advergirl

Branded back-to-school bet

Take a look at Saatchi's new niche marketing site for JCP - all about back-to-school.

According to their release, it's part of a huge investment in the high school demo. The site itself has a reality program featuring designers Chip and Pepper Foster, a contest to present at the Teen Choice Awards, and a couple of great style guide tools including this very fun mix-and-match your stereotype approach:

Offline, there's a seeding strategy for the site (mostly push through movie theater ads), a couple of well-done TV spots and - de rigeur with this audience - a mobile strategy.

All-and-all, a pretty tight campaign. But, I'm left with one objection: The content and the voice don't seem to match. The brand is in your face, but the content is really playful. There's a credibility gap - will a cynical teen audience really engage with this site and tools when there's so little that's organic in the strategy (from the seeding all the way through to the site content).

I think I'm looking for a consumer voice on the site ... something that opens up the brand. The difference between shaveeverywhere.com and Brawny Academy.

Thoughts on the campaign?

Fetish casting?

"I want to be one less. One less."

A little melody so annoyingly memorable that you'd think it was in a Target spot.

But, I digress. I actually have something much more snarky to say:

This Merck spot has been running since February or so and every time it comes on, I am completely distracted by the casting. How does being HPV-free correlate to having really, really horrible eyebrows? The full range of eyebrow errors is displayed: from huge, untamed caterpillars to over-plucked bald foreheads. I cannot look away. It's like a mangled, burning car on the side of the road.

My guess: Either the casting director has a thing for eyebrows or the agency creative team had this conversation very late on the night before (ok, the morning of) the casting presentation:

Hyper-caffeinated creative director: We're selling a $360 product to girls 9 - 26. Get it? This can't look like an over-produced spot. These all look like models. Where's the authenticity?

Pissed off copywriter: We've talked about this a hundred times. It's still TV - they have to look aspirational. The script will deliver the authenticity.

Guy who knows he has to give the presentation: Maybe we just give them all one thing - one signature that makes them look more accessible. Like ... I don't know... cut off jeans.

Hyper-caffeinated creative director: Yeah, but something more physical. Something that separates them from models. What about eyebrows... big bushy eyebrows.

Guy who knows everyone: Perfect, boss. I know the makeup artist who made Ugly Betty ugly.

Reruns, hypocrisy and procrastination

Ah, great topics in any agency. All in a little advergirl buffet today:

A Rerun: T.G. just reminded me of this classic ad parody from the Director of Yuletide Messaging...

And - I'm practically your virtual TIVO here, but - it brought to mind these other all-time faves:

Sharpe Blackmore's Conference Call Audio Clip

The Bullshit Observer's Hallway Test

Meyocks Group's Kids Love to Work in Advertising

Microsoft's The Break UP

(yes, I said Microsoft. I know. But... it's true)

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The Baconator OR Hypocrisy: Why self-report data is always suspect

R.M. spotted this tasty item in Media Post (also covered by Mr.BaconPants):

Recently 21.3% of consumers reported agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement, "I am making a sustained effort to eat healthy at restaurants"

Never fear. Product marketers at Wendys know how to sway those health nuts: Six strips of hickory smoked bacon on top of a half-pound of never-frozen beef. The Baconator. Now in a restaurant near you.

This capped off their new belt-busting line featuring: the Triple Stack cheeseburger and the Steakhouse Double-Melt cheeseburger.

(You think I'm kidding, but this is the actual menu)

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Ok, last item (of course): Procrastination (and, oddly, this is the most interesting item in the bunch):

A new ScanAlert study has found that online shoppers delay on average 34 hours and 19 minutes from the time they first click to an ecommerce site and when they finally buy something there.

That's up from 19 hours in 2005.

Moms networking online, too

Hitwise's LeeAnn Prescott has an interesting post today about emerging social networking trends - particularly the growth of online niche communities, like the mom site, CafeMom:

It's no surprise that online communities are growing in "need niches" - serving as effective support groups and deep databases of experience for audiences with unique daily challenges. It's interesting, though, the technology selected. Although WIKI would likely be a much more appropriate medium (in terms of searchability, peer review and elevation of the best content), the online community's advantages are simply more "human friendly," appealing to lots of key emotions for a behavior transition as significant as offline friend & family network to online community support:

• Ego: I have a space that is mine. It reflects me. I can share it with people. I can see how many are attracted to the space.
• Human contact: This feels one-on-one, like relationships I'd have offline. I can see who is talking about what. I can put a face to the content.
• GUI: I understand how this works, it feels easy to use and like something I can do. I know it's technology, but I don't feel confused or ill-equipped to get involved.
• And, many others...

Two other great resources in the social networking and mom marketing worlds respectively:

Hitwise's Top 20 Social Networking Sites:
A quick reference chart and some interesting commentary on the sites that are looking to reduce MySpace's 80% market share.

Email Labs study on Effective Strategy for Email Marketing to Moms
It's a little older of a document, but has some compelling statistics and trends - all for the price of a quick registration

The other organic food story

Have you noticed all the buzz (and, well, legal action) around the Wild Oats acquisition seems to end with - what about Trader Joes?

Well, granola heads, it's no Whole Foods. But, another competitor - one much closer in approach - is using field marketing and WOM to actively take on the big guys. With some early success.

Sunflower Market

Check out this brand launch strategy:

Market: Indianapolis
Audience: Suburban Moms (mid-tier shoppers who don't currently buy a lot of organic food)
Medium: Online - offline / trying for viral
Marketing budget: ~ $200,000

Agency: Olson

Key online tactic: Amazing Growing Virtual Sunflower - a downloadable desktop plant that would live or die based on user action to water, give sunlight and fertilize. Totally sharable on a daily basis - look what I grew.

Key offline tactic: Think pink flamingos, but more eco-friendly. Olson & Sunflower Market took guerilla to the 'burbs with "lawnvertising" - planting neighborhood lawns in a three-mile radius with branded cardboard sunflowers.

Key media tactic: Six weeks out from the first store opening, key media received a branded flower pot + seeds and soil with the instruction to  "plant the seeds in the pot, and, by the time it sprouts, you will have been introduced to the sunny new face of organic food."

BIG, BIG, BIG ROI:

• Whole Foods' plans to build a competing store were put on hold
• Pickup by all local TV news + online media
• Exceeded initial sales goals by ~20%
• Nearly doubled average basket goals
• Lots of email registrations for ongoing communication

So far, Sunflower Market has five stores in the midwest with more opening soon...

The ads we were raised to create

Brands of our childhoods.

Nostalgic.

Harkening simple memories of good times.

Or, at least uncomplicated times.

How glorious to sit in a workstart meeting, charged with boldly exploiting them to sell a completely unrelated product.

No, really. That sounds fantastic.

Like the Transformers.

The (cranky, snotty) boy my mom babysat growing up would hunker down in my dad's tan cordoroy La-Z-Boy at 3 every day to watch the warring robots. And, of course, we all watched, too ... biding time through the machines & GI Joe for whatever we were really waiting to watch.

Despite the luke-warm reviews, I'm still looking forward to the movie. And, although the too-obvious GM spots barely held me for the full 30-seconds, congratulations to the new Mountain Dew spot for hitting all the key tones for successfully playing a nostalgia brand:

• Fresh element added (not a direct lift from the story)
• Priveleged view (as with all great childhood stories, it's important that not everyone in the room can really see the magic going on)
• Unexpected environment (bring the icon into the brand's real audience / location / etc.)
• Playful (even if it was scary growing up, all kid brands should be fun looking back)
• Remembers the re-runners (even if you didn't see it the first time around, you still get it)

Now we know!

And knowing is half the battle.

Anyway, top five brands I cannot wait to have a movie made of ... a movie that I will parlay into advertisements for hams and 800-thread count sheet sets:

1. Smurfs. (Gargamel obviously needed softer sheets. And, Bigmouth could have been easily distracted by a nice ham)
2. Fraggle Rock. (Sing it with me ... down at Fraggle Rock)
3. Punky Brewster. (It could happen. Headbands are hot right now)
4. The Snorks. (I wonder if Al Gore will make them part of his movie ... in a post-Global Warming world, when we all live under water...)
5. Strawberry Shortcake. (It's only a matter of time until we're all trading scratch-n-sniff stickers again)