BrandsAmongMany

Well first of all, obviously here at *AmongMany we do care, a little. I was asked to look into this Motrin Mom’s debacle after seeing the ad on youTube. I read the comments, I watched the responses, I look at the twitter backlash, the websites devoted to writing about and/or slandering Motrin, and the Motrin Response Apology:

And what’s my take on this all? Am I personally offended? No. Do I think Motrin deserves to be boycotted for making this ad? No. Do I find it distasteful? Eh, no. And that led me to think… who made this ad? How did it get greenlit. I know I have tried to do much more distasteful things and was met time and time again with –’ but we might offend old people,’ ‘what about all the people who are bowlegged,’ ‘but some people are afraid of pigeons.’

Anyway this train of thought led me to wonder, who made this ad?
Some would argue, there is no way this ad was made by a mother. Maybe the person was young, and thought they were being clever. Or maybe some man, who hated how his wife was always wearing the stupid sling and complaining about her back, sent his wife to go see a chiropracter, who she fell in love with and then subsequently left him, wrote the ad. Who knows. But more importantly:

Can you tell if an ad is made by a man or a woman?

Remember this pregnancy test ad?

I remember the first time I saw it I thought, there is NO WAY that ad was created by a woman. I could envision two dudes, sitting in their office being handed this pregnancy testing brief and freaking out. They would begin by exchanging stories about girls they were with, and then they’d focus back down on the brief. They’d read all these impressive stats on the accuracy of the test and then they’d learn you PEE on it. They’d chuckle and then BAM. Technology you pee on, an ad is born, with a man stamp of approval.

A few weeks ago I came across this site called GenderAnalyzer.

It claims to have the ability to analyze your website using the text-classifier uClassify that “has been trained on 2000 blogs written by men and women.”

When I had it scan my personal blog, it predicted I was a man. FAIL.

I had a friend in school who claimed he could always tell the gender. Sweet, sensitive, hand-written, borderline-kinda-maybe funny — it was by a girl. He was a jerk (chicks do love hand-written type).

So back to this Motrin ad. Who made it? Could a female be as insensitive as the blogs make them out to be? Wouldn’t she recognize with all her maternal instinct that holding a baby in a trendy sling was meant to increase the bond between mother & child and look trendy at the same time? I don’t know. When I watch the ad I don’t hear a woman the same way I do when I hear Kashi ads.

What do you think? Can you tell the gender of an ad?

I love the Nissan Shift campaign, probably one of my favorites in the world of car advertising. Yet, their most recent truck commercial seems familiar. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great spot, horrid music aside, but there something wrong here.

Now, compare and contrast.

See what I mean?

One of my favorite writers is Paul Arden, author of Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite and It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be. The books challenge everything, from ideas to thinking, and are the most inspirational pieces of literature I have ever read. I have read hundreds, maybe even thousands of blogs, but it wasn’t until I came across Dave Trott’s Blog that I was immediately reminded of the late Paul Arden. Dave Trott, CD at CST Advertising, fills the void left after Mr. Arden’s passing with his unique anecdotes and advice for young up and comers in the industry. I recommend anyone clamoring for some daily inspiration or words of wisdom to bookmark or subscribe to the blog.

In my first post I mentioned a few good reads that included ihaveanidea or American Copywriter. Additionally, don’t forget to take a glance at Ad Age, AdWeek, or Creativity Online, especially when it comes to the interactive front of advertising. Lastly, anyone interested in a more in-depth analysis about the business and ideas, I recommend reading the books Ogilvy on Advertising, Purple Cow, Hey Whipple, Squeeze This or anything by George Lois. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to stay relevant and keep up with popular culture, read the Gawkers, Perez Hiltons, and a gem I recently came upon, Magnificent Bastard. And watch Saturday Night Live, it’s pure hilarity.

These days, you can find a Facebook group (or six) for just about everything under the sun. Want proof? Do a quick search through the groups section for “Saved by Zero” and you’ll find nothing short of 11 different groups dedicated to Toyota’s newest television commercial touting their extended 0% financing program. While most advertisers pray for their work to “go viral” (I shudder at the phrase), I don’t think this is what Toyota’s agency (Saatchi?) had in mind.

The backlash against this diminuative little piece of film is nothing shy of impressive. The largest of the Facebook hate-groups has swelled to more than two thousand members in only ten days. But the discussions don’t end on Facebook - in fact the social community is perhaps just the tip of the spear. Enraged (and rarely do I use that word to describe viewers of a TV commercial) viewers are coming out of the woodwork in communities of every type imaginable across the web.

