Online media can be a real paradox—an environment that represents such a wealth of creative opportunity, yet has for so long been a slave to the banner ad. Buttons, leaderboards, skyscrapers—the challenge to advertisers has been to cram as much creativity as they can into awkward shapes and sizes. Online ads have been more about geometry than creativity.
But more brands are rewriting the rules of online ads by growing the dimensions of their ideas beyond the traditional banner or video. Of course bigger is not always better—a bad idea is a bad idea in any size. But with a great idea, breaking the boundaries of traditional online formats can really bring to life what this medium does best.
APPLE
Apple’s “Second Opinion” on NYtimes.com shows the unique creative opportunities of three different ad units that are talking to each other…literally.
BMW
BMW’s “Expression of Joy” banner can expand across the screen to transform the page into a canvas and a Z4 convertible into an interactive paintbrush.
BURGER KING
Burger King’s “Collapse” uses the browser itself as part of the idea, reducing the size of the window as users scramble to solve the puzzle before time runs out.
QUICKSILVER
Quiksilver’s “The Spot” turns a skate video into a full screen skate park as Tony Hawk and friends jump out of the ad and dismantle the page with their tricks.
HONDA
Honda’s “Let it Shine” ad brings the environment of the video to the page around it, turning an already cool video into a full screen experience.
With the Internet’s ability to empower individuals, social media platforms have become powerful forces for change and community action. Social media interconnects millions of people at any given point providing everyone with a megaphone that can be heard far and fast.
While companies conventionally buy media and hire PR agencies to tell people about their charitable efforts, recently Adweek reported on a different kind of media tactic to help people discover and disseminate the good deeds of brands. More brands are tapping into people’s do-gooder impulses to spread their charitable messages through P2P endorsement. Giving the supported charity a donation is incentive for people to post about it in their personal feeds—the real-time “stream” of updates on Facebook & co.—creating word of mouth that comes close to a personal recommendation.
This tactic has the potential upside for brands to be more cost-efficient by offering donations vs. buying ad space to build awareness for the supported cause. And it allows them to redirect some of their media budgets to cover part of the costs of the cause initiative. But there is also risk if people see the efforts as promotional tactics and social-media spam vs. believing the brand wants to genuinely solve a problem or effect real change.
TARGET – BULLSEYE GIVE
Target’s Bullseye Gives campaign found the perfect blend of social media and charitable giving. For two weeks in May, users could vote once a day for one of 10 charities on Target’s Facebook page, to determine what percent of Target’s $3 million each charity would receive. Votes were published on news feeds for friends to view and become fans of the brand. The campaign resulted in 167,000 Facebook members who voted over 291,000 times and a 3,000% surge in Target’s wall posts.
KRAFT – SHARE A LITTLE COMFORT
Kraft has teamed up with Feeding America to create the Share a Little Comfort campaign that offers to donate 1,000,000 boxes of Kraft’s Blue Box Mac and Cheese to families in need. With a single click of the mouse, users can donate a free box and share their charitable ways with friends on Facebook and Twitter via Kraft’s helpful links that instantly update news feeds with a convenient prewritten message, informing and encouraging friends to donate. At press, the campaign generated over 73,000 donations.
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR There’s no such thing as a captive audience. Gone are the days of neat and discrete moments in time where advertisers talked to target audiences. Today’s is a culture in constant motion. And the dizzying array of platforms, constant connectivity and ever-increasing speed of information has left the ad industry out of sync with its audience. People don’t live in quarterly campaigns, nor do they distinguish communication channels. They expect faster and constant communication with their brands across more media platforms and conversations. Every month, week, day, on the hour. It’s now about how fast brands can move, how relevant they can be and what they can offer in the here and now. There is a always need for “slow” and carefully crafted brand strategies and stories. But, with culture in constant motion there is also a need for marketers to be quick and nimble, so they can find opportunities where their brands can tap into cultural conversations that are part of people’s lives.
