At MRY, I've had the great pleasure of working with some inspiring classes of interns, and the summer intern class of 2015 was no exception. For the big team project this year, we gave them an especially daunting brief: come up with a campaign to support college students grappling with mental health issues. Oh yeah, and they'd have little time to do it, next to no budget, and they'd be working with people they just met.
What the interns (with the assistance of a great, deep bench of mentors across the agency) was inspiring. I would have been surprised if any team pulled off anything remotely successful. It turns out that both teams not only put together impressive campaigns, but they each attracted hundreds of posts practically overnight from people around the world supporting their work. Perhaps in time they'll have even started a movement.
Here's a quick recap of what each team did, and this post won't do justice to either, so spend some time checking out their links, videos, social feeds, and more.
One team crafted a funny brand, Don't Be a Dick, as a way to sardonically shame people who are all too dismissive or ignorant about their friends' serious mental issues. The videos they created, especially the best of the lot, are both funny and biting, and the personas they brought to life feel all too real. Check out one of the videos below, featuring team member Courtney Ratner. Beyond YouTube and their site, you can see their work on Instagram and Twitter.
The other team, The How Are You Project, took a more serious approach. The centerpiece is a ten-hour video of team member Trevor Hains in a coffee shop who is just waiting to find out how you're really feeling. There's something so salient about how the team sought to make people pay attention when asking such a commonplace question. You can also find them on Twitter. And no, I'm not just embedding their video below to try to get you to spend ten hours on this blog.
Kudos to the class of interns: Marisol Pelaez, Trevor Hains, Carly Harris, Georgina Morgan, Nancy Nystrom, Leah Greene, Cody Allen, Jason Hill, Aye Chan Moe, Richard Balagtas, Morgan Klovens, Peter Maturo, Courtney Ratner, and Charles Crain. I hope to have the pleasure of collaborating with all of them again, given how much I learned from working with them. To all of you #MRYinterns, thanks for your countless contributions to the agency this summer.
[Update: MediaPost covered the internship program. Thanks again, intern crew, for the work you did here. It's exciting to report we already hired two of them from this class, and we may well get to bring on others as they graduate in the years ahead.]
Finkel mentions that Chevy Chase starred in commercials for Cola Turka last decade, showing what happens when Americans start drinking Turkish soda. It's so ridiculous that Chevy Chase is about as perfect a star as could be cast in this, and in the second spot, there's even a nod to the Wagon Queen Family Truckster station wagon from the Vacation movies.
Enjoy these two. And yes, I am REALLY curious to try this soda while I'm out there. See, advertising works.
The Social Bowl That Wasn't originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider
Super Bowl XLVI may be over, but as long as there are still drunk fans screaming at the bar Tonic in Manhattan’s Murray Hill, the analysis will go on. It’s not just the Patriots that should be hitting their heads over all the dropped balls. I’m wondering why so many marketers dropped the ball with social media this year.
It was a crazy night of football, and at least as crazy during the breaks, as ads revealed surprising similarities. Was your favorite bald wisecracker the E*TRADE baby or Bruce Willis in the “G.I. Joe”trailer? Were you salivating more over the naked male body of David Beckham or the M&M?
The biggest surprise was that in a year where Twitter averaged more than 10,000 tweets per second, and comments during the game were either up at least fivefold according to Trendrr and Bluefin Labs, social media was so marginalized during the advertising.
Yes, some brands had a great game plan. Volkswagen and Honda both created teasers for ads connected to classic movies and attracted millions of viewers, along with ample anticipation for their actual spots. Coca-Cola was the most ambitious, orchestrating a Polar Bowl with animated commentary lasting the entirety of the game; that’s more than three hours longer than a typical 30-second spot, and it had to keep adding servers during the game to keep up with demand.
During the game itself, I was most impressed by Chevrolet. Its montage of car stunts got me excited when I recognized the band OK Go driving a modified car around some crazy track. The end of the spot included a link to letsdothis.com which redirected to the brand’s YouTube channel. From there, it was easy to navigate to a music video with OK Go turning a racetrack into a musical instrument. The call to action was succinct and memorable, the navigation at the destination was intuitive, and the music video payoff was everything that I wanted. So why weren’t more brands doing anything like this?
Instead, the few brands that did plug their social channels tended to stumble. The biggest letdowns were with how marketers handled Facebook during their Super Bowl spots. Marketers shouldn’t necessarily be driving people to their Facebook pages, but when marketers include a Facebook call-out, it should make sense. Two marketers in particular fumbled this badly.
MetLife’s spot of classic cartoon characters included a tagline at the end with a Facebook logo and then the callout to “meet the cast.” I tried searching Facebook for “Met Life” and found nothing related to the brand, but there were pages along the theme of people having met someone who changed their life; one even has more than 800,000 fans. Only later did I realize that the company’s name was one word, and was then able to find the spot. Specifying the URL of facebook.com/metlife would have been far easier for fans.
Another advertiser to plug Facebook was Bud Light, in its spot about the beer-fetching rescue dog Weego. On Facebook, Bud Light announced, “For every 'like' Weego receives, Bud Light will donate $1 (up to $250,000) to Tony La Russa's Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF).” This sounds heartwarming, until you realize Bud Light is not just trying to juice its fan count with the donation, but the donation amounts to less than one-tenth of the cost of media alone for the Super Bowl spot. Give Bud Light credit for staying true to its brand, as it can both literally and figuratively leave a bad taste in your mouth.
It wasn’t just brands’ use of Facebook that surprised me. Some of the second- and third-screen apps themselves overpromised and underdelivered. The worst offender here was Shazam, which first said one-third and then later one-half of all Super Bowl ads would be “shazamable.” That meant that you could run the app during an ad and receive more information, content, and possibly offers from the advertisers. What I mistakenly inferred was that the ads themselves would have a call-out with the Shazam logo running for five to 10 seconds, as other TV advertisers have done previously. I didn’t see the logo all night; the closest I got was a report that Toyota partnered with Shazam, but I didn’t see the call-out on the online version of the spot the next day. So how could viewers know which spots worked with Shazam? Worse still was that when running Shazam during an ad, it led to a generic landing page for the Super Bowl that usually had nothing to do with the ad playing.
Then there’s the whole idea of checking in to TV shows. As of Tuesday morning, Super Bowl XLVI recorded more than 170,000 check-ins on GetGlue. It’s not clear how many unique users checked in or how many did so during the broadcast, as two of my friends each checked in 11 times; perhaps they were flipping back and forth between the Super Bowl and Puppy Bowl. Meanwhile, 300,000 people checked in to the Super Swarm Sunday event on Foursquare. I was pleasantly surprised to see a tip there from Madonna plugging her new album. Other apps linking up with the game included IntoNow, Miso, Viggle, and ConnecTV. I juggled most of them, and the greatest similarity was that there wasn’t much going on with any of them. I couldn’t figure out what to do or why to stick around. There’s a lot of promise for multiscreen experiences, but the Super Bowl wasn’t a good showcase for them.
With the surge in tweets and comments during the game, people were clearly active with social media. I often found interest in what my friends were sharing on Twitter and Facebook, as that’s where conversations were happening. I expected more, though, with digital tie-ins that enhanced what was happening on screen. With little materializing, it was easier to sit back, grab another Guinness, and revel in watching one of the greatest professional sports rematches of all time. As for better uses of social media, there’s always next year.
I don't normally post press releases, but I haven't seen this list of top Super Bowl 45 spots on Hulu or elsewhere yet, so I figured you may enjoy the whole thing. How many of these spots do you even remember the day after?
HULU ANNOUNCES 2011 SUPER BOWL XLV ADZONE WINNERS Volkswagen and Bridgestone Ads Scored Major Points on Hulu WHAT Only hours after the Packers were crowned Super Bowl XLV champions, Hulu users have determined the Super Bowl ad winners as well. Votes have been cast across the 69 Super Bowl ads on Hulu’s AdZone. (www.hulu.com/adzone) HIGHLIGHTS The “most liked” category was led by Volkswagen’s “The Force,” narrowly edging out Bridgestone’s “Carma.” But this was a very close race: Voters in the South and East preferred Bridgestone, while the voters in the West and Midwest cast more votes for VW.
Dorito’s “Pug Attack” and Bud Light’s “Hack Job” were two of the most viewed ad on Hulu’s AdZone.
“Chrysler: Imported From Detroit” made the Top 5 “Most Liked” list in the Midwest, while the voters in the West showed a preference for “BMW: X3”
RESULTS Overall Most Liked Ads 1. Volkswagen: The Force 2. Bridgestone: Carma 3. Volkswagen: Black Beetle
Most Viewed Ads 1. Doritos: Pug Attack 2. Volkswagen: The Force 3. Bud Light: Hack Job Overall Most Liked Ads by Women 1. Volkswagen: The Force 2. Bridgestone: Carma 3. NFL: Super Bowl Celebration
Overall Most Liked Ads by Men 1. Bridgestone: Carma 2. Volkswagen: The Force 3. Paramount: Captain America: The First Avenger
Most Polarizing by Gender Women Strongly Favor 1. Chevrolet: GMME 2. Play60: Who's Next? 3. Twentieth Century Fox: Rio 4. Chevrolet: Cruze Status 5. Living Social: It'll Change Your Life
Men Strongly Favor 1. Columbia Pictures: Battle: Los Angeles 2. Universal: Cowboys and Aliens 3. Skechers: Kim Kardashian: Hello Skechers 4. Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY: Surgeon - Extended 5. Paramount: Thor
Overall Most Disliked Ads 1. Salesforce: Chatter.com Launch: Still Doing Impossible Things 2. Salesforce: Chatter.com Launch: Do Impossible Things 3. Go Daddy: The Contract
Most Active States (Most Votes) 1. California 2. Texas 3. New York 4. Washington 5. Florida
Most Liked, by Region West 1. Volkswagen: The Force 2. Bridgestone: Carma 3. Volkswagen: Black Beetle 4. NFL: Super Bowl Celebration 5. Doritos: House Sitting
Midwest 1. Volkswagen: The Force 2. Bridgestone: Carma 3. Chrysler: Imported From Detroit 4. Volkswagen: Black Beetle 5. NFL: Super Bowl Celebration
South 1. Bridgestone: Carma 2. Volkswagen: The Force 3. Volkswagen: Black Beetle 4. NFL: Super Bowl Celebration 5. Doritos: House Sitting
East 1. Bridgestone: Carma 2. Volkswagen: The Force 3. NFL: Super Bowl Celebration 4. Volkswagen: Black Beetle 5. Coca-Cola: Border
Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider
Where were you the morning of Thursday, October 21, 2010?
I happened to be in a series of meetings. Yet if you were walking down a certain street in Singapore, you would have seen my face projected on to the side of a building, clearly visible in the night given the 12-hour time difference. Much to my relief, this caused no major panic in the region; the Singapore Exchange Limited opened 10 points higher Friday morning (yes, I checked). I sadly missed the moment, choosing the wrong time to pay attention to my colleagues and thus missing the video feed.
The event was made possible by Aviva, the world's sixth largest insurance group. That one fact is more than I knew about them when I submitted my face for global projection. All I knew at the time was that there was a press pitch involving something about a Facebook application, a marketer, and a chance to have my face momentarily flashed to people passing by a designated façade in Singapore, Warsaw, London, Paris, Mumbai, or Delhi. I've been to the last four cities, and now my face has been to the first, so I'm getting around. While it was great to visit somewhere new virtually, it would have been fun for a Frenchman to see my face and say to a friend, "Pourquoi ont-ils laisser M. Berkowitz revenir à notre pays? Je déménage en Suisse." ("Why did they let Mr. Berkowitz return to our country? I'm moving to Switzerland.")
The program combined a lot of smart elements to make it successful, or at least memorable, as I don't know how they're measuring success. There's a cause marketing element, where you're asked to "donate your picture" with funds going to Save the Children. There are several points of engagement along the way: various calls to action to join, such as on a custom-branded Facebook tab; a personalized video preview that shows my face getting assembled on a skyscraper billboard; a customized Facebook event so I could share when my projection would happen; an email alert that my face would be projected; and then a final update with a link to my face on the building.
There were a few things that, as a participant, I wish they did better. My biggest gripe is the overreliance on Flash. That's the main reason why I couldn't save the personalized video or the time-lapse projection to my PC. How much more effective would this be if, in a click or two, I could set my billboard-exposed face my Facebook profile, or if I could upload my video to YouTube? This was something out of the ordinary, and I wanted to save the moment. When else could this happen again?
