May
16

Drinking Our Own Kool-Aid

If there’s one thing you can’t accuse marketers of, it’s believing in their own solutions.

At least that’s what this infographic study from San Francisco agency Heat suggests. They recently compiled this sobering overview of how we, the advertising/marketing professionals, use social media in comparison to the general population, AKA, the people we’re supposed to be talking to.

The general consensus? We’re way more into it than anyone else. In just about every category and platform, our usage and engagement levels are several times higher than that of the typical consumer.

A few particularly glaring gaps include the number of people on Instagram (53% of ad peeps vs. just 6% general population) and Pinterest (57% vs. 11%), as well as the amount of users following brands on Twitter (92% vs 33%).

You could certainly read into these numbers and be alarmed. However, it also makes sense in a way – it’s part of our job to be early adaptors and get on board with emerging platforms and apps before they hit critical mass.

Oh, and it turns out that Don Draper types are more likely to get bombed at parties and hook up with coworkers…but we all suspected that one, didn’t we?

May
15

The Wine That Sold Beer

DB Export, the same brand that commissioned these hilarious grape-hating print ads, is at it again – this time with a covert ambush effort.

In an attempt to save innocent beer drinkers from succumbing to the pretentious wrath of sauvignon blanc, double-agent wine bottles (from the vineyards of “Chateau Crapio”) were placed inside liquor stores, labeled with instructions on how to discreetly escape and go buy beer instead.

It’s a good strategy, very funny, and well-written. Props to agency Colenso BBDO in Auckland for another home run.

May
15

Chews & Booze

Ad is for a food and wine festival in kangaroo land. Surely this has been done before, right? Don’t care. Love simple visual twists like this.

May
09

Emotional Rollercoaster

This is sort of what I look like when I have sex. A lot going on.

Series is for a French movie theatre or something. Line reads, “More movies, More emotions.”

I don’t trust weirdos that get THIS into movies. But I like it. Nice retouching. Thirty-six golden stars for agency TBWA (Paris).

May
07

Perpetual Abuse

Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Heh heh.

“70 percent of abused children turn into abusive adults”

Powerful series. I like the one with the torn apart teddy bear. How cute.

May
03

The World Without Billionaires

Really fun print series for Forbes magazine out of Ogilvy Brazil. God I miss pictographs. I still remember learning about them in school. My teacher was all like, “Okay kids, you have to draw a graph about giraffes and instead of drawing a bunch of bullshit lines and data points, you can just sketch a few mini mammals and that’ll do just fine”. Awesome.

May
02

Don’t Tune Out

Here in the 21st century land of PSA campaigns, we have to deal with brand new problems that are uniquely exclusive to the rich white public.

Take Australia for example, where people are too damn busy listening to their Sony Walkmans to see that 16 wheeler rolling on their way.

This set is for the Pedestrian Council of Australia, which could very well be the most wholesome-sounding workplace in the history of kangaroo land. Awesome idea. They even managed to art direct a few a different earbud styles into the ads. Wonder what they were listening to? Probably Ted Nugent…definitely Ted Nugent.

Apr
30

Odour Eating Flowers

Perfect visual metaphor. This is kind of shit I imagined venus fly traps doing when I was kid.

Quick tangent: one of the popular ad archives I use to find these ads is a site called “Ads Of The World“. It’s a wonderful resource for creatives and a great way to keep tabs on new work…but it’s also one of the douchiest, most childish, and tactless professional communities I’ve ever stumbled upon. The comment section under each and every ad inevitably becomes a pissing contest fueled by anonymous creatives that are more than happy to point out all the reasons why every piece sucks. And some of them deserve it. But more often than not, it’s just a bunch of self-righteous pricks ragging on something because they didn’t do it themselves. This campaign was a perfect example. It’s simple, smart, and looks good. And yet for every positive “good job” note left behind, there are armchair critics dishing out fierce criticism about things no real CONSUMER would ever think of.

No other creative community acts like this. Imagine going to a coffeehouse and seeing a spoken word poet harassing Acoustic Adam with the kind of venom typically reserved for divorcees and Jersey Shore climax scenes. Very representative of the too often poisonous nature of this industry. Young creatives: you’ve been warned. Don’t get sucked into the hate vortex.

Apr
25

Searching For Answers

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The following post was originally written for the FUSE Marketing Group Blog. You can view the original + comments here.
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Be warned: you’re about to read a marketing blog post about an advertiser’s advertisement campaign about their advertising.

Who would possibly have the time and money (and cojones!) to execute such an Inception-esque communications strategy? Google, of course! They recently launched a campaign to promote their overhauled Search Ad platform. You know the ones – you Google “African Penguins” and you’re served up a sidebar text ad for your local African Penguin dealer. It was a simple keyword approach to targeted messaging, but it lacked personalization. That’s about to change, and the refocused scheme is rooted in one simple but ingenius insight.

Maybe the best ads are just answers

Understanding that “when you’re hungry, the best sandwich is usually the closest one” and “100% of people searching for trailer hitches are interested in trailer hitches”, Google plans to not only cater ads based on web searches, but to also provide rich, dynamic, and personalized content within the ad that aims to inform first and (hopefully) sell second.

The ads will still appear based on your search query, but now they’ll include consumer reviews, star ratings, and ties to your social network (assuming you’re one of the 18 people still using Google+). In essence, they’re trying to encapsulate the 3 or 4 pieces of information you’d normally look for via search results within the ad itself.

That’s efficient web marketing. It’s one thing to call yourself “consumer-centric”, but it’s quite another to act that way. Google is walking the walk. They’re genuinely interested in making ads useful, and that deserves a big ol’ hip-hip-hurray.

Or at least a +1.

Apr
24

“One Letter Is All It Takes”

Don’t text and drive or you’ll hit that Brazilian cow, okay?

Agency: Ogilvy, Sao Paulo, Brazil
CCO: Anselmo Ramos
CDs: Claudio Lima, Andre Kirkelis
Copywriter: Hugo Veiga
AD: Diego Machado
Illustrators: Diego Machado, Fullframe Filmes

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