AdDude's Insights

Well it has been a crazy year since this blog started last August. I was just finishing up University and college and now I am working on the National McDonald’s team at Cossette for almost a year. Time flies! It is so easy to lose track of all the cool stuff that has happened over the year in Advertising, marketing, and technology. So to commemorate this momentous occasion I am going to start an annual tradition: Wait for it…

The Best of Advertising This Year According to Lifson

1. Meet Milo- The Future of Interactivity- http://lifson.com/?p=258
Milo, which uses Project Natal for amazing interaction with an on-screen character is simply incredible. Microsoft makes this a must see!

2. How to Tell Your GF You Aren’t Having Beer With Friends- http://lifson.com/?p=800
The Andes Teletransporter was an incredibly humorous and unique activation that was truly integrated campaign that blended advertising with engaging Impact pieces

3. Esquire Comes Alive- http://lifson.com/?m=20091116
For their December issue, Esquire developed an Augmented Reality cover featuring none other then Robert Downey Jr. Downey introduces the issue and does a brief plug for the Sherlock Holmes movie. Bonus content was accessed and controlled on the Esquire website by installing an app and interacting with the Augmented Reality marker. This was pretty innovative for the print world

4. McDonald’s Burger Debate on Facebook and Up in the Air- http://lifson.com/?p=793
Once again a shameless plug for my team at Cossette, but this was pretty innovative and garnered a lot of press and interaction

5. If Marriage is Hell, Why Spare Homosexuals? http://lifson.com/?p=730
This clever and humorous video featuring Justin Long was created by opponents of California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state in 2008

6. Andre 3000 Brings Everyone Together For Nike- http://lifson.com/?p=738
This one is just cool featuring Kobe Bryant in the company of greats

7. Come For A Quickie- http://lifson.com/?p=720
Tourisme Montreal and Tourism Toronto launched a collaborative marketing effort designed to encourage people from both cities to see what the other has to offer. The campaign plays with the ongoing rivalry between Canada’s biggest cities, taking the Ashley Madison approach to travel and cheekily suggesting it’s OK to “cheat” on your city

8. Apple To Place Ads In OS- http://lifson.com/?m=20091106
This is a no-brainer, yet very smart move for Apple. A possible mechanic to the system would be that users could receive a free operating system upgrade in return for accepting the ads. Logic would also dictate that users would be happier to fill out certain information for the service, and it would ensure extremely targeted ads

9. Cossette and General Mills Add Latin Flare to Online Shows- http://lifson.com/?p=517
Mi Marido, Mi Angel (My Husband, My Angel), was created by Cossette for the Old El Paso brand. Fjord, the agency’s digital division, worked with CTV to have it listed at CTV.ca as a regular show

10. Amazing Anti Aids AD- http://lifson.com/?p=452
“AIDES graffiti” has great animation work against AIDS, promoting the use of condoms from TBWA Paris

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: 2009, 2010, Advertising, Best of, Cossette, Eric Lifson, Fjord, General Mills, Marketing, McDonalds, Microsoft, Newspapers, Nike, Shopping. | #

A new report from Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) claims that the country’s largest food and beverage companies are becoming more responsible in how they advertise to children. The report notes the 19 companies participating in the Canadian Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CAI) achieved “excellent compliance results” in 2009.

The CAI was developed in 2007 to shift advertising directed primarily to children under 12 to the promotion of better-for-you products. Companies participating in the CAI include fast food giants like McDonald’s and Burger King as well as packaged goods companies such as Kellogg Canada, Kraft Canada and Unilever Canada.

The ASC noted that the landscape of children’s advertising was “significantly different” at the end of 2009 than it was before the initiative’s launch. Among the most significant changes:

• Food and beverage advertising now represents less than 20% of all child-directed TV advertising on Canadian channels catering to audiences under 12

• Many products have been reformulated to enhance their nutritional value

• Child-directed ads depicting a child consuming food now show portion sizes consistent with the serving size stated on the product’s Nutrition Facts Panel

In the past year, the ASC partnered with Corus Television–owner of the youth-oriented TV channels YTV, Teletoon (50%), Treehouse and Nickelodeon–to conduct a comparative study of children’s TV advertising pre-CAI and now.

