Archive for the ‘Online advertising’ Category

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 »

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 »