By offering good quality paper cups to offices and workplaces free of charge, Cups Media offers a new, exciting and non-traditional marketing tactics for advertisers and money saving solutions for small, medium and large companies in Singapore.
Used by the Chief Executives, decision makers, visitors, guests and employees in offices during the workday, these branded advertising cups are perfect for hot and cold beverages. These cups are used during their official meetings or informal discussions. To make it really easy for companies to receive these cups, the delivery of these branded paper cups is complimentary as well. Companies can apply at their official website if they are interested to get these quality free paper cups.
Smart advertisers and marketing professionals from various industries have already started to engage with Cups Media to incorporate this innovative marketing tactics to promote their brands, products and services.
The BBC is planning to invest £25m in children's TV programmes over the next three years, meaning TV Brackets and TV Mounts could be reaffirmed as positive assets to any modern environment.
LCD TV's, programmes and TV Brackets and TV Mounts have taken a battering in recent years with many suggesting that watching TV may encourage laziness. LCD TV's and therefore accessories like TV Brackets and TV Mounts have become staple additions to most homes, but our love affair with the LCD TV has been
changeable. Click here for more info!
The Cool Hunter: Have fun with your pimples! That was likely the thinking of Gideon Amichay, Chief Creative Officer and partner at Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive in Tel Aviv, Israel, when he created a campaign for Clearex acne treatment gel. A pimply-faced, 5-meter-tall climbing wall at Israel’s largest climbing center exposed 8,000 teenagers per month to the brand during their summer holidays.
Inhabitat: Swedish advertising company, Acne, put together a rather eye-catching advertising campaign for Flygbussarna, an airport coach bus service, to inspire individual car drivers to take the coach bus instead. An installation made up of 50 wrecked cars resembling a Flygbussarna coach bus was placed next to the highway leading to the Swedish airport. Acne used 50 cars to emphasize that a coach bus can seat up to 50 people whereas, on average, an individual car has only 1.2 people. Consider that with the fact that a coach bus releases no more carbon than 4 cars. The campaign also included a website where visitors could watch cars whizz past the installation. The website tracked the number of cars that drove by and how much carbon could have been saved if those drivers had taken a bus instead.
This is a very creative advertisement conveying on a very strong theme of "Think Family". An effective video can convey the message you intended across to your customers in just 3 minutes. Therefore, an effective sales pitch can be done within this timeframe to capture your target customers!
And best of all, these videos can be uploaded onto many social sites such as Facebook, Youtube etc. At almost zero cost!
Viral marketing would come into play if such a video is picked up by many other "onliners" and would create a buzz through the word of mouths by the many.
Most importantly, a creative idea to market your business is can set you apart from your competitors!
Silicon Valley Watcher: Online advertising is becoming less and less effective. Eric Clemons has some ideas on why this is happening, and there are many startups trying to fix the problem.
And it is a very significant problem because it affects the business model for nearly all types of online publishers. If online advertising continues to fall in its effectiveness then there will less and less revenue support for content creators, such as newspapers and magazines.
WidgetBucks, based in Seattle is one of those companies that are working on making Internet advertising more effective. It offers clients an advertising "container" or widget, that provides better contextual delivery of adverts, and a much richer user experience, which results in more effective advertising.
This part of its business has already been extraordinarily effective, helping publishers gain higher revenues than through advertising networks such as Google AdSense, etc.
"What we do is we optimize the ad networks so that they deliver ads that are more relevant to the site, and that can make a big difference for advertisers and the publishers," says Matt Hulett, CEO.
The company is also working on making the content of its advertising "containers" more interesting and it is experimenting with combining ads with online games and other types of media that engages Internet users. "Engagement" is the term du jour these days as advertisers seek new formats that will work better than current ones.
Springwise: When times are tough, there's nothing like a little sympathy from a brand to get through to consumers in a way no mass-media ad can. Case in point: To promote its new Stove Top Quick Cups, Kraft Foods is offering warmth and samples at select Chicago area bus stops.
Kraft has already posted ads in 50 bus shelters around Chicago featuring the tagline, "Cold, provided by winter. Warmth, provided by us. It's a good night for Stove Top." Earlier this week the company went a step further and began heating ten of those shelters to give consumers within a little sympvertising in the form of relief from the cold. Next, beginning today and continuing for three weeks, Kraft will also be giving out samples of its Quick Cups at those heated shelters, for a dose of tryvertising as well.
As economic conditions continue to drag throughout the world, consumers will increasingly appreciate small acts of kindness—even branded ones. Throw in the opportunity to try before they buy, and you may just have a recession-proof plan!
Adued distributes free paper notebooks to college students. The notebooks are called Eco-Notes. Advertising space at the bottom of each page covers the costs associated with manufacturing and distribution of the notebooks.
Eco-Notes are trendy, free, and environmentally friendly. They are made using recycled paper and soybean-based ink. The aim is to send and sustain a positive message within the academic community about being eco-friendly through items of daily use.
Adued plans to distribute 20,000 Eco-Notes in late January of 2009, to 15 schools in 10 states, including Harvard, MIT and ColumbiaUniversity. They will be handed out at school entrances.
Notebooks are one of most basic necessities for students. The students will see the ads over and over. This advertising concept is unique and would draw the attention of tens of thousands of students. The ad's message will also spread by word of mouth because students want to share something new and interesting with their peers.
ADpunch: Diners might be shocked to find giant eggs on billboards outside McDonald’s. Its a new ad campaign by them with the help of Leo Burnett ad agency in Chicago. It has caught the attention of many people. The giant egg billboard starts cracking and opens up in the morning and by breakfast it is hatched, and later it remains a whole egg till the next morning. This is to indicate the fresh availability of eggs. It looks similar to Humpty Dumpty and the prevailing theory is that it is to promote their breakfast sandwiches. Another theory is that it is to brainbomb customers from an alien source into buying these sandwiches. Whatever the theory might be, the ad looks really interesting and sure is going to catch people’s attention and make them get inside the warm interiors of a Mc. Do watch out for that extra pound or two you will put on.
pnj.com: Chick-fil-A is giving you a good reason to eat chicken, but there's a catch.
On Friday, all Chick-fil-A chain restaurants will be celebrating the fourth annual Cow Appreciation Day. The restaurant will be offering a free Chick-fil-A meal to any customer that comes to the eatery fully dressed as a cow. This means the customer needs to be dressed from head to toe as a cow.
If you're partially dressed as a cow, such as a cow-printed T-shirt, hat, vest or purse, Chick-fil-A will give you a free entrée.
Last year, thousands of customers throughout the county visited Chick-fil-A dressed in cow-themed costumes, ranging from simple cow-spotted T-shirts to full cow suits complete with furry ears, cow bells and homemade sandwich boards with personalized renditions of Chick-fil-A's "Eat Mor Chikin" cow messages.
What happens when you put baggy jeans, duct tape, and helium together?
Coming off the success of their viral video hits (all filmed in the environs of Los Angeles), “Guys backflip into jeans” and “Super chill monkey does Hollywood”, the creative folks at UnbuttonedFilms pull off “Guys fill their jeans with helium”. It's a good way to drive viral traffic online with the popularity of YouTube in today's Internet age.
Snellville (Atlanta), GA USA. A Ukrainian inventor, Johan De Broyer has conceived the idea for a re-sealable aluminum soda can featuring hidden advertising messaging. The idea was developed/designed by Robert Davis, Davis Advertising Inc. of Snellville (Atlanta), GA USA. K Mac McClintock, Advercan (Dallas, TX USA) is handling messaging technologies and representation.
The ingenious new “Soda Seal®” can appears like a standard soda can -- until it is popped open. When the tab is turned the can becomes re-sealed with a water-tight and gas-tight seal,* revealing full-color, high-resolution advertising messaging. The potential for the new soda can is proportionate to the 250 billion soda cans consumed annually.
There are numerous benefits including:
-Net-zero production cost. The “mini-billboard” advertising message is sold to co-promoters. Advertising revenues will offset the cost of production.
-Advertising messaging can include hidden codes, prizes, logos, branding, websites, scent, flavor and other messaging technologies.
-The “novelty aspect” of the new can, in addition to the hidden promotional messaging, may result in added beverage sales, especially when used in conjunction with sweepstakes, contests, giveaways, etc.
-Advertising messaging can be customized for local, regional, national or worldwide (with language translation) implementation. The closing disks can be printed and distributed to various packaging facilities for specific advertising/
promotional targeting.
-The can’s all aluminum construction requires no deviation from current recycling programs. There are no plastics or other materials used.
-The Soda-Seal top assembly is fitted to a standard aluminum can. There is no redesign, retooling or machining required for the standard can which resides beneath the Soda-Seal can top assembly.
Newswire: OversockArt.com, one of the web’s most successful distributors of reproduction oil paintings, has set up shop on one of the world’s most popular youth-driven websites – Facebook.com
The company’s new application called, “My Art Gallery”, allows Facebook members to upload photos of various pieces of art for sale on the OverstockArt.com website for free. Members can enjoy works from such notable artists as Van Gogh, Degas and Monet to name a few.
Like other businesses tapping into the youth markets through popular social websites like Facebook, OverstockArt.com is gearing its affordable products toward trend-savvy, college-age individuals who want to boost the atmosphere of their apartments and dorm rooms with real oil paintings.
“We think the younger market is a great place to pitch our product,” said Amitai Sasson, OverstockArt.com’s marketing director. “Kids are becoming more and more trend-savvy these days and are also interested in uploading cool applications to highlight their profiles on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace.”
OverstockArt.com’s application allows members to choose as many paintings as they want from all the available paintings on their website. Members can also choose to invite friends and comment on their friend’s galleries. Each uploaded painting also has a purchase option attached to it.
Internation Herald Tribune: Near the end of an early galley of "Cathy's Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233," a young adult novel that will be published in September, the spunky eponymous heroine talks about wearing a "killer coat of Clinique #11 'Black Violet' lipstick." But in the final edition of the book, that reference has been changed to "a killer coat of Lipslicks in 'Daring.' "
As it turns out, Lipslicks is a line of lip gloss made by Cover Girl, which has signed an unusual marketing partnership with Running Press, the unit of Perseus Books Group that is publishing the novel.
By now, television and movie viewers have become used to this kind of thing: when they see sneakers or cars on a show or in a film, they generally assume that these appearances have been paid for by the companies that make the brands.
But product placement in books is still relatively rare. The use of even the subtlest of sales pitches, particularly in a book aimed at adolescents, could raise questions about the vulnerability of the readers.
From a marketing perspective, said Michael Watras, chief executive of Straightline International, a New York strategic branding agency, "it's a great concept."
The FASTForward Blog: Dove (Unilever) is taking social networking to a whole new dimension as it relates to campaign development: they’re letting customers not only create ads (which they did last year) but vote on them and then announce the winner at the Oscars. Someone has looked at every angle of cross-integration for this (including mobile voting).
I can’t even feel comfortable calling it either a promotion or an event — it’s both and more. It’s synthesis in a decidedly different way that is a mashup of sorts, but focused on reframing and repurposing existing methods in unexpected ways. It introduces an interesting leap from incidental product positioning in productions (actor drinks well-displayed Coke during scene) to intentional co-event creation.
What’s also interesting is how significant a role the metrics played to reinforce additional investment this year.
“…last year’s campaign leading up to the Oscars resulted in over 1.5 million people visiting the official entry site at dovecreamoil.com, and the company got more than 1,200 ad submissions.”
So you have seen advertisements from commercials to billboards. Now advertisers are looking at your skin to place their ads! Look at how this Orange County based company is getting venues to let advertisers on their customer’s hands.
This is a new form of advertising and is completely different from the television commercials and magazine ads people are used to. What do you call advertising on your hands? "Well I like to call it Handvertising", said Mike Brown CEO of Handvertising USA.
Handvertising USA is transforming the way advertisers are looking at your skin, more specifically your hands. "Almost everyone has been to a county fair, swap meet, bar or club and had had their hand stamped for proof of entry. We have found a better use for this space that could make everyone happy" said Mike.
Canton Daily Ledger: At some point in life, just about all of us have spelled something out on our plate with food. A University of Illinois Horticulturist has taken this concept to new heights - spelling out the words "Fresh Salads" on a billboard advertisement using real, growing lettuce.
Pierceall was first contacted by the Leo Burnett advertising company to ask for his assistance in creating the billboard for one of their clients, McDonald's Corporation -- the goal being to stress the fresh salads in their menu. "Burnett googled horticulture and Chicago and my name kept coming up, so they called me," said Pierceall.
The billboard was mounted in Wrigleyville near the intersection of Addison and Clark streets. Pierceall said that the "shelf life" of the billboard is unlimited as defined by Mother Nature, and even she can't be pushed. "The ad agency wanted the billboard to be up this summer, but I told them it had to wait because lettuce is a cool season crop and would never be successful in the summer in Chicago. The seasonal nature of the plants defined the presentation timing and the eventual length of the presentation, kind of like installation art."
Pierceall has over 30 years of experience in environmental education and landscape design. Currently he is advisor of a horticulture degree-completion program for Chicago area students.
Bizreport: "With SmartEdition, publisher’s customers benefit from anywhere/anytime access to current and back issues of their publications, while enjoying audited paid circulation and a new advertising platform," was written on the company website.
The platform is geared toward small, local newspapers. Called AdGet, it is a cost-per-action model geared toward advertising for digital editions of the local papers. The platform allows for audio and video ads and also gives consumers a "click to transact" button so that advertisers can offer a quicker transaction. Restaurants could offer online reservations or car dealers could offer online sign-ups for test drives, according to one report.
The SmartEdition itself is a kind of cross between traditional newspapers and online editions. It offers a text reader for the online editions. NewspaperDirect is currently working with more than 550 local newspapers, many of which are in Canada.
Cherryflava: We remember that a couple of years ago SAA painted on of their 747's in hideous colours in an apparent celebration of managing to send an entire Olympic team overseas without loosing all of their luggage.
That plane is probably still lurking around, 'cause it would have been too expensive to repaint the thing.
But, in an ongoing strategy to milk more money out of their human trafficking business model, other airlines are selling fuselage space as an advertising canvas.
BizReport: The study was commissioned by Ball State University and found that just over 55% of college aged kids are open to receiving ad messages on their cell phones as long as they get something in return for looking at the message.
Michael Hanley, a marketing profession at Ball State said, "All you have to do is offer free ring tones, cash or access to the Internet because this age group has grown up with cell phones and other mobile devices. It is the way they communicate with each other as well as with the outside world.”
College students are already affecting mobile marketing. Nearly 37% of those studied said they had received a mobile message in the past year, up 13% from last year's numbers. Students are also using their phones for more than talking. 40% of students surveyed said they sent photos through their cell or email and 10% said they sent video via cell or email.