Examining CAI participants’ scheduling information for a two-month period in 2004 and the same period in 2008, the ASC found that in 2008, 95% of the food and beverage products advertised to children under 12 were for better-for-you products, compared with 63% in the 2004 period. The report also notes that the mix of products advertised directly to children has changed. By 2008, for example, one participant had stopped advertising a product that accounted for 40% of its ads in the monitored period in 2004, while two other companies stopped advertising to children altogether.

“What it shows is [participating companies] are taking it seriously and we

see it’s making a difference in what’s being advertised,” said Janet Feasby, the ASC’s vice-president, standards. “We’re certainly pleased that this has been achieved. It’s not easy when you’re a huge company and you’ve got lots of products. It takes a lot of hard work and effort and commitment in order to do this. “Their agencies and media buying companies have to be equally committed.”

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: Advertising, Advertising Standards Council, ASC, Burger King, Canada, Kraft, McDonalds. | #

So people. I took a little bit of a break. Went to South America. Checked out Lima, Huacachina, Cusco, Machu Pichu, and the Amazon jungle in Peru. Then we went to Buenos Aires in Argentina and Rio de Janeiro in Brasil. And let me tell you something: I have nothing advertising related to discuss about it! Why? Because I purposely disconnected myself from the adgame for a bit. now i’m back and checking out what I missed.

How about this nugget right here:

Facebook made its long-anticipated jump into the location-based fray yesterday with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of Facebook Places.

The mobile product will focus on three major features, he said: It will allow users to share where they are with their friends; allow them to see who is near them; and allow them to discover new places around them. And company executives were quick to push Places’ privacy controls in an effort to stave off criticism that has plagued Facebook during the past year.

Places is a mobile product for “advanced mobile browsers” and can be accessed through Facebook’s most recent iPhone app or via touch.facebook.com.

Several of the major players in the local-mobile digital space, including Gowalla, Yelp, Booyah and Foursquare, were also at the press conference and some showed off ways they’ll be integrated into Places. While many pundits suggested Facebook’s impending launch of location would be the death of Foursquare and its location-based ilk, the companies–at least publicly–appeared eager to work with Facebook and tap its 500 million worldwide users. (Yelp, for example, boasts 2.5 million users of its mobile app, a fraction of Facebook’s user base.)

Zuckerberg said this first version of Places will only roll out in the U.S. While Facebook didn’t introduce monetization plans for Places, it suggested that was coming. “You can imagine a whole world can develop around this,” Zuckerberg said. “But we’ll check in on the monetization at a later time.”

Still, there are opportunities for any marketer with a physical location to benefit from Places by taking some basic steps. “[Business owners] can claim their business’s Places page, and every time anyone checks in from that location, that’s a huge deal,” said Chris Cox, vice-president-product. “We wanted to make sure that feature was available before we launched.”

About 1.5 million business pages exist on Facebook, and each one can merge that page with their Places page by “claiming” it, or letting Facebook know that business belongs to them. Facebook will verify it, but Cox said he’s not sure if it’ll be giving away stickers for owners to put on the door like Yelp does.

Places is, in some ways, a reach extension for marketers–when people check in from a venue, they essentially broadcast their presence at that spot to their Facebook network–as well as way to attract new visitors through the discovery feature.

“It’s an additional venue where you can communicate with the customer as they’re walking by and provide them with something of value,” said Lisa Bradner, president of Chicago agency Geomentum. And, eventually, it could be a place they can offer discounts and marketing messages to people within a particular proximity–whenever Facebook introduces such a feature.

Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA, suggested that while Foursquare popularized the gaming aspect of checking in from physical venues, with Places the prize could be not just a “mayorship” of a venue, but a coupon or other type of award. “It creates another level of engagement with the consumer. If you check into the Gap, let’s make a special offer for you,” Bedecarre said. “If you check in at 3 p.m. near a Starbucks, it’s ‘Hey, do you want a special on this latte?’ We see your favorite movies on Facebook, and the movie theater nearby can say, ‘Hey, this movie is playing here, come in now and we’ll give you a free popcorn.’

“I can see advertisers connect the dots as quickly as Facebook allows them to,” he added. “It gives them a chance to put an offer in front of someone when they’re in a position that allows for an immediate transaction.”

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: Advertising, Facebook, Foursquare, South America, Trends. | #

I’ve always thought that a brand is much more than which cereal or car you buy. You buy something greater than a product or service. With a brand you buy into the experience. I saw an interesting documentary on Hugh Hefner yesterday. He didn’t just create a magazine. He created a brand. He became the brand himself and manifested its philosophy into everything he did.

