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This past Sunday was a pretty big commercial day (and I guess there was some football in there, too) and I noticed quite a few brands teamed up to try and catch viewers’ attention. Co-branding works a lot of times as you can tell by the popularity of Haagen-Dazs’ Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream or Betty Crocker’s brownie mix with Hershey’s chocolate syrup. But this Super Bowl there were a few interesting combination commercials that were unexpected, which may or may not be a good thing.
This year, GE worked with Budweiser to show how the turbines GE produces provide the power to make the beer and to keep it cold. It’s an interesting combination; not one you’d expect from either company. Another odd combination included Old Spice teaming up with both Charmin and Bounce. While you do see the Bounce Dyer Bar and Charmin Freshmates, Old Spice takes over the commercials saying “It’s so powerful it sells itself in other peoples’ commercials.” Interesting concepts but in all honesty, the Old Spice commercials scare me a little.
In my opinion, the best show of teamwork goes to OK Go and Chevy’s new Sonic, who produced a music video that was referenced in their Super Bowl commercial. In the 60 second spot, Chevy intrigues you with shots of “Sonic’s first music video” with OK Go along with “Sonic’s first skydive” and “Sonic’s first bungee”. I was most intrigued by the music video and checked out OK Go’s new video for their song “Needing/Getting” and have been obsessed ever since. The video took four days of filming, stunt driving lessons and over 1,100 custom-made instruments to make and it was all worth it. I’m intrigued to see how successful this was for Chevy’s newest product, but with over 9.5 million views on YouTube, it definitely gets the name out there.
Be sure to check out the Chevy Super Bowl ad and OK Go’s “Needing/Getting” video (below)!
A few months ago, Wildfire conducted an ROI survey of over 700 marketers across different industries all around the world to see how social media is used in their businesses and why. The below infographic shows how social media is used to grow brand awareness, increase communication with consumers, and how marketers use this information to determine the impact of social media on their business.
I don’t know about you, but I am a snoozer. It’s bad. Really, really bad. I hit the snooze button 5 times yesterday.This morning it was 4 times, but I admit, I badly wanted those extra 9 minutes one more snooze would’ve gotten me.
Sadly, for those like me, snoozing has now become expensive, both financially and socially. Two new apps are on the market that will change the way you wake up. The first is Snooze by LetGive, a charitable giving organization that works with charities like DoSomething.org and Action Against Hunger. This app charges you $0.25 every time you hit the snooze button and donates it to a charity. It’ll let you know how much money you’ve sent to these organizations twice a month and I’m sure my bill would be pretty high by the end of the month. At least it’s for a good cause!
The second is OKITE by the Japanese developer Eureka. This app connects with Twitter so that every time you hit snooze a weird and/or embarrassing tweet goes out to your followers. Some examples of tweets it could send include, “Dressed as a sailor now” and “Not enough talented people like me in the world.” Depending on who follows you, this would be a great way to make sure you get up right away. Who knows what looks you’d get if your coworkers saw something like this on Twitter at 730 in the morning.
I, for one, would love to try these apps but temporarily. Let’s be honest, I would most likely have no money to buy groceries and my Twitter Followers would probably unfollow me for being even weirder than usual. For those snoozers out there, would you ever download these apps and do you think they’d be successful at getting you up and out of bed?
As Stephen Colbert said on Monday’s episode of the Colbert Report, “Cyber Monday is a follow up to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when Americans awake from their tryptophan induced comma to trade gluttony for greed.” And in my opinion, he hit the nail on the head. Everybody knows that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping days of the year and that people go crazy for them, even to extremes such as pepper spraying people for waffle irons. Don’t get me wrong, I love waffles, but this is getting out of control. Not only are we going insane, we are also spending record breaking amounts of money. Though the final sales numbers for Cyber Monday have not been released, comScore projects that around 123 million U.S. consumers spent $1.2 billion this year compared to $1 billion last year.
Patagonia is not a fan of this type of consumerism or how it impacts the environment. Through their Common Threads Initiative, Patagonia is trying to get consumers to buy less of everything including their products. To push this initiative, they sent out a special email message yesterday telling people to not buy their jackets. Some may think this is just a ploy, but they really are asking consumers to “buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else.” They even tell you what it takes to make one of their most popular jackets and explain how it affects the planet’s natural resources.
To make the R2 jacket “required 135 liters of water, enough to meet the daily needs (three glasses a day) of 45 people. Its journey from its origin as 60% recycled polyester to our Reno warehouse generated nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, 24 times the weight of the finished product. This jacket left behind, on its way to Reno, two-thirds its weight in waste.”
This advertising campaign and the project itself is really amazing and hopefully the idea of reducing the number of items we buy and recycling items we don’t use will catch on just a little more because of it.
Check out the video for Patigonia’s Common Threads Initiative and read the full AdAge article here.
