While it isn't always apparent by the ads that attack you day in, day out, advertisers today have it in their power to produce the ultimate advertisement -- one that creates a fevered buzz without stinging and irritating the very targets it is trying to reach.
Currently, the old-school method of bludgeoning people with messages until they are forced to listen is happily on the out. This trend is particularly hopeful for consumers, since it is creating a kind of noninvasive advertisement where the consumer actively seeks out the product rather than the product chasing the consumer. And it's not necessarily because the product immediately attracts the consumer but because the entertainment packaged around it does.
This method has a name: Contagious Marketing, and a magazine, too:
www.contagiousmagazine.com. Contagious Marketing is focused on inspiring consumers to talk about and actively participate in branded ideas. It attempts to create two-way traffic between the brand and its believer. In many ways, it also better aligns advertising with that oldest and noblest of trades: storytelling -- yes, storytelling. And perhaps one day advertising might even end up beating Hollywood at its own story-telling game. Now wouldn't that be the ultimate happy-ending scenario?
A more recent example of contagious marketing across the United States is the Boomer Coalition. Branding a disease may sound curious but, hey, it was curiosity that sold the cat on tender vittles. Baby boomers by the millions are seeking out this campaign to fight cardiovascular disease.
The movement started with a TV campaign that kicked off at this year's Academy Awards, and then with such attention-getting events as Rock concerts featuring the Doobie Brothers, Los Lobos, and members of the Lovin' Spoonful … viral campaigns promoting the search for lost loves from Woodstock, celebrity jean art auctions on Ebay featuring Chevy Chase, Phil Collins, Bette Midler and Henry Winkler, and "Flower Power hearse processions" down major city streets (
www.boomercoalition.org).
And it is a true coalition, involving many different corporations and organizations, and thereby reflects another growing trend: strategic alliances like those we have seen recently arise between the likes of Motorola and Apple iTunes, McDonalds and Sony, Diesel and 200 AD comics. It's as if good will is now finally seen as something that can be shared.
A number of other, recent campaigns are meanwhile looking to create a dialogue between brand and buyer. French Connection, after years of reaping advantage from its cheeky and notorious FCUK logo, is now creating a whole new buzz by leaving the logo out of their commercials entirely. This forces the creatives to come up with a distinctive feel and look that will hopefully trickle back down and have a positive feedback effect on the clothing actual design as well. They will hopefully escape the trap of, say, Benetton -- which has great clothes and great ads, but neither really has anything to do with each other anymore. Like with any good story, style should always be dictated by the actual content.
Perhaps one day advertising might even end up beating Hollywood at its own story-telling game.
|
|
And while some corporations like Audi are sponsoring their own TV channels to tell their tale, a branded content TV show like the UK's Orange Playlist is engaging viewers in the traditional way with a roster of celebrities, while also promoting a true interactivity through viewer-based charts for top hits, top music and top ringtones (the mobile phone industry's great unsung money maker), all of which are available to download directly to your phone. They also encourage viewers to send in their own pictures and text messages (a la MTV) by broadcasting a selection during the show in the hope of stimulating latest mobile phone technology. It sounds a bit devious, but from an advertising perspective, it is offering many different points of engagement and thereby increasing the likelihood of two-way communication.
US beer maker Miller is hoping to find a soft spot in American hearts by relieving them of their most persistent TV qualm —- commercials —- by sponsoring an entire TV drama. Co-written and directed by Dennis Leary, "Rescue Me" is aired on the FX channel and is entirely free of commercials. Miller is now being associated with a quality program -- one, ironically, that takes a cliché-free look at alcoholism -- that is already being hyped by many as the next The Sopranos or Six Feet Under. This quality programming and a no-nonsense message has given Miller some serious street cred in the US.
