What a great way to start the day! Just got an email with the information that we had won the Intercontinental Advertising Cup in two categories.
Here is the entry movie: Mini Clubman. The Other Test-Drive
The project scored in Best of Products & Services / Cars and Best of Media / One2One plus Nominee in the category Best of Admaking / Use of Technology.
Yes he can. Barack Obama is the new president of the United States of America. But what is even more fascinating than the fact that Obama moves into the White House is how he came there.
Politics, after all, is about marketing - projecting and selling an image, moving people to identify, evangelize and consume. Thats the reason why a political campaign is very similar to an advertising one. So let´s have a look at it from a brand perspective.
“Barack Obama is three things you want in a brand. He is new, different and attractive. Thats as good as it gets.” Keith Reinhard chairman DDB Worldwide.
What I love the most is his openness to the way consumers communicate with one another and how he distributed his messages in this new way. Obama and his team transformed politics with its use of technology and turned them,selves into a media organization.
On BarackObama.com they featured constant updates, videos, photos, ringtones, widgets and events to give the supporters a reason to come back.
But they go even further. Together with Chris Hughes, one of three Harvard roommates who invented Facebook four years ago, Obama’s team created their own social networking site, my.barackobama.com with over 1.000.000 active users!
A short introduction video:
Here you can write your own blog, send policy recommendations directly to Obama, set up your own mini fund-raising site, organize an event or even use a phone-bank to get call lists and scripts to tele-canvass from home.
This movement is a conversation where everybody is invited. And those who join the conversation get constant feedback from the campaign and from each other. For marketers a cheap and effective way to get in touch with personal supporters around the globe and for the users a great experience to be connected to a huge community of soul mates.
Their social media activities do also reach people over the age of 30. It proves that there is a immense potential to involve elderly folks within this medium:
“I’m a political junkie who watches Chris Matthews and C-Span,” he said. “But instead of just sitting there . . . this allows me to become involved. It’s real grass roots.”
Mr. Goodburn a 56-year-old grandfather
or another interesting statement:
“With the organizational tools Barack’s campaign is giving us, we, the people, can change history.”
Valli Frausto, a 50-year-old mother of two from Columbus
Also a great example is the use of viral videos to spread the word online. This one here is my personal favorite:
And even after Obama has won the election he uses the web as a channel to communicate with his audience.
This here is the latest post on his own youtube channel:
Barack Obama: “We Have a Lot of Work to Do”
Obama was successful at converting online clicks into real-world currency. And I truly believe that many brands and their products out there could do the same. We simple need to rethink the way we work and make some changes.
Every forward-thinking business would be wise to examine his marketing strategies and leadership styles.
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time…We are the hope of the future”
said Barack Obama on Super Thuesday
So let´s start today and change the industry! YES WE CAN!
Lee Clow is not only the Global Director of TBWA Media Arts, he was also the guy who created the legendary Apple 1984 ad.
here it is:
He did some of the best campaigns back in the 80ies, and at that time advertising was all about TV commercials, radio spots or print ads. (The good old days, ha?)
That is the reason why it is even more encouraging for me to hear him talk, together with Alex Bogusky, who is one of the ad-revolutionary, about the fundamental changes in the industry.
He talks about the massive shift from a monologue to a dialogue and that advertising has to be a constant conversation and every piece we create has to interact with the audience.
“The Internet opened up a whole new world for us, a great time to be in this business…”
What an attitude! Instead to be frightened by all that weired stuff, he wants to explore the possibilities and create something exciting with it.
I wish there would be more people like Lee and Alex out there, because we need everybody to join this revolution and to stop wasting all our energy by fighting against it.
I needed a break today, so I decided to take one and use it to catch up with all the blogposts etc. I had missed, and watched this really cool Pixelated presentation from Chris Brogan. So if you have some spare time, lay back and have a look.
Diamond Shreddies - I already saw this case when I scrolled down the cannes lions winners site some time ago, but it didn´t seemed that interesting to me to blog about. (and I don´t understand why it had won?)
But anyway, a few days ago I stumbled into it on youtube and had a closer look.
What fascinated me about it, was not the case itself…
…they only did some standard integrated campaign stuff - with viral videos, a website, tv spots and print ads (uuuuuhhhh…boring).
No, the interesting thing were the reactions from the people to this campaign. A lot of people responded with their own video to comment on this piece of advertising.
Video comments like this one:
This video got 26.301 views and over 337 comments!!! And they all ask the same question.
“Are the people out there that dumb???”
But unfortunately this whole campaign is based on fooling consumers. I mean…ok…I work in advertising myself and I know that we always try to fool or let´s call it “to convince” people in some way or another but this Diamond Shreddie thing is going way too far!
Not all ad guys seem to agree with me (watch this post), but this campaign really scares me!
And even if the company sold some more cereals at the beginning I`m sure that this is not a good long term strategy! Because if someone makes fun of me, I will either ignore him or punch him right in the face.
And people will also do this with the brand. And all the negative buzz going on online will harm the brand more than they sold with this stupid campaign. (hopefully)
But this is only my opinion, and I would love to discuss about this campaign, do you think the people out there are all pricks?…so if you have an opinion, just leave a comment or write a mail.
So I´m back again from the Golden Drum Awards in Portoroz. And it was a great trip, not only because we had won 2 x gold and 1 X silver after we pitched our ideas in front of the jury and the audience, but because we met so many interesting people from agency´s all around the globe. I had some inspiring chats with them about what and how our industry is going to change.
And tomorrow I´ll be back with some new postings about these thoughts and ideas.
What a great idea! There are so many conferences out there and its absolutely impossible to go to all of them. (Or even only a few) - So this is good way to hear interesting speakers and keynotes at any time you want from any place you are.
The only difference is that you don´t run into interesting people around you.
Back from Amsterdam with a sketchbook filled with tons of things I want to blog about. Unfortunately this week was so busy that I didn´t have time for anything but work.
The reason for these long hours is, that we are shortlisted at the Golden Drum Award. And my colleague and I are flying to Slovenia on Sunday night to give two presentations about the projects we entered.
So, I´m looking forward to meet some interesting people there, and keep your fingers crossed for me that we come back with a price. - And as soon as I have time again I´ll write about all the stuff I saw at the picnic conference.
13:00 Kick Off at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam by Bas Verhart and Marleen Stikker, the event’s co-founders.
13.45 We Think Author Charles Leadbeater talked about “The Power of Mass Creativity”. An interesting talk but unfortunately he used all the old, well known examples, like the “I Love Bees” ARG or Wickipedia to proof his theory. - But I will read his book and hope to find some more examples and blog about them here.
15:00 Artist Aaron Koblin’s showed us his project “TheSheepMarket” and some other good examples for “Collaborative Creativity” and Crowd sourcing like the “10,000 Cents Buys You $100″ he did.
Tomorrow I´ll be at the PICNIC Conference in Amsterdam. It´s gonna be the third time for me and I´m looking forward to three inspiring days of ideas, fun and sensory stimulation in media technology, entertainment, art and science.
A great place to meet interesting people. Last year I had the chance to chat with Johnathan Harris, Kevin Roberts , David Weinberger (which singed my Cluetrain Manifesto) and many more.
I will keep you updated with some “live blogposts” straight out of Amsterdam.