This brand experience  building is precisely present in the next brilliant ad from Argentina. This beer ad for Andes is a clever piece of creative. It is a full embodiment of the brand and the brand promise (fun with your friends, without any annoyances). Andes put booths called Teletransporters across various bars that create ambient sounds for when your girlfriend calls and you don’t want her to know that you are at the bar with your friends. This, people, is where advertising is heading. Thanks to Kruti (The Krut) for pointing this one out.

1 Comment | In: Uncategorized | tags: Advertising, Alcohol, Andes, Andes Beer, Beer, Branding, Creativity, Hugh Hefner, Marketing, Playboy, Strategy. | #

Must get blue Smarties! Must get blue Smarties! JWT in Toronto presents a blue talking cat for Smarties. The cat has a weird accent, that sounds like a leprechaun or something. And there’s a trippy mind-control vibe. Now, humans generally don’t need mind-controlling critters to make us eat candy. We’ll do it anyways. This is an intesting strategy for Smarties as they were focuse before on “when you eat your Smarties, do you eat the red ones last?”. This focus on colour is smart because it is an assumptive close. Its not if you are eating Smarties, but when you’re eating Smarties. This time it’s all about the blue ones.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: Advertising, Blue cat, Candy, Chocolate, JWT, Smarties, Toronto. | #

As media companies and publishers continue to recover from the recession and adapt business models for an ongoing digital shift, overall ad spending is on the rise, particularly in online and mobile, according to ZenithOptimedia.

ZenithOptimedia has upgraded its forecast for global ad spending growth from April’s forecast of 2.2% to 3.5%.

This is the company’s third upgrade in a row after six consecutive downgrades. North America is the region with the biggest upgrade of 2.8%. In the last forecast, the market was expected to shrink 1.5% this year, but is now pegged for 1.3% growth. Based on a strong Super Bowl and Vancouver Olympics in the first half of 2010, ZenithOptimedia’s report expects television to maintain its strong showing, while the continued decline of newspaper and spot radio ad revenue has slowed. 

The report said Canada has bounced back from the recession much more quickly than its southern neighbour and is expected to grow ad spending by 5.4% this year, compared to 1.1% in U.S.

“Advertisers are spending again, now that consumers are opening their wallets,” states the Canadian summary. “Automotive is back; retail, finance, telecom, food, are all ratchetting up the demand.”

In 2008, total advertising expenditures in Canada reached a high-water mark of nearly $10.2 billion. By the next year, when the recession had its strongest hold on the economy, total spending was down 8.4% to $9.3 billion. ZenithOptimedia now projects total spending to hit $9.84 billion this year, rising to $10.2 billion in 2011 and $10.6 billion in 2012.

Ad spending on the Internet continues its climb, increasing its global market share from 10.5% in 2008 to 12.7% in 2009. In Canada, ZenithOptimedia predicts spending on Internet advertising to rise 13% this year and 12.7% next year when it will pass newspapers advertising ($2.2 billion online to $2 billion for newspapers) as the second most popular medium in the country behind only TV.

By 2012, ZenithOptimedia expects Internet spending to make up 17% of total ad expenditure worldwide, still two percentage points below newspapers. Since 1987 when they accounted for 40.6% of expenditure, newspapers have been losing share every year to reach 23% by 2009, and the report expects that number to fall further to 19.2% in 2012.

Paid search made up 50.2% of all Internet spending in 2009 and expectations are that it will get to 52.6% by 2012. Display’s contribution to total internet spend fell from 32.9% in 2008 to 31.9% in 2009. New formats such as web video, mobile and social media are expected to help display stabilize this year and increase its share of internet spend to 32% in 2012. In 2009, about $18 million was spent on mobile advertising, rising to $30 million this year, $55 million in 2011 and $92 million the year after that.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: Advertising, Digital, Finance, Media, Newspapers, Television. | #

Yes, it’s true. This is a true shock! Creative God Alex Bogusky, co-founder of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, has left MDC to “pursue a number of issues apart from advertising.” Rising from CP+B founfer to co-chair to head creative honcho at MDC, Bogusky, 47, is leaving the business.

An MDC statement said, “Alex Bogusky has resigned from MDC Partners in order to focus his time and energy on pursuing a number of initiatives and issues apart from advertising and marketing that he feels strongly about. We have enjoyed a long and tremendously productive partnership over the past 10 years and have the utmost respect and admiration for Alex. We’re confident that many important causes will benefit from his passion and brilliance, and wish him the very best in all of his future.”

“Alex Bogusky has resigned from MDC Partners in order to focus his time and energy on pursuing a number of initiatives and issues apart from advertising and marketing that he feels strongly about,” MDC said in a statement.

“We have enjoyed a long and tremendously productive partnership over the past 10 years and have the utmost respect and admiration for Alex. We’re confident that many important causes will benefit from his passion and brilliance, and wish him the very best in all of his future.”

Alex Bogusky was the chief creative executive at the Toronto-based MDC and was responsible for helping make MDC’s Crispin Porter + Bogusky one of the most successful creative shops in the business.
Bogusky joined MDC after more than two decades at CP+B, which he helped transform from a small, unknown shop in Miami into one of the best-known creative powerhouses in the industry.

Some notable creative driven CP+B projects include Burger King’s subservient chicken, their creepy King character, and most recently Microsoft’s campaign overhaul to help slow Apple’s breach of their market share.

So where will CP+B go from here? This may cause irreparable damage, I fear. Alex is such a well known figure in the ad industry. His equity is what drives many clients there. This may be the start of the end for them. What are your thoughts.

Here is a (not very flattering- but still awesome) picture of me and Bogusky from back in September from Adweek in NYC:

1 Comment | In: Uncategorized | tags: Advertising, Alex Bogusky, CP+P, MDC, News. | #

In looking around the world, the one thing that remains true in almost all advertising is the idea of enforcing a USP, or Unique Selling Point. This one attribute is the thing that sets you apart from the competition. It doesn’t even have to be tangible, but can be based on a psychographic appeal of the product like lifestyle. Nike in Japan was given an interesting take on their USP for their Abuku shoe. Abuku means bubble in Japanese, and that’s the word behind this video coming from W+K Tokyo Lab, in which they emphasize the air (main quality of the product). They decided to create an aquarium inside the shoe… I’m still wondering if that’s cool or weird, probably both, but that’s an original approach for sure.

NIKE78 – W+K Tokyo LAB | ‘ABUKU -泡-’ from NIKE78 on Vimeo.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: Abuku, Advertainment, Advertising, Aquarium, Fish, Footwear, Japan, Nike, Shoes, Viral. | #

The way you create a compelling ad campaign is to use a true insight into the target audience’s psyche. Here is an incredible example of how an ad campaign can change your perception of something being of no value to something that is the most valuable thing in the world at that moment.

This campaign was created by BorghiErh/Lowe in Brazil, makes  Bic pens seem vital via a trio of amusing low-budget TV commercials that we’re told will “only be shown once.” We’re given the directions to the Holy Grail, the secret formula for the most famous soft drink in the world and every last scrap of personal contact information for a super-sexy model.

This golden insight is actually very similar to the classic “Got Milk” campaign (also included below for your viewing pleasure) that made an everyday overlooked item seem essential. A great campaign comes from a great strategy and great insights. You can do great things with that. As this campaign shows, a low budget can be transcended. The idea is everything.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: Advertising, Bic Pens, BorghiErh/Lowe, Brazil, Got Milk, Insight, Milk, Strategy, TV, Viral. | #

Yep. He just went there! Eminem has just tapped the SlapChop guy to sell his new album. If there’s one person who’s always willing to forgive violence against women, it’s Eminem. So, I suppose it makes sense that Vince “ShamWow Guy” Shlomi would make his comeback in a manufactured-viral promo for the rapper’s new album. You might remember that Shlomi’s meteoric rise to infomercial stardom came to an abrupt halt when he got into a fist fight with a prostitute. Although the charges were dropped, the arrest and subsequent photos made Shlomi a television outcast. Now, he’s back, reliving his glory days in a lame Slap-Chop parody for Eminem’s upcoming release, Recovery. Because if you can’t escape your image as a guy who beats up hookers, you might as well partner with the rapper who pens lyrics like, “Put anthrax on a Tampax and slap you till you can’t stand.” Oh Eminem, if only you could ‘relapse’ into making good music and not lame gimmicks!

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: Advertainment, Advertising, Eminem, Gimicks, Infomercials, Marketing, Music, Recovery, Relapse, SlapChop, Viral. | #