Ad Age reports Battle Creek cereal maker Kellogg has broken the digital ROI marketing code for it’s Special K brand. With a combined ad/promo budget in the general zip code of $1.3B, that’s a lot of return.
Category Archives: marketing and promotion
guerilla marketing olympic event
guerilla olympic marketing effort wins gold
GM’s Chevy division’s Olympic ad blitz, smart and contemporary, is attracting the buzz. And at $750,000 every prime time 30-seconds, that’s good, especially if you’re curious about the Volt.
But out back of the swim cube, BMW cooked up a tasty little guerilla marketing campaign of their own. That’s a whacked in half MINI Cooper trundling around town behind the front end of what used to be a pedicab.
Which proves – again – the worth of creativity in the right situation. No word, though, on how the a/c’s holding up.
harley charts new, uh, territory
Curious about the new ’09 Nightster I instinctively Googled “Brazilian waxing” and wasn’t disappointed for my effort when this smart little banner popped up.
This is the kind of synergy that can only happen when you combine a healthy interest in stylized female hygiene and Sportsters. Thanks to the web, TMC can parse their market finer than frog hair. Or similar.
Was this serendipity or a carefully laid Google adsense trap? Either way, we’ll keep searching. The truth is out there.
planes, trains and – planes and trains
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Even HST couldn’t have seen this quiniela coming down the toll road of what the hell else can go wrong.
We won’t dwell on the details. If you somehow missed the Bus Ride From Hell, you can get up to speed here.
And no joke, when it comes to GPS and navigation sometimes you really do have to Just Say No.
What do these two tales of the psychotic kind have to do with each other? They’re pr nightmares with no good ending except for the competition, should they choose to play the hand.
The GPS manufacturer with the slightly faulty POI will no doubt be revealed soon, as in just as soon as the competition gets to the survivors with a fistful of cash and an exclusivity agreement for what surely is the ultimate comparison ad.
And Greyhound? It’s a safe bet Jack Nicholson’s not in their plans as a corporate spokesman. So the next time some insurance type brings up road rage in response to your screaming at the idiot who cut you off on the way to the airport, wave this story in their face as to the real consequences of getting on someone’s bad side during a road trip. At least in Canada.
does F-R-E-E advertising work?
You’ve seen the ads, maybe TiVo’d one or two. “Now my legs’re stickin’ to the vinyl and my posse’s getting laughed at,” all because of Bad Credit. F-R-E-E does spell free, except it’s credit reporting monster Experian trolling for consumers to take the bait and sign up for monthly hits for something that’s – well – free here, just not there.
Online sign-ups are up 20%, a pretty remarkable stat for the likeable ads from Martin Agency as part of a $70M campaign (up 200 percent since 2002) to drive new biz. Viral? Ya’ think? This thing’s crawling all over YouTube, which we think is a little weird considering the core message. Read more details about the campaign and why it’s taking flak here on the New York Times site.
can you spell y – m – c – a?
Blame it on Florida’s exquisite bureaucracy, of course, and the fashionistas lurking in the Department of Transportation. Who knew they could be so stylish and yet so clueless? I’m all for improving the visibility of bikers, but at the same time reserve the right to maintain a little dignity.
Midnight Cowboy’s the only thing that comes to mind when I saw the state’s latest genius approach to reducing bike fatalities. Somewhere in Tallahassee, there’s a career desk jockey who’s life’s work is to make day-glo chaps a requirement for a two-wheeled endorsement. Ride safe, little Hulksters.
pr, schme-r – you say tomato, i say rutabago
Hollywood gospel says there’s no such thing as bad p.r. Unless it’s no p.r. Which is exactly what happened to Clearwater Wednesday night, as the A&E (originally named for arts and entertainment – how far we’ve fallen) cable channel beamed live footage of illusionist Criss Angel ‘s escape from a blown to smithereens beachfront hotel.
Except that the on-air program guide described the hotel as a condo. And the location as Miami. Be assured this was not what the city bargained for when they put up the security and such needed to accomodate a live feed and a crowd estimated at perhaps 50,000. I know this because I’m right down the road from an event that dominated the local papers. As Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up.”
id at hd – new museum by pentagram
ID magazine saw fit to highlight premier design firm Pentagram’s exhibit work for the freshly minted H-D museum in their current issue.
Clean, contemporary and compelling are the trademark attributes of Pentagram’s design product over the decades and responsible for their successful projects that span the globe.
virulent viral video
This YouTube hit monster – over 5 million as of this post – is one of those oddities the web’s (in)famous for. As viral goes it’s out of the park. I’ve seen it mentioned just this week in both the New York Times and Ad Age, a quinella that doesn’t happen every day.
It’s just your average guy – he could be the greeter at TGIF – performing a slightly goofy dance in 40-plus locales around the world. That’s it. Amy Winehouse should be so lucky.
The point being that young Matt’s sole sponsor, Stride Gum, is getting hit on like Jessica Simpson at a bachelor party. You can’t predict viral – and you can’t, as they say, buy this kind of publicity. But we’d like to think we can help.
new urgency for web solution
I’d planned a post on the shifting attitudes towards e-advertising (worth $21-billion last year) when I got a query from a Canadian dealer friend, still using traditional methods, asking pretty much the same questions only from the retailer side. How did/can you (the customer) find us? This is when I coincidentally started seeing H-D’s new second tier banners popping up on Yahoo.
A recent Washington Post feature summarized the latest look back on major brands’ adventures with web advertising. And the big news is, the biggest spenders aren’t who you might think: number eight Netflix lays out $10-mil a month to push those irritating popups in our face. So what’s going on these days? Continue reading