Hitting it home: Pepsi's Refresh campaign

I'm in class right now, time to blog!

Someone just made a comment in class about how Obama's election isn't anything new, it's just the representation of American political sentiment at this moment. I'd seriously care to disagree, and Justin emphasized that 2M people in Washington is hardly evidence of the fact that Obama is no different than other presidents.

This all speaks to a larger cultural movement that's churning and frothing but still largely intangible.

Pepsi has relaunched its brand in an effort to ride this new cultural zeitgeist. It's now a fresher, edgier, more movement-focused brand. And it's coincided with the inauguration!

Here's their old look:

Here's their new look:



Familiar, but different. It's fun.

The centrepiece of the brand relaunch is the Refresh Campaign.

Check out the microsite: RefreshEverything.com. It's a social media site to aggregate the opinions and voices of normal citizens and Eva Longoria (among other celebrities).


It's been created to allow anyone to upload their own user-generated content that expresses their feelings of hope and optimism with the new President.


Even my current fascination, Lady GaGa, has gotten in on the action!



The Refresh campaign doesn't prominently feature any Pepsi products. I like this campaign because it's not about driving sales, it's about driving engagement (again, how does one actually value this?...is it even fair to value engagement by the classical measures of consumer value??)

The microsite is simply meant as an online interactive destination for their offline commercials. It's tied to a YouTube channel with Pepsi's new commercials and other related videos. The microsite doesn't have any search or folksonomy tagging capabilities so it's not too important for site visitors to find exact information on what people are saying, rather, it's meant to act as a speaker's corner for average voices to be heard.

So what's the point?

Two things:

Think of the optics: Pepsi is showing that they are a brand associated with change and youth (again). The TV commercial, courtesy of TBWA Chiat Day, was shown during key primetime spots (I saw it on AC 360 at 10:15pm, January 20) and captured the momentousness of the day. Check out the commercial. It's fresh and friendly.

Think of the non-quantifiable brand development: Tacitly, Pepsi's Refresh campaign is effectively sponsoring the Obama administration! It's piggybacking on a wave of interest in society in individualism, plurality, and self-expression. Pepsi is demonstrating that it understands the strong needs by consumers/voters for these things.

Pepsi is allowing consumers to be heard at a time when the urge to speak up has never been stronger.

To be fair, Coke is launching a big wave of new ads too. Analysts think the Colas Wars are going to begin again!


Great work by Pepsi and their agencies on this one, this is definitely a campaign i'd have loved to be involved in.

Excellent example of getting it done, creating a transparent and highly understanding brand personality, and emphasizing that Pepsi is a brand that unites and empowers people.

Way. To. Go.

Cool interactive billboards and 90210

Interactive media is where it’s at these days in terms of delivering excitement and experience to consumers. Often though, the message is gets lost in the punchiness of the medium. The channel distributor has done a great job selling ad space and gross consumer impressions to unsuspecting, wide-eyed brand managers that the issue of whether or not the marketing is effective or not is never raised.

Such might have been the case for an interactive billboard I experienced a few weekends ago at the Harbourfront Hot and Spicy Food Festival. Watch the video, it’s a 6 x 8 foot led screen which is touch-sensitive. As people step and tap on it, colourful led balls go flying around the screen. It’s wild. My friend Olga took the video as we played around.



…but what was it advertising again? What brand was there?

I’m not saying that this was an ineffective vehicle – far from it. We stood there giggling and jumping around on this led mat for probably ten minutes. People around us joined in. So the audience is tuned in and captive, they’re rapt by what they’re seeing and the fact that they have control over the ad itself is a big plus. As mentioned before in this blog, participation is a critical factor in modern marketing, especially in an ad targeted to Gen Ys. It afford a modicum of individualization and personal spin on the marketing, making the consumer feel like they have accountability over the marketing. This, in turn, makes the consumer feel that the ad has greater relevance to them (because they created it or had a part in it).

