Tweet This

With the exception of the clever Twitter post a while back from Carina, we’ve pretty much left the Twitter topic alone. Well, I’m going to make the first crack at it. The ladies here at Yaybia all have Twitter accounts and have been testing it out with our friends. We’ve found that it’s a great place for us to connect with our current friends, share inside jokes, and waste time in general. But as far as self promo, networking, and fostering lasting relationships goes? SKIP IT. Now, even if we so desired to become fully enthralled with this supposed social media revolution that is Twitter, we couldn’t because it’s broken all the time! I took a marketing strategy class this past semester and I actually took a handful of insights away from that dreadful Wednesday night class. If you have a product/service/social network, a whatever! and it has the potential (at least you would hope so) to be so widely adopted that Google is going to snatch you up, be ready for it! At least once a day I find Twitter to be experiencing technical difficulties and I’ve had it this time. Hey Twitter, before you go out to try and change the world and monetize microblogging, why don’t you get your development down first. I like things that work, so I’m taking up residence at Brightkite instead. Libby and I have a few beta invites left and we'd love to share. Get 'em while they're hot.

Good times

Penguin books recently launched a six-week innovative literature project. Several well-known authors present digital fiction based on classics. Charles Cumming, for example, utilizes googlemaps to re-interpret John Buchan's "39 steps". In a modern version of M.R. James' "The haunted dolls' house" the characters blog and twitter their way through the story. Fairy tales can finally become true, as readers can choose characters and endings in their versions of Grimm's stories and 1001 Nights.

My favorite though, is Matt Mason and Nicholas Felton's take on "Hard Times". Charles Dicken's classic novel is about a man's effort to cope with the social and economic pressures in 19th century England. The story is set in an industrial town, in an age of materialism and machines. The main character initially values rationality and facts above everything else. As a school principal he completely bans imagination from his curriculum. And as a father he uses statistics to convince his daughter to marry an old, heartless business man. After a series of twists and turns, however, he is forced to recognize the importance of creativity and emotions for society and his personal well-being.

Take a look at Mason and Felton's graphical interpretation of today's value of statistics, facts and fancy. Maybe "Hard Times" can become good times in a globalized world and social and economic pressures can become possibilities in an age of communication and connections. Imagination and rationality are no longer mutually exclusive, but reinforce each other.

I would think some of those trends are rather harmful for a publishing house of old-fashioned novels. However, if Penguin continues its innovative online ventures, I am sure they will continue to do just fine in the future. True classics never go out of style, after all.

Read this doc on Scribd: Penguin-hard times

100 Percent recall ratio.

You know it is a great ad when you wonder how nobody could have thought about such a simple, obvious idea before - and you wish you would have been the first one.

Kudos to DDB Amsterdam for this evergreen ad and congratulations for a Gold Clio.

Long live one of the best-selling cars of all times.

And long live brilliant text-based print ads.

Also Volkswagen, also DDB - Berlin this time - , also simple and surprising, but image-based instead. Thanks to the guys (yes, only guys, I checked) at DDB, my motivation to go back to Europe has just been boosted a little bit. I cannot wait to cruise around in my friend's ancient, red 1974 VW Golf, blaring Jacko from his new entertainment system that he will likely get in exchange for his broken gloves department.

Less gas, not less $$

So, I have been on a blog hiatus, but had a thought. Chrysler, among others, are offering plans such as the $2.99 gas deal where if you buy a select car you only pay $2.99 a gallon in gas for 3 years up to 15,000 miles per year, or something like that- and they'll foot the rest of the bill. Especially when, for the first time ever, my friends were willing to pay more to park in a lot last night downtown rather than circle for those coveted after hours free meters so I wouldn't waste gas- and I being the poor one that I am, pulled into that lot. However, this does not really fix the problem. Chrysler should NOT be giving people gas discounts, they should address the problem by making more fuel efficient cars. The technology is there- USE IT! This discounted gas is a great temporary marketing ploy, but does not do anyone any good in the long run.

For anyone who feels like they're not good enough...

Ever get down because you haven't won a Lion, Clio, or a Pencil yet? Don't fret. At least you're not making this shit:



Just wanted to cheer up everyone. :) Yaybia!

NoDak-Style Yaybia: SRT and a Great Integrated Campaign

Okay, fine, I'll admit it: I'm from North Dakota. And on this recent trek home, I've been impressed by the by the ads from our local communications company, Souris River Telecommunications. SRT is a co-op based in Minot that serves north central North Dakota with cable, high-speed Internet (even in places where no respectable high-speed Internet should be), landline phones, and cell phones.

Odney Advertising's recent promotion encouraged customers to submit stories about how SRT has improved their day-to-day life. Winning entries were chosen to receive five years of free SRT service (!!!) and their stories featured in the new SRT ad campaign. Check it:



Coming from a telecom giant like Qwest or Comcast, these ads wouldn't mean much. But Odney realized that SRT is local at its core. It's true that SRT is ridiculously cheap compared to most cell phone providers (like 2000 anytime minutes per month for $20 cheap), and it's true that customer service is phenomenal (like driving 60 miles to repaired storm-damaged lines on a Sunday phenomenal), but Odney knew that its most important value is its local pride. Personally, I know two of the winners, and undoubtedly so do most other SRT customers. The "hey I know her!" factor is strong here, so it's smart to take advantage of that in local ads. Plus, this week several local newspapers had substantial stories on area winners and the promotion.

So congrats, Odney, on creating a great campaign when every brand wants to jump, usually unsuccessfully, on the "submit a viral story" bandwagon. You got the right combination of local relevance, viral/word of mouth, and consumer engagement, and topped it off with a truly worthwhile prize!

More at mysrtforlife.com.

Quit Plan Minnesota: Great OOH

I make the drive between the Twin Cities and Fargo, ND on I-94 pretty frequently and have a few specific landmarks I watch for along the way: the smiling water tower in Freeport, the WeDoCows building in Melrose, and even my favorite highway sign (which was the inspiration for Road Sign Math, by the way). But the one that catches my attention the most is this brilliant billboard just outside the Twin Cities near Rogers:




My non-ad boyfriend even remarked last time we made the drive how cool he thought the sign was. Simple and clear, like out of home should be.

We are geniuses!

So, today I saw that MSNBC that they are basically doing the AIM to Gain Stockmarket Game as a promotion. You invest with fake money and those who make a lot get the money! Just more validation that we are geniuses.

mobile advertising = hot hot hot

If you didn't notice yet, here at Yaybia, we LOVE mobile. So imagine my excitement when I came across this wonderful article.


So better click rates than banners? I wonder what causes that. There are two possibilities that come to mind:
1) Mobile marketing is better targeted than other forms. Better targeted = more relevant = more clicks.
2) Mobile advertising is still a novelty. Remember how high click thrus used to be on online banners? It was because people thought the Internet was SO COOL that they clicked on everything.

Hmm.

No Facebook, No Photo Sharing?

One of my favorite things about being in the advertising industry is the sixth sense that you develop. We constantly have our eyes and ears open for trends that have made their way into everyday conversation and local media placements. Today was no exception. I was hanging out with my 18 year old sister who is about to graduate in a few weeks and she was convinced that I had seen pictures of her prom dress [false] and was excited to show me pictures of their party bus [and ultimately pregnancy test results]. But after this stat was posted not too long ago, the next part of the conversation left me slightly speechless and smiling.

Me: Why don't you just post your pics on the interwebs?
Sister: Because I don't have Facebook yet.

She automatically assumed that I meant that her photos weren't being shared on Facebook, when in fact I wasn't because I know she doesn't have an account. Facebook makes it tough for users to walk away. All of their friends AND pictures are there. Congrats FB, don't screw it up!

P.S. While I am writing this, my roommate is browsing through photos of her brother's prom on Facebook!

$3 Million for a Super Bowl Spot: A Super Value?

The announcement that NBC will start Super Bowl :30 spots at $3 million was all over the ad world today. Let's think about what advertisers are getting for that $3 million...

• In 2008, 97.4 million people tuned in at some point to watch the Super Bowl.

• Assuming the recession continues, consumers are going to be looking for cheap entertainment options. Televised NFL games fit this perfectly. Next year's numbers should be even bigger.

• Those kind of numbers make the Super Bowl one of the last remaining "mass media" TV events. Brands with diverse, wide-ranging targets, like Coca-Cola, Fed Ex, and Anheuser-Busch, should jump at the chance to hit that kind of cross-section of America. With a low estimate of about 50% of Super Bowl viewers falling within the targets for these dominant brands, that's about $60 CPM. A little on the high side, but definitely competitive.

• And what else does the brand get for their $3 million? For brands that do the Super Bowl right--brands that create funny or novel or charming :30 stories--YouTube hits, Monday morning watercooler discussions, and Top 10 lists across the Internet and USA Today. True, the online stats for last year's commercials aren't mind-blowing--one version of Pepsi's Justin Timberlake ad has a modest 2.4 million YouTube hits--but that doesn't include replays on the Pepsi site.

The added value of Super Bowl ads is what comes after the big game. If marketers get more interactive and more integrated and use the Super Bowl to launch microsites, or if they create a hilarious ad that get passed around the Internet, they're getting at least their $3 million worth of exposure. So right on, NBC, for analyzing the trends and making the most of this epic opportunity.

David v. SuperGoliath

PIXSTA, a UK based image search technology company, has announced it's taking on Google by providing an extremely sophisticated image based search engine rivaling Google's. However, you can search via images rather than words and all tests of the program have thus far been very very successful. Initially, this AdImage program is used with participating online retailers so consumers can search via images rather than words. Read more here:

Pixsta launches image-based ad network

Good luck, PIXSTA, and God Speed...

The art of shaving, kissing and microsites

I wish there would have been microsites back when I was middle school. I could have just forwarded this link to Simon, aka. the Tongue Twister. And to Stephan, the Throat Digger. Oh, and to Chris, the Wet Whirl.

To beard or not to beard, that is the question

BBDO created a fairly entertaining and educating page for Gillette. A middle-aged guy and a couple of attractive ladies offer lessons in love to men in need. The message is that a clean-shaven face is the first step on the path to the perfect kiss. Guys who prefer a little stubble can only learn how to shake hands in about 500 ways. Maybe my early experiences would have been more pleasant after some virtual tutoring for the above mentioned boys. In their particular case, however, the benefit for Gillette would have been rather marginal. They hardly had any facial hair yet, apart from eyebrows.

To be precise, the microsite is for the Gillette Fusion safety razor. Fusion seems rather appropriate, considering the viral videos that two of Gillette's competitors have released way earlier. An advergame and related trailer from JWT Paris for Wilkinson stars a baby and his daddy fighting for mommy's kisses. When the dad finally figures out that the toddler's competitive edge is his soft skin he simply shaves. Now the son has to come up with new ways to get his mother's attention and rival his father.

Would you kiss this guy?

A Phillips microsite with hilarious videos (in the "body" part, warning NSFW) features a grown-up fratboy, who talks and sings about the change in his life after he started using the Bodygroom razor. The creative campaign increased the razor's sale beyond expectations and earned Tribal DDB New York tons of awards. Props to Phillips for having enough balls to run the racy site!

As a girl, I might not be able to compare the actual product benefits of the different razors in questions. However, I still know about shaving: My legs are much longer and generally less hairy than most male faces. And as the shaving results on some boy's cheeks and chins show as well, the right tool is not enough. It also takes talent for smooth skin. The same is true for a smoth kiss by the way. Luckily for us girls (and for Simon, Chris and Stephan) both skills can be learned.

Poor Poor NBC

I am greatly amused by the RSS feeds on my iGoogle page. Someone on NBC's legal team has been screwing up left and right. First, the big secret was announced that Scrubs was not actually ending its run this season, but rather moving to ABC from NBC for at least 18 more episodes. After this announcement NBC came out swinging with protests claiming that ABC was violating terms and blah blah blah.

Then... a few weeks ago it was announced that the rights to Project Runway went up for sale and Bravo (owned by NBC) didn't really jump in the bid on keeping the series. So, now Lifetime owns it. Once again NBC threw a hissy fit and sued, with no real grounds.

All I have to say is, quit being a whiny little bitch and hang on to your successful series because these RSS feeds do not exactly scream "NBC is awesome; we have GREAT brand health and care about our viewers and our series!!!!". Bad PR move, methinks.

Forget YouTube

YouTube is so yesterday, I've discovered the hottest thing in user generated content.....(drumroll).......shoetube (the dramatic intro sounded better in my head). Anyways shoetube is fabulous beyond belief with a daily shoe feature and videos of designers latest collections, I mean what more could you want out of life. If you think about it, shoes are one thing in your closet that will always fit no matter how much weight you gain or lose. I really think the idea of interest driven user generated video sites are the new wave. Instead of searching for random vids there are sites that are catering to your needs, and helping you connect with others through shared interests.

Cheerful caskets

If you live - or well, die - in England, you can take your favorite brand with you to the grave. In the homeland of black humor, funerals can be anything but black. Several clever companies offer colorful, customizable and even crazy coffins. Whether and to what degree the deceased benefit from the personalized caskets is a question of faith. But funerals are more for the living than for dead, anyways.

What seemed to be rather out of place at first sight, made sense after I forced myself to think about what nobody wants to think about in the first place: There is a slight chance that I might actually die one day. In that event there will likely be a casket and I might as well have it my way then. I like to think of myself as a fairly agreeable sight and somewhat entertaining company. So why not continue that tradition when I am no longer with us and provide some visual stimulation and a topic to chit-chat about at the afterparty. In that way, people who did not really know me will have a topic to small-talk about and people who did not actually like me won't have to pretend they did.

I don't usually like boxes in any size or style, however, I do like purses in all sizes and shoes in all shapes. I do not care about mahagony or pine board, but I sometimes have trouble to choose between a Caramel Capuccino and a Vanilla Latte. While hexagonal and rectangular sound like medical terms to me, I do know exactly what a Frontside 360 is. So, future husband and children, take this as a hint and choose between a huge handbag, a coffe cup (caffein-free please, I am already dead and don't need to stay awake) and a snowboard to bury me in. If you can't make up your mind, just take a casket from the Easy Rider collection. I am sure I will appreciate the postmortem irony.

Starbucks' WiFi Could Use a Little Cream and Sugar

Starbucks has been a popular player in the blogosphere lately but the company hasn’t been generating all positive vibes. Their time-out to train employees intended to emphasize their focus on quality, the throwback logo shows off their coffee making roots, and mystarbucksidea.com is aimed at getting consumers involved with the brand online. All well and good, but not when customers can’t even access the site for free from within Starbucks shops! Currently, Starbucks customers can pay for hourly WiFi passes, unless you are an AT&T broadband customer. Now riddle me this Howard Shultz, you make a site to engage with your consumers but you aren’t giving them the ability to access the site free of charge from within the walls of your stores? Talk about a missed epic opportunity. These customers are already paying $5 for a coffee and willingly choosing to spend their time inside Starbucks. They are loyal to the Starbucks brand, but still might not visit the mystarbucksidea site from home. By allowing customers to connect with the brand online and share their ideas while they are experiencing Starbucks, more useful truths and insights are likely to be posted and give the company the ideas that they had hoped for when creating this site.

Starbucks is missing the free trade boat on this one. Free WiFi access could be provided and users would be taken to mystarbucksidea.com and even prompt them to create an account. There is also potential to take this idea even further. Users could connect with other brand loyal customers within the cafes and converse with other online Starbucks customers around the world. I think Starbucks would want to leverage this portal and connect with their consumers on multiple levels all at one location, but I guess not. Now that Mr. Shutlz knows myyaybiaidea, maybe he should know that I always drink a Grande Americano. No cream or sugar.

The free WiFi/branded network conversation will continue later this week. Hang in there.

"social" is not a destination

Today I stumbled across this thought provoking article in the NYT. I love the quote about social not being a destination. I think that Google and Yahoo are smart to not try to directly compete with Facebook and MySpace. People are going to go where their friends are, and are NOT going to sign up for another social networking site just for the fun of it. In order for users to have a desire to use multiple social networks, the site must provide a unique utility (and NO I do not mean just new features or better privacy, I mean a completely new utility).

Here is a good analogy for you: AOL Instant Messenger holds the lead position for instant messaging. MSN and Yahoo never cracked AIM because when they came out (in the US at least) everyone and their friends were already on AIM. MSN and Yahoo only offered the essential same utility as AIM, but nobody's friends used it. So, 10 yeas later, AIM is still the leader. However, in my mind, this is all about to change. Facebook chat offers the same essential utility, but with no download, and most Facebook users have all of their AIM friends on Facebook. So, is Facebook chat going to be the demise of AIM? I think so, unless AIM adds some new incentives to download their software.

The sky is the limit... NOT!

On long, boring road trips, my brother and I used to kill time by looking at the clouds and identifying shapes in them. Eventually one of us would always spot a huge, white arch in the fluffy masses above us. We subsequently tried to convince our parents in the front seats that even the sky wanted to tell them it was time for a stop at the next McDonalds along the road. Maybe our attempts to claim heavenly support would have been more persuasive, had there been Flogos back in those days.

Flogos - flying logos - are essentially branded clouds. They are made out of soap like foam and gases that are lighter than air such as helium. Currently they come in three sizes between 24 and 48 inches that are popped out of an modified snow machine every 15 seconds. A computer generated and custom-made stencil inside the machine forms the foam in whatever shape is desired by a cloud client. According to the Flogo creators, two "international special effects creators" from Alabama, the airy ads can last anything between a few minutes and "an hour or so", depending on the customer's wish and cash. And not to mention the atmospheric conditions. They are eco and pilot-friendly since they literally vanish into thin air after 20 to 30 miles.

I suppose the in-house Flogo artists are the same ones who "designed" the website and their own logo. Maybe that's why I first thought their Atlanta Braves Tomahawk Flogo was actually a lofty Durex ad.

museums have it going on

contrary to a couple of bogus judges' opinions, i still think museums are going to be the next big place for advertisers. Reasons being:

1. We crave experience. But oil is $4 bucks a gallon, and Pearl Jam tickets are $300 a pop. So we will look for cheaper alternatives to fulfill our cravings for experiences.
2. These aren't your dad's museums. Technology makes every exhibit an interactive experience.
3. All this techy stuff is EXPENSIVE and museums will need the help of advertisers to finance all these super cool exhibits.

With that said here is a cool example of an interactive exhibit being shown at NYC's Museum of Modern Art called "I Want You To Want Me." Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar constructed this beautiful exhibit using profile content from online dating sites across the globe. Vistitors use interactive touch-screens to navigate through people's self-expressions. They can see what people say about themselves and what they are looking for in a partner.

The nerd in me thinks that this is such an awesome use of data. But don't trust my opinion, check it out for yourself: