Archive for March, 2009

Advertising Fixes Potholes

Monday, March 30th, 2009

We are going to talk about more than creative advertising on this blog (I promise), but this example is too interesting to pass up. 

Colonel Sanders is fixing potholes.  Via AdAge, KFC launched an innnovative program last week in which they are partnering with several cities around the U.S. to help patch those pesky obstacles that spring up this time of year.

 

Is the KFC campaign working?  It looks like it has been a big success (even if you don’t drive in those cities).  In addition to mainstream coverage by NPR and ABC News, the campaign has spread across the web in blog posts (here and here for example) and social media. 

Here’s what I love about this program: it shows in a very tangible way that advertising $’s represent a huge resource.  According to The Nielsen Company, companies spent $136.8 billion dollars last year in U.S. advertising.  Big CPG players like P&G and Johnson & Johnson spent over $4 billion alone.  That is a lot of potholes.  What else could be done to transform some of those $’s into more tangible value?  Here’s hoping we see lots more creative examples like this in 2009 and beyond.

Posted in Online advertising | 5 Comments »

Charmin’s got your back

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

How do you create brand awareness in a world in which customers no longer put up with interruptive ads?  It is a huge challenge for today’s brands.  

I came across a great example covered by AdAge yesterday: the Charmin SitorSquat mobile application  (thanks to Sucharita Mulpuru over at Forrester for the heads up).  Download the app to your smartphone, and you’ve got instant access to the nearest public toilet, ranked by cleanliness.  

Kudos to the folks at Charmin for branding to me in a fun and useful way (especially when you’ve got to go!).  

I also loved this last paragraph in the AdAge piece:

This is the first time a toilet-paper brand has partnered with a downloadable mobile application, P&G said in its release. Other relevant potential mobile applications may not immediately spring to mind, other than perhaps text alerts when the roll is running low at home. But the technology doesn’t exist yet for that.

Maybe this will exist sooner than you think  . . . :-)

Posted in Online advertising | 2 Comments »

Alice Beta Update

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

A big thank you to everyone that has signed up to participate in the beta test of the Alice.com service (here).  The interest has been pretty fantastic, and we’re excited to have everyone start using Alice soon.   It has been a few weeks since we announced the start of testing, and I thought an update was in order, so here goes.  

Beta Timeline

Private Testing Continues Through May

Because Alice is a very different eCommerce site, we made the decision to start user testing with a small group of users that we could closely evaluate and gather feedback from in one-on-one user sessions.  

There has been lots of talk the last few days about how much companies should listen to their customers (apparently Facebook isn’t sure it is a good idea, see here and here and here).  Although I agree that customer feedback can be a tricky thing to balance, the initial feedback we’ve been gathering for Alice has been invaluable.  We’ll be adding a few dozen users here in Madison in the next few weeks to continue these user sessions.  

Beta will expand in May-June

If you’ve already submitted your e-mail to us (or do so here in the next several days), congrats!  You’ll be in our first main beta-test group.  We consider you a Friend of Alice, and we are excited to open up our site to you and get your feedback.  Look for an e-mail from us in late May/early June with instructions on how to get started using Alice.  We can’t wait to drop off a box like this to your door soon.  

Posted in Announcements | 16 Comments »

Product Sampling Gets Creative

Friday, March 20th, 2009

“We hope you liked the movie.  Would you like some Crest Whitestrips?”  

Sounds strange, but that is exactly what P&G did recently as part of a very clever product sampling program.  At the conclusion of the film “He’s Just Not That Into You,” which featured a scene with Crest Whitestrips, Crest brand representatives handed out 200,000 promo packs in five major markets.  The packs included samples of the product, a coupon and a fun tie in to the movie.  (You can read more here)     

It isn’t easy to create demand for a product in today’s world.  People know they control their attention.  I don’t watch t.v. commercials.  I ignore banner ads.  I get my news from RSS feeds and Twitter.  How does a brand tell me about a new product without annoying or alienating me?  This is a huge issue for brands. 

Brian Morrissey made the case recently that brands can’t give up on interruptive advertising.  His argument: Google has built an amazing system for harvesting existing demand (we tried to improve upon their model at Jellyfish), but brands still need to interrupt to create the demand in the first place.  I agree with Brian that interruptive advertising isn’t going away anytime soon, but I think the answer is to interrupt in ways that create value to the end user.  The value can come from entertaining me, surprising me in a fun way, giving me status, and (of course) putting some extra savings in my pocket. 

I salute P&G for finding a way to interrupt people in a fun, and valuable way.  You can see other great sampling examples here. 

Our team at Alice is working hard to give brands other value-added ways to create and harvest demand.  It’s part of the evolution of advertising that we’ve been fascinated with for a long time.  

Posted in Online advertising, Sampling | 6 Comments »

Welcome to the Alice Company Blog

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

You’ve found the official company blog for Alice.com.  Thanks for stopping by. 

Alice is working hard on a new and disruptive eCommerce model for the consumer packaged goods market.  We are in a closed beta of the service at the moment, and moving rapidly towards launch.  If you’d like to learn more and participate in our beta, please sign up here.  

This blog will keep you up to date on our official company news, and we’ll also be discussing our views on the evolution of eCommerce, online advertising, traditional retailing, and consumer packaged goods.  

A few of the questions we’ll be trying to answer in this blog: 

  • Why doesn’t anyone buy toilet paper online? 
  • Why does Wal-Mart dominate the world? 
  • Why do we still clip coupons and carry them to the store? 
  • How can online advertising evolve to make our lives better? 
  • How do you market in a world where no one watches television commercials or reads newspapers? 
  • Will eCommerce continue to take market share from traditional retail?

Interested in these questions?  We hope you subscribe and join in the discussion.  Maybe you can help us find some answers.

Posted in Announcements | 6 Comments »