Adverblog talks about some of the better interactive online marketing campaigns. It’s interesting in all of these to see how prominently the brand and product are featured. It’s never unclear what is being explained.

So as for that wild led screen, perhaps its use is better for promotional settings where you can physically interact with the brand. Imagine Nike setting up two of these in stores and allowing consumers to try out the shoes as if they were a soccer goalie or seeing how high they can jump in the shoes. Imagine these displays in high-traffic locations like the PATH system and each step displays the kinetic energy created – a potential ad for Bullfrog or Bruce Power looking to promote their clean energy options to consumers.

Anyway, some food for thought. The new series of 90210 just started, featuring AnnaLynne McCord:


…and yes, bad television counts as legitimate research into consumer culture.

New Bluenotes jeans commercial: hit it outta the park!

Bluenotes has a great new ad campaign of TV spots and a few prevalent billboards in locations downtown and on the subway. It’s evidently repositioning the brand with an older, more college-educated, ‘indie-kid’ vibe, rather than as a brand for tween girls seeking low-priced, unflatteringly ass-hugging jeans.

The campaign takes a lot of elements from other apparel and accessories campaigns:

• Storytelling – the product is imbued with some intangible character that comes with experience and wardrobe tenure
• Original – the jeans are unique like the people wearing them
• PYTs – pretty young things!

I laud the team at MacLaren McCann for this whole rebrand and the ethos of the campaign. Although jeans are just distressed heavy pieces of fabric, it’s the whole backstory to where they came from, what you did in them, and how they’ve grown with you that makes them a compelling buy. Your jeans have essentially become an old friend.

Watch the new Bluenotes jeans commercial here and read the analysis from Marketing Mag here.

And check out Mom Jeans, my favourite label:

Funny Mom Jeans Spoof Funny Video! This is a spoof on how some women start wearing those high waisted pants after they get to be a certain age. You know this is true because you see women wearing them all the time.

Scent marketing: what's the big stink

Upon beginning to look into the topic of “scent marketing” for a “mere” blog post and not an academic essay, I was quickly overwhelmed! The sophistication of retail marketing and consumer shopping analysis means that, as a topic, “scent marketing” already has a wealth of information written about it. Although this renders any attempt by me to look knowledgeable in this area to be doomed to failure, I decided to push on with the topic.

Scent marketing is grounded in the premise that an individual’s olfactory (read, nasal) receptors are sensitive to certain smells and that reactions to certain smells can prompt a consumer to linger a little longer in a shopping aisle or adopt a more positive attitude to the surroundings around them. Florida amusement parks and electronics stores use these techniques. Gen Ys will probably be familiar with the faux cedar woodsy scents billowing around any typical suburban Hollister store!


Yet this type of “sensory marketing” has actually been around in advertising in a much subtler form for as long as real estate agents have been able to conduct open houses. It has become an adage among these agents that having the smell of freshly baked cookies or pies can be more effective for potential buyers than a “fresh coat of paint or the allure of good schools.” The Science of Smell website provides exhaustive research from Dr. Alan Hirsch describing the path of odors to the nerve (smell) receptors in our nose and how they eventually end up triggering various hormonal or emotional responses in the body.

(Image taken from the Science of Smell website)

In terms of a marketing perspective, having this connection and reaction provides enhanced abilities for individual consumers to distinguish products, triggering memories or desires that can influence purchasing decisions or quite simply, create environments that remind consumers of home, a place where they are comfortable and are therefore able to stay longer and consume more.
(Taken from The Scent Marketing Institute)

Consumers today are bombarded with visual advertisements, with the typical adult being exposed to 294 TV ads per day, according to the industry reference book "TV Dimensions 2005" not to mention internet, print, out-of-home, and radio. With 83% of “commercial contact being visual, CAB/AC Nielsen estimated that only 10 or 20 messages will produce even a "fleeting awareness of the brand”. Smell has now been targeted in a more mainstream grouping of industries, beyond fashion and hospitality as a way to gain a marketing edge.

