Fabio Makes A Comeback As The ‘New’ Old Spice Guy
July 21st, 2011
Leave it to Old Spice to give Fabio a career boost. In the words of L.L. Cool J – Don’t Call It A Comeback.
Archive
Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category
McDonalds Super Sizes The Game Of Pong
June 6th, 2011
In a brilliant marriage between Out of Home advertising (Video Boards) and your Smart Phone, McDonald’s has managed to come up with an engaging new twist on an arcade classic – Pong – Golden Arches style. Well played Ronald…
Red Sox Nation vs. The Evil Empire
May 31st, 2011
John Krasinski and Alec Baldwin go toe to toe for their respective teams in a new commercial by New Era… classic. If you read my blog and follow my Twitter stream, you’ll know I’m on John’s side.
American Express Tweet Stories: The Social Currency
May 9th, 2011
The best advertisers for your product are satisfied customers. American Express captured that concept brilliantly in 30 seconds, using ‘Tweet Stories’. Membership has it’s privileges.
Google Unveils Two New TV Adverts
May 6th, 2011
Now, if your in media you know that Google doesn’t typically advertise on TV – yet they’ve come out with 2 spots within the last week promoting Chrome. The first one I saw was entitled “It Gets Better” and the theme of the ad spot focused on bullying. Great spot, great message – discussing a very relevant topic in the news today.
The second spot I saw really hit its mark with me. I’m a new dad to my son Brooks. A few nights ago Danielle and I were watching TV and saw the spot entitled “Dear Sophie“, about a new dad that used all the tools from Google (in his Chrome Browser, of course) to communicate ‘forward’ to his daughter at various stages of her life. It was basically a time capsule of her life, through Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Picassa and any other tool from Google that was applicable. Brilliant. I think it’s just inspired me to do the same…
Chrysler’s Imports ‘Homecoming’ To The Rose City
May 4th, 2011
The Autos are back, having secured more than half of the spots in the Super Bowl – with Chrysler’s ‘Imported From Detroit‘ stealing the show. Watching TV the other night with my wife Danielle, she turned my attention to Chrysler’s latest installment, featuring Portland’s own Ndomukong Suh, entitled ‘Homecoming‘.
I’m a huge football fan, and an even bigger fan of my home city, so marrying the two and showing off Portland on a national stage with a newly crowned NFL star clearly appeals to my emotion. Wanting to see the spot again, I searched high and low on the interwebs for the advertisement. To no avail. Turning next to my social network, specifically Twitter, I asked where to find it of my followers. Before long, I got this note from Josh Smith, pointing me to Mike Driehorst of Chrysler PR who mentioned that Chrysler doesn’t always post to YouTube right when a spot airs. After some back and forth (along with an objective that I’m sure was not on his ‘To Do’ list), Mike came through with the following message:
@dveneski Ask and ye shall receive
Hat tip, Mike. Well done, Chrysler. Your new slate of advertisements are brilliant. Your customer service, stellar. Thank you for showing off our beautiful city in such a well produced manner.
“Show where you’re going without forgetting where you’re from.”
Old Spice – Bring Back Isaiah Mustafa
April 21st, 2011
Old Spice has started releasing a new round of advertising, minus famous ‘man’s man’ Isaiah Mustafa, to promote its new line: ‘Old Spice Danger Zone’. Interesting choice, considering the success they had with him. This spot is running outside the U.S. currently. Has it been widely embraced by the viewers? Not based on this comment:
“It was pretty entertaining and effective up to the point where he became a walking skeleton. Then I didn’t want the product anymore.”
Not sure that’s what they were shooting for… My bet is this never makes it on air in our market.
The Penguins Are Back! Operation ‘Rico Star’
April 7th, 2011
We’ve released our latest spot, featuring the Penguins from Disney’s Madagascar. Proving once again, everything IS better with Intel Inside.
We Are Timbers – Soccer Goes Social
April 1st, 2011
The Portland Timbers are the second professional sports team to come into my home town (behind our long time resident NBA team, the Trail Blazers). We are a soccer, er ‘futbol’, hungry community and the fans have embraced our new MLS team with open arms. Kudos to the Timbers – they’ve ‘hugged back’ with the same enthusiasm.
One of the things this organization did well right out of the gate was to harness the power of these local fans – in a very social way. Sure, they have a Facebook presence and a Twitter feed. More importantly they reached out their biggest cheerleader – the community of Portland – and asked them to be a part of their Marketing and Media materials, in the most visible fashion available – billboards throughout the Portland Metro area – through a contest called ‘We Are Timbers‘.
How did it work? You went to the Timbers store, got your picture taken with various ‘accessories’ (double headed axe, chain saw – to name a few) and had your photo submitted to be considered to make the top 100. If you made the top 100, your photo was put to a vote by the fans of the soccer club (you had to ‘Like’ the Timbers on Facebook and then ‘Like’ the photo of your friend, colleague, or neighbor that had entered the contest). There was some stiff competition out there. Personally, I wish my good buddy Dwight Adkins had made the final four but when you pair axes with baby bjorns he didn’t stand a chance. Hat tip Timbers – way to get your fans excited about your team and nice job making the community a part of your promotion efforts.
Chrysler & Eminem: Never Forget Where You Came From
February 9th, 2011
As you’ve seen by my last few posts, I took a pretty good look at the Super Bowl ads this year. In my opinion, most fell short of the mark from past Super Bowls. There were a few that resonated with me for different reasons. Volkswagen with the previously mentioned ‘The Force‘ spot, as well as the introduction of the new VW Beetle – cute and well executed spots. I thought Planters did a great job with their stop motion spot entitled ‘Alejandro‘ for their almond line. I’m biased – it was done here in Portland by Laika/House. I always love local companies making good on the big stage.
Finally, the spot I thought evoked the most EMOTION in me was by Chrysler – ‘Imported From Detroit‘ (created by Wieden+Kennedy here in PDX). This is a city and a community that has been kicked in the head repeatedly as we’ve hit the economic downturn. As one of my co-workers stated, the spot connects and re-connects with almost every line. For someone that has never been to Detroit, nor really considered it a place I’d be interested in visiting, I had that opinion altered with the cinematography as Slim Shady navigated his Chrysler throughout the city. Someone else described the ad as an ode to the motor city, with a bit of product placement. That’s a spot on assessment. You’ll never see this aired again on broadcast TV in it’s original format – at 2 minutes long, it’s outside the boundaries of a normal 30 second commercial. It is getting plenty of run on YouTube however, with 4.5M views and counting. Well done Chrysler. Never forget where you came from.
