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Brown Communications got a grudging pat on the back from AdRants' Steve Hall for their latest self-promotion on their storefront billboard.
This one features an amplifier volume switch that goes up to 11. Brings back memories of Spinal Tap, the great mockumentary that showed Christopher Guest how it's done.
In Spinal Tap, the heavy metal rocker enthuses about the fact that after fudging the number on his amplifier, it now goes "one louder" than the others.
Nice to see the other Saskatchewan marketing/digital/PR blogger get some attention. Nice one, Derek.
Tags: saskatchewan, outdoor, promotion, advertising, browncommunications, regina
Previous post: Self-promotion: Make a Statement
Confesion: I have a thing for signage. I rave about good signage, and contantly harp about the perils of bad signage.
When I see a new stop sign - without warning signs about the change - all I see is a lawsuit. When I can barely navigate a parking garage because the signs are hard to read, hard to understand and poorly placed, I vow not to return to that mall (well, for a few months, anyway).
When I speed up after the super speed bumps, only to find out someone mistakenly placed the 50 km/h sign before the last speed bump, instead of after it, I start to fantacize about painful procedures mistakenly performed on city engineers. (Try going over one of those extra large speed bumps at 50 K when your spouse is recovering from whiplash. Now go look up pain and suffering in the dictionary.)
So, I'm a signage fetishist. I'm not ashamed.
I was particularly pleased to come across Josh Hallett's photos from an Ikea. The signage - like the rest of the store and product design - is simple, elegant and extremely functional.
The spotlight trained on the arrow on the floor is a particularly nice touch. Thanks for sharing, Josh. His Flickr photos. Check his blog, too.
Tangential linking: For a different take on design, check out Ross Howard's post about ambient signifiers, and how the use of sound on the Tokyo rail system suggests ways to subtly help website visitors find their way (and no, Ross isn't suggesting musical websites).
Tags: signage, kea, retail, signs, joshhallett, functionality
Here's a Flash site that makes the most of low-res graphics and the public's expectation that milk will be marketed in a wholesome way.
Instead of testimonials about health and bone density levels, mechantchoco.com (warning: site launches with sound) uses a horror film motif to reveal the sad fate of kidnapped chocolate bunnies, ducks and bears that are ground up and turned into chocolate milk.
The choppy, cheap horror-film look of the graphics works well. Selecting different options, you can see how the chocolate critters were bashed, ground and micro-waved into pieces before being transformed into chocolate milk.
The campaign earned BBDO Montreal a Cassie grand prix. For six weeks in 2005 Quebec was peppered with posters for various "missing" chocolate animals, prompting teens to visit the site. Sales went up 17%, says the Globe and Mail.
The breathless news release from OutdoorPartner Media describes a nameless client that is spending $1 million on an outdoor campaign using "payphone kiosks," which I assume is a synonm for phone booths.
That's not news. Nor is the fact that "OutdoorPartner is particularly well-positioned to capitalize on the migration of media dollars to out-of-home media properties due to a combination of the Company's: vast network of advertising displays; micro-targeting capabilities; and ability to deliver branded, multimedia content to consumers using Prime Point's Bluetooth product."
Here's the real news item: There are hundreds of thousands of phone booths still in use in North America! I don't know if anyone make phone calls in them, but they're certainly useful as "alternative out-of-home media solutions for advertisers."
Disclosure: God, now I have to write disclaimers about advertisers. The timing of this piece is awkward, since it's based on a news release handled by CNW Group, who just started advertising on this blog yesterday. But I don't believe in penalizing advertisers any more than I believe in fawning all over them, so instead of spiking this item, I'll just note the potential conflict of interest and run it anyway. I've been subscribed to CNW's news release distribution service on and off for three years.
In the right margin of this blog, you'll find an ad aimed at Canadian public relations folks.
I haven't run ads here before, not from a misguided sense of the purity of my ideas, but because I didn't have the time and energy to pursue it.
Well, CNW Group sought out several Canadian public relations bloggers for a promotion of a media monitoring tool, so you could say opportunity came knocking.
The result, for those who click through to CNW, is an online game that has a PR flack trying to protect the client from whatever objects coming falling from the sky. Full credit to them for recognizing that advertising has to have some intrinsic value (in this case, a bit of entertainment) for the audience, especially an audience that is as jaded toward traditional marketing as your average PR person is.
Not wanting to host anything on the blog I wouldn't try myself, I checked out the game, and it's both safe for work and sort of fun. The game animation is okay, but I liked best the descriptions of crises that are dropped on the poor PR person in the game.
David Jones has a comment recognizing CNW for trying something different. Much thanks to Michael O'Connor Clarke for being the go-between for several months while the idea took shape. Colin McKay is also selling his soul, as is Chris Clarke.
(Update: Donna Papacosta chimes in.)
Knowing how much we bloggers like to talk about ourselves and our blogs, I suspect this campaign will get as much traction from the posts written about it as from the ads themselves.
This is an intermediate step for me. Pretty soon I'll be delving much deeper into the world of advertising-supported blogging, and I'm really looking forward to it. More on that next week...
Tags: ads, socialmedia, promotion, blogs, cnwgroup
Gainer the Gopher was riding high on a swell of public support. But now allegations have surfaced that he has been hiding his true species.
Globe and Mail columnist Allan Maki wrote an exposé that reveals Gainer may be a Richardson's ground squirrel, or some other species.
"The irony here is that while the Stampeders are worried about a six-foot, short-tailed Gainer invading their stadium and making Saskatchewan fans cheer louder, they don't know if he's really a gopher, and neither does anyone else. It could be a ground squirrel, a hamster in disguise, or worse, an elected member of Saskatchewan's legislative assembly."
See:
Gainergate Goes Goofy. Gosh. Go Gainer, Go Green Riders! - Saskboy
Is Gainer Really a Gopher? - Allan Maki
Watch the Game with Gainer - Rod Pedersen
Au Revoir, Gopher - Sports Illustrated
Previous posts:
Revenge of the Gopher
Roughriders' 13th Player Barred from Game
Now it's personal. The Saskatchewan Roughriders are used to being taunted by opposing players and coaches. This time, the Calgary Stampeders are trying to neuter the 'Riders' mascot.
Gainer the Gopher has been told not to show up at McMahon Stadium for this weekend's CFL playoff game. The Stampeders are worried that he'll take away their home field advantage by getting too many 'Riders fans in Calgary riled up.
The Roughriders' main marketing theme this year has been 'The 13th Player'. In TV ads, the colour commentator points to an overzealous fan in the stands, who made a difference for the team.
Of course, Gainer is also called the 13th Roughrider, helping fans pump up the players and rattle the opposition quarterback when he's trying to call a play on the field.
The challenge this weekend for the thousands of 'Rider fans in Calgary, will be to rattle the Stampeders, with or without a mascot. Anyone who's checked the number of expatriate Saskatchewanians in Alberta knows they've got the numbers to do it. And now they have the motivation.
It seems that at least once a year a CFL team tries to snub Saskatchewan, making the fans that much more devoted to their underdogs. This year, it was Calgary's turn to make a shabby move (as if enticing away so many of our skilled workers over the years wasn't insulting enough), and the fans are once again solidly behind their Green and White.
Thanks to Jordon Cooper for the photo of Gainer.
See also:
Gainer Scandal Escalates - Allegations about Mascot's Species
Tags: football, mascot, cfl, publicity, saskatchewan,marketing
The claim that new marketing company 'crayon' was the first new company to launch in Second Life raised some eyebrows and hackles among the virtual world's denizens.
The backlash against the launch was as much about a community feeling invaded by corporations that threaten to suck the creative life out of the online world as it was about the semantics of the claim, set against the history of Second Life's three years of creativity and development.
Jason Pettus, editor of a magazine about Second Life says it best in a comment on company president Joseph Jaffe's blog:
"I think there are a lot of people worried right now about the potential 'MySpaceization' of Second Life; of the entire thing becoming just a glorified environment for corporate advertising, and with the creativity and innovation that has usually defined the grid suddenly having to take a back seat. I think marketers entering SL would do themselves some good thinking about this issue, and asking themselves, "So okay, how do we impress -those- people?" I think RL veterans will find a lot of resistance melting away for their new SL companies, once they start answering this last question more."
Jaffe's post in response to the backlash: A Learning from Second Life
"Coming through the launch process, I'm learned a pretty important lesson. Opening up a storefront/presence in Second Life is not dissimilar to a Wal-Mart opening up in a small town.
"Let's leave it at that."
The critics are right that crayon's claim that it's "the first" to do anything in Second Life comes off as hubris in the eyes of people who have put in years of very uncorporate hard work building a new online world. Having been pummelled by their neighbours in their first week of operation, I suspect the crayon folks will do a bit of reaching out to those who were offended, and will get on with serving clients from their virtual head office.
I'm not a Second Lifer, so I don't claim to have special insight into the online experience there. Steve Hall, another blogger who knows very little about Second Life, suggests the backlash would be better aimed at clueless corporations than at a startup like crayon. As Steve points out, most of their work will probably be to help their clients connect with social media communities and others far outside of Second Life.
Backlash:
Second Life Madness - Mimi Harris, Eastwikkers
A Gallery of Lies - Urizines Sklar a.k.a. Peter Ludlow, The Second Life Herald
Backlash Week - Ed Lee, Blogging Me, Blogging You
Fucktards in Cyberspace - Peter Ludlow a.k.a. Urizines Sklar, in The Strumpette
Response:
Marketers Will Not Destroy Second Life - Steve Hall, AdRants
crayon's launch news release
Disclosure: I'm virtual pals with a few of crayon's founding employees.
See also: Second Life Backlash Continues
Tags: crayon, socialmedia, promotion, publicity, secondlife,marketing
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