I hate the mall. I love shopping but absolutely hate the mall. There are so many people and I get very anxious. I also hate trying on clothes. It’s time consuming and tiring especially when you grab the wrong sizes and have to go back and forth, over and over. I’m an online shopper to the core. But there are consequences to online shopping. Unless I’ve bought the exact same pair of jeans at the store, how will I know if it fits? If it doesn’t, I’m going to have to pay shipping to send it back and most likely shipping for the exchange. Which makes me very excited for this new possibility…
Recently at the Retail Expo in Tokyo, Toshiba TEC showcased their new virtual dressing room, the Hybrid Fitting System. Using a camera, people can see items available in the store on their own bodies. Like the Kinect, all users have to do is wave their hand to switch products or colors to see what they like best. Not only can you check yourself out while shopping, you can see the prices and sizes that you’d need when you purchase the items. On top of that, it gives suggestions of items you may like based on what you’re trying on. It’s like my own personal fashion guru. How handy is that!?
This could change the world of retail in my opinion. The possibilities are endless. This can go to remote locations where people don’t have the option to go to the stores themselves. It could work for people like me who just don’t want to go to the stores or those who don’t have the time before the stores close. Even better, this can even work for those with disabilities who cannot normally have the in-store shopping experience.
I think that Toshiba TEC has pushed augmented reality to a new level which can connect to a lot of people across the globe. I am excited to find out which other companies will jump on this idea.
The video below shows the Hybrid Fitting System in action at the Tokyo Retail Expo. Enjoy!
This year at the Association of National Advertisers convention, Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook decided to be bold with her sales pitch. Her message: Facebook shouldn’t be the only thing marketers do online or in marketing. It should just be part of everything they do. In the AdAge article, Sandberg’s Quietly Audacious Pitch to ANA: Put a Little Facebook in Everything You Do, they quote her saying, “For Facebook, not only is overall sharing doubling every year via “Zuckerberg’s Law,” but the number of daily fan page “likes” also has doubled in the past year to 100 million daily.” Though she has a point and proved it with case studies showing the success of American Express and Huggies, I don’t really agree with her that it should be the strategy for everyone.
There are some brands that should definitely be on Facebook. I have liked pages for companies like my favorite brands of ice cream and shoes. However, my main goal is to get discounts or enter contests. I’m all about free shoes, not that I ever win. Because of this, I understand Ms. Sandberg’s point of view. However, there are some types of companies I don’t want to “like” on Facebook. I don’t want to “like” life insurance companies, pharmaceutical makers, or financial planners on Facebook. There are certain industries that should remain serious and in my opinion, having a page on Facebook cheapens the value of their brand. I also want at least some of my life private and “liking” something personal such as who I go to about my 401K to pop up on all of my friends’ newfeeds. I also think that the number of likes a company has is not necessarily a good measure of success. I know many people who have “liked” a brand on Facebook in order to write on their wall about how much they hate them. In this case, being on Facebook is hurting your brand by making everyone aware of all of the problems people have had.
I completely agree that Facebook is a great way to highlight a brand when it is appropriate. I’ve seen many successful campaigns use Facebook as a platform but it should not be part of a strategy for every brand. In my opinion, Ms. Sandberg’s statements should be taken into consideration, but keep in mind that she is the COO of Facebook and it was a sales pitch.
Read the full AdAge artile here.
Confession of the day: I am a romance novel addict. It’s sad, but true. Give me a relaxing weekend and I can go through two or three Nora Roberts’ books with time to spare for sniffles and romantic sighs. This year for my birthday I got a Kindle, and though I added the classics (mostly for the ability to say “oh I have that on my Kindle,”) my main priority was getting as many romance novels as possible. And luckily, thanks to my Kindle, nobody has to know that I’m reading a sappy love story unless they notice me crying when the characters, of course, break up for a week before living happily ever after.
As we all know, the digital book business is booming but what most people don’t realize is that romance novels are a big part of that. Random House, who just released the digital romance series “Rouge Romance,” reports that digital books now make up 10.2% of their sales. When Random House researched the industry they found that romance novel readers among the first to migrate to ebooks and, as Gillian Green of Ebury Publishing says, “one in seven romance readers have already bought an ebook in the last year.” The romance novel publisher Mills & Boon, releases around 100 ebooks each month and according to the PSFK article, their parent company Torstar reported digital revenue increases of C$16.1m. In 2008, a survey by Forrester Research found that 37% of online consumers had never even heard of an electronic book device. Since then, the US has seen an increase in ebook sales of over 1000%.
So why do romance readers prefer the ebook route? For starters, there is a stigma around romance novels and their readers, even though we should be proud that we are actually reading a book rather than constantly watching TV. In PSFK’s article, “Romantic Fiction’s Passion for eBooks,” Sharon Kendrick, a popular romance author says, “If you’ve got a Kindle then no one knows what you’re reading. It’s not about embarrassment, really – it’s more that you don’t want to be judged, and we are often judged by what we read.” In the same article, Susan Edwards, the COO of Ellora’s Cave (a romance publishing firm), attributes the popularity of digital romance novels to the “voracious” appetites of romance readers, who will race through “several” books a week. She says, “That’s a lot of books to buy and store. Ebooks take up a lot less room and busy people don’t have to make a trip to a book store to buy them.”
Now even Ellora’s Cave has come out with the new “eCave Reader” and they are already making plans for the next version. Romance novel publishers are realizing the large potential for this market and are putting their best foot forward in the shift to digital. I, for one, am very pleased, since this allows me to put even more romance novels on my Kindle!
Read the full PSFK article here.
