlimited data plan
* JUOC — jacked up on caffeine
* 12OF — twelve-o'clock flasher (refers to someone less than competent with technology, to the extent that every appliance in the house flashes "12:00")
* SML — send me the link
* RHB — read his/her blog
* MBLO — much better-looking online
* NBL — no battery left
* TWD — typing while driving
* CMT (CMF, CMM, CMB) — check my Twitter (Facebook, Myspace, blog)
* CYE (CYF, CYM, CYB)–check your email (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

The future of advertising? Think online and personal.

"As marketers scramble to stay ahead (or at least abreast) of the technological innovations that are changing how people receive messages, those who plan and buy media have become the industry's rock stars and oracles. The ads themselves now play second fiddle to where they're presented," write Verklin and Kanner.

They describe an advertising universe that has morphed into two kinds of companies - those that create the advertising and those that buy time and space. That transformation has left 10 giant companies largely in control of the buying and selling of time and space, they say.

Labels: adgruntie, online advertising, trends, web, work

Saturday, September 01, 2007
[ Interactive marketing to moms ]

+ Marketing To Women Online.

Alpha Moms become top trendsetters.

Email Marketing to Moms.

The combined study found that 69 percent of online moms subscribe to 1 to 5 retail emails. The study also reported that 86 percent subscribe for discounts and coupons. Also, online moms are more likely to click through emails that include product pricing (62 percent) and photos (61 percent).

"With 75 million Moms in the United States influencing 80 percent of consumer household purchasing decisions, it's critical that retailers understand how to gain the trust of Moms and deliver value through the email marketing channel," says Kevin Burke, president, Lucid Marketing

Marketing to Moms - When trying to reach the "Mommy Market," keep their busy schedules and individuality in mind.

Get to the point when marketing to moms.

Labels: adgruntie, online advertising, reference, wisdom, work

[ Ah the glory days of lard ]


+ Found via katize.com

Labels: adgruntie, classic ad, print