Adpunch: This is an exceptionally brilliant and intelligent ambient campaign launched in Canada to promote security glasses. In a unique and impressive advertisement campaign in Vancouver, 3M firm, deals in security glasses, wanted to create a solid image of their product. In order to pursue their objective, they decided to modify a bus stand and fitted their security glass at the sides of the shelter. They further filled the security glasses with real banknotes to lure miscreants to take attempt to lay their hands on it.
The idea clicked and many attempted fruitlessly to gain access with golf clubs and baseball bats however, the glass remained intact. Seeing this ambient advertisement, one could safely conclude that the product benefit is very effectively demonstrated to the masses. The remarkable idea and its perfect execution provided the firm a strong platform to project its product with a bright image.
BizReport: It should, therefore, come as no surprise to learn that Google is expanding into the world of video games. Bernie Stolar, Google’s Dean of Games, is adamant that Google won’t be publishing its own games or building its own console, but that they do have plans for a new system, called “AdSense for Games”.
For Google, in-game advertising was always on the cards. On its acquisition of AdScape the search engine giant said, “Over the past few years, the video game experience has become richer and more interactive. We think this rich environment is a perfect medium to deliver relevant, targeted advertising that ultimately benefits the user, the video game publisher and the advertiser.”
“AdSense for Games” will enable advertisers to purchase ad space within games and game publishers can integrate the system to monetize their products. Text and video ad formats will be on offer. Initially the system will only be available on web-based games but there are plans to include PC and console games in the future.
Update on Zoopa.com, featured on CoolBusinessIdeas.com on March 17, 2007:
Zooppa.com is revolutionizing advertising by involving the consumers themselves in the creative process. Companies partner with Zooppa.com to sponsor online commercial contests where users( who are the creatives and the potential consumers these companies are marketing to) are invited to create their own ads for the brand based on a brief the company provides. Participation is not limited to just shooting a video however. Users can write a script, upload photos or simply post an idea for an advertisement for others to use in their videos (this collaboration is rewarded as well). Users then compete for real cash prizes as the community of registered users votes for their favorite ads to decide the winners of the contest.
The new features developed on Zooppa 1.0, far surpass the beta version as well. Users will be able to comment on ALL posted contributions, where previously only on-air and active videos were available for comment. The creatives behind Zooppa are building a new video player to add more relevance to users’ contributions, as well as communicate with them in a more efficient way. The type of material possible to post on Zooppa has also been expanded. Now users can generate photos and other images to create advertisements for the Zooppa contests. In addition, users will now have the option of privately contacting one another.
Cool Hunting: Call it ingenious marketing or just plain bad taste, but a company promoting its laxatives on a bus stop billboard on busy Avenida Faria Lima in São Paulo has incorporated toilet lids attached to the seats where bus passengers sit and wait to further drive home its message. Those innocently taking a rest while waiting for their rides on public transport unwittingly become part of the ad, which gives off the impression they’re sitting on a toilet actually waiting for, well, something other than the No. 2 bus line.
Springwise: Dutch Gratis-Post lets people order envelopes with free postage for mailing within The Netherlands. Like most of the free love concepts we've covered in the past (from free photocopies to free phone calls), the concept is supported by advertising, in two parts. Ads are printed on the back of the envelope, and in exchange for 5 free ready-to-mail envelopes, users also agree to receive advertising messages by email for a period of four weeks.
If you think consumers can't possibly be interested in being ad-bombed for four weeks in exchange for EUR 2.20 (one stamp is EUR 0.44) worth of postage on ad-covered envelopes, you're wrong ;-) Gratis-Post ran out of its first print-run of 52,500 envelopes a few hours after they launched last Monday. Registered users can order a maximum of 5 envelopes per week. To give you a bit of insight into the format's revenue structure: for EUR 12,500, advertisers can have their ads printed on 10,000 envelopes, an email shot sent to registered users and banners placed on gratis-post.nl.
Free snail mail, sponsored by advertisers [Springwise]
Springwise: An innovative Japanese company is offering university students free photocopies. This free love is made possible by printing ads on the back of the copy paper, which is slightly thicker than normal to prevent ads from shining through. For JPY 400,000, advertisers can have their message printed on 10,000 sheets of paper.
Tadacopy machines have been placed at a few dozen campuses, and are a big hit with students. The company was founded by students at the universities of Keio, Chuo and Hosei, who installed the first free copy machine in April of last year. Nice one for student entrepreneurs to set up in other countries! You'll make some extra money, your fellow students will thank you, and local advertisers will be able to reach a targeted audience in a novel way. Like any good free love concept, it’s a win-win-win situation.
BizReport: A new website gives advertisers the chance to brief online video ad developers for considerably less than the cost of a production agency.
It’s a win-win situation for advertisers on Zooppa, a new website launched this week. It is essentially a platform for paid, user generated video, with a twist.
Businesses are encouraged to supply advertising briefs, including specifics such as target audience, product details, core message and brand guidelines. Users create video ads which are then entered in to a contest where they are reviewed and voted on by other Zooppa users. At the time of writing details of the value of the prizes are not known.
"Zooppa.com's purpose is to create a community of professional and amateur creatives and videomakers that compete in creating the best and the most viral video commercials ever,” said Zooppa’s Allison Green.
The Boston Globe: In an ad-saturated world, the cellphone screen is a nearly pristine canvas.
But a number of area companies are helping to transform the device that 220 million people are loath to leave at home into a personal, pocket-sized billboard, hawking everything from the latest ringtone to Fabio-favored "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!"
"We're calling the phone 'the brand in your hand' -- you're never more than a foot away from it, 24 hours a day," said Fareena Sultan , associate professor of marketing at Northeastern University's College of Business Administration. The challenge, Sultan said, will be to produce an advertisement for the phone "that excites the person holding it."
Fueled by faster wireless networks, more capable phones, and increasingly popular data services, the cellphone ad space is poised to grow, according to industry watchers, and a cluster of Boston start-ups have positioned themselves as the middlemen who bring brands to the screen.
Boston-based Enpocket Inc. partnered with Sprint Nextel Corp. to place banner ads on the carrier's mobile browser homepage last year. Third Screen Media Inc., also in Boston, builds cellphone-sized banner ads for major brands such as Burger King Holdings Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Toyota Motor Corp.
Isoceania: Discover Wizmark, the interactive urinal communicator, its advertising you can't help but look at. An idea so original, it has everyone talking. Wizmark's interactive capabilities will get results, providing the perfect guerrilla marketing medium for men of all ages.
Targeting your audience can be half the battle in marketing. Given the venue of this marketing tool's location, it will undoubtedly be the vastly perfect media format for every male oriented product and promotion.
As a one-of-a-kind, fully functional interactive device, Wizmark can talk, sing, or flash a string of lights around a promotional message when greeting a "visitor". The large anti-glare, waterproof viewing screen is strategically located just above the drain to ensure guaranteed viewing without interruptions. Using the elements of surprise and humour in a truly unique location will allow Wizmark, in combination with your ad, to make a lasting impression on every male that sees it.
The Interactive Urinal Communicator comes in 3 different models.
BRAND INFECTION: Over and over again funny amazing what kind of ideas companies have. This time it is all about toasts and raising money for charity organisations like World Vision, Save the Children or others you can help decide on.
It works the following way: you give YourNameOnToast some money and they write your desired name or web address on toast in order to put it on their website. Your toast will act as a link to your website and the more you pay for your toast, the higher it will appear in the listings.
V-Lodge is an online business-to-business marketplace for smarter, more civilized product placement and advertising weaved into video games. The new company will facilitate direct contacts between interested parties and contribute to more informed decision makings. In-game advertising is the next frontier in entertainment marketing.
The content section on V-Lodge will feature articles on both the theory and practice of savvy advertising and product placement for video and mobile games, as well as relevant industry stories and interviews. The ultimate goal of V-Lodge is to build a marketplace for in-game ads that is friendly to three groups of stakeholders: game developers and publishers, advertisers, and entertainment consumers.
Media Life: The Wall Street Journal is smelling out a new way to advertise. The newspaper, which recently debuted a new design, is gearing up to offer advertisers the ability to run scented ads. These ads would be on the regular newspaper pages and not on inserts, according to details that emerged in yesterday's earnings conference call. Rather than lifting a flap, the way most current scent advertising is distributed, the reader would rub the ad in order to release the scent, much like the scratch-and-sniff stickers kids play with. The paper has not yet completely refined the technology, but so far it has developed the ability to create chocolate and perfume scents. A WSJ spokesperson this morning said that no advertisers have been approached yet about using the technology, which is part of the paper's push to find new ways to add value for advertisers.
Adrants: Here's something we don't get to report every day. Massachusetts company Alt Terrain LLC unleashes an actual new media platform. We were like, is that possible?
The patent-pending 360 Degree Mobile Video Billboard delivers ad content (even 30-second moving spots) to thousands of eyeballs in a given hit. Right now it's in New York, LA, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. You attach it to your car, truck or SUV.
Strange New Products: Arcade Marketing Inc., in tandem with the California Milk Processor Board, is putting up a new type of advertisement at bus stops that emit the smell of chocolate chip cookies.
The ad, which will be placed at five bus stops in downtown San Francisco, utilizes the company's technology called MagniScent®, which disseminates smell via
scent-infused adhesives affixed to the inside of the bus shelters and undersides of the benches.
While scent-based advertisements have been used in magazines, it's supposedly a first for outdoor advertising. Though, I swear some fast-food burger joints deliberately pump burger smoke outside just to get me to walk in!
Interesting that the Milk Board would use cookie smell to attract attention to milk.
Post-Gazette.com: Maybe the writers finally ran out of ideas for the MasterCard "Priceless" ads. That's what it looked like earlier this year when they sat an actor down in a chair and had him type out empty spaces, inviting viewers to try filling in the blanks themselves.
Apparently, the ad copywriters were just up with the latest fashion.
This is the moment of in-your-hands consumer advertising -- the kind generated by the masses rather than for the masses. From Emerald Nuts' make-your-own contest to Mozilla FireFox's posting of consumer-produced spots at firefoxflicks.com, the creative directors seem to be handing over the work to us common folk.
There's marketing powerhouse Procter & Gamble, responsible for such memorable ad icons as Folger's Mrs. Olson and "99 and 44/100 % pure'' Ivory soap, offering a $1,000 prize to food-service professionals who can come up with the best pitch for the Dawn Grease Fighting Arsenal used in cafeterias and restaurant kitchens.
All these efforts to encourage consumer-generated marketing may look like a cheap trick to get free ideas, but advertising executives say there's more to it. What's actually happening is the industry is trying to plug into a very connected online audience that has little patience for traditional ads.
GUSH magazine: Buyjake.com is a website set up by a mother who thinks her child is so cute that companies will want to put their logos on his clothing or him for $100 000 a year. “I will dress in your company’s provided apparel (and sport a tattoo!) everywhere I go for the amount of time chosen. Want me to do a commercial? How about a public appearance? I’ll do that too.** All advertising must be pre-approved by Mom (nothing distasteful).”
A company called perfectpopcorn.com, has actually offered Jake $350 for a month’s worth of wearing their clothing. “Here is what Tim Farina, President & CEO of Javanni Inc. has to say about Baby Jake: In today’s creative world of advertising we not only need to know our customers but we need to find creative ways of reaching them to deliver our message.
Trend Hunter: It seems we’re running out of advertising space (or at least good/fresh space) so now companies are eager to increase their market share in space. In 1985, Coca-Cola and Pepsi seized an opportunity to test the viability of carbonated drinks in space. Both companies benefited from the first unofficial taste test in space. Then in 2001 Pizza Hut flew with the Russian Space Agency and became the first to deliver pizza in space. Radio Shack followed with a commercial aboard the International Space Station. It featured a Russian cosmonaut opening a Father’s Day present. NASA has been reluctant to participate, but marketers say advertising could help fund scientific research. NASA is currently working with the Bush administration to conduct an evaluation for a commercialization strategy in space.
The Gazette: High-tech spy Sam Fisher uses a Sony Ericsson phone to snap a picture of terrorists and sends it to home base. Then he reads his mission briefings on his PDA - personal digital assistant - from the same gadget maker.
While Fisher may be fictional hero of Ubisoft's Montreal-made Splinter Cell video game series, the tools he needs to complete his missions are quite real. And this is only the beginning for the fast-growing industry of advertising in video games, as the eyeballs of young men shift from the television to the gaming console.
"Advertisers want to engage audiences in the environments where they are," said Brandon Berger of Ogilvy interactive, which creates in-game ads for client brands.
"Games are not even a phenomenon anymore. It's mainstream. These are major consumers."
As video games become increasingly lifelike, so do their ability to imitate the world's ad-cluttered landscapes. And as production costs for major titles can hit $40 million, some extra cash is highly welcome.
And it can only grow from here. Depending who you ask, in-game advertising could be worth up to $4 billion by 2010, Berger said.
Product placements like Sam Fisher's camera phone is the most popular choice, linking the brand directly with an enjoyable activity.
Brand Infection: Here’s one for Switzerland’s airline group Swiss Air, created by Artfield (website in german), a company shaping agricultural land into art but also advertising. Using fields between 50.000 and 100.000 square meters the company can create characters of up to 100meters length while only using natural colors and elements.
Pretty crazy but hey, this works perfectly next to airports where people already see the advertising from far up.
Teleformance: Teleformance is a Pay-Per-Call advertising account management company, and is the only company in the nation devoted solely to this service. Our goal is to connect your business to qualified consumers that are seeking your company’s product or service by eliminating the waste of traditional direct response advertising methods. We manage every aspect of the Pay-Per-Call advertising campaign process for your company. Our experienced team will work with you to customize your strategic campaign and distribute your ads across the nation’s largest network of search engines and online directories.
Teleformance's President Terry McCarthy wrote to convince us why his company is different from the #1 business in the PPCall industry, Ingenio, which recently launched a new service called Ether. In his own words:
*Ingenio offers PPCall ads on AOL and a few other secondary search engines (AOL is yielding well over 95% of the call volume for Ingenio clients) --- Teleformance offers PPCall ads on Google, Yahoo, etc. and we have the flexibility to expand to any other major search engine for our clients. In other words, with Teleformance, there are no limits. This is a HUGE advantage that no one can touch.
*Ingenio offers a live up-to-the-second bidding model. We offer a fixed price-per-call model. Pricing varies based on the client vertical (category) and it's subject to change based on click-thru vs. call conversions after the initial two weeks of the campaign. We believe that our clients will prefer a fixed price...It eliminates the constant
bid monitoring and allows for predictable efficiencies.
*Ingenio places the top bidders in each category in the top search position on AOL. The rest of the bidders are relegated to the top search position on the subsequent PAGES. This represents a major discrepancy in call volume between the top bidder and everyone else within the category. Teleformance simply offers premium placement at a
fixed price per call. If the client wants top positioning, then the price will go up accordingly. If the client prefers a lower position, then the pricing will go down accordingly. We tailor placement to each of our clients' needs.
*Ingenio ad listings are notated by a telephone icon next to the ad listing. Teleformance ads appear without an accompanying icon.
