Saturday, June 5, 2010

McDonalds "Come as you are" Campaign

Following on from this mornings discussion in progress about McDonald's latest ad campaign "Come as you are" I would like your opnions on other ads featured in the campaign. The first ad below features two "silver-surfers" adopting new identities online and interacting with one another. The second ad features a mother and daughter and illustrates the similarities between the two as they both manage to lose their bags in the same day. The campaign sees its brand move away from its usual focus of the traditional family set-up to recognizing a wider clientele. Is this a good move in the right direction or should McDonalds revert back to the likes of it's happy easygoing "I'm Loving it" campaign??



Monday, April 12, 2010

Cadbury's Chocolate Charmer

On Friday 9th April at 7.45pm, Cadbury Ireland launched its latest Dairy Milk advertisement for their Chocolate Charmer campaign. It follows previously successful Cadbury ads – Gorilla, Eyebrows and Airport Trucks - and cost them €500,000 to make. The campaign will include TV, experiential marketing, online and PR. It shows the chocolate charmer at work, using his magic to whip the milk and chocolate together. A Cadbury spokesperson announced that the aim of this ad is to show people the joy of creating chocolate.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Tiger Woods Ad



Here is the new Tiger Woods advertisement for Nike with a recording used from his late father Earl. One quote underneath the video on Youtube stated, "Totally exploitive. Tiger woods just sold himself and his father out at wholesale. Its obviously a money thing for him. The guy has no integrity." On the other hand, it's being hailed as a great idea that has sparked a lot of interest for both Nike and Tiger Woods. The question is have they gone too far or is it marketing at it's best?

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Pepsi New Strategy

A £700 million revamp of the Pepsi brand has begun. The first phase involves relaunching the UK website with the new logo being used for the first time. The second phase involves a social media campaign in which they want people to show their wild sides. This is based on the popular series of advertisements they ran recently. Also, Pepsi wants people to tell them how they should spend £13 million on charitable causes. The third phase involves ambush marketing the FIFA World Cup (which is kindly sponsored by Coca-Cola) by launching viral and traditional media advertisements using the controversial Thierry Henry and other soccer stars. It will be interesting to see if a reference is made to the Irish qualifier game. So, it seems they have a comprehensive strategy there but it will be interesting to see if the investment level is warranted.

Monday, March 1, 2010

The MDP's Favourite AD

Ok guys,

Following on from progress this morning, I am starting a poll to find out what the MDP's favorite AD is? My favorite AD is the "Coco Madamosille" AD featuring Keira Knightly. I love this AD because it communicates the attributes of the product very well. All the elements of the AD (music, product placement ect.) combine together to create a very effective AD for Chanel.

Do you like this AD? Why? What is your favorite AD?

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Super Bowl is over for one more year......

The Super Bowl is over for another year and with it came another set of fantastic advertisements. These are usually the most talked about ads of the year and costing $2.4 to $3 million they would want to be. The ads have moved from being an interruption to being part of the main event. According to a survey undertaken by the US’s Retail Advertising and Marketing association 26.9% of people rated the Super Bowl ad’s as the most important part of the day.

That perhaps is some justification for the amount of money spent. Viewers’ sit down and wait to see your ads, the complete opposite of what is audiences are doing for other programs. The trend is that viewers are actively avoiding the ads by flicking channels, doing something else or fast forwarding through them with ad skipping technologies such as TiVo. Viewers’ critique them immediately afterwards, both with friends at Super Bowl parties and online. It is a process that separates the good from the bad, meaning they have to be the best. It is clear why air time costs so much, and why many big brands invest heavily in them. This year saw ads from Dr. Pepper and this year’s top rated ad from snickers (See Below) amongst others.

However in what might seem like a strange move Pepsi have decided not to run a Super Bowl ad for the first time in 23 years, instead they have decided to focus their attention on Facebook and an online strategy. This is a brave move by Pepsi who have historically invested heavily in celebrity endorsement (Britney Spears and David Beckham, to name just two) and less than average in online marketing. They cited getting close to the customer as a main reason for this decision. Ralph Santana, vice-president of marketing for PepsiCo North America said customers:

"...are looking for more of a two-way dialogue, story-telling and word of mouth. Mediums like the digital space are much more conducive towards that."

So is this the beginning of the end for traditional advertising, if big brands are moving away from it? Doritos (the only PepsiCo owned brand advertising at this year’s Super Bowl) provide a good example of what I believe we will see more of in the future. They have merged both traditional and online campaigns, one form supports the other and Doritos reap the benefits of both. Doritos launched a competition to for their customers to design their ad for the Super Bowl, entries are loaded onto the website and the winner is eventually voted for online (available at http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/winners ). By doing this Doritos manage to hack into the creativity of their customers and discover how they really feel about the brand. The winning ad is then broadcast during the Super Bowl, reaching a wide audience eager to see it. I think this is quite a clever approach to take and that we will be seeing more and more brands adopting this tactic in the future.

DR. Pepper and Kiss



Snickers, 2010 best ranked ad


1 of Doritos 5 finalists

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The Superbowl is coming up...

ETrade is a financial corporation based in the US and is divided into trading & investing, retirement & planning and banking & credit cards. As the name ETrade implies they concentrate on online services, e.g. buying stock online. Last week we discussed the use of humour in ads for “serious” products such as financial services.

ETrade paid $ 3 million to place their snarky baby ad during last year’s Superbowl. Although most of us did not really like this ad, it was a huge success because after the broadcast 19 million people surged on the website.