Promo Gone Wrong!

So I'm sure you've all been exposed to some brilliant, unique, and creative marketing campaigns sometime in your lives (if not then I hope this blog has introduced y'all to some cool ones!). But what about those that didn't get quite the results that the companies were looking for? What about those that BACKFIRE?

Well...

This past week Brazil experienced a bomb scare in the public square of the well known and upscale Ipanema beach area of the city. Police were called last Wednesday to report that there were two wooden crates abandoned in the aforementioned location. I don't know if you guys know this, but the city was just recovering after days of fighting between violent drug gangs and the heavily armed police with military vehicles that killed at least 23 people. So imagine their reaction to find these crates in the middle of such a public place. After the Rio's bomb squad closed off the area and surrounding streets, they opened the crates only to report that it was completely empty, and no explosives were found.

So what in the world were those two crates for??

LONG STORY SHORT, the crates were actually part of P&G's teaser promotion for its biggest sweepstakes in Brazil, called "P&G Faustão's Airplane" with multiple drawings held every Sunday by Brazil's most popular TV host, Fausto Silva. The website for the promotion shows a plane on a run way with cars, motorcycles, and home electronics and appliances--as well as a wooden crate with stickers of P&G products and labels on it (see above). And thus, the crate kind of became the mascot of the campaign/promotion, and so the idea behind putting said crate(s) in such a public place was to show that Faustão's Airplane was so filled to the brim with prizes that they were even falling from the sky. This..brilliant idea was created by two partnering local promotions companies called NewStyle situated in Sao Paulo with Moda Promoções e Eventos in Rio. There were also plans to put these crates in the parking lots of huge retailers that sold P&G products...but I guess that kind of backfired, eh? Neither promotions company would comment but P&G quickly cancelled their plans on installing other wooden crates in public.

Well I would assume so, after such an event!

T-Mobile Sings Its Way to Second

Remember that awesome T-Mobile advert a while back where they did a dance flash mob at the Liverpool Street Station in London? And then they also did that cool sing-along in Trafalgar Square?

Well, this time they're back with another creative venture--also created by Saatchi & Saatchi, as with all their previous stunts. This version, "Welcome Back" was filmed at Heathrow Airport (Terminal 5, to be exact!), and released just before Hallowe'en. Already, it's garnered over 3.7 million views, last I checked, which is pretty awesome, in my opinion. According to Adage.com, the video has climbed its way to second place on the Viral Video Chart, bested only by Nike's "Lebron Rise" video, which has over 3.9 million views. Oooo it's going to be a close race! (Note: the numbers were taken from their official YouTube channels.)

Welcome Back:

LeBron Rise:

What do y'all think? Does T-Mobile's "Welcome Back" have what it takes to usurp Nike? Or will "LeBron Rise" reign supreme? Have a look-see, and comment accordingly!!

Her Royal Majesty...on Facebook?

Now this is what I call keeping up with the times. So apparently, Queen Elizabeth II and her whole royal household have created a Facebook page that was launched just last week. Social media fans will now be caught up in all the latest news, photos, speeches (etc etc) of the monarchy, and there is even an app for which users can search up Royal events happening near them (sadly, for us North Americans the closest would still be an ocean away). The page has been created as a 3 way collaboration between Buckingham Palace, Clarence House (official home of the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and Princes William and Harry), and the Royal Collection.

But this isn’t the only social media site where the royal family is active on. Though the Facebook page is the latest in the series of social media launches by the Household, the British Monarchy also has a Flickr account (launched earlier this year), a Twitter account (joined 2009), and a channel on Youtube (2007). For all you social media fans, feel free to follow, like, subscribe and basically find out what’s happening in the family’s lives.

In my opinion, joining a social network (or in their case, many networks) this is a great way for the family to be more integrated in our society in this day and age. Celebrities do it, politicians do it, even your Average-Joe does it. So why not the British Monarchy? The Queen is also said to frequently email her grandkids! So kudos to the Queen for staying in tune with her inner techie!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Facebook page is a corporate page. So no, you cannot poke her.