BRAND BEHAVIOR Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Digital Officer for TBWA\Worldwide, challenges marketers to “advertise at the speed of culture”— making the case for designing constant communications at the intersections of product, culture, news and events. It’s a fleet of micro-initiatives as ongoing communication programs with your audience in response to culture 365 days a year. It’s about being opportunistic and leveraging key moments with brand relevance. It’s about owning the current conversation to generate faster and more frequent communication points. It’s a new form of CRM using a mix of planned, anticipative and reactive micro initiatives.
PLANNED initiatives are created around identified cultural moments relevant to your brand. By asking “Who do you think is refreshing music?” Pepsi leveraged the cultural conversation around this year’s Coachella Music Fest with their RefreshMusic Twitter feed featuring Thievery Corporation’s Rob Myers as a guest tweeter. By putting a unique spin on the concert for music lovers, Pepsi is not only letting tweeters experience the festival in new ways, but is also bringing the brand idea “refresh everything” to life.
ANTICIPATED is scenario based planning that requires marketers to be smart enough to see the cultural conversation and be ready to act upon it. Visa’s seemingly “real-time” ad, celebrating Michael Phelps’s Olympic record eight gold medals, proved the brand recognized the Game’s most talked about story. The TV spot had footage of Phelps’s previous wins literally moments after his record-breaking performance, helping Visa go beyond being a sponsor and become a part of the conversation surrounding the Games.
REACTIVE is being nimble enough to surprise and delight your audience by your brand tapping into the zeitgeist. In President Obama’s acceptance speech he declared the family’s intention of getting a dog. The next day, Pedigree began crafting a response. A day later an ad in USA Today urged the President to adopt: “We’d love to help you fulfill your first campaign promise.” Pedigree’s quick actions helped place them in the cultural conversation regarding the President’s pet decision.
“Information wants to be free.” It’s the unofficial motto of the free-content movementand the populist opinion of a society that lives through and makes a living out of the free information that’s a mouse click away. We’re all used to traveling quite a distance on the information highway without any tollbooths. So for marketers today (especially in an economic downturn where every expenditure is scrutinized), expensive subscriptions to trade pubs have become easy targets for the company chopping block.
Here are some periodicals beyond the standard list of industry pubs that we think are still well worth the investment. While the Web will always win the pace race, these unique pubs have found a way to deliver content in an inspiring, informative, “high-touch” experience that makes a pretty good case for hard copy.
Contagiousis a quarterly magazine with DVD that explores the relationship between brands, consumers and the ideas behind the world’s most creative marketing strategies across advertising, technology, retail, design and media.
Creamis a quarterly showcase of media creativity, innovation and excellence from around the globe. Part magazine, part directory, it features inspiring media case studies for progressive and creative-minded advertisers and media planners.
Monocleis a 10 issues/year global publication catering to cosmopolitan readers that explores world affairs, business, culture and design. Created to challenge new forms of media, Monocle places an emphasis on design & long-form journalism.
Viewpointis a biannual trends and insights magazine created specifically to inspire and inform marketers, creatives and strategists. Each issue is centered on a single theme and addresses what’s new, what’s next, and how that impacts brands.
Everything is information and information is everything. It’s the mantra of marketing in an age where people are constantly creating collectible data—all the things we do, say, use, buy, click and share are data points in the graphs of our lives. But in an increasingly visual society, pie charts and bar charts can’t begin to do justice to this wealth of information there is to digest now.
Data visualization tools are helping to change the ways we look at information and audiences. While a lot of these are just plain fun to look at, there is far more potential than just painting a prettier picture. Good data visualization communicates information clearly and effectively, where form and functionality work together to tell sophisticated stories, uncover relationships and patterns, and reveal insights that might otherwise go unseen.
While many of these tools are, at this stage, more about experimentation than expertise, they are indicators of the near future where we can make much smarter strategic decisions just by finding some cooler ways to crunch the numbers.
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR People expect companies to do more than just sell stuff. They want to know what you stand for, what choices you make as a result and what difference that could make in the world. So when it comes to people making their brand choices, Cause Marketing can be a tiebreaker. Almost 80% of Americans are more likely to switch to the brand supporting a good cause over a competitor with the same price and quality. But Cause Marketing is not just about photo opportunities, oversized checks and warm fuzzies. It can be an opportunity to turn commercial interest into real change. Cause Marketing usually means supporting social or environmental efforts, but to today’s cynical audiences, just choosing some cause to “believe in” doesn’t do much good if your audience doesn’t believe you. Don’t just search for a cause, be the cause you’re brand is already about. Who says that doing good can’t mean doing well?
BRAND BEHAVIOR Cause Marketing is by now the norm, but instead of sponsoring somebody else’s cause and giving back tax-deductable pocket change, identify a cause with authenticity that comes from a true passion and create real change. Authentic advocacy is about picking a self-motivated cause a company already genuinely believes in, and allowing that cause to be integral across the entire organization – not an isolated corporate responsibility program. Doing good doesn’t need to be altruistic. Real change doesn’t happen when it’s a sacrifice for the company, but rather if the cause directly serves the company’s commercial interest.
AMERICAN APPAREL: LEGALIZE LA
American Apparel is an anti-sweatshop apparel manufacturer that believes in humanity and that immigration policy should be fair. Its social cause ”Legalize LA” is about recognizing, celebrating and embracing the diversity of Los Angeles. It takes on the issue of the over 1 million undocumented migrant workers with the goal for them to become legal residents. All while serving its own benefit to be able to continue its operations in its beloved hometown and to keep its claim “made in LA”.
HÄAGEN-DAZS: HELP THE HONEY BEES
Honey Bees are responsible for pollinating 1/3 of our natural food supply and nearly 40% of the ice-cream manufacturer’s natural ingredients. With more than one in three Honey Bee colonies mysteriously vanishing in the US in the last three years, the company realized that the insects’ survival was one with their own. “Help the Honey Bees” is an activist campaign to raise funds for researching the alarming phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder and for building awareness to lead to individual action.
BURTON: POWER TO THE POACHER
Jake Burton, founder of Burton snowboard company, believes that snowboarders deserve equal access to the same resorts as skiers, a.k.a. “equal snow.” To liberate the remaining elitist ski-only resorts in the US, he offered $5,000 dollars to snowboarders who submitted the best video of themselves riding the four forbidden mountains – a practice called poaching. Burton’s challenge ”Power to the Poachers” didn’t just put his money where his mouth is but also potentially opened more markets for his business.
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR Reduce, reuse, recycle — we’ve all heard it a million times. It was the simple mantra that marked the mainstream arrival of the environmental movement. But from this clever catchphrase has grown such a cacophony of “green noise” and green-washed marketing that people have gotten overwhelmed by the right things to do. However, since 83% of people say they would change their consumption habits to make tomorrow’s world a better place, brands still have an incredible influence on environmental change. Maybe a return of the three Rs is just the point of reference people need to get some new perspective on making change simpler. Many of us have already made “recycling” part of our daily lives (although over 75% of what we buy is still trash in six months), and “reducing” and “reusing” is something we’re doing a lot more of in this economy anyway. So it’s a good time to make them all habits worth keeping.
BRAND BEHAVIOR Regardless of where your company stands on the environmental movement, one thing is undeniable: with limited natural resources, the only future for our economy is to become a sustainable one. Whether you support new school, eco- friendly business strategies like cradle to cradle, zero waste, closed loop production, local living economy, green chemistry or not, marketers don’t have to wait for companies to figure out a long-term sustainable business strategy. It may not entirely solve the problem, but rethinking “reduce, reuse, recycle” can represent new brand opportunities for marketers to take small steps in the right direction today.
rethinking “reduce”
Companies only looking at the environmental impact of the production and distribution of goods are not considering their marketing as part of its footprint. Placing ads on alternative-energy-powered billboards and in biodegradable media, going paperless with digital coupons, hosting climate-neutral events, designing eco-efficient packaging, and printing collaterals with soy-based ink on recycled paper with chlorine-free bleaching are all easy steps to reduce a company’s entire footprint.