*Ingenio calls are billable 12 seconds after the call starts ringing or, if the call is answered within 12 second, then they charge 12 seconds after the call is answered (yes, it's confusing). Our calls are only billable 30 seconds after the call is answered. This might seem trivial, but our clients have indicated that it represents a substantial difference in our services.
*Ingenio landing pages have strict character and graphic limitations. Teleformance landing pages are wide open. Like Ingenio, we won't allow a client to display their website address or add a link, but as far as the appearance of the ads, we encourage our clients to maximize their attractiveness via enhanced graphics. The better the landing page looks, the more likely the user will want to initiate the call.
*Ingenio offers broad client categories that might or might not encompass the correct keywords. Teleformance asks the clients for a list of their top-performing keywords. We lock in our clients' ads under these specific keywords. If a client doesn't have a keyword list, then we will research their industry sector and come up with a customized list.
*Ingenio offers online reporting - and it's very detailed. Teleformance offers basic daily e-mail reporting. These reports can be customized to the clients' needs, but at this point we don't have the system in place to match up with Ingenio's extensive reporting software.
*Ingenio offers ZERO % discounts to agencies and SEM firms. Teleformance offers a 10% discount to all agencies and SEM firms that manage their clients' PPCall campaigns.
*Teleformance can manage every step of the process for our directclients from start-to-finish, including setting up campaigns with other PPCall service providers, like Ingenio.
He also gave a walk-through of the Teleformance PPCall process:
1. Our ads will appear much like any other sponsored link on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. There isn't an icon that identifies the ad as PPCall (we don't think it makes a difference to the user - and that's all that matters)
2. When clicked, the ad opens up to a single landing page. Unlike Ingenio or the other PPCall service providers, we don't have a lot of graphic or character restrictions for the landing page. This allows our clients' landing pages to be as basic or as advanced as they want. On the landing page, a CONNECT ME button is prominently displayed at least twice.
3. When clicked, the CONNECT ME button opens a click-to-call pop-up window. The user can enter in their phone number and immediately initiate a call with the client.
4. When they hit submit, the user phone will ring and a message will announce that their call is being connected. Within a second or two, the toll-free call will seamlessly ring into the client's designated phone number.
MSNBC: Psstt. KFC wants to share a secret. No, not that secret.
Colonel Sanders’ herbs-and-spices recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken is still safely locked away, but the chain unveiled a new TV ad Thursday that allows viewers to crack a hidden message if they play the spot back slowly on a digital video recorder or VCR. The gimmick is aimed at countering the rise of technology that enables television viewers to skip past commercials faster than ever before.
“This is taking the exact opposition approach — rewarding viewers for taking the time to engage and be interactive with television,” said Tom O’Keefe, an executive at Foote Cone & Belding, the advertising agency that created the spot for KFC Corp.
For those savvy enough to solve the secret, the prize is a coupon for KFC’s new, sauce-drenched Buffalo Snacker chicken sandwich. The 99-cent Snacker debuted a year ago and is credited in KFC’s earnings rebound.
PRNewswire: AquaCell Media, Inc., a subsidiary of AquaCell Technologies, has tapped into the fast-growing out-of-home advertising segment with their patented self-filling water coolers used as in-store "billboards".
AquaCell installs their unlimited-use water coolers free of charge for retailers so that they can offer their customers a refreshing shopping experience while simultaneously giving advertisers a unique way to reach their targeted audience. AquaCell launched its innovative advertising campaign in Duane Reade stores throughout the NY metro area and Rite Aid drugstores nationwide.
"In today's fragmented media advertising arena, it's getting increasingly more difficult to reach out to the consumer in a relevant timeframe of their purchase intent cycle," said Alan Jope, President of Unilever Home & Personal Care U.S. "In a controlled test, AquaCell's in-store advertising on our largest brand, Dove, revealed a significant sales lift versus same stores without the AquaCell cooler advertising."
"Our advertisers enjoy exclusivity without any diversions from competing ads," said Michael Dougherty, President of AquaCell Media. "As proven by the 34% Dove sales lift, advertising on our patented permanently attached five- gallon bottle and cup holder is a unique and effective way for advertisers to target consumers while they shop."
With approximately 1300 "billboard" water coolers currently in place, AquaCell continues to roll out its program to numerous retailers and expects to expand beyond the pharmacy segment in the near future.
Yenra: The spring television and print advertising campaign for Candie's will feature four celebrities: Singer, actress, megastar Hilary Duff; Grammy nominee Ciara; and actresses Michelle Trachtenberg and Samaire Armstrong. This is the first time the brand has enlisted four stars to appear in an advertising campaign. Past Candie's spokespeople include Destiny's Child and Kelly Clarkson.
Hilary, Ciara, Michelle, and Samaire are all unique in their talent as well as their style. Mixing the four girls in an advertising campaign was the ideal way to showcase all of Candie's product categories which are available nationwide exclusively at Kohl's Department Stores.
Iconix CEO Neil Cole stated: "Bringing together the hottest young stars of Hollywood in one ad campaign is an excellent way speak to young women, who may identify with one or more of the stars. Kohl's has embraced our brand and we are thrilled with the response to Candie's at Kohl's."
BusinessWeek: For decades, wine consumption in the U.S. was hobbled by a lack of understanding of wine combined with lame or confusing marketing and labeling by wine producers, both domestic and international. But as increasingly clever marketers find success with simple, compelling labels -- think Yellow Tail and Marilyn Merlot -- they're discovering another way appeal to the $10-wine buyer: Make fun of the $30-and-up buyers. Think about how Rush Limbaugh talks about liberals, and you get the idea.
Brown-Forman (which markets wines such as Jekel, Fetzer, and Bolla) recently jumped into this vat hand-in-hand with Virgin Atlantic Chief Richard Branson in launching Virgin Vines. Starting with two California wines, a Chardonnay and Shiraz, the partnership seeks to promote wine consumption by dissing those who take wine too seriously. The label's pitch goes like this: "Dare to enjoy this wine without dashes of pretentiousness or hints of snootiness. Virgin Vines believes wine should be all about having fun and loving the taste...not waxing poetically about meaningless wine-speak and food pairings."
Displax.com: Displax® projects itself in a transparent, holographic display, with high definition, visible at daylight, captures the customers attention, bonds with the reality of the business of any kind of organization and has customized sizes, witch allows its placement in window stores of banks or telecommunications store, with the certainty that, whoever passes by, will not be indifferent to it. It has a great impact!
Displax® - Interactive window will be released in three versions. Displax® Interactive is the solution that allows people to interact with a projected multimedia application, just pressing the display with a finger. Displax® - Network allows managing displays placed in any location of the world, in a remote and central way. Displax® - Show allows you to present, in an innovative way, the products in a display, set in a window-store or inside the shop.
Who can use Displax® - Interactive window ?
Banks, Car Show-Rooms, Telecommunications, Shopping Centers, Fairs and Exhibits, Travel Agencies, Museums, Theatres…
WSJ.com: Glitzy television advertising, long the mainstay of marketing, fell out of vogue this year on Madison Avenue. In its place: frill-free commercials. Reflecting the proliferation of reality television, agencies embraced ads that used real people or looked like home videos.
Typical of the trend was an ad for Vonage Holdings Corp., the Internet phone service provider, which used a home movie of a skier leaping off a roof onto a pickup truck. A Toyota Motor Corp. spot was filmed to look like a home movie shot by two slacker dudes partying in the desert when a meteor hits their Tacoma truck. Anheuser-Busch Cos. has lately been running Bud Light ads shot documentary-style, which feature a fictional character named Ted Ferguson who performs daredevil stunts and rewards himself with beer.