How to Go Viral With Your Videos

So I came across this really great article on Mashable the other day (via Twitter…it’s an addiction, I swear!) that discussed the 3 things a video needs in order for it to go viral. Off the top of my head, a perfect example of it a video gone viral would have to be the Old Spice ones that’s been circulating just recently. Or the HALO video that I put up in one of my earlier blog posts.

But what is it about videos like these that make it so epically…viral? Well, according to the article, the 3 main things you need for video success are:

1) Psychological share motivation, which was further broken down into three subcategories: emotions (tug the heartstrings), identity and self expression (clear message), and information (self explanatory).

2) Easy shareability (also self explanatory. I always look for “share” buttons when I see a particularly cool video online, Youtube, in my opinion, is fantastic for its easy shareability).

3) Data-driven strategy (obviously, you should know which sites generates the most traffic, at which time, and for which target audience etc etc before you launch your video.

Though these traits may be obvious to y'all, you may be surprised to see how effective these small reminders can be for people who are looking to launch a successful video.

And obviously, one can’t make a blog post about great viral videos without actually posting one. So…here’s one that I particularly liked from the article:

For further information (or just access to the article), click here.

Interactive Screen!

I'll spare y'all from a long and tedious post (since it's midterm season and all), and just put up video that our awesome YMA co-president emailed me a few days ago.

Tell me what you think about it!

Definitely makes ME want to go to NYC and wave at the screen like a fool! Oh, and of course, shop at Forever XXI! ;)

Apple of the Decade

So Ad Age, an online marketing and communications website, recently gave Apple their first Marketer of the Decade award. Cool, eh? Though it’s only won Ad Age’s Marketer of the Year once this past decade, the company has been named runner up many times, and a contender practically every year.

To be frank, I'd have to agree with Ad Age’s decision on this one. Apple ran plenty of great marketing campaigns over the years that were fun, engaging, and told the audience what Apple was all about. Let’s take a peek at some of their major campaigns over the years:

The Apple silhouette dancing campaign for the first few generations/lines of iPods (one of my fave campaigns, BTW):

“Get a Mac” campaign (with John Hodgeman and Justin Long—hilarious!):

Sorry for the blurriness!

“There’s an app for that”:

Impressive, eh? Well, part of the genius goes the advertising agency, TBWA (who has a long term agency-client relationship with Apple), for its success! Fascinated? If you want to learn a bit more about this, go here for more info!

New Logos??

I'm not sure if any of you have heard..but Gap just recently came out with their new logo, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. If you head on over to Gap's home page, you can see that the iconic blue box with the white logo in caps (the 84th most valued brand in the world, according to Interbrand, might I add) has been replaced by a plain old "Gap" in black over white background..with a blue box sitting morosely over the "p".

See the comparison below:

Outrageous! I don't know about you, but frankly, I'm not impressed by the new logo. The old logo has been around for 20-odd years, and I guess Gap thinks it's time for a change! When Gap came out with the new look, netizens were quick to react and quick to criticize (quite harshly from some, I've heard).

Gap soon responded with a note on their Facebook page, acknowledging the reaction and asking the audience for new designs. So says on their status:

"Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project."

Well, at least they were quick about it.

Which brings me to ANOTHER company that recently did a logo change as well: Myspace (thanks to Katherine, our Publications Director for telling me about this! You are awesome!!). Apparently, even more recently, Myspace rolled out their new logo:

Geddit, geddit? I actually think that the idea behind it is a pretty good one, and a great play on words...image...line...thingy. And the cool thing about the logo is that when you hover your mouse over it, the blank space will have user generated artwork in the redesigned site. I'm not sure what the general verdict about it will be since the site hasn't been relaunched yet (otherwise, I'd totally link you lovely people to it!), and since I'm not on Myspace, I'm a bit indifferent to the logo change. But what about you guys? What do you think of the new logo?

Oh, and here's something that was tweeted (that Katherine also sent me...honestly, what would I do without you, girl?) by @gaplogo, supposedly a parody account that was created within 24 hours of the new Gap logo launch. I think I like that one the most!