NSAC District 8 Competition This Saturday

Hello to all in YAYBIAland! Just wanted to let you all know that the National Student Advertising Competition will be in full swing this weekend for District 8. The event will be on the University of Minnesota campus in Willey Hall on the West Bank on Saturday, May 1st.

This year's client is State Farm. Here is the schedule for presentations:

9:00-9:30 St. Thomas (Room 125)
9:45-10:15 University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (Room 175)
10:30-11:00 Minnesota State University Moorhead (Room 125)
11:15-11:45 South Dakota State University (Room 175)

11:45-1:15 Break for Lunch

1:30-2:00 St. Cloud Technical College (Room 125)
2:15-2:45 University of Wisconsin - Madison (Room 175)
3:00-3:30 St. Cloud State University (Room 125)
3:45-4:15 University of Minnesota - Duluth (Room 175)

Remember that even if you're a minute late, you will not be let in to the room, so plan accordingly. Doors open 10 minutes before each presentation.

I know that Chariot (U of M - Twin Cities) would love your support (IT'S FREE!), and it should be very interesting to see what such bright young thinkers can come up with for an insurance campaign targeting their age group!

GOOD LUCK CHARIOT! I know you will make all of us Ghosts of NSAC Past proud!

Facebook Ads: Fan vs. Like

You've all probably formed opinions of your own now that Facebook has officially rolled out the switch from "Become a Fan" to "Like" for subscribing to Page updates. So besides "WTF, Facebook?!" here's something I've noticed that I haven't seen many people talking about.

When setting up a Facebook social ad campaign, you can choose to "advertise something I have on Facebook" or "advertise a web page". Before the switch, it was clear which ads would keep you on Facebook when clicking and which ones were for external websites.

Now that everything is "Like", all the ads look the same. One of the advantages with the "Become a Fan" ad feature was that people could scope out your page knowing they'd stay within Facebook. All ads look the same now, website or not. It's no longer clear whether your click on "Like" will end up with a "you like this ad" or "you like this page". And it's not clear whether a headline click will take you to the Fan Page or to MyFreeCrazyPage4U.biz

So, out of these ads can you tell which ones are linking to websites or to properties within Facebook? Sort of like Facebook ad roulette, no?

Quest for ads continues

Last week's moving mystery was a spot for Belgium Natural Gas by TBWA Brussels and Lovo Film. The thermostat switches on in the morning and voila, the whole house is covered in symbolic warm wool. Simple, straight-forward idea vs. complicated and elaborate execution. The whole thing was shot backwards and required "a month of preparation, 4 days and night shoot, with a professional crew of over 40 men, shot live and in stopmotion with 4 different cameras." Watch the Making of the commerical here.

This week we return to a print ad, which is, well, rather not so warm. Who can guess what this friendly fellow's gut feeling is all about?

Nike, I'm taking your bait

Reactions are running the gamut from love to hate to confusion. I can't decide my reaction because I can't decide what Nike's goal was. Help me figure it out?

• Setting the stage to move forward. "We're not going to ignore the Tiger issue. We can yank his ads or we can run them like nothing happened...or we can do something awesome."
  
• Generate some BUZZ! "Dude, let's do something controversial about Tiger Woods. The bloggers will love it!"
• Branding. "Everybody fucks up, even the most successful athletes in the world. Face your shit, own up to it, get past it, and just do it. It's totally on brand. Let's get a writer on this."

I hope it's the third one but I'm not sure. What do you think? Is it succeeding?

Moving mystery

I am sorry to report to you, my dear loyal guessers, that unfortunately nobody was able to solve the Guess What Easter edition.

Umm... okay, okay, I plead guilty. It was an auto ad again. Far out for anybody except maybe engineers, race car drivers and experimental biologists. This time the ad was for BMW with the subline "This is why we don't have front wheel drives".



There you go! Now you finally know: BMW doesn't construct front wheel drives cause nature doesn't, either. Only Photoshop does. The print series also features a deformed horse and an immobile frog, but unfortunately no kangaroo or T-Rex. Well, at least you got to see a cute, handicapped bunny.

For this week's Guess What, I thought we'd try something new. No car ad and not even a print ad. Instead, I cut off the last five seconds of a very beautiful, artistic spot from Great Britain. New medium, same question: What does it advertise?