rethinking “reuse”
In our throwaway society, encouraging people to reuse your product is usually not on the minds of marketers. But the ”Hand Me Down” line by Howies, a UK clothing brand, has a different spin. The line uses fabrics and materials made to withstand the test of time and are designed to look timeless. So that the company uses less resources in the end, the high-quality products come with a guarantee to last at least 10 years and a contract that asks consumers to commit to handing them down to a second-generation wearer.
rethinking “recycle”
Recycling normally results in a product of equal or lesser quality. Rethinking recycling has allowed Coca-Cola to upcycle its empty PET bottles into an entirely new product line with a different purpose: a sustainable fashion line . Its ”Drink 2 Wear” line is made of a blend of recycled plastic bottles and cotton featuring catchy slogans intended to promote recycling. The neck labels indicate the number of bottles recovered to create each shirt, reminding people that small steps can go a long way.
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR – For most of us, sports touch our lives on a daily basis. We play sports, watch sports on TV, read about sports in the newspapers, talk to friends about them, buy merchandise and attend sporting events. Sports take us away from our daily routines and entertain us. But while people realize that sports need sponsors (in fact, 74% actually think sponsorship is good), their corporatization can move them away from their fans. With ticket prices skyrocketing, hospitality areas taking up all the good seats and every square inch of the arena emblazoned with logos, sponsorships are making sports less about the games and more about the names. Sponsoring can be a powerful passion-based marketing tool, and the financial support for those sponsored will always be needed, but marketers need to consider the brand-to-fan connection. Simply putting more logos in more places to get the most out of the investment is not going to get you any fans.
BRAND BEHAVIOR – Brands support athletes, teams and events hoping that the sports fans will in return support them. Sponsorship is relatively Tivo-proof and can provide reach in an increasingly fragmented media world. So it’s no wonder that brands pay top dollar to get into the game. While naming and branding rights are part of the package, brands should add more than just their logo—they should add real value to the game and fan experience. Just as the Goodyear blimp brought the aerial view to sporting events, more brands are experimenting with innovative and brand relevant integrations into the game.
ENHANCING THE GAME: GUINESS
Guinness brought its positioning “It’s Alive Inside” literally to life by putting RFID technology inside rugby balls and on players. Fraunhofer Institute created the innovative technology to measure the ball’s location 2000 times a second (!) and players’ location 200 times a second. The real-time data allows coaches and fans alike to analyze running pace and acceleration, passing speed and accuracy, impact of tackling and kicking power like never before – potentially changing the game forever.
INVENTING THE GAME: RED BULL
For some, it’s not enough to enhance an existing game, some brands choose to invent one entirely. Red Bull has become synonymous with extreme games and invented a series of gravity-defying sports. These unique competitions fit the brand in ways most off-the-shelf sponsorship opportunities don’t. Their ownable competitions range from Crashed Ice, a mix of downhill skiing, hockey and boardercross to Air Racing, where stunt pilots helm low-level aerial tracks with lightweight racing planes.
ENHANCING THE EXPERIENCE: POLAR
Of the 21 teams competing at the 2008 Tour De France, 11 were sponsored by Polar. Polar, a heart rate and fitness assessment company, used its cycling technology to stream speed, cadence, peddling power, location, altitude and heart rates of their equipped cyclists onto a microsite for fans to monitor in real time. This live telemetry not only gave fans an idea of how well their cyclist was doing, but whether they were holding back or over-exerting themselves at any stage of the race.
Online media can be a real paradox—an environment that represents such a wealth of creative opportunity, yet has for so long been a slave to the banner ad. Buttons, leaderboards, skyscrapers—the challenge to advertisers has been to cram as much creativity as they can into awkward shapes and sizes. Online ads have been more about geometry than creativity.
American Apparel
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR