What do Vincent Chase and Apple have in common?

So Entourage's Vincent Chase (otherwise know as Adrian Grenier) has been in Australia latley promoting something or another and Sunday night saw him interviewed on Rove live. I can see why the guy was chosen for the role of Vinni Chase in Entourage as ladies seem to go weak at the knees when he flashes the pearly whites at the camera, but in the Rove interview he came across as pretty arrogant and a bit of a jerk. What does this have to do with Apples recent decision to brick hacked iPhones?



Apple is very quickly turning into the Adrian Grenier of the IT world. An asshole but so dam good looking people still love 'em no matter how much of a jerk they are. Apple has already kicked their eirly adopter customers in the guts by dropping the price 2 months after releasing the iphone and the general concesus from the Apple community "I still love my iPhone". Now they are threatening to turn a $700+ product into scap metal and STILL people talk up how much they adore Steve Job's company.

So whats the marketing lesson from all of this?

If your good looking enough you can get away with anything...

Gen Y Marketing Podcast - Episode 7

Its celebration time here at the Gen Y Marketing Podcast seeing the return of Paulie in the podcasting hot seat. To celebrate his triumphant return we have put together a show choc-a-block full of marketing news and our unique take on the world of generation Y marketing...

Don’t forget to join our facebook group, Gen Y Marketing Podcast on Facebook, where you can see everyone else who is listening to the Gen Y Marketing Podcast. Jake and Nat are there, no Paulie yet, but we are happy to be your friends :)
Peace.

Dove Pro-Age...Pro-Marketing or Anti-Marketing?

I came across this Dove ad in the Sunday Age Magazine. As much as I like Dove's approach to advertising and beauty, I am in two minds about this ad.

Right off the bat, the Ad gives off the anti-marketing message and feel that Dove Ads have now become famous for. Showing natural, beautiful, "normal", non-traditional models has become a hallmark of Doves "Attainable Beauty" Advertising.

She’s an older woman, beautiful, but with the obvious natural beauty flaws that come with aging. The photo works well with the tagline "too old to be in an anti-aging ad?” Its show natural beauty that doesn't conform to traditional marketing and media views of attractiveness and body image. It fits in great with Dove's Anti-Marketing message.

But then some idiot, some lame copywriter, has ruined the overall feel with the end tagline (below the picture) that reads, "but this isn't anti-aging. this is pro-age. a new range of skin and hair care from dove. beauty has no age limit"

Give me a break! That ruins it. That tagline treats readers like idiots. It comes across as tricky, unauthentic and lame. Don’t' come at me with an anti-marketing message, just so you can slip me the "true" marketing message. This isn't Anti-marketing, Dove. This Pro-Marketing!

Am I overreacting? Perhaps. Does dove care about my views considering that I am pretty certain that I'm not their target market? Absolutely not? Go and and see some of Dove's other Ads (which are generally great) and let me know what you think of this one in comparison?

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.