//WHAT: “World’s Apart,” a new Heineken ad that involves some frank conversations between people with differing views.
WHO: Agency Publicis London
WHY WE CARE: Earlier this month, Pepsi tried to walk in step with the #Resistance, and ended up falling on its face. Hard. The company’s tone-deaf ad–which used Black Lives Matter iconography and Kendall Jenner to suggest that carbonated beverages can heal America’s wounds–inspired such a seething backlash it was pulled almost instantly, and savagely parodied. It would’ve been a fine time for Coca-Cola to step up and deliver a perfectly calibrated topical ad, thereby eating Pepsi’s lunch. In truth, though, Coke had to do absolutely nothing to achieve the same result. Instead, Heineken has come along a couple weeks later with an ad that gets to the heart of political engagement in a straightforward way that makes Pepsi’s self-congratulatory ad seem even more embarrassing.//
At the end of the day, all reporting must rest on fairness. I’ve asked Business Insider reporter Lara to post her full unedited video/audio interview for the sake of transparency since Kevin has now been placed on ‘Leave of Absence’ because of her interview.
Until Lara can provide us the full unedited video/audio interview to watch/listen to judge for ourselves, I can only base my critique on the written interview. I have excerpted all of Kevin’s quotes from the report and added my emphasis and brief commentaries afterwards. Read the rest of this entry »
To be honest, this reporter is one of the people who was shocked to find out Hello Kitty is not a cat from reading Miranda’s article. And then changed my mind again Read the rest of this entry »
Thousands of unsuspecting customers were simultaneously and pleasantly surprised while banking with TD today as part of its Automated Thanking Machine campaign today. At exactly 2 p.m. EST Friday July 25th, TD customers at over 1,110 branches received green envelopes containing a $20 bill from over 20,000 TD employees! Customers using TD phone and online banking service were also included as $20 was deposited directly into their accounts. Since TD thanked over 30,000 customers across Canada, a quick calculation has lead to the conclusion that over $600,000 in $20 bills or direct deposit were gifted to customers! In addition to the cash gifts, a TD spokesperson stated “over a dozen customers across Canada received a special customer thanking experience at their local branch through the Automated Thanking MachineTM, such as trips, experiences, RESP contributions etc.”
“It was incredible to see the look of surprise on our customers’ faces,” said Ester Condello, a branch manager with TD Canada Trust. “We say thank you to our customers every day, and we’ll say thank you tomorrow and the next day. Today’s thank you is about all of us at TD working together to shout it from the rooftops.”
“A thank you can change someone’s day, so that’s why we have been surprising our customers across Canada, to say ‘TD Thanks You’,” said Tim Hockey, President and CEO, TD Canada Trust.
At press time, 22 hours after the heart warming YouTube video “Sometimes you just want to say thank you #TDThanksYou” featuring TD’s Automated Thanking MachineTM was posted, it has over 119,000 views. According to TD spokesperson, “Local branch employees helped design these very meaningful and individualized thank-you experiences that were ultimately unveiled to their customers through the Automated Thanking MachineTM, an ATM that talks and delivers surprises.”
One of the TD customers, a baseball fan, featured in the video shared his experience. “I can’t believe TD did this – it’s something that I’ll never forget,” said Mike Jobin, a TD customer who received a special thank you experience from his local TD branch in Pickering, ON. “We’re a real baseball family and making the first pitch at a Blue Jays game was at the top of my bucket list. Let’s just say that I had goosebumps the whole time!”
Some readers may want to compare #TDThanksYou to the globally successful “WestJet Christmas Miracle: real-time giving” campaign (over 36 millions views) and think this new campaign is a bit derivative but that would have been a bit unfair. In reply to a question about the potential similarity between the two campaigns, a TD spokesperson stated, “The goal behind the campaign was to thank our incredible customers. We created the concept to provide meaningful thank you surprises to customers and drew inspiration from our unique customer service approach- to strive for legendary experiences. We were focused on developing surprising ways to thank our customer, and less so on what others have done.”