Rants can be found on CraigsList (more than one), on sports forums, on gambling sites, and even on Esquire’s website. Major news sites including Forbes have picked up on the story. Someone even went so far as to create a petition to have the ad pulled.

I think we can safely say that this effort has “gone viral”. But perhaps not in the manner that anyone would have hoped for. In fact, I can’t imagine that anyone expected too much of this ad at all. At a glance, it just another mediocre-at-best car advertisment screaming about finance rates on a dozen models - something we’ve all heard thousands of times by now, unfortunately.

But tick people off just enough and you’ll find exactly how powerful an outlet the web can be. People who use the web to foster any number of diverse interests have found common ground on this one, and they’re not going quietly into the night this time. Sure, plenty of ads have been pulled because they outraged this group of fanatics or that one, but can anyone else remember a commercial that’s been pulled - not that this one has…yet - because it was just plain bad? Keep an eye out. This could set an unusual precedent.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen the spot yet, here it is:

Advertising, in its most rudimentary state, is supposed to inform people on products and services. For me, advertising is so much more than just a, “paid form of communication.” The ideas and creativity in advertising is inspiring and it’s not just me.  Sure, I hope to make a career in advertising and I’m probably not the best example, but if people weren’t so inspired by great ads, why would someone view this commercial 3 millions times? Or this commercial 2.8 million times?

Many ad-gurus have been calling the television spot dead for years, slain by the internet and user-generated content. That’s ridiculous. Whether the spot is on YouTube, Vimeo, or the regular old television, a good ad evokes emotion and ignites action. Seems to me, with the help of the internet, the so-called “dead” television spot has even more potential. With Facebook, Myspace, e-mail, blogs, forums, message boards, and whatever other ways people connect on the world wide web, a television spot has literally unlimited reaches. The interactive age of advertising calls for better, more creative, and more inspiring commercials. And heck, a nice micro-site that tags along with a spot doesn’t hurt either.

Brands like Nike, Burger King, Volkswagen, Toyota Trucks, and Apple have been pretty successful on the web. Windows was doing pretty good when they had Seinfeld in their ads, but once they dumped the project, who even cared anymore?

So yesterday morning I got a friendly email from a reader named Lornie:

Hi Danny,
Have you seen this yet? not sure what to make of it….
http://lifetakesvista.com/
Lornie

At first glance, of course, it looks like any other email I get from various PR people looking to promote the newest campaign by agency X or company Y, most of which I ignore (I’m not usually too interested in playing shill for some company’s new TV campaign). The only thing that led me to look into this one a little further was the fact that Lornie’s email didn’t come from a PR company account and didn’t name agency X or company Y. Well, that and the fact that I actually hadn’t seen the Life Takes Vista effort yet.

So after taking a quick look at the Life Takes Vista site, my immediate question to Lornie was…

What’s your connection to the campaign?

To which she responded:

zero. i dont work for msft. (actually unemployed at the moment) not sure if its from msft because i searched the web and didnt see anything on this…or theyre trying to be stealthy!

At first I took her answer at face value. But, in the midst of looking further into the campaign to ready a post, I stumbled onto a couple of other blogs who heard from a “loyal fan”, Lornie:

jkOnTheRun
James Kendrick’s Twitter
The Ranch
Flickr

Of course, these aren’t the only blogs talking about the effort. There’s still the lingering question of who the heck is responsible for this campaign (blatant rip-off?). It doesn’t appear to be an official Microsoft effort. In fact, there’s discussion around that question in a couple of places:

AdRants
CrunchGear

Hrm. As CrunchGear points out, this feels either like a very smart effort by a couple of ad students to get themselves noticed (feels like a reach to me) or an effort by a couple of bored Crispin employees who didn’t get the idea through during the original effort. A little further digging reveals that the Life Take Vista site is being hosted by a company in Denver under anonymous administration - only a stone’s throw from Boulder…

Suddenly Lornie seems less like a friendly reader and more like a PR agent that she seemed like to begin with. Lornie, I’ll be the first to offer my most sincere apologies if I’m wrong - we appreciate a tip as much as the next guy - but this one just feels dirty. A search for the email address the tip was sent from reveals nothing, which would be rather unusual given how many forums, websites, etc. most digitally savvy ad students are signed up for. And a search for Lornie’s full name also reveals nothing…no Facebook profile, no LinkedIn account, no personal website…nothing.

So short answer…I’m not sold. This feels like nothing more than a covert, subversive attempt to get eyeballs on a rip-off campaign. Which it seems to have accomplished - along with building a wealth of negative brand equity. Kudos!

I had originally planned to write my first post on Brands Among Many about college advertising curriculum and their lack of professional resources. I emphasized how colleges are out of touch and a 4.0 GPA coupled with leadership positions doesn’t guarantee you anything on the creative side of advertising and by anything, I mean a job. I also pointed out that there are vast differences between a business or engineering major and an advertising major.

In advertising, agencies don’t seek out interns, which explain why out of the hundreds of companies at a career fair you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single ad agency present. In addition, most of the advertising internships are unpaid- other majors wouldn’t even think of an unpaid internship. Lastly, schools offer loads of professional resources to help prepare students for every major, that is, except advertising. We have no idea what we’re getting ourselves into and truth be told, the college chapter of AAF only prepares us so much.

Aside from all these pitfalls, colleges offer an experience essential for art directors and writers. In the midst of homework or studying, I often hear students ask, “When will I use this in life?”  If you’re a political science or english major, you’ll probably never need math. If you’re a business major, you’ll probably never need science. And if you’re an engineering major, you’ll probably never need humanities. In advertising, a well-rounded college education creates not only a large wealth of knowledge, but life changing experiences you can pull from when creating a campaign.

To excel in this industry, the best thing a college student can do is live it up. Go out to party on a Tuesday to see what type of people actually party on a Tuesday. Meet international exchange students and try things that wouldn’t normally interest you like a root beer pong tournament hosted by the fundamentalist Christians. Try that weird Korean restaurant named, Emo’s and go to the obscure foreign film playing down the road. Break rules, do illegal things, (I’m talking about stealing a road sign or something, not exposing your genitals) and play Edward Fortyhands. Take an astrology class, a yoga class, and attempt to take a chemistry class. I hate to sound like I’m preaching here, but step outside your comfort zone.

All this stuff is going to be beneficial. Heck, you can write about your cool experiences in your resume or portfolio. Anything to show you have been around the block gives you a leg up, plus it doesn’t even have to be advertising related. As long as you present your experiences in a creative way that shows off some chops, you’ve got a piece for your portfolio. These experiences will be essential when you’re interviewing and when you have to relate to the, oh so important, target market. It may even help you land a job with W + K via WK 12, an experiment disguised as an ad school, which recently accepted twelve grad students based on their unique experiences and backgrounds, not necessarily their skills. If all else fails and none of that helps you, at least you have a bunch of cool stories to tell people while you bag their groceries.

I kid, of course, so here are some pieces of advice to keep in mind if you find yourself at any generic university as an advertising major:

• Read advertising blogs. ihaveanidea, adfreak, and American Copywriter are all good starting points
• See what kind of ads are out there at Creativity-Online or Ads of the World
• If you’re a writer- write! You’re life should consist of writing, reading, and watching movies all the time. Learn how people communicate.
• If you’re an artist, draw/paint/sketch/sculpt all the time.
• Want an internship? Send out letters/e-mails to ad agencies. Attach your art work, writing samples, or resume. Tell them who you are and why you would benefit the agency. If they don’t respond, call them up, ask to speak to the creative director (figure out his or her name first!) and give them the lowdown.
• If you’re new to the ad world, check if your school has an AAF chapter or see if your school has any professors who worked or work in the industry.  Ask to meet with them and pick their brain.
• Take any advice at your own discretion. When it comes to this business, there are no right and wrongs. I do think, however, it’s essential to practice art direction or writing, otherwise it’s a free for all.
• As I have said before- do cool shit and write or draw about it and if it’s awesome put it in your portfolio. Then, when someone takes the time to look at your work and asks about it, you will have a great story to tell.
• Lastly, remember advertising isn’t like any other industry. If you end up getting an M.I.P. don’t plead innocent and have to deal with random breathalyzer tests for three months, probation for a year, and expensive tickets. Just take the guilty charge, pay the ticket, and continue to party like it never happened. As far as I’m concerned, if an agency won’t hire me because I have an M.I.P. (not saying I do) on my record, I don’t want to work there.
• For more information, make the jump and watch.

Every once in a while there’s a new spot that pops up and takes the (ad) world by storm, quickly becoming the “talk of the town”. The latest in that genre seems to be from the fashioneers over at Diesel. This mashup has been flying back and forth across our office (and across the web) since the middle of last week, so I figure it’s high time to give it a nod.

No, it isn’t a masterfully genius piece promoting their newest jeans. In fact, if you blink you might even miss the branded payoff. But it is funny. Diesel has taken a selection of the grandest of ’70’s porn and made it SFW. ish:

Apparently this amalgamation of cartoonified skin flicks is intended to promote their 30th anniversary celebration, coming up on October 11 (get it? 30th anniversary…’70’s porn…). Though I have to admit, even after watching it a couple of times, I didn’t pick up on that fact until I stumbled onto the associated website.