Well, it could happen next month. Corona Light has a new promotion where, if you like its Facebook page and upload a photo, it will put your face on a Times Square billboard. It will then send you proof of your appearance. The app updated my Facebook status without me realizing it, but overall it's got a good hook. If you've got assets like prime New York City real estate, social media is a great way to flaunt and share them.
Corona's hardly the first marketer to pull a stunt like this. Last year, Kodak launched its Times Square Smile Gallery. Over the summer, Forever 21 put up a billboard that took real-time photos of pedestrians and streamed fans' Twitter messages. Coca-Cola showed fans' photos on its own Times Square billboard as part of its Expedition 206 program.
It would be fascinating to study the demographics of who participates in these stunts. There's a scene in the movie "Up in the Air" where the ambitious wunderkind Natalie Keener (played by Anna Kendrick) remarks to the suave veteran Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) how men love putting their name on everything. "You guys don't grow up," she said. "It's like you need to pee on everything."
Based on the number of marketers doing this, there's a lot of peeing going on, and if Forever 21 is any indication, it's not just about guys either. Aviva proved to be especially ambitious with its global approach. Some others will undoubtedly try to top that, whether it's showcasing fans in the Louvre, on the Great Wall of China, or even on the moon. If you've missed your chance to participate, don't worry -- because marketers won't rest until every man, woman, and child alive has the chance to fleetingly flicker their face on a famous façade.
Doritos is continuing to crowdsource its Super Bowl spots, and it seems like the creators and voters need to get out their aggression.
There are six finalists competing for 3 spots. The twist this year is that if they take the top 3 in USA Today's ad votes, the winners split a $5 million prize. Take that, agencies!
Overall, the spots are very good. They're viewable at the Crash the Super Bowl site, and also at this site for press. Viewed all together though, the humor wares off as one theme emerges: almost all involve senseless violence. This is true for five of the six finalists:
An old guy tasers a younger guy at a vending machine
A guy slaps another guy, knocking him across the room
A Doritos ninja goes all samurai, attacking a guy at the gym
A dog chokes and electrocutes its owner
A young boy slaps his mom's suitor, warning the guy to keep his hands of both "momma" and the Doritos
As for the one spot that's not violent, the protagonist is in a coffin.
What does this all mean? Are corn chip eaters sadistic? Is everyone voting for chips in some kind of butt kicking mode? Does it mean that we should send Doritos lovers into Afghanistan so they can show the Taliban who's REALLY boss? Were the non-violent spots just pathetic? Is the recession causing everyone to hoard more and thus making Americans more selfish?
I don't know. I mean, I could make something up on the spot, and it would be very entertaining, discussing our national psyche. And it's hardly surprising to see some violence in a competition where the funniest spots will win. But to have all of the spots hinging on violence or death is rather bleak. It makes me want to look for a snack chip that incite me to attack someone.
A quick note: I have a guest post on Google’s official CPG blog today, a new one for me. I’ve been focused on this vertical quite a bit more lately so if you are doing some interesting work helping consumer packaged goods brands engage with consumers through social marketing, I welcome chatting more.
Here’s an excerpt:
When CPG marketers are assessing various social marketing opportunities, answering four questions can help determine whether or not the opportunity makes sense for the brand:
1) Does the opportunity meet your brand’s objectives?
2) Does the opportunity leverage your brand’s existing arsenal of assets?
3) Does the opportunity abide by the social media rules of the road?
4) Does it provide significant value exchange?
These questions, as well as other tips and best practices, are detailed in 360i’s recently-released Social Marketing Playbook, a freely available 56-page guide on how to develop, execute and measure a successful social marketing strategy.
The rest of the post looks at examples relating to all four questions.
As far as where the examples came from, I often hear some from multiple sources, but two came from conferences I’ve been to recently, one came from a personal contact with a vendor, and one came from reading industry trades. It does help having multiple arenas to draw from, and I always welcome personal connections to hear more.
Thanks to Tyson Foods, Red Bull, Oscar Mayer, and Vitamin Water, along with Facebook, House Party, and MySpace (it’s safe to say Twitter didn’t have anything to do with the Tyson execution while the other vendors played more active roles).
Update: The deadline has been extended to April 7, 11:59pm PST (it was previously March 31 and the text below has been updated). And there are still some Blurb codes left.
I’m a little late in posting this one thanks to my travels, but I did want to share some info on this contest:
A lot of my favorite ideas are ones that never materialized into anything. There’s one client where I’ve given them a lot of homeruns (okay, and a few bunts, and pop outs, and fly outs, and flat out strikeouts) and they just haven’t done anything with them. It’s a part of the job.
Blurb, a pretty impressive company for making printed books from digital content (blogs, photos, etc) is now running a Killed Ideas contest. Your best ideas will be included in a book.
The bad news: The deadline is April 7, 11:59pm PST.
The good news: You can still enter. And the curator? Only the ever-awesome Steve Hall of Adrants.
The better news: Share a comment here and get your own Blurb book – in the form of a coupon code, valued at $29.95. I have five coupons available, and I’m not even taking one. Just post ONE relevant comment about a killed idea you’ve had and include some way for me to email you (or comment and then email me directly at marketersstudio @ gmail . com).
For full disclosure, this isn’t a sponsored shill or anything. I get nothing out of this, not even a free book. I’ve actually tried to use Blurb for awhile to print a book based on my blog and couldn’t get it to work because you can’t select date ranges and I have too many blog posts. But it is a good service, as I’ve tried using it for other stuff, and I’m a big fan of doing this kind of printing; I have a few hard copies of travel journals from services like Blurb’s.
Again, first five relevant comments get a Blurb book. Not a bad deal. And if there are a lot of comments, I’ll see if Blurb can pony up another code and I’ll pick the best one for another winner – heck, even if Blurb doesn’t, if there are 10 or more relevant comments I’ll give a Blurb gift card to the best of the others.
This was a surprise when I was checking out the Mets schedule this month: Indiana Jones is pictured on the calendar for opening day. Only after looking did I notice the ad to the left. It's definitely an attention-grabber. He's there for every team, though growing up in Princeton, NJ (according to Wikia), I fear he's a Phillies fan, and I'd have a hard time rooting for him.
Wait, he was born in 1899, two years before the Philadelphia Athletics were founded. The A's moved to Kansas City in '55, and then Oakland in '68. He's definitely an A's fan. I can live with that.
The phone rings. It's a vaguely familiar voice saying there's a possum in your kitchen, or your car's about to be towed, or someone found your doll collection. At the end, there's some reference to pizza. That's it.
The call's courtesy of a DiGiorno pizza MySpace page that presents The Ditcher, and it's one of the best and worst campaigns I've seen. As a consumer, I love it. As an ad agency exec, I'm less convinced.
The idea is that you can set up a time to get a call or text message with an excuse. But it's really fun when you schedule it to ring others.
Here's what's fresh:
It's easy to use - you just enter a name, a phone number, select the excuse, and pick the time. It takes under a minute.
The excuses range from the plausible (the possum in the kitchen bit is great for anyone living a bit outside of a city, though many are far more likely than that, such as a kid having trouble in school to a washing machine haywire) to the less likely (a celebrity wants to party with you). The variety of options make it easy to think of lots of people to use it with.
The recipient doesn't know who's sending it, so you can remain anonymous if you choose.
There are several calls to action to print a coupon.
Mrs. Purple Kisses says it's the best idea ever in the comments. And who dares argue with Mrs. Purple Kisses?
Here's what's stale:
You can only schedule calls on the hour. If you're trying to get someone in a certain time and place, it might not work.
There's no clear privacy policy, so conceivably DiGiorno could be doing whatever it wants with the phone numbers. I'm still using it freely, so hopefully DiGiorno won't abuse it. Oddly, there are lots of privacy seals and assurances when you go to print the coupon.
There's no mobile couponing. Given the phone tie-in and the young audience on MySpace, that's a missed opportunity.
The anonymity is a pro and a con. You can't spoof who the sender is, and the call appears to come from a random number.
The biggest downside for DiGiorno is that no one who I've pranked is clear that this is coming from DiGiorno or what this has to do with them, and they can't come back in turn to the site. So it promotes a lot of engagement from the people who see the MySpace page, but none from the viral nature of it unless the sender later tells them where to make their own calls.
David Berkowitz is Chief Marketing Officer at agency MRY. A frequent speaker and media pundit, he has been published hundreds of times in MediaPost, Ad Age, eMarketer, Mashable, and elsewhere. Get to know him in the links below the blog's header.
This was a surprise when I was checking out the 
