Sorry NAB what did you say? I was distracted by your ad

So whilst watching the football tonight I saw a new ad from the National Australia Bank. NAB noticed a few years ago that their customers hated them and rightly so took solid bump to their bottom line. Rebranded as the NAB they came out trying to rebuild their position with strong customer service and have now launched their "smarter everyday banking" campaign.

The ad (that I would put here as an embedded video but they haven't bothered to upload it to Youtube) shows lots of people ears and talks about how they have been listening. Its one of those ads that has a post production filter applied to make it look a little more "arty" (see this would be much easier if I could just embed it). I would have paid more attention to their message too but I just couldn't get past the fact that the men in the commercial were wearing lipstick. Yes thats right, that was no typo, they are WEARING LIPSTICK!!!

So well done to the NAB for apparently listening to their customers, but lipstick?

Another Bloody Blog Post...

Just a couple of quick things today. So I have been drinking this water for the past few months and I think it’s pretty cool. I like the look of the Another Bloody Water bottle, the anti-marketing feel of the name and copy, and I must admit, I think the shape and color of the bottle and text to be pretty stylish.

Apparently, three guys started the company: one a local food distributor, a graphic designer and an ad guy.

Companies need to tread a fine line when they are going down the “anti-marketing” marketing approach. It can quite easily come off as tricky and un-authentic by a cynical audience. But in this case I think they have walked that fine line quite well and tapped into something I think a lot of us have probably thought about before - IT'S JUST BLOODY WATER!

Makes me think about what else we could apply this slogan to. Another Bloody Energy Drink. Another Bloody boutique Beer. Another Bloody Social Networking Site. Another Bloody Reality TV Show....

Who likes Riddles and Paradox's? A couple of my favorites are:

• What starts with "e" ends with "e" and contains only one letter? An envelope.
• Why is it called the 100-year war when it lasted for 116 years?

My friend Ed sent me this little paradox yesterday: according to a study from McKinsey & Co, regarding the effectiveness of TV advertising, by 2010 they predict:

• A 23 percent decline in ads viewed due to switching off.
• Nine percent loss of attention to ads due to increased multitasking.
• A 37 percent decrease in message impact due to saturation

And the real kicker: real ad spending on prime-time broadcast TV has increased over last decade by about 40 percent even as viewers have dropped almost 50 percent.

A free case of Bloody Water for anyone who can explain that one to me!

when will ManCans.com.au kick into campaign mode

So I saw the ManCans.com.au ad on TV the other night for about the 10th time and decided I would check out this viral marketing campaign and see what its all about.

For the average visitor it seems to be nothing more than a silly joke site about guys growing breasts due to nancyness. But no one in their right mind buys prime time ad slots on commercial TV just for fun, so its almost certain that there is a campaign behind it. A quick look at the Whois info shows that the site is actually registered to Cadbury Schwepps so that narrows it down a little (some kind of food or beverage product it would seem). But the question I found myself asking after checking the Alexa traffic graph is "when are they going to start trying to convert their buzz into brand recognition or sales?"..

Being that Australian marketers are usually pretty conservative when it comes to trying wacky marketing campaign, I am actually really happy to see the folks at Cadbury giving it a shot. They have got quite a few Google references from people in forum sites asking "what the hell is with this mancans thing" so from that perspective its actually working quite well. But with a downward trend in visitors since mid August, it might be time they clicked the site into gear and start getting their monies worth.