Some quick ads...

I Just wanted to post some of my fav ads over the past couple of months.
This one is my absolute favorite...The Wind Ad


And there is something about this series from Budweiser that is growing on me. and who said Ads can't be entertaining...

Mobile Ads

Some interesting developments in the mobile phone marketing platform today. From tech crunch, "Blyk, the mobile virtual network operator offering free phone call minutes and messaging in return for sending customers advertising, launches in the UK today” read more here.

Basically how this works is that you register on the website (you have to be between the ages of 16 to 24) and get a SIM from Blyk. Users get free SMS and Calls (capped) in exchange for up to six ads being delivered to the users mobile phone each day. This ain’t no Mickey Mouse project with some big advertisers already signed up, including Buena Vista, Coca-Cola, I-play Mobile Gaming, L’Oreal Paris, StepStone and Yell.

This is a pretty interesting concept. It is just a matter of time until advertising and marketing on mobile phones takes off in a big way. Also from tech crunch is the news of ThePudding, which, “provides free, PC-based phone calls to anywhere in the US or Canada. The big catch: computers in Fremont, CA will eavesdrop on and analyse every word of your conversation so they can serve up advertisements tailored to the topic at hand.” – Tech Crunch

My issue with these forms of ad supported revenue models is how they require users to opt in. Whereas when you use the Internet, where most sites are essentially ad supported, you do not have to opt in explicitly to view ads, viewing is a consequence of surfing the net. The same is true with television, radio and print. Asking users to actively view, or listen, to ads is a different kettle of fish.

I would suspect that as mobile phones, like the iphone and the yet confirmed mythical Google phone, become integrated media devices, ad content will primarily be delivered through Internet use and other online content. Will be interesting to see future developments.

Aside: I just realised I have never received a marketing message, or ad, on my mobile phone (apart from telemarketers). Could this be right?

Employee Generated Content

Doing my daily blog crawl (I love my google reader), a new term popped up on a few different blogs - Employee Generated Content (EGC) - or as some call it Employee Generated Media (EGM). Now I am all over User Generated Content (UGC), User Generated Ads (UGA), or my preferred User Created Ads (UCA) – I think this makes users feel less like tools and puppets of the corporate machine.

Although I have read a bit about Employee Generated Content – it’s nice now that we have a nice little term for it. Check out the couple of references on the blogs I read this morning, Brand Autopsy, Search Engine Guide and Brand Autopsy again.

In my opinion, I think we can probably refine EGC down a little further, possibly 2 ways, dictated by its intent.

1. Internal EGC. A key use of EGC is to foster improved employee engagement, employment efficiency and productivity. These are inward, internal focused outcomes for an organisation. Having an internal corporate blog, employee productivity competitions are great examples of engagement. Corporate and knowledge-based wiki’s and shared document spaces are areas where EGC can help improve business efficiency by promoting greater sharing, accessibility and volume of employee held knowledge.
2. External EGC. The other main use of EGC is to utilise it as a tool to engage with customers. These are outward focused outcomes that use internal EGC tools. Things like using employee blogs, employee created videos and employee buying tips, which are generated by the employees, for the consumption purposes of consumers. These messages can provide an authentic voice in a businesses conversation with customers.
   
   Bacn! Oh, and on new buzz words, seems like Bacn, which refers to "electronic messages which have been subscribed to and are therefore not unsolicited but are often unread by the recipient for a long period of time". Bacn is email you want but not right now . So it’s not as annoying as spam but still annoying. Like all the facebook messages telling you who has written on you wall or sent you a message.
   Check out Seth Godin’s views on this.
   

Even channel 10 dont want you to watch ads

During the screening of the movie Kenny this evening on channel 10 a strange thing happened. Just as they went to the break, Kenny pops up in a 10 promo screen and says "its probably a good time to duck out for a quick number 1s, or a really quick number 2s". Being that the movie is about toilets it kinda made for a funny opener to the ad break but I'm interested to know what the advertisers who have paid good money to screen their ads during the break think of it. I'm guessing they would not be overly impressed with channel 10 telling their viewers that they can stop paying attention for the next few minutes..

I'm sure these advertisers are well aware of the fact that during the screening of a movie people will often get up and do something else whilst the ads are on, but to have channel 10 actually promoting it is something I didn't expect.

Magazines Heavy in Ads

All advertising sucks, right? We should avoid ads, marketing and campaigning at all cost? A friend said this to me on the weekend, “Advertising is lame. It’s so manipulative. I hate ads, I hate being advertised to and I try to avoid seeing any ads at all if I can”

Now I don’t want to get too defensive of something that I spend a lot of time doing. An Ex girlfriend of mine stopped watching TV with me because I was constantly yelling at the TV with is dumb, lame-ass commercials (I sometimes think I am turning into an old man). So I hate Ads as much as the next guy.

Someone sent me these bunch of statistics the other day. An analysis done by Folio, a US based magazine for magazine management (what a niche), compares the percentage of content that are Ads across the top fashion magazines for the 2007 Fall season. The results are insane.

Maire Claire starts off with an average of 340 pages, of which 170 are Ad content, 50% (the remaining editorial content). Elle magazine comes in next with 67% of their page content that are Ads. Taking out the top prize, Vogue with a total of 840 pages. Of those 840 pages, 727 pages where Ad content. 727! 86%. Add that to the fact that over half of the women surveyed read fashion magazines for fashion tips and Advertisements. These magazine people are onto something. Paid advertisements that people actually enjoy viewing.

So not all commercials are bad and not all Ads are a waste of time. Think how many times you have done one of the following:

• Read a magazine that consist most of Ads.
• Watched a funny commercial that you have been forwarded by email or on youtube.
  Watched the Super bowl for the Ads.
• Seen one of those “world’s funniest Ads” TV shows

In these cases (and like youtube, best of ads website and TV shows) the advertising content is so good and entertaining and at times provides such valuable information – like showing fashion trends and new products, that it moves beyond a sales pitch and becomes the content itself.

I am just suprised that people still buy magazines in the first place, and not just read everything online!

Gen Y Marketing Podcast Now on Facebook

So apart from both Jake and myself being on facebook (hey Paulie where are you at?) the Gen Y Marketing Podcast now has its very own group that you can join. Click Here!

To tell you the truth, there are no real extra-added benefits of joining the group on facebook (we don't have any special promotions or extra post - though apparently Jake has some old white t-shirts he is keen to give away) but you can join up with other people who are jamming along to the podcast - and we all need more friends, right?

Alright, you can also post comments and discussions on the wall and discussion board, and you can also help me turn the group slowly against Jake - I tell ya I don't know why he thinks he is so smart.

Anyway, click on the picture link below (and if you haven't join facebook yet, sign up) and join the group so we can all be friends.

Peace.

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?