Posted by spalinkas on 26th April 2010
Shell has definitely gone above and beyond with their advertising and support of their Helix oil product. The recreation of a life size car made of all clear parts is awesome. You can actually see the oil running through the engine. Check out the behind the scenes video and commercial via YouTube:
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Posted by nfarsun on 31st December 2009
FreeAllMusic.com, which began a test version for invited users on Dec. 22 and plans to open to the public in January, will allow users to download songs, which may be copied and shared — unencumbered, in other words, by digital rights management restrictions.
In return, instead of paying 99 cents a song as on iTunes, users must first watch a 15- to 30-second advertisement.
“It’s iTunes meets Hulu,” said Richard Nailling, chief executive of FreeAllMusic.
Two of the four major labels have signed with the service and will provide their full digital catalogs, said Mr. Nailling, who declined to name the labels. Six advertisers are on board for the site’s debut, he added, including Coca-Cola, Warner Brothers Television and Zappos.com.
Source: New York Times
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Posted by cfox on 14th October 2009
If you can’t beat them, mock them.
Facing nearly insurmountable competition from AT&T Wireless and its iPhone juggernaut, Verizon Wireless is capitalizing on the latter company’s well-publicized download problems by airing a television advertisement that tweaks Apple’s iPhone tagline, “There’s a map for that.”
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Posted by sourceu30 on 21st July 2009
Robots to Advertise on the Moon
It’s one giant leap for robot-kind. New Shadow Shaping technology creates images on the Moon that can be seen from Earth. Robots are used to create several small ridges in the lunar dust over large areas that capture shadows and shape them to form logos, domains names, memorials or even portraits. Talk about the Man in the Moon! You can even carve your initials in a heart to impress your sweetheart.
The advertising potential is mind-boggling. Never in history have companies been able to penetrate every market on Earth, reach every person on the planet, and touch them at an emotional level only possible with the beauty of the Moon on a starlit night. Twelve billion eyeballs looking at your logo in the sky for several days every month. And since there is no atmosphere on the Moon, the images last for thousands of years.
“Finally dependency on government to travel beyond Earth is over,” says inventor David Kent Jones. “This new commercial incentive will turbo charge space technology development. Shadows are just the beginning; eventually robots will be planting crops on other planets.”
Beginning July 20, 2009, the fortieth anniversary of man’s first step on the Moon, exclusive licensing for this patent pending technology is publicly available. Moon Publicity is accepting bids from accredited investors and companies for 44 lunar regions until October 20, 2009. You could license moon-imaging technology potentially worth a fortune in advertising value for about the cost of an SUV. Minimum bids start as low as $46,000. For more information visit Moon Publicity.
Posted in General, Just the Begining | No Comments »
Posted by nfarsun on 4th March 2009
Ad age listed the top 10 iPhone applications that every adman, or woman should have, because as fun as the iPhone is, it is also a business tool. See below for the complete list from Ad Age.
10. iBeer. For those days when no one remembers to make the Free Beer Friday beer run. Yes, sadly it does happen.
9. Shazam. For when you find the perfect background music for the campaign that is due tomorrow while sitting at the wine bar eating breakfast.
8. Twittelator Pro. If you’re on Twitter, you know why. This one lets you basically do it all from your iPhone. In fact, it powered my entire Mardi Gras Twitter experiment. Troubles here and there, but overall, good stuff.
7. Facebook. Because it is much easier to hide an iPhone screen when you’re boss comes in your office.
6. Files. A great app that lets you create a file tree on your iPhone. I use it to carry all my important files with me so that no matter where I am, I can reference any client files. Supports all major formats and syncs via WiFi. Very cool little app that I’d highly recommend.
5. WhereTraveler. A great app for any traveler. Find out security wait times at all airports, search for info on your destination like restaurants, shopping and entertainment. And for when things go wrong, phone numbers for every airline and rental car agency. Just tap a screen to call.
4. Google Reader. I follow over 100 blogs so being able to read them as I ride the elevator or when I’m in that really boring meeting you’re running is invaluable.
3. OmniFocus. For all you David Allen GTD folks, this is a great stand-alone iPhone app (which is how I use it) or you can use it with the desktop client too. But beware, I’ve heard the sync is a little hit and miss when you use the desktop app in conjunction with the iPhone app. The “nearby” feature is the absolute bomb when you find yourself with a few spare minutes.
2. XpenseTrkr. Like this one needs an explanation. It even lets you take a picture of the receipt, something I’m thinking our accounting folks will relish me using more in the future.
1. And the number one most important iPhone app for today’s crazed Adman/Adwoman is … drum roll please … Lightsaber Unleashed. Because sometimes there is just no better way to settle a difference of opinion with cranky art directors.
source: Ad Age, March 4, 2009 online issue - http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=135011
Posted in Mobile Technology, The Geek Journal | 2 Comments »
Posted by sourceu30 on 19th February 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/companies/19yahoo.html?ref=technology
Posted in The Geek Journal, Web, Web Technology | No Comments »
Posted by spalinkas on 8th January 2009
This website is pretty sweet. You can see tons of different ads from around the world. The best part is, you can search by Category (print, tv, radio etc), Country, Industry, and even Agency. So if you are interested to see the most up to date Ads from all over the world, check this out: http://adsoftheworld.com/
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Posted by sourceu30 on 3rd December 2008
Interesting article from the NY Times about what makes people click on web-based banner ads.
ONLINE advertisers are not lacking in choices: They can display their ads in any color, on any site, with any message, to any audience, with any image.