So, no, I’m not going to sit here and delve deeply into the brand value of such a creation. This one, we’re going to take at face value and simply laugh at. So enjoy it.

Oh, and on a side note. We had a group of ad school folks here at POKE last week and decided to share this gem. Mid-way through, one of the students exclaimed loudly

Hey, that’s from Debbie Does Dallas!

and promptly turned bright red. Can you spot the clip?

As I was writing up a post for our sister site, ThingsAmongMany this morning, a thought hit me regarding branded art partnerships and their prevalence in advertising…

The lines between art and advertising have been a blur for as long as either has existed. The cycle of one borrowing from the other, borrowing back has been a never-ending process that has spurred both amazing breakthroughs as well as bitter fights – just look at the popular case of Sony vs. kozyndan. But lately, the notion of branded artwork has made a jump to the forefront. Scion commissioned popular artists to contribute to their Want 2 B Square campaign. Microsoft has made similar efforts for their Zune and Xbox branding. A slew of other brands that seem to allude me for the moment have also jumped at the trend.

The latest I’ve noticed, and perhaps the best use of branded artwork that I’ve seen to date, is a recent effort from Green Works, a brand that creates plant-based, environmentally friendly cleaning products. Green Works commissioned British graffiti artist Moose to create a 140 foot long mural in San Francisco’s Broadway tunnel. The catch? Moose doesn’t work with the standard spray paints and wheat paste. His work is called reverse graffiti.

Invented by Paul “Moose” Curtis, a then kitchen-hand in Leeds, reverse grafitti is the process of creating artwork on a surface by cleaning it. Not quite clear? Have a look at Symbollix, Moose’s agency for creating branded works of reverse grafitti or watch this vid on the San Fran project:

Of course, branded artwork has a downside sometimes as well. It’s often considered “selling out”. It associates a brand with a specific artist’s work and often creates an image for the brand that it simply can’t live up to. Of course, those brands can afford to pay for that image and the artists are agreeing to its use (most of the time). What do you think? Should the trend continue?

Noticed a tweet by the crew over at Imperial this morning that stirred some thoughts:

Oddly enough, this short little statement does an excellent job of encompassing much of my interest and my progression through the industry (though slightly out of order). I started as a marketing major in undergrad, moved on to the creative side of advertising, and have now found myself inching closer toward product development as the opportunities have allowed (and hopefully will allow more in the future).

So the question, of course, is “what’s next?”…

As times have changed and the mechanisms for delivery have fragmented and spread, “the industry” has struggled to keep up. In my experience, the connection between strategy and creative is tenuous at best. So is the connection between creative and the medium. Add the prevalence of new technologies – both technologies that help the delivery of a branded message as well as those that help the consumer to avoid those messages – and suddenly it seems that “tenuous” might be a generous offering. Realistically speaking, we haven’t cracked the formula on the first three. But that’s never stopped us from jumping toward something new in the past, has it?

What will that be? I have no idea.
What should it be? How about working to perfect the understanding of what we already have?

The television-driven model is well into its death throes – in fact, it might already be dead if there were more openness toward embracing the future. It’s only our refusal to admit that what we’re used to isn’t necessarily right anymore that’s holding us in the past.

It is changing though. Brands are finally realizing that they don’t have to spend multiple millions of dollars producing television spots to see results.

Don’t believe me? Have a look at Kellogg who’s planning to cut commercial filming by 10-20% next year. For a company that makes 350-400 television commercials a year, that could cut as many as 80 spots from the production schedule in 2009 at a savings of $1M for every 3 commercials.

Product development is an area where most agencies are barely scratching the surface. Case in point: at my last ad agency job, I threw out an idea for a new package design for one of our clients that aligned perfectly with the 10-minute diatribe that the strategy team had just presented. The response:

That’s package design. That’s outside our pervue.

Um…NO. How is anything…ANYTHING…that has to do with the brand we’re working on “outside our pervue”? Until that mentality is shunned by agencies, product development won’t have a place within their walls. Instead, it will be pioneered by the small, seldom-heard-of companies that focus directly on that niche in the market. And they’ll have free reign until someone can step up to challenge them.

So, to answer the question…
Product development is a nearly untapped market for our industry right now. And it will remain that way until the agencies get their own houses in order. Until we can rethink the marketing and advertising sides to align to the realities of the modern market. And who will be king? The one who can do just that and then make product development a serious part of their repertoire. Let’s get now right before we worry about what’s next?