Stories about TV advertising vs. online advertising always seem to catch my eye – as previous posts such as Its a generation thing and They call me mellow yellow will demonstrate – so it was with interest that I read the recent news story on NMA discussing Toys ‘R’ Us’s planned return to TV adverts.
Toys ‘R’ Us is running a social media campaign to promote the return of its TV ad character Geoffrey the Giraffe, launching both a presence for the character on Facebook and uploading older versions of the advert onto YouTube. However all this social media activity is merely part of a plan to build engagement online ahead of the TV launch this week. So is TV is the real star of the show?
Nowadays a brand running a social media campaign to advertise itself is nothing out of the ordinary but I did think it was interested that the company plan to relaunch the TV adverts. This decision comes as many other brands are pulling their TV advertising budgets and putting everything online.
I have not seen a Toys ‘R’ Us advert on TV for what seems like an absolute age though the fact that I am now having severe difficulties getting the ‘It’s a magical place..’ jingle out of my head surely shows how successful the adverts were for building recognition around the brand.
So what do we think is more effective? Is Toys ‘R’ Us just bucking the trend to dismiss TV advertising or is this part of a TV advertising revival?! The below stories suggest a bit of a trend developing…
The media is reporting a survey by health campaign group Consensus Action on Salt & Health (CASH) which shows that some pasta sauces on sale in the UK are saltier than sea water. A good hook for a survey but bad news for celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, whose spicy olive and garlic pasta sauce topped the poll with a whacking 3 grams of salt per 100g.
This looks to have been a brand extension too far. Jamie is a brand and brands need to deliver on their promise. Over the years, he has been the front man for campaigns on better school dinners, healthier eating, animal welfare, creating employment for disadvantaged young people, apple pie and more. Today’s news is at odds with his wholesome image. What is to be done? His team will be working to focus attention on their man’s good deeds. But while they control the brand, they don’t own Jamie’s reputation. His public image will be dented. Will his sales be hit? Certainly, expect a new recipe pasta sauce to be rushed out and to hear updates on his campaigning efforts. But when his next campaign is launched with television series, website and spin-off book, his public might just take it all with a pinch of salt.
Meanwhile, the celebrity cook market remains big business, particularly in the run up to Christmas. A quick search of the web shows that today Jamie can sell you:
So for many of the uninitiated, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 was released this week. This has been the most anticipated video game since GTA IV which came out in 2008. CoD MF2 is already a record breaker with over 1 million copies being sold in day one, analysts expect 10 million sales in the run up to Christmas.
That’s mental! Record companies would bite your hand off for those figures especially when the game costs around £50 a pop.
The reason this is relevant to the PR industry is the buzz around this game this week has been incredible, it has secured coverage across not only in the traditional gaming press and blogs but also mainstream broadcast and national press with MP’s debating the games’ release in Parliament. Shouldn’t they be sorting the country out rather than discussing a piece of entertainment that has already been classified and approved by the British Board of Film Classification?
I have no doubt that the game is a great piece of workmanship and entertainment and I am looking forward to playing it. What I was impressed with was the PR launch of the game. Many shops were breaking sales embargoes and there were large queues of fans waiting to get their hands on it. The most impressive aspect of the launch was the permission to use Leicester Sq in London as the site to unveil the game. This is predominately reserved for Hollywood movies, so the fact that there was a massive scale PR event with full military occupation including camo vehicles and personnel added to the drama and event. The launch also had the red carpet feel with a number of celebrities attending, proving that gaming is part of our modern culture just as music, art and movies are.
The revenues of the gaming industry worldwide are overtaking the movie industry very quickly due to huge sales and high prices for games. The scope for executing well planned and large PR campaigns for games has arrived and will be a major aspect of the PR business sector in the years to come. Expect a lot of big agencies to be pitching for software houses such as Activision, EA, Epic, Rockstar, Eidos and Ubisoft as well as crazier and bigger PR launches.
eBay Advertising yesterday launched some research about European online shopping habits and people’s receptiveness to online advertising and this truly got me thinking. Not about the research per se - people are more receptive to ads on a social network (seven per cent) than they are on a portal (five percent) – but more about how the success of online advertising is inversely proportional to its quality.