Now, a new breed of companies is trying to tackle all of those options and determine what ad works for a specific audience. They are creating hundreds of versions of clients’ online ads, changing elements like color, type font, message, and image to see what combination draws clicks on a particular site or from a specific audience.
It is technology that could cause a shift in the advertising world. The creators and designers of ads have long believed that a clever idea or emotional resonance drives an ad’s success. But that argument may be difficult to make when analysis suggests that it is not an ad’s brilliant tagline but its pale-yellow background and sans serif font that attracts customers.
The question is, “how do we combine creative energy, which is a manual and sort of qualitative exercise, with the raw processing power of computing, which is all about quantitative data?” said Tim Hanlon, executive vice president of VivaKi Ventures, the investment unit of Publicis Groupe.
“I think it’s clear that the traditional process of agencies is clearly not going to survive the digital era without significant changes to our approaches,” Mr. Hanlon said.
•
The push to automate the creative elements of ad units is coming from two companies in California, not Madison Avenue.
Adisn, based in Long Beach, and Tumri, based in Mountain View, are working both sides of the ad equation. On one, they are trying to figure out who is looking at a page by using a mix of behavioral targeting and analysis of the page’s content. On the other side, they are assembling an ad on the fly that is meant to appeal to that person.
Both companies assume there is no perfect version of an ad, and instead assemble hundreds of different versions that are displayed on Web sites where their clients have bought ad space, showing versions of an ad to actual consumers as they browse the Web.
That might lead to finding that an ad for a baby supply store is more popular with young mothers when it features a bottle instead of diapers.
(Adisn and Tumri both measure the ad’s effectiveness based on parameters the advertiser sets, like how many people clicked on the ad or how many people actually bought something after clicking on it. They compare those with standard ads they run as part of a control group.)
Adisn’s approach has been to build a database of related words so it can assess the content of a Web site or blog based on the words on its pages.
Adisn then buys space on Web sites, and uses its information to find an appropriate ad to show visitors to those sites. If a visitor views pages about beaches, weather and Hawaii, it might suggest that the visitor is interested in Hawaiian travel.
Based on that analysis, Adisn’s system pulls different components — actors, fonts, background images — to make an ad. For example, it might show an ad with a blue background, an image of a beach, and a text about tickets to Hawaii. “Once we’ve built this huge database of hundreds of millions of relationships” between words, said Andy Moeck, the chief executive of Adisn, the system can “make a very good real-time decision as to what is the most relevant or appropriate campaign we could show.”
Simple Green, the cleaning brand, began working with Adisn this year to advertise a new line of products called Simple Green Naturals.
“If it’s a woman looking at a kitchen with a stainless steel refrigerator, they can show a stainless steel product,” said Jessica Frandson, the vice president for marketing for Simple Green. While Ms. Frandson gave Adisn a general idea of what she wanted, she also let the agency do almost random combinations with about 10 percent of her ads to see which of those combinations had the highest click-through rates.
“If it wants to be purple and orange, if that’s going to be appealing to my customer, then so be it,” she said.
Even Mr. Moeck said he was often surprised by the success of certain ads. “Some of it, I just scratch my head and say, ‘I have no idea,’ ” he said.
Tumri’s approach is slightly different. It creates a template for ads, including slots for the message, the color, the image and other elements.
Unlike Adisn, it does not buy ad space, but lets clients — like Sears and Best Buy — choose and buy space on sites themselves. And rather than building a contextual database like Adisn, Tumri uses whatever targeting approach advertisers are already using, whether it is behavioral or contextual or demographic, and assembles an ad on the fly based on that information.
“It’s reporting back to the advertiser and agency saying, ‘Guess what? The soccer mom in Indiana likes background three, which was pink, likes image four, which was the S.U.V., and likes marketing message 12, about room, safety and comfort,” said Calvin Lui, chief of Tumri.
•
Some advertisers are using that information just to see which version of the ad works best, but Mr. Lui emphasized that the appropriate ad is not static, and changes all the time as content on the page changes.
While the planners and buyers in advertising agencies are intrigued by the idea of measuring each part of an ad, the creative staff that designs ads is less focused on measurement and more focused on the overall effect.
“I think the creative community has to get very comfortable with results-based outcomes in marketing,” said Mr. Hanlon, whose company has an interest in Tumri. “There are a lot of creative people who didn’t sign up for that kind of world.”
Bant Breen, the president of worldwide digital communications at Initiative, the Interpublic Group media buying and planning firm, had a similar view. “The traditional creative process right now is not structured to essentially deliver hundreds of permutations, or hundreds of ideas for messaging,” said Mr. Breen, whose firm is using Tumri to determine which ads are working.
“There’s no doubt that there will be a lot of data that can be collected that could be applied to the creative process.”
But, he said, “that’s not necessarily an easy discussion to have with great art directors.”
Posted in Designer Resources, General, Web | No Comments »
Posted by sourceu30 on 30th July 2008
The TV Show Gossip Girls has been marked by parents and critics as “A parents worst nightmare”. Instead of fighting back, or toning down the content of the show, they’ve decided to use these words and negative reviews to their advantage. They’ve turned it into a marketing campaign to promote their 2nd season.
Racy ads appear with headlines straight from parents’ mouths and critics reviews - such as “Mind-Blowingly Inappropriate” and “A Nasty Piece of Work”. And of course, their target is eating it right up. The marketing boss for CW, the network that airs the show, says the ads are out their to reach and talk to their target in a way they would appreciate. Others call it an act of desperation.
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Bold move? Or crossing the line? What do you think?
Posted in Poprocks & Popcorn, TV, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »