Brand Noise

Building a Better Retail Experience for Mobile Devices

From Influx Insights
KDDI is a wireless carrier with over 21 million mobile subscribers and it recently opened a showcase retail store in the trendy Harajuku district in Tokyo. The five story store is big enough to host live performances, let consumers interact with handsets through games and photo contests, showcase future handset concepts and surf the web at the wireless internet cafe on the top floor.

Read more

Cult Marketing: Counterfeitmini.org

Mini builds buzz with amusing anti-marketing approach.  Check it out at: http://www.counterfeitmini.org.

A section in the site shows you how to make sure you do not have a "fake" mini.  The copy reads: "A genuine MINI is small. A proven method of verifying a MINIs authenticity is by making sure the vehicle is not, in fact, huge."  Brilliant stuff.

Great Advertising: Sony PSP

Excellent ad by Chiat\Day for Sony's PSP.  Same vibe as their iPod ads. The use of switched perspective - us looking out through the game screen to show off the size of the screen - is very effective. It showcases the product's key draw - that cool big screen.  The emphasis on PSP as an essential part of an active lifestyle (like your cellphone) is also well articulated. Topped off with great use of a music track by Franz Ferdinand with the anthem "Take Me Out".

Pimp My Big Mac (Unfortunate Moments in Advertising)

McDonald's in the United States wants hip-hop artists to rap about the burger — and is willing to pay them if they write it into their songs.

The fact that what defines Hip Hop in American culture is its authentic and unprovoked/uncontrolled commentary of society. The marketing move by Maven and McDonald's has us scratching our heads with skepticism. 

More sneak marketing. UGH!. If the marketing drives the song...what makes us interested in listening to what these rappers have to say? A better approach would be something similar to what Toyota is doing with the Scion record label.  Help promote artists that aren't getting airplay.  Help find the next Eminem.  Tap into regional nuances in hip hop.  There are a ton of amazing talented rappers out there that we haven't heard yet. Risk is good...but be motivated to contribute rather than simply exploit.

Instead McDonald's is going to enter the mix by making big established rappers suck by making songs and videos paid commercials.  They are trying to skip a step in the cultivation of brand relevance.  Rappers talk about Hennessy and Mercedes because it signifies their world and the aspirational world of their fans. If rappers aren't talking about your brand maybe you need to work at giving them something to talk about.  As opposed to showing up with a briefcase full of cash and forcing the issue.   This represents everything music lovers hate about the music industry.

What happened to the concern for being authentic with the skeptical Gen Y Consumer?  How about making the product worth talking about.

Read the article

MSN Teams With Sprite to Market to Teens

MSN and Sprite have joined forces to launch The Scenario, an exclusive, branded, online entertainment experience designed for teens. The Scenario is a site where teens can experience 10 of the hottest hip-hop DJs in the country, connect with each other through new MSN Messenger functionality and connect with the Sprite brand. Sprite and the MSN Branded Entertainment and Experiences Team collaborated to create this music platform that brings Sprite-obsessed spokesperson Miles Thirst and his straightforward attitude and style to life in the digital world.

"We collaborated with MSN to develop The Scenario because it offered fresh ideas and innovative ways to fully integrate Sprite into the MSN Music service," said Geoff Cottrill, group director of Entertainment Marketing at Coca-Cola North America. "Working closely with MSN and its Branded Entertainment and Experiences Team, we have created an experience that embraces the passion that teens have for music and MSN Messenger to bring Sprite to the millions who visit MSN every day."

Read more

More reading
A critique fo the privacy policy connected to this campaign (from P2PNet.net)

Movie Merchandise Hits Fever Pitch

From The Telegraph
Three decades after Star Wars invented modern movie merchandising, Hollywood is preparing its biggest onslaught on children's pocket money - and parents' bank accounts.

Over the next few months a torrent of fantasy, comic strip and science fiction films are being released, all with their own ranges of action figures, vehicles, toys and masks.

Since the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977, £5 billion of linked merchandise has been sold. Although the new film is said to be bleak - its hero Anakin Skywalker is horribly disfigured and turns into the evil Darth Vader - the merchandise will be aimed squarely at children.

Read more

Is the Blue Jean Bubble About to Burst?

From NPR
Brian Unger on NPR's Day to Day says the price of denim is going through the roof, with a pair of premium jeans now regularly going for $200. Observers predict that there are danger signs indicating the "blue jean bubble" is about to burst at the seams.

Listen to the full report

                   

               

TiVo Discovers the Pop Up

From MIT Advertising Lab
"TiVo confirmed that it released the first in a series of advertising features to a random and limited number of subscribers to the digital-video recorder service. The first test feature--a tag--pops up on the screen when a viewer is fast-forwarding through an advertisement." -- ZDnet.com, screenshot from BetaNews

Read more

Hollywood Gets Wiser to Internet as Buzz Builder

From Time Magazine
Directors and studios, in their never-ending quest to build buzz for big summer releases, are opening their sets to the public via Web-based video diaries. Singer's video blog, bluetights.net joins several other real-time movie blogs, such as the text-only diary Zach Braff did for his movie Garden State gardenstate.typepad.com and the video journal of the King Kong shoot that Peter Jackson is keeping at kongisking.net These guys are releasing the making of movies as they're making the movie.

Read more

Ad Industry Tackles ZAP

From The Wall Street Journal
The battle between the people who make commercials and the people who zap through them has been joined in earnest.

"In the old days, you could get away with a funny idea, or anything that was goofy or slap-happy," says Paul Venables, founder and co-creative director of independent San Francisco shop Venables, Bell & Partners. Now, TV ads require a higher level of craftsmanship, better casting and a more obvious show of money and intelligence. "It's making people step up and treat TV commercials as what they should be -- not just as a big bullhorn, but something that could create intimacy, where you connect with somebody," he says.

Mr. Venables's firm has come up with an interesting idea. Sixty-second spots for iShares, exchange-traded funds from Barclays Global Investors, consist of a 40-second commercial and a 20-second preview of other ads in the series. "If they get a feel for a commercial, and they like it and enjoy it, they'll pursue it from step to step," says the adman of people who see the spots.

Read more