Of flying people and colourful things

Lately I've noticed a growing trend in TV advertising towards featuring people flying around in slow motion.  Throw in some motion blur, or even better, colour splashes of some sort and you seem to be on a winner.

Try to resist the urge to fill or empty yourself during the next ad break and pay attention to just how many times you see this type of creative.  The flying people thing seems to work for selling everything from cars to perfume,  televisions and clothing.

To date, every one I've seen of this type has been pretty clear in what it's advertising. Except for this latest effort for Van Heusen.  Check it out and let me know if you can figure out what they're flogging...  good luck.



BTW, their website doesn't make it any clearer - mainly cause most of us already know what these guys are famous for. Is this a clever marketing tactic or a massive oversight? There's a fine line between genius and... you know.

Old Spice Case Study

Here's a great video that shows the results of the fantastic Old Spice Guy campaign. At the end of the vid there's a bunch of interesting stats on site visitation and views - but the most important at the end of the day is the whole point of the exercise; the massive increase in sales over the previous periods.



Check it out.  This post is now diamonds!

genius!

 

good work Nandos

the campaign is dead?

Discussions at Ad:tech Sydney yesterday turned to the subject of stand alone campaigns and how they fit into the overall conversation that a brand has with its audience.

Doesn't it make perfect sense that once you engage someone and lure them into your circle, you need to have a plan for them?  Marketers too often have an extremely short-sighted view in their marketing timelines.  Is this because their performance reviews are quarterly?  Is it because they really just don't care about the bigger picture?

In any case, hopefully more marketers will slowly start to get the fact that firstly, all marketing is direct and the second you stop the conversation, be prepared to lose customers.

Put it into a face to face real world scenario.  You wouldn't start talking to someone if you're just going to walk away mid-conversation would you?

Would you?

More over at Mumbrella

ad:tech Sydney

If you're in Sydney this week and have any interest in marketing whatsoever, then you're probably already going to Ad:Tech.

If you're not going, you can follow the action over at Mumbrella.

iPad mayhem

Now that the initial burst of media crazyness (26 posts in 48 hours from Engadget alone) surrounding the new Apple iPad has abated slightly, I thought I'd take a bit more of a look at what exactly this little bundle of electronics is and why I'm told I will be a better human by owning one.

When it comes to Apple, I'll sadly admit that I'm a slave to their marketing machine.  Even though I wont ever own a Mac of any type, I'll gladly buy whatever else Uncle Steve tells me I need.

But this thing, even though it's shiny and has the requisite logo I need, just doesn't do it for me.  But Stevo tells me it's magical and revolutionary so lets see if he's right.

According to Dictionary.com, magical is 'of or pertaining to magic' and magic is defined in a few different ways.  My favourite though is this:

the art of producing illusions as entertainment by the use of sleight of hand, deceptive devices, etc.; legerdemain; conjuring:

When we look at the definition of  'revolutionary', we get:

radically new or innovative; outside or beyond established procedure, principles, etc.:

I love it!  Deceptive devices and illusions indeed!  And where exactly is the innovation here?  Where is anything being developed or produced or invented that is outside of 'established procedure or principles' when all this is is just a big iPod Touch?

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing I would have considered 'magical' about this device is it's marketing campaign, were it not for the fact that they accidentally put an 'r' in front of  'evolutionary'.

As for me, I'm happy with my iPad Nano - my iPhone :)