I hadn’t planned to talk about the new Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches ad campaign but I couldn’t help but chat about it with a few Google+ friends and bringing up my love of the 2006 awardwinningEvolution campaign. Anyway, while Sketches nowhere near as good as Evolution, I like some element of the campaign enough to share it here.
P.S. Most people just want to think “What a lucky guy?! People have no idea Jesse Heiman has been an actor (working as extras and other roles) for 12 years and has an extensive resume!
I love this quote, ““Ben Hogan said, ‘Golf is a game of luck, the more I practice, the luckier I get.’ The harder you work, the luckier you are.” Yes, before you attribute others’ success on “luck”, work hard, very hard. You may then earned the “luck” to experience Louis Pasteur’s “Chance favors the prepared mind.” yourself one day. I work very hard to get lucky. Wish me luck (or success)! :)
“This is an opportunity. The entire world is watching and there is nothing on. So quickly, everyone pull together a design, a caption, the folks from Oreo were in the room, and we got something out in just a few minutes [kempton’s note: 360i was ready in only 5 mins after the power outage but waited for 5 more mins to confirm that people were safe before they tweeted].“ – Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i (WSJ Video interview, Feb 4th, 2013)
It was my pleasure the Monday morning after Superbowl to host an event to have an insightful chat with Kim Beasley and Trev Warth to specifically talk about the very successful Oreo’s “Power Out? No problem.” tweet campaign. Here is a video of our chat. See my reference notes below for more detailed research.
I’m first of all puzzled and wondering “Why is @IKEACanada silent during global trending Twitter #ikeamonkey ?” I see people from around the world on Twitters write and write about #ikeamonkey. And the media outlets not just in Canada but from aroundtheworld are also turning this into a viral discussion! But then paradoxically, I see the @IKEACanada account (yes, the official verified IKEA Canada Twitter account) being completely silent on #ikeamonkey! Why is the IKEA Canada social media tweeting nothing about #ikeamonkey? And, more seriously, why is the Toronto-based Leo Burnett, IKEA’s creative agency of record (since March 2011) NOT convincing IKEA Canada to do something creative and fun to engage all the people tweeting about IKEA!
Questions for Leo Burnett & IKEA Canada
Why is Judy John, chief creative officer, Leo Burnett and her team doing nothing? Are there heavy resistent from IKEA Canada? Now, may be they are doing something but in the Twitter age inside a perfect viral storm, one viral #ikeamonkey day is easily more than 100 human days! Since monkey Darwin was first spotted by shoppers at 2 p.m. ET Sunday, so one viral #ikeamonkey day (100 human days) has officially passed without something fun or engaging from @IKEACanada or Leo Burnett! What a waste of social media positive energy.
Lets have some fun IKEA Canada & Leo Burnett
There are many ways to engage and have fun. I spent a few quick minutes to come up with a few. Feel free to post and share yours in the comment.
Here are my free #ikeamonkey ideas/advices 2 @IKEACanada & @LeoBurnett#hint #youshouldreallypayme4myideas #yyc #canada
At this point, some thoughtful social engagement by @IKEACanada about #ikeamonkey will tremendous good for IKEA as a global brand.
Now, I don’t mean to criticize Leo Burnett (Toronto) too harshly as I think they have done some great work over the years like this one, “Ikea’s Cardboard Outdoor Posters Fold Down Into Moving Boxes Take one and start packing.” But I just can’t help but think about the wasted positive worldwide fun & positive attention to IKEA (not just IKEA Canada). What a waste! I feel like someone dumping tons and tons of preciously liquid gold randomly into ocean, once lost, they can’t be found again! It sucks!
Update: I rethink a little, since this is an article about social media, I will wait & see if @IKEACanada or @LeoBurnett see my Twitter tags re this article or do anything today. If I have time or want to do a followup article on this, I will then call up Leo Burnett and see if I can get a comment.