Online advertising undoubtedly works – the metrics don’t lie and money continues to flow into the sector. But I don’t think I have ever intentionally clicked on an online ad and my own research (a quick shout out around the office) revealed that is the case for others too. Online ads are still seen as intrusive and an irritant and people find them too interruptive and poorly targeted. I’m all for behavioural targeting if it can actually work but I keep getting served ads on a social network for a Chris Rea compilation, something hell would freeze over before I would even think about buying.
A good advert can generate buzz and discussion yet I don’t think a single online ad has come anywhere near the impact of say the Guinness ads. Is it a lack of creativity? I can only recall one online ad – a mocked-up IM exchange promoting the film Knocked Up – that I have mentioned in conversation (and now this blog) as an example of a strong advertisement that may have helped influence my behaviour.
So who are these millions of people that click through? Where is the creativity in the online space? Perhaps I am missing the better work but I don’t think so. All the while online advertising keeps working then I don’t see the quality being raised – a shame given the massive potential for creativity that online affords.
The Lib Dem Conference this year seems to have been more exciting than usual. I am afraid to say that too often I have dismissed it as a warm up for the main two conferences. But this year it has delivered a punch.
Whether you love Nick Clegg or you see him as a David Cameron downgrade, this year he has brought greater presence and press coverage to the conference than before. The newspapers have followed what, in particular, Clegg and Cable have had to say.
The two dominating policy announcements for me have been the ‘Mansion Tax’ - Vince Cable’s announcement that people with houses over £1 million would be charged a tax at 0.5% on the value of a house above this amount and Nick Clegg’s announcement of ’savage’ cuts.
With the ‘Mansion Tax’ Vince Cable received great coverage and it has been debated widely in the press and on news channels. In fact people have been scrutinising it as if it could be introduced by a Government. This shows that the Lib Dems have been taken more seriously at this conference.
Similarly Nick Clegg’s announcement of ’savage’ cuts was a strong call that gained a great deal of coverage, but again the messaging and PR behind the announcement was extremely poor. Nick Clegg has not thought through the messaging because ’savage’ cuts, as opposed to just ‘cuts’, suggests that frontline services will suffer. Again it is a case of Lib Dems making a great deal of noise and being scrutinised seriously and being found wanting on their messaging.
Overall the Lib Dems seemed to make progress this conference, being taken seriously. But their messaging has been found wanting. They need to now work out their proposals tightly and sell them with the right language that says they are a party that can govern not just a third option.
A series of fairly hard hitting ads with the tagline AIDS is a Mass Murderer, will be played on Germany TV and cinema screens in the lead up to World AIDS Day. The video features a couple having sex, however, at the end of ad, the male raises his head and is clearly supposed to be Hitler. A number of posters are also being produced and the imagery is again of a couple however, the male character is either Hitler, Stalin or Saddam Hussein.
AIDS has always been a focus of hard hitting ads. I don’t remember many ads from my childhood, but one that has always stuck with me is from 1987 from back home in Australia. I’ve embedded it below. It is one of the most frightening ads I’ve seen, but the message is essentially that AIDS doesn’t discriminate and it is a devastating disease that could affect anyone, so take proper precautions and don’t be naive.
That, personally, was a pretty effective ad. The Hitler one I think goes a tad too far.
But, the problem with this ad is that the message could be read by some people as - if you have AIDS, you are as bad as Hitler/Stalin/Hussein. By personifying an individual with AIDS as a mass murderer, you could be running into trouble and you enter the territory of vilifying AIDS sufferers.
I know that there are few internationally recognisable female mass murderers, but I think it is also questionable that the person transmitting AIDS in these posters are only men. I know it sounds silly, but with people thinking chicken skin, kebabs and coke can act as contraception (I know, I was stunned too), it isn’t outside of the realms of possibility that young men would think you can only catch AIDS through sex with men and you can’t catch it from a unprotected sex with a woman.
I believe the most effective campaigns are a combination of shock and education. These ads only state protect yourself. From what? Where is the advice around condoms, clean needles etc.?