TechRepublic Blog: CNET has recently launched page-turn ad units. Here's a sample, the Circuit City ad.
It's interactive without being in-your-face like interstitial ads or the ads that take over part of the page. You can browse the pages if you like, or just ignore the ad. And for a retailer I think it's perfect--the Circuit CIty example is a great showcase for what you can do in this new ad format.
News Blaze: These days, one college student in England is changing the world of real estate one pixel at a time. Sound strange? You bet it is and, in fact, it's just strange enough to work. Alex Tew, a 21 year old college student, is on the way to being a millionaire and it's all thanks to the world wide web and the sale of his virtual real estate.
The concept is surprisingly simple. Alex Tew is selling virtual real estate via the internet. No, it's not a house or land, but it is a cool concept. The Million Dollar Homepage offers a spot of advertising on it's virtual real estate, also known as a website, for a fee of $1.00 per pixel with a 100 pixel minimum. Each purchase of 100 pixels are sold in 10x10 blocks. The goal is to sell one million pixels, which will earn Tew the title of millionaire. After posting his website in August 2005, he's already half way to his goal.
Small Business Trends: Pay-per-call is an advertising service that connects online searchers with your business by phone. You place an Internet ad, and Internet surfers who respond to the ad call you on the phone. You pay for the ads similarly to pay-per-click advertising, except you pay per phone call, rather than per click-through. As with any advertising, it is still up to you to convert the lead into a sale.
The image above shows a pay-per-call ad from a search I just ran a few minutes ago for "Cleveland web designer." Similarly, I found listings for "Akron mortgage," "Columbus home builder," "Toledo florist," and "Cincinnati auto repair." You see a listing on the search page, with a telephone number underneath. When you click on the listing, rather than taking you to a website, it takes you instead to a second page with information about the business, its products and services, a telephone number, and business hours to call.
It seems like an excellent solution for small businesses, because more small businesses are prepared to deal with a phone call, than with an Internet lead.
Springwise: We reported on nearly-free short term rental cars in Europe a long time ago; leave it to entrepreneurs and marketers from around the world to add some really interesting twists, turning a new corner in Carvertising. In Austria, CoolCar offers long term (12-48 months) rental cars decked out in ads, including the Mini One and the Citroen C4, for only EUR 199 (USD 249/GBP 135) per month if drivers make enough miles. The lease also includes insurance and service costs, and obviously provides an interesting alternative to buying or leasing a regular car.
In France, Liberty Drive offers a similar long-term rental service, offering Smart cars for EUR 150 per month. But they also have a program that rewards existing Smart car owners for participating in carvertising campaigns, paying these MINIPRENEURS up to EUR 100 per month if they turn their cars into driving billboards. Clients have included Coca Cola Light, Kookai, Evian, Always, Club Med, Schwarzkopf, Gillette, Nike, Samsung, Tele2. Liberty Drive is looking for franchisees in French cities with over 100,000 inhabitants.
WSJ.com: assengers waiting to board a Virgin Atlantic Airways flight at London Heathrow airport may get an unexpected invitation on their cellphone these days.
Under a new advertising program, transmitters are beaming out text messages to the phones of people walking by to ask them if they would like to watch a video-clip ad on their phone's screen. The commercial, aimed at passengers in Virgin's first-class lounge, touts a new SUV, the Range Rover Sport.
Two London companies are behind the new ad approach -- Maiden Group PLC, which has handled billboard advertising for 80 years in the United Kingdom, and Filter UK Ltd., a small firm specializing in the transmitter technology.
NetImperative: Search marketing agency Greenlight has launched a Pay-Per-Call service aimed at UK advertisers.
Pay-per-call is billed as an alternative to traditional pay-per-click search advertising.
The advertiser is only required to pay for the adverts that result in phone calls, in much the same way pay-per-click advertising only charges for visitors sent to a website.
Greenlight said the service could open up the search market to thousands of businesses which operate without a website.
gizmag: Perth-based advertising agency Breakthrough has released an original and innovative ideas generation tool specifically focussed on advertising. The card-based system is designed to assist in concept generation and media selection and is one of the cleverest concepts we've seen to help with brainstorming communications strategies. Adpack is a card-based tool made up of trigger or strategy cards which contain proven techniques that are current and relevant in today's business divided into three sections - Media, Offer and Power Words. Each of these cards can be combined to create powerful marketing ideas.
Adpack is also an educational and lateral thinking tool designed to catalyse the brainstorming process and is an ideal way of including the people who know the business best (the staff) in the process.
Revolution Magazine:Yell.com is launching a suite of seasonal interactive ad campaigns, which target creative to regional weather conditions.
The first wave of creative, running until July, aims to promote Yell.com's range of services and is based on the "great British summer". It will be followed by a new push in autumn.
Expandable skyscraper ads predominantly targeting London's office workers will show maps of the UK displaying the weather in different regions, with a real-time weather feed triggering different creative executions depending on local conditions.
The ads suggest a suitable activity according to the city it is viewed from: a user logging on to www.thisislondon.com on a warm day in the capital will see a "sunny, outdoor" execution. If it is wet, the ad might suggest visitors search its directory for bowling alleys.
The campaign, developed by agency AKQA with media planning from i-level, involves home-page takeovers on Tiscali and Yahoo!, and targets information sites including Trainline, London Eating and Streetmap. Yell.com is aiming at the 20-26 age group through ads on music and entertainment sites including Mean Fiddler, The Raft, Channel 4 and Big Brother, and creative is further tailored to the site it is placed on: users of Property Finder will see an execution tailored to those searching for a house on a hot summer's day.
The New York Times: Consider this somewhat strange development: search engines like Google and Yahoo have become so proficient at attracting advertising that even competitors, like newspapers and yellow pages publishers, are now selling ads on their behalf.
Newspapers like The Houston Chronicle, which is owned by the Hearst Corporation, and yellow pages publishers like the BellSouth Corporation and SBC Communications have recently turned themselves into de facto agents for the search engines in the small-business market, where the Internet companies have had limited success.
Businesses like yellow pages publishers, which exist solely to serve the local advertiser that Google and Yahoo covet, may appear to be cutting their own throats by passing those customers onto the search engines. But the publishers argue that they are taking advantage of the chance to make additional money, while also studying the search engines closely enough to determine a long-term strategy to compete with them.
CNet: Be prepared for such moments to become a regular occurrence, thanks to a new service that inserts dynamic ads into video games. After several months of beta testing, New York start-up Massive is set to launch its in-game advertising network on Monday, with support from several major game publishers and mainstream advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Intel.
In-game advertising has become a growing source of revenue for publishers over the past few years, with developers of sports games in particular financing much of their work through product placement fees. Shag a deep fly ball in the latest baseball game, for example, and the outfield fence will probably be emblazoned with paid ads from real companies.
Massive will take advertising to another level by serving up dynamic ads, said Nicholas Longano, chief marketing officer for the Los Angeles-based company. Pass a virtual billboard in the latest "Splinter Cell" counterterrorism game, for example, and it could be hawking soft drinks one day and the latest Vin Diesel movie the next.
USAToday: "Heat-resistant coatings," "high-temperature adhesives" and "machinable ceramics" aren't even in the same league as "Britney Spears" when it comes to popular Web searches.
But for Aremco Products Inc. of Valley Cottage, N.Y., they're golden.
That's because the customers for Aremco's high-temperature coatings and adhesives are typing those words into search engines such as Yahoo! and Google.
To make sure Aremco's Web site comes up when they do, the company bids from 50 cents to $3 to be part of the list of "sponsored" links that appear above and to the right of the primary search engine results. Aremco only pays when a potential customer clicks on a link.
Peter Schwartz, president and chief operating officer at Aremco, said he started placing search ads more than a year ago and is spending a couple of thousand dollars a month on the promotion.
"I can't tell you that we get an extra million a year in business, but our order frequency is up 20% to 30%," Schwartz said.
The online ads are taking the place of advertising in an annual industrial directory and dozens of monthly trade magazines for engineers eager to buy adhesives and coatings that can withstand 3,000-degree temperatures for use in hair dryers and halogen headlights.
PRNewswire: Just when you think you've seen it all in the world of marketing, listen up - HALLS Fruit Breezers lets you hear it all too! Tattooing advertisements on body parts is old news, but the newest wave in creative branding is loud and difficult to miss…at least if you live in New York City with Floyd Hayes. HALLS Fruit Breezers purchased Hayes' voice on eBay, in a unique advertising deal that may leave you…well, hoarse.
Floyd Hayes, a Brooklyn, NY resident, put his "voicevertising" services up for sale on eBay, offering to shout out a brand name every fifteen minutes for an entire week -- no matter what location or situation, i.e. subways, elevators, bars, clubs, weddings or even business meetings. (Don't worry…he will be allowed to sleep.) It's a contemporary spin on the traditional town crier, and what brand could be more fitting to purchase the services than HALLS Fruit Breezers, a throat drop that cools and soothes dry, scratchy throats, which Hayes is likely to experience on this mission.
Businessweek Online: No, this is not about buxom bikini-clad women riding Clydesdales or SpongeBob holding a longneck. It's about this ad war between Miller and Anheuser-Busch about whether Lite or Bud Light tastes better, or has "more taste."
The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus says it is now referring Anheuser-Busch's challenge of Miller Brewing's "More flavor, more taste" claims to the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which already is reviewing the Milwaukee brewer's campaign for fairness and truthfulness.
Miller points to blind taste "perception" tests of 400,000 consumers conducted by the Institute for Perception, Richmond, Va., pitting A-B versus Miller products. A-B charged that the tests were improperly conducted and the ads may leave consumers to think Miller beers were preferred over the AB's brands.
Investors.com: Internet Casino GoldenPalace.com will leave a lasting impression on "The Human Pincushion" Brent Moffatt, who auctioned off his forehead on eBay, offering the highest bidder the opportunity to permanently tattoo their brand on his bald head. This auction is unique because it differs from other auctions offering ad space on body parts, as it will be a permanent tattoo as opposed to a temporary one.
Moffatt will literally have "GoldenPalace.com" on the brain. Not just any skinny, tattooed, pierced, bald billboard, Moffatt has already received worldwide media attention for his excessively impaled body. He has the distinction of being in the 2005 edition of the Guinness Book Of World Records, as well as having appeared all over the world on major print, radio, and television media outlets including CNN, the National Enquirer, Weekly World News and even the Sept. 2004 issue of Playboy.
BusinessWeek: At a hip singles bar in Las Vegas earlier this year, attractive urbanites were busy typing messages into their cell phones. But messages like, "Who's the hottie at the end of the bar?" weren't just going to friends -- they were being posted on a giant video screen as part of a promotion at several events organized by Anheuser-Busch (BUD) and Maxim magazine.
These kinds of promotions have become rampant at sporting events, concerts, and ultra-trendy bars in the latter part of 2004, and they're poised to explode next year, say marketers like Alex Campbell, CEO of Vibes Media, a small interactive marketing firm that put on the Vegas event. Idle cell-phone users are being encouraged via big-screen TV, or video scoreboard, to text messages to one another, answer trivia questions, or enter sweepstakes. Sometimes, participation is as high as 30%, Campbell and others say.
It may seem like just a gimmick for restless audience members and barflies. But it's the beginnings of the much-hyped, much-anticipated rush to mobile advertising, in which marketers connect to consumers in a variety of ways via their cell phones. And industry watchers say 2005 is set to be the year a lot of big brands finally give it a shot -- despite the difficulties that still loom. At this early stage, it's still hard to predict a how much will be spent on mobile advertising since the cost of these campaigns can range from thousands to millions. But like spending on video ads online in 2004, this new category looks poised to go from virtually nothing to millions in pilot investments in 2005, agencies say.
PCWorld: You're deep in an online game, storming through a gritty urban landscape. The enemy? A gang of brawling thugs armed with baseball bats. You battle furiously, take out the last villain, and look up in triumph. And the first thing your eyes light upon is a billboard hawking Starbucks.
Take note if your favorite online game has billboards, banners, and other signage sprinkled around the landscape. Although some games already contain real ads, many still have signs promoting imaginary companies or services. But that may not last much longer--two online ad networks, the type of company that dreamed up banner ads for Web sites, promise to pump games full of ads for cable TV shows, soft drinks, technology products--you name it.
Here's something different in advertising and product promotion: digital walking billboards.
Chibi Vision, a U.S.-patented brand new advertisement method, is a digital walking billboard that you can fashionably wear as a backpack. Ad video contents run on a 7-inch digital screen. You can make a cool video in any form — DVD, CD, SVCD, MP3, CDDA, JPEG, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW. The Chibi Vision backpack only weighs 500 grams.
PointRoll, a provider of rich media marketing services, has launched a new polling feature called Pollster.
Pollster provides a unique tool for online advertisers to drive user interaction and gain insights to the minds of online community users. As online ads are viewed, Pollster instantly reports interactive survey results. Web audiences can respond to any number of questions regarding current events and issues, movies, brands, products, or even weigh in on upcoming events to instantly see how their answers compare to the larger online community.
The benefits of this new polling feature? Survey users have the ability to share opinions and attitudes, while advertisers can capture valuable information about brands, products and positioning.
All sorts of innovative (you might say weird) advertising methods are popping up. We have in the United States liquid crystal display screens that show Internet-based Flash animations to people seeking to relieve themselves in public restrooms. Although marketers have thought of placing indoor advertising in restrooms before, it is the first time that people are seeing Flash advertisements at eye level. Looks like most patrons of the restrooms in which the advertising screens are placed do not mind having this form of commercialism intruding on their space, according to an article by the Arizona Republic.
At least one Chinese restaurant in Manhattan is sending out delivery orders in cartons adorned not with the traditional "Thank You, Enjoy," but with something a bit more jarring: an advertisement for Cingular Wireless, a purveyor of cellular phone service. From a distance, the boxes are indistinguishable from millions of similar Chinese food containers, but closer inspection reveals that one side reads "I H New York." Another bears the message "Cingular Wireless: Swing by one of our retail locations below."
You probably would have came across taxis with eye-catching colours and logos on their exteriors driving along on the highway already. Now, this form of car advertising is being extended to private cars - with great results. In fact, private car advertising is now being taken seriously by companies seeking a cost-effective medium of reaching their target audience.
Already, new companies are being formed to facilitate this form of car sponsorship. Agencies like AdsOnCars or Ads2Go have built up a database of potential car-owners who are willing to display the ads on their cars. In return, these drivers are paid with cash. Most come to know of this simply money-making opportunity through word of mouth or from having seen similar sponsored cars elsewhere. The agencies then collect relevant demographics information so that advertisers can target their ads according to the type of audience which is likely to be exposed to the sponsored cars. They can actually choose drivers who match their target audience and who fit in with their brand. This is razor-sharp advertising at its best!
This innovative form of advertising is superior to traditional advertising media because it allows the advertiser's brand to be brought physically to places where it is not normally seen, such as like the supermarket or the gym. Brand awareness is indeed strengthened!
Plenty of opportunities here: for marketers, this is a cost-effective form of advertising your goods, while for advertising agencies, car advertising is a new area for you to make your niche in!
An innovative form of advertising is slowly but surely making its way into our lives, or rather, our subways. In Boston, USA, subway riders will get to see an ad for a cruise line which slowly takes shape outside the windows of the city's trains while travelling toward downtown Boston.
This ad unit works like a frame-by-frame animation. In the case of the subway ad in Boston, 400 still images are placed on a 1,000-foot stretch of tunnel wall. The animation is timed such that passengers see 24 images per second with lights flashing on and off a passing train. The images are transformed into a mini-movie featuring several cruise-goers having fun aboard the cruise-line's ship.
This ad technology isn't really new too. It has made its debut three years ago in such cities as Atlanta, Budapest, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Advertisers and train operators benefit from these subway ads. As a new form of advertising which most people haven't seen anything like it before, it is certain to generate buzz. Moreover, it faces no competiting ads being shown simultaneously to riders along the subway tunnels. For train operators, it represents a new source of revenue.
In the first issue of our CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter, we reported on Adwalker, an innovative advertising unit that shows ads on an LCD screen mounted on a wearable jacket. Now, that clever adverts-on-shirts concept has come to the US.
San Francisco-based Brand Marketers has launched Adver-Wear, an ad medium that is made up of an 11-inch flat screen mounted at chest level and four hidden speakers which deliver sound. An Adver-Wear TV-shirt weighs about 6.5 pounds and costs around $1,000 to make. Brand Marketers is sending models out in public with these Adver-Wear T-shirts, and their first assignment is to promote the Fox movie "I, Robot." at theaters and malls.
Apparently, younger generations are so used to moving images on TV that if an advert isn't a moving image, it doesn't leave an impression on them, said Adam Hollander creator of the Adver-Wear shirts. This concept seems to be effective because it doesn't pretend to be something other than advertising. You can expect shirts that deliver marketing messages to become common in the future because of rapid advancements in television and miniaturization technology. Who knows, maybe one day the whole shirt will be a screen!
There are plenty of new avenues to spend your advertising dollars in. Video and online game advertising is officially big business, according to an article from Clickz.com. For example, you could advertise in Multi-user Dungeon (MUD) as well as Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) to effectively reach the 18-34 year-old male demographic group.
Product placement and branding by third-party advertisers can be incorporated in many popular games and in many ways. For example, Electronic Arts's "Need for Speed Underground" allows gamers to modify their racing cars with parts and equipment from real-world brands. In Sony's "Gran Turismo," players not only enjoy racing with each other at breakneck speed, they are also exposed to real-life advertiser sponsorships around the racetrack.
Young male consumers spend a lot of time gaming, so be sure to consider video game advertising for your marketing campaign! :)
Don't be surprised to see models walking around London's streets wearing small jackets that display light LCD screens prominently to understandably amused passer-bys. This brand-new "out of home, mobile, interactive media platform" called Adwalker is but the latest advertising idea to hit the United Kingdom.
The Adwalker, designed and created by a young Irish firm of the same name, combines the strengths of the latest advertising breakthroughs as well as traditional forms of the media, thus offering consumers an all-in-one solution to their promotion needs. Hey, if you can make use of the visual impact of TV and conventional outdoor advertisements, the engaging power of consumer interaction, the higher-than-average success rates of direct marketing, and the widespread accessibility of the Internet, you'll have a winning technique to market your products and your brand!
How does the Adwalker works? It utilizes a LCD screen that is connected to the Internet, and this makes it possible to deliver dynamic sales messages in any location and to any group of consumers. This ensures highly relevant and targeted advertising to the target audience of Adwalker's advertisers. Also, a small printer in the device can instantly print tickets or vouchers for the products being advertised. With such cool features, Adwalker can be used to deliver a wide suite of applications and services. Here are just some examples:
Point-of-Sale: credit card and smart card transactions can be carried out via Adwalker anywhere.
Interactive games and competitions: customised games can be played by the consumer on the Adwalker.
Consumer data collection: consumer data can be easily captured on the platform and uploaded to a database for analysis.
Information services: real-time information updates can be downloaded via the Internet.
Multimedia messaging: SMS and MMS are supported by the Adwalker, allowing mobile phone interaction between it and consumers. (Source: Adwalker.com)
This cool concept has been licensed to outdoor advertising firm Poster Publicity, who serve clients like British Airways, Levi's and Visa. (Source: Thisismoney.com)
Let's Get Down To Business...
Don't be afraid to try out new ways of interacting with your target consumer group. Yes, the crazy idea you have may not work, but who knows, you can just succeed simply because consumers notice your innovative and original way of reaching out to them!
Think interaction; traditional advertising media are limited to the delivering of your sales message to your consumers, nothing more. Only dynamic new forms of media can engage and interact with consumers effectively. Only active interaction allows for the tactical placements of ads for high impact targeting of key consumer groups.
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Silicon Valley Watcher: Online advertising is becoming less and less effective. Eric Clemons has some ideas on why this is happening, and there are many startups trying to fix the problem.
BizReport: The study was commissioned by Ball State University and found that just over 55% of college aged kids are open to receiving ad messages on their cell phones as long as they get something in return for looking at the message.
The Boston Globe: In an ad-saturated world, the cellphone screen is a nearly pristine canvas.
GUSH magazine: Buyjake.com is a website set up by a mother who thinks her child is so cute that companies will want to put their logos on his clothing or him for $100 000 a year. “I will dress in your company’s provided apparel (and sport a tattoo!) everywhere I go for the amount of time chosen. Want me to do a commercial? How about a public appearance? I’ll do that too.** All advertising must be pre-approved by Mom (nothing distasteful).”
Trend Hunter: It seems we’re running out of advertising space (or at least good/fresh space) so now companies are eager to increase their market share in space. In 1985, Coca-Cola and Pepsi seized an opportunity to test the viability of carbonated drinks in space. Both companies benefited from the first unofficial taste test in space. Then in 2001 Pizza Hut flew with the Russian Space Agency and became the first to deliver pizza in space. Radio Shack followed with a commercial aboard the International Space Station. It featured a Russian cosmonaut opening a Father’s Day present. NASA has been reluctant to participate, but marketers say advertising could help fund scientific research. NASA is currently working with the Bush administration to conduct an evaluation for a commercialization strategy in space. 
MSNBC: Psstt. KFC wants to share a secret. No, not that secret.
PRNewswire: AquaCell Media, Inc., a subsidiary of AquaCell Technologies, has tapped into the fast-growing out-of-home advertising segment with their patented self-filling water coolers used as in-store "billboards".
gizmag: Perth-based advertising agency Breakthrough has released an original and innovative ideas generation tool specifically focussed on advertising. The card-based system is designed to assist in concept generation and media selection and is one of the cleverest concepts we've seen to help with brainstorming communications strategies. Adpack is a card-based tool made up of trigger or strategy cards which contain proven techniques that are current and relevant in today's business divided into three sections - Media, Offer and Power Words. Each of these cards can be combined to create powerful marketing ideas.
PRNewswire: Just when you think you've seen it all in the world of marketing, listen up - 
You probably would have came across taxis with eye-catching colours and logos on their exteriors driving along on the highway already. Now, this form of car advertising is being extended to private cars - with great results. In fact, private car advertising is now being taken seriously by companies seeking a cost-effective medium of reaching their target audience.