Someday, through the power of Smell-o-Vision, you’ll be able to experience these scents as you’re reading this blog! But until that glorious day, here are what the Scent Marketing Institute purports to be the top 10 retail marketing scents and their desired effects on consumers:

Talcum powder: Feel safe, secure and nostalgic
Peppermint, citrus: Be more alert
Lavender, vanilla, chamomile: Relax
Barbecue smoke: Perceive a room as being smaller
Apple, cucumber: Perceive a room as larger
Leather, cedar: Buy expensive furniture
Fresh baked goods: Buy a home
Tailored floral/citrus scents: Browse longer and spend more
Unpleasant smells (rotting rubbish, air pollution): Develop road rage – although why retail marketers would want consumers to develop road rage in stores is somewhat baffling.
Pumpkin pie/lavender (for men) and the sweat of nursing mothers (for women): sexual arousal

As the technological sophistication of scent marketing increases and marketers learn more about the very atavistic ways in which we are affected by smells, a new segment of brand interaction will arise in which scent plays a big role in cultivating a consumer’s holistic brand experience. This is far beyond the days of old scratch and sniff promo materials.

If it leads to the next new car smell, then I’m all for it!

Sources and Interesting Links to Follow:
Article from HowStuffWorks on Scent Marketing
FastCompany.com article about Scent as a new branding frontier
The Journal News
Dr. Alan Hirsch's Science of Smell
Sellsius Real Estate Blog
Orland Sentinel article about scents in rides

The best Nike commercial ever

I’m an emotional guy and I like my share of sad movies, but it’s not very often that a commercial gets me weepy and gives me the chills.

It’s the 20th anniversary of Nike’s ‘Just do it’ campaign and their AOR, Portland’s Wieden + Kennedy, developed this 60 sec spot:



Chills. Watch it again.

More chills.

The perfect syncopation of the tenor of the images to the rhythm of ‘All these things that I’ve done’ by the Killers, the raw emotion immortalized in the footage of international Olympians and athletes, and the simplicity of the message really converge in a perfect storm.

How about the fact that with the exception of the campaign url, nike.com/courage, there is no voiceover and only nine words of text appear throughout the entire sixty seconds?

How about that in a series of probably 200 images, no Nike logo, shoe, or apparel item is conspicuously displayed? The logo flashes on some athletes but only for a few milliseconds each time.

Advertising Age has done a terrific job of explaining the strategy behind Nike’s Just do it anniversary and the relevance of brand strategy to this commercial. So I’m not going to be a bad blogger and rehash content, you can read the original on their site.

Overall, my reflections are that this spot successfully conveys Nike as a brand for the lives of all people. It deepens Nike’s accessibility to its customers in a highly human and emotional way.

The director is Ralf Schmerberg. Way. To. Go.

Dealing with the pain

Building unique, original content on this blog is extremely important to me so on those few rare days when I don’t post anything you can assume that something is wrong. Something strange is going on inside my abdomen which I can’t quite understand! It’s incredibly painful and my doctor has put me on Tylenol 3 with codeine and Prevacid, a strong antacid.

Neither of these are particularly glamorous medications (although the Tylenol 3 with codeine is a really nice trip!), but tonight I wanted to post about the ‘fashion’ drugs so often advertised on Nightly News or CNN. Here are some of my favourites:

Advair

What is COPD anyway? Doesn’t this seem like a condition invented for the sole purpose of selling this drug? Anyway, this Advair commercial is the perfect template for most ask-your-doctor drug ads. Let’s break it down:

1. Dark and dreary lighting during the setup before the drug is introduced
2. Oh my God, her life looks so much better now! She’s outside!
3. Simplified graphic of bodily insides showing effective relief in action
4. Lots of detail from the voiceover
5. Free offer ensures that patients stay over-medicated and doctors continue a second revenue stream

Overall, very effective.

Requip

Requip is hilarious. What Kramer called ‘jimmy legs’ are now a legitimate condition called RLS, apparently diagnosed first in this commercial! This drug is basically a narcotic to keep you in one place at night.

So many things are wrong with the Requip commercial. The creepy music punctuating shots of this poor woman rolling like a log in bed only pique my curiosity about these “strange sensations” the woman was feeling in her legs. Didn’t my junior high sex ed classes also talk about the “strange sensations” I would soon experience? But the best part of this commercial is the slow, thoughtful panning of the camera over her legs, now lying dead still on a chaise – thanks Requip!

Zoloft

Man, live must be pretty awful when you can easily compare your depressed situation to that of an anthropomorphic blob squishing along its miserable way. Zoloft introduced us to a new family of designer ‘mood’ drugs and the tone of this commercial is quite apparent – it’s ok to feel like you want to kill yourself.

Huh?

Although the initial tone may try a little too hard to sell viewers on a drug they might not have otherwise needed, I do appreciate the descriptive cartoon diagram of neural pathways in the brain as Woody Allen serenades on the oboe.

Rozerem

Now this is actually clever! Rozerem continues the dynastic tradition set by Ambien and Lunesta for sleep aids that we shouldn’t otherwise be taking. Gee, maybe we can’t sleep because of all the Red Bull and Starbucks we’re ingesting. I like the no bullshit tone of the male voiceover too – it makes the drug sound more effective and less mystical. Also pay attention to one of the first statements made in the copy: “Rozerem is the first and only prescription sleep aid that in clinical studies shows no risk for abuse or dependence” – obviously identified as a likely aversion concern for possible users and therefore reinforced in the commercial. Smart.

Dr. Porkenheimer’s Boner Juice

Thicker, sturdier, and meatier? Sign me up!

Effective online ads

If you’re reading this, go to MSNBC and see if the ad I’m about to analyze is still live on the home page of the site.

T-Mobile in the US is advertising its network coverage in a series of really cool flash based banner ads and landing pages. The flash ads are activated when the page loads (or when you scroll down to them, I’m not sure). They are interactive on mouseover and not nearly as obtrusive or flashy as other banner ads on less credible sites. Two ads appear on the home page, one square right panel skyscraper ad and one flat rectangular panel further down the page in the middle of the news content. The viewer can wave the mouse over these ads and actually lead the animated character to the right where you see the tagline for T-Mobile.

Upon clicking through, the user is taken to a landing page (which is being tracked to see how effective the MSNBC ads are and which type of ad is drawing higher clicks) where they’re encouraged to map their cellular reception signal strength on T-Mobile’s signal map.

I’m fascinated by this campaign and it’s effective for the following reasons:

• Simple message: coast-to-coast, T-Mobile has comprehensive cell coverage. Through research, T-Mobile has likely identified that cellular reception is a strong decision criteria for a certain group of consumers (likely the same profile of consumers who read MSNBC) over other offerings like mobile media, jazzy phones, or rate plans. Network clarity is still a big deal.
• Simple call to action: see zones of signal strength in your area. It’s interactive and the ad only asks you to see the cellular coverage in your area. It’s not salesy. It’s intriguing. (I wonder if they’re tracking the locations people search for and matching it back to clickthroughs…it would be interesting to know which states or cities had the greatest interaction with this ad)
• Unique online ads that catch the eye and are not too distracting. The 3D perspective created with Flash looks great and it isn’t screamingly page killing in the overall schema of the MSNBC site.
• Loads of opportunity for testing and optimization. I assume that the ads, landing page, and destination page are tested on A/B splits and that this campaign is appearing on other partner sites.

I am surprised though that MSNBC couldn’t enable geotargeting for this ads – why is a Canadian web user seeing ads for a US cellular network?

Otherwise, terrific stuff.

See? Banner ads can still be effective.

Bad Ad Rodeo: Sumo Wrestlers vs. Stuffed Heads

Love It

I really can't get enough of this ad for the new Subaru 2009 Forrester featuring sumo wrestlers.

Ok let's analyze:

1. Great soundtrack, catchy modern song (Electric Six 'Danger! High Voltage!') with a killer beat and good intro to begin the spot. Notice the perfect timing of sponge hits to the hooks of the song.
2. Great tagline, couldn't be any clearer. "Japanese SUVs just got a little sexier." There is no way that this message could be confused based on the plot of the commercial. It's such a play on classic "buxom blonde washing a car in the sun" parable so iconic in North American culture. Perfect twist because sumo wrestlers are highly identifiable with Japan and the first thing one remembers about this commercial is that it is a Subaru car. The voiceover makes no small point of acknowledging that it's a Japanese car. 'Japanese' is the first word spoken during the entire spot. Perhaps the marketing department learned through research that they had a problem differentiating the Subaru brand from other Japanese automobile manufacturers and this was a way to carve out a 'sexier', hipper appeal with car buyers.
3. It's funny! The slow pace of the camera shots over the sump wrestler's fat semi-nude bodies is almost voyeuristic. The blatant depiction of jiggling fat and long drenched hair makes viewers feel simultaneously repulsed and attracted because they want to understand the point of the commercial.
4. The product is featured first but the tagline comes at the end. A great way to create buildup and anticipation in viewers and to give the product as much face time as possible.

Hate it

Commercials for suburban feedtroughs like Milestones, Kelsey’s, or Jack Astor’s don’t usually irk me too much. However, this ad from Montana’s with the talking animal heads on the wall actually forces me to change the channel.

Ok let’s analyze:

1. There’s nothing wrong with the message here. It clearly explains that Montana’s is a place that brings families together and drawing with crayons on the tables is obviously a big highlight about the dining experience. Fine.
2. The friendly staff and appealing meals are also featured. Fine.
3. The talking moose head introduces viewers to Montana’s at the beginning of the spot. Fine, that’s good to establish the primacy effect in people’s minds since we don’t see the food until later in the commercial.
4. Really, it’s the disembodied heads of the Moose and the Elk (Reindeer? Caribou?) that make this commercial unwatchable. The CDs must have rationalized that Canada’s love affair with unfunny odd couple animal mascots (Frank and Gordon ring any bells?) would easily translate into shilling for family feedbag restaurants…ok fine, but why do their heads have to be cut off? Is the audience to believe that the Montana’s Cookhouse is really an Aboriginal longhouse where shamanistic powers have reanimated the spirits of cloven-hoofed dead? It’s just a creepy premise for an otherwise benign commercial.

Juxta-poseur

The office where I work has some of the ugliest art I’ve ever seen. Companies usually have something hanging from the walls to break up the monotony and speak to their organizational culture, but this stuff is truly hideous. It’s like fractals + sad clowns.

I’m not sure whether it’s all just bad art or bad juxtapositions, but it got me thinking about how great ads usually have some hook that’s unconventional or out of place.

It’s either an immediate hook which only makes sense until the end of the commercial:

Or a hip reinvention of old ideas/symbols/paradigms:

Or a juxtaposition that is just too ridiculous to conceive:

I guess it takes a lot of creativity and an eye for the obscene or offbeat to design these ads. At my core I’m an analyst, so I naturally have to break things down. Here’s my take at developing catchy creative:

1. What’s the campaign’s message?
2. What puns, jokes, images, suggestions, metaphors, allusions, allegories, double entendres, word plays, or limericks can you safely get away with?
3. Choose the one that the client would like best
4. Call this Version One
5. Go one step further and push the envelope of appropriateness by choosing the best (read: funniest) juxtaposition for the campaign.
6. Call this Version Two!

I like to have fun with this, but ultimately it’s the ad which draws the greatest response and awareness through market research that is going to be the most effective.