To me, this ad is only about raising the issue of AIDS as a media priority and is based purely on shock value. It will, as it already has sparked debate and gained publicity, but do we need more than that? Like other shock campaigns, people will also become desensitised, then the media will move to the next story, so what is the next step for media campaigns? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Interesting list from TechRadar today - few new names I hadn’t heard on here:
Just look for your free images in a library of stock photos, where the photographer has already given away most, or all of their rights. There are plenty of online libraries just packed with excellent free images that you can use, even commercially, for no cost at all - and we’ve found 12 of the very best.
Today is a big test for the government. Even though everyone from local authorities to MPs to civil servants essentially went on holidays this week, the Norwich North by-election is going to cause consternation, exasperation and exaltation for one or another party in Westminster.
The seat, vacated by the widely respected Dr Ian Gibson after he was told he would not be allowed to run in the next election under the Labour flag after the expenses scandal, is now being hotly contested. While a number of news outlets have said Dr Gibson had a very good chance of winning again even if he ran as an independent, he has decided not to and there now are 12 candidates vying for the seat.
There is an outside chance Labour could scrape through by some landmark upset, although when candidate Chris Ostrowski was struck down with swine flu this week, effectively stopping any vital last minute campaigning, the chance of upset probably went out the window. There are suggestions that the Green candidate, Rupert Read could have a chance due to the unusually high number of Green candidates sitting on local authorities in the area. But combined with the presence of the Liberal-Democrat April Pond, any left leaning vote is going to be split leaving the Tory candidate, Chloe Smith, a young high-flying Conservative who is tipped for an extremely bright future, favourite to win.
But the real question is what happens after the election is announced? If the win to the Tories is massive, the leadership rumbles surrounding Brown will inevitably start again. There already seems to be increasing mumblings coming from sectors of the Labour Party. On the 12th of July, a number of female MPs attacked Brown for being ‘laddish’, while just last week Former Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell spoke to the press about his resignation from the Cabinet before the local elections in June. By equating New Labour to Britpop by saying “it was absolutely right for its time, but that time was 1994″, Purnell tried to turn the knife in Brown. These are ominous omens indeed.
While Blair was Teflon Tony, Brown must be likened to an underdog boxcar boxer fighting Mike Tyson. Brown has been pummelled so badly, a normal man would have fallen, but somehow, he has held on. Every now and then, he looks like he has composed himself and maybe fighting back, but then he gets hit again and he begins to stagger. One suspects there is only a matter of time before that knock-out punch comes, but the question is, will it be sooner or later and how badly will he be injured after the Norwich North result?
When I hear the words ‘protest song’ I immediately think of some gnarly old hippy wheezing into a harmonica spouting wordy and ideological rubbish. And musically at least, this song is not much better, but perhaps it will mark the day social media gets taken seriously.
For anyone unfamiliar with United Breaks Guitars, its the work of a musician namd Dave Carroll who was moved to record it after United Airlines, er broke his guitar and were unsympathetic after doing so. Essentially a letter of complaint set to music, he posted it on YouTube and it got a lot of hits a week or two ago.
Since then, United’s share price has fallen by 10 per cent and mainstream media has suddenly shown an interest, with even BBC Breakfast running a story on it today. Is the fall in share price just down to the song? Of course not, although the publicity generated has not done United any favours in what is a difficult time for the business.
But it does bring social media and how companies manage their online brand and corporate reputation much more under the spotlight. When people start connecting YouTube videos to falling share prices (accurately or not) then business leaders will turn their attention pretty sharply to addresing this.
A few months ago Ruder Finn surveyed inhouse PROs about digital communications and a majority were still struggling to see ROI. Perhaps looking at it from this different persepctive - what happens if you don’t pay close attention to your brand online - will scare people into seeing its value?
A: When it dons a fake moustache and dark glasses and poses as an independent or boutique outlet.
So the backlash against the large corporate sterile environment moves up a pace today with news that Starbucks has opened three new coffee shops in the US, all unbranded stores and according to Brand republic “redesigned them to resemble independent local cafes.”
The aim of the move is to rid the company of its image of being overpriced but I think it runs the risk of seeming underhand to its customers with this “Glocal” stealth marketing exercise. With so much focus on supporting your local high street and buying from independent stores in many areas of this country, I think the UK would view this as little more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