Note: This post is cross-posted by me at examiner.
Wieden & Kennedy is a great Ad company that bought us the exceptionally cool “Old Spice Man campaign” in 2010 but its lastest “Chairs Are Like Facebook” Ad to celebrate it had reached its billion-user milestone has left this reporter and many people scratching our collective heads. To many people, Facebook is a Lovemark to them but this ad isn’t one fit for a Lovemark.
Rebecca Van Dyck (FB), former exec for Apple and Levi’s and hired by Facebook in Feb 2012 as its head of consumer marketing, told AdAge, (emphasis added)
“What we’re trying to articulate is that we as humans exist to connect, and we at Facebook to facilitate and enable that process.” “We make the tools and services that allow people to feel human, get together, open up. Even if it’s a small gesture, or a grand notion — we wanted to express that huge range of connectivity and how we interact with each other.”
Ms Van Dyck continued, (emphasis added)
“We started thinking about this a year ago and approached Wieden & Kennedy to help us craft a message that articulated our values and who we are. It wasn’t until recently that we realized we were close to reaching 1 billion, and we thought what an amazing way to honor our users, to create this piece for them.“
For an ad that aspires to articulate “our values and who we are“, the least it should is to touch us emotionally, be meaningful, and may be have it stand the test of time. I’ve watched the Ad quite a few times now to make sure my comments express my feelings fairly. And I’ve also transcribed the words from the voiceover of “Chairs Are Like Facebook” so I can read it in full and you can see for yourself.
[red wood chair suspending in mid-air in a forest]
“Chairs. Chairs are made so that people can sit down and take a break.
Anyone can sit on a chair and if the chair is a large enough they can sit down together and tell jokes or make up stories or just listen.
Chairs are for people and that’s why chairs are like Facebook.
Doorbells. Airplanes. Bridges. These are things people used to get together. So they can open up and connect about ideas and music.
Another things people share: Dance Floors. Basketball. A Great Nation.
A Great Nation is something people build so they can have a place where they belong.
The Universe. It is vast and dark. And makes us wonder if we are alone. So may be the reason we make all of these things is to remind ourselves that we are not.”
in white appears on a black screen.
Reading the about FaceBook Ad copy, it just seems, to me, totally disposable and ready to be thrown away next week/month and ready to be replaced by something flashy, different and new. In stark contrast, Apple’s timeless “Think Different” Ad campaign is so impressive a copy that I’ve personally heard it read out loud in wedding ceremony! Yes, people love it that much! As this reporter wrote in 2011 when the Steve Jobs biography was published, the voice (someone has to read the copy) of the voice over deserves tremendous attention! And I don’t know what happened in the Facebook voice over casting?! Anyway, here is what Steve Jobs went through in his struggle to decide whose voice to use.
“Jobs couldn’t decide whether to use the version with his voice or to stick with Dreyfuss. […] When morning came, Jobs called and told them to use the Dreyfuss version. “If we use my voice, when people find out they will say it’s about me,” he told Clow. “It’s not. It’s about Apple.”“
Have a listen and watch of the following two versions of “Here’s to the Crazy Ones” videos.
The following are videos of 1984 McDonald’sBig Mac commercials in US (I believe) and Hong Kong respectively. To me, the Cantonese campaign actually trumped the English one! The HK commercial actually came as a part of a really smart campaign. And in hindsight, it can also be said that it was part of a campaign to “brainwash” HK kids with the virtues of Big Mac! How so? Well, HK kids were asked to memorize and recite a promo about the virtues of Big Mac in less than six seconds (see following Cantonese ad), in exchange for a FREE Big Mac!
I and many HK kids recited the promo in less than six seconds with flying colours! I didn’t know then, but in hindsight if this campaign didn’t fall under “brainwashing” I don’t know what would. Yes, in case you ask, after all these years, I still can recite the Cantonese Hong Kong Big Mac promo in less than five seconds (not six)! In Canada (I am less sure about US), we now have advertising/marketing guidelines as to what we can do to advertise to young children, and I am happy to say there are forms of advertising we don’t allow any company to do to influence the mind of young ones.
P.S. Setting aside ethics and morality for a moment, the Hong Kong advertising/marketing team did one heck of a job in improving upon the original US ad concept. Translating the language and culture of an ad is almost impossible but improving upon was really pushing everything one level up! Great job even I had to set aside ethics and morality to praise the original 1984 HK McDonald’s Big Mac team.
Fast food, especially McDonald’s fast food, has received some decidedly bad press (some say rightfully) when the world has become more health aware. It is a breath of fresh air when Hope Bagozzi, director of marketing at McDonald’s Canada, not only put herself in the center of a marketing campaign that can blow up quickly, but have a team of dedicated people & experts in answering some serious questions from people. Here are some questions and screen captures from tonight.
Charles S. from Concord, ON asked “There is a concern that animals are breed to reach a maximum weight in the shortest time. At what age is your livestock put to slaughter?”
Madison L. from North Battleford, SK asked: “Is the chicken real meat?”
Laura B. from Toronto, ON asked: “How is it that a McDonalds burger does not rot?”
Nikki L. from Blackfalds, AB asked: “Does Canada use “pink slime”?”
Sarah H. from Brampton, ON asked: “Why should I eat anything that has ingredients like “dimethylpolysiloxane” embedded into it?“
As you can see, the above sample questions are not “softball” questions at all. Not being a food expert or medical professional, it may be hard for us to decide if the answers provided are “justifiable” or “acceptable” but at least McDonald’s is posting these questions and giving an attempt in answering them.
Duncan explains and share his experiences with using Sport Chek (a Canadian Tire owned and operated brand via FGL Sports) to experiment with new/cool social media, Google/YouTube and Facebook advertising/marketing campaigns. I agree with Duncan that the best way (when everything is so new) is simply by “trail and error” to figure what actually works and what doesn’t. Find out what contributes to the bottom-lines and makes money and what actually destroys shareholders’ equity. Once what works are found (via Sport Chek), then applying the lessons learned to Canadian Tire as a whole. Very interesting real world examples.
“Duncan Fulton Senior Vice President of Communications and Corporate Affairs Canadian Tire Corporation
Duncan Fulton is Senior Vice President of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Canadian Tire Corporation & Chief Marketing Officer of the Forzani Group, including mega sport retailers like Sport Chek and Sports Experts. Duncan is a member of the Canadian Tire and Forzani Group executive teams and works across all the company’s business areas, including Canadian Tire Retail, Automotive, Part Source, Petroleum, Mark’s, Financial Services and the company’s charity, Jumpstart.
Duncan currently represents the company as a board member of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and is also on the Board of One X One,a non-profit foundation committed to supporting, preserving and improving the lives of children at home in Canada, Haiti and Africa.
Before joining Canadian Tire, Duncan was the General Manager and Senior Partner of the Toronto flagship office of international public relations company, Fleishman-Hillard Communications. During his seven years with Fleishman-Hillard, Duncan led and worked on the company’s largest accounts across multiple practice areas. As a key strategist within the Omnicom network, Duncan played an important role in multi-agency campaigns, bringing together experts in advertising, social, experiential, direct to consumer, and paid and earned media.
Prior to Fleishman-Hillard, Duncan was a communication advisor and press secretary for Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Duncan was also Communications Director for the Minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Press Secretary for the Hon. Dalton McGuinty – now Ontario’s Premier – and communication assistant for Premier Frank McKenna.”
“Nikesh Arora Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer
Nikesh oversees all revenue and customer operations, as well as marketing and partnerships. Since joining Google in 2004, he has held several positions with the company. Most recently, he led Google’s global direct sales operations. He also developed and managed the company’s operations in the European, Middle Eastern and African markets and was responsible for creating and expanding strategic partnerships in those regions for the benefit of Google’s growing number of users and advertisers.
Prior to joining Google, he was chief marketing officer and a member of the management board at T-Mobile Europe. While there, he spearheaded all product development, terminals, brand and marketing activities of Read the rest of this entry »
My good friend Gingi Baki asked me: who is the most interesting person you met at Banff 2012? Tough question! You see, I have met television creatives & luminaries like Chuck Lorre, Glen Mazzara, Jeanne Beker, Mike Fleiss, Terence Winter and I can easily put any one of them on my “most interesting person” list. But if I do that, I will be doing a diservice to you. What would you gain if I name any one of them? Nothing! Because you know them already. Instead I will share with you a name that, unless you are in the “business“, you may not heard of.
Paul is the brain behind bringing the international format Got Talent into the almost impossible land of China (rebranded to be China’s Got Talent 中国达人秀) which was a 15 months effort and lots of negotiation (as Paul wrote, “co-operation and partnership with IPCN, Shanghai Media Group and format owners Freemantle and SYCO“). China’s Got Talent is one of the first TV formats that got into China. I actually saw widespread popularity first hand at the time as many of the amazing China’s Got Talent videos were shared by my friends on their social networks. (for more details, see Paul’s 2010 blog and ICPN page with video clip)
I stumbled upon a talk by Gary Carter at the 2007 nextMedia/Banff World TV Festival (yes, 5 years ago!) and his insights were amazingly deep. Since then, I’ve attended all of Gary’s talk I can and try to pay close attention to what Gary does and related news, including his recent resignation as FremantleMedia’s Chief Operating Officer. I am sure whatever Gary does next will be worth my attention to know and learn from. (note: Gary came back to Banff in 2009, here is a great list of Gary’s 2009 clips, see The Susan Boyle Phenomenon, and FremantleMedia Experimental)
Paul Chard
Which brings back to Paul. And I am going to share with you a secret trick I use. I use Google Alerts to track and try to learn from interesting & insightful people. I am adding Paul to my Google Alerts list along the likes of Kevin and Gary. In life, I believe an important way to better ourselves is to learn from the best.
Kevin wrote years ago, “Ideas are the currency of the future.” And the likes of Kevin, Gary, and Paul are “rich people” going by the quote. And William Gibson’s quote “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” enlightens me to realize that the best way to look into the future is to look and see what “rich people” like Kevin, Gary, and Paul think and do!
P.S. Who is your “most interesting #banff2012 person“? Please share with your reasons in the comment section.
*******
Here is the official Banff session description.
“Paul Chard, Global Head of Content, MediaCom: How Content is Changing the Business
Paul Chard is a true industry veteran, getting his start over three decades ago, in 1980. Today, as the Global Head of Content at MediaCom, Chard is responsible for media sponsorship, sport, branded entertainment and advertiser funding, social media and emerging platforms. In 2010, Chard brokered the successful “Got Talent” format into China and saw it become the biggest foreign reality show ever screened in the country. Having seen this industry from every angle, Chard carries with him a wealth of knowledge and insight. Join Chard as he reflects on his career and looks forward to the future of the entertainment industry in this exclusive opening keynote.”
Hello Kitty and SpongeBob are loved by many and easily qualified as Lovemarks. Now, I am curious of the commercial benefits of licensing the images of Hello Kitty and SpongeBob to put on pasta products. May be all Heinz wants is to put their late coming products stand out a little from a large field of competitors and that benefit alone is worth the price of the licensing fees. What do you think?
Bill Buxton is one of the smartest technologists I know of. Once in a while, I try to “catch up” with Bill by finding some of his online presentations/videos to watch. I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I do.
“What makes some brands inspirational, while others struggle? BNN’s Kim Parlee and Andrew Bell find out from Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi.”
Kevin talks Apple (iPhone, iPad) vs Blackberry. “[RIM] is out of touch with the consumers. They rely very much on matrix, research, and facts. […] The miss how the consumers feel.” I had a lot of fun seeing Kevin chat with the two hosts.
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