Germany luxury sedan maker BMW has been pushing online films for a while now, and not without success among a certain, edgy public. Combining both quality and artistic merit with its high-octane short films produced by Ridley and Tony Scott and directed by the 'cult-accredited' likes of John Woo and Alejandro González Iñárritu, these films have proven so successful -- via word-of-mouth alone -- that they are now due to be cross-pollinated into a comic book series. P&G similarly employs Hollywood resources and techniques in its micro-movies on ABC. For its Art of Speed campaign, shoe giant Nike commissioned 15 hipster filmmakers to interpret their ideas of speed through short films. Nike then approached the very popular postmodern gossip site,
gawker.com, to produce an "Art of Speed" weblog.
Cult building has skyrocketed to the top of almost every brand's list of objectives. Cult building must be music to many brand marketers' ears, as it doesn't necessary have to cost a lot of money to achieve your goals. With a very low budget, for example, the ultimately interactive Subservient Chicken managed to secure grassroots for-the-people flavor in a matter of days via the web, an image that would have otherwise taken years to build up in more traditional ways.
Sharp's
www.moretosee.com takes the idea to an altogether higher level. Cult appeal Is the aim. A forerunner worked for Weiden+Kennedy's; ESPN/Sega Beta7 campaign, which was particularly effective because it exploited an already proven viral entity -- namely, the conspiracy theory that we are all under constant manipulation via subliminal messages.
Isn't it always a happy ending whenever the smart and witty wins?
|
|
Working with the creators of
The Blair Witch Project, W+K came up with a whole reality -- complete with a renegade blogger -- where the initial game testers had suffered from blackouts and strange behaviors due to subconscious messages built into the games. This was a whole complex yet engaging story that had nerds everywhere not necessarily believing it, but wanting to believe it … And this is really the magic of a good book or movie. So why shouldn't we apply the same magic in making good commercials?
Cult-building via Contagious Marketing also worked for the seemingly dyslexia-afflicted Beanz Meanz Heinz, which fully exploited consumer love for kitsch and nostalgia. The iconic American foods manufacturer asked consumers to vote on whether they should keep the above-named slogan, one that had not been used in 13 years and was thereby entirely new to the majority of teenagers the company was targeting. The vintage slogan was accompanied by vintage bean TV ads and newborn bean obsessives could vote via Sky's interactive TV platforms, text messages or the
beanzmeanzheinz.com website, where daily updates were also posted. A similar method of elevating a sense of the democratic was the recent launch of Audi's A3 Sport, where the German carmaker asked drivers to select the campaign that would run in Europe.
Another example of a campaign that likely surpassed all expectation was the award-drenched Bud Light's Real Men of Genius radio ads that spoofed old-fashioned beer commercials while saluting those "little guys" who had made our lives better in the subtlest of ways. Mr. Giant-Foam-Finger Inventor or the ever-pragmatic Mr. All-You- Can-Eat-Buffet Inventor are certainly both figures that we can all respect on some level. They certainly inspired an almost Simpsons-like devotional cult that generated countless personal web pages, successful incarnations as TV and web commercials, and best-selling CD/DVD collections.
And we seem to have a lot of these sort of happy endings lately. The delirious Trojan Games viral developed to launch Trojan condoms in the UK during the 2004 Olympics featured such you-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it animations as "Pelvic Power Lifting" and "Masters of Precision Vaulting" that combined that age-old adage of "sex sells" with a newer one of "quirky sells."
Good-timing and quirkiness also played a role in the success of Asics' The Running Fish Gutter film and website that told the heart-warming tale of a man who won't let go of his dreams of becoming an Olympic contender. Meanwhile, NFC's Node Runner urban Wi-Fi game continues to inspire an almost Olympian-like dedication from its participants as they ran around with laptops, GPS units and digital cameras, in search of wireless nodes in the downtowns of the world. Now that's serious interaction … and one where the participants are actually writing their own story while they do it.
Isn't it always a happy ending whenever the smart and witty wins? And think about it: no one will ever call us devious again if they are too busy having fun.
Scott Goodson is co-founder and creative partner of StrawberryFrog, a full-service advertising agency located in Amsterdam and New York City, with clients including Ikea, Mitsubishi Motors Europe, MTV Europe, Onitsuka Tiger, Pfizer, Sony Ericsson, Sprint and Credit Suisse.
