Sunday, November 18, 2012

Smart Campaign Shows Dumb Ways to Die

Whenever some great advertising campaign comes along, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about it and wondering what made it so good. So there is this song in my head for the last 30 hours which came out of a little animation on youtube. It was shared by at least five people on my facebook so I had to have a look.



Turns out that this video is actually a community safety message put out by Metro Trains in Melbourne. Makes sense because the first time I saw the video, I didn't realise it was an ad and was  thinking about how good it would be if it were part of an advertising campaign.

Was even better surprise to read a guest post on Mumbrella from one of the creators of this ad who helped to explain how the ad came to be.

"The music itself was obviously vital. We were adamant that this couldn’t be an advertising piece of music – we wanted this to exist as a song in its own right. Fair to say the composer nailed it.
The rest of the time was spent making the video as funny and likeable as possible. Not just that, but to load it with so many moments, you finish watching it and want to watch it again.
Anyone who’s ever made a commercial knows that there always comes a point when you’ve seen/heard it so many times during production that it drives you insane. But with Dumb Ways to Die, that moment never came. We’d all seen and heard it a hundred times, yet whenever it aired in the agency, people still stopped to look."

Check out the rest of the article here.


Monday, September 24, 2012

Hungry Jack's Implements Shake and Win App for Freebies

This is probably the cleverest promotion I've seen from a fast food company in years!


Hungry Jack's has come out with an iPhone App which gives away free food items every day to potential customers within 1km of any Hungry Jack's store. Once you are in range, activate the app and shake your phone to find out what the closest store is offering you. Let's say you win a Whopper, the timer will start counting down from 20 minutes during which you are able to claim your giveaway.

This is a clever app because it is not just giving away free food items.
  1. Hungry Jacks is making people more consciously aware of their stores nearby. The more you have HJs in your head, the more likely you are going to stop by. 
  2. By offering a giveaway with a time limit attached to it, they are turning their foot traffic, or rather, road traffic, into more potential sales. The countdown introduces a fear-of-loss aspect to the giveaway, leading to more spur of the moment purchases than they would have achieved.
  3. The app also promotes the fun side of Hungry Jacks, requiring customers to shake their phone to get their deal. Potentially, this can make people more likely to talk about the offer to friends that are nearby. If you have a school near HJs you can imagine kids shaking their iphones at 3:30pm seeing whether they should drop by HJs with their friends
  4. Having the app only available on iPhone means that there will be another flurry of interest when it finally gets developed and released for Android users. 
So what do you think of Hungry Jack's app strategy?

EDIT: If you have a Samsung Galaxy II or III, Galaxy Nexus or other Android phone, the Hungry Jacks shake and win app is now available for download as well! Check it out here.

6/10/12 - It seems that this promotion is over. Quite a few stores that we tried recently all said "Sorry all prized have been claimed at this location for the current time".


Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Salsa's Two Free Tacos for Mexican Olympic Medals

There is a recent promotion by the Australian answer to Taco Bell, Salsa's Mex Grill which takes advantage of the Olympics in a clever little way. Salsa's Facebook page has the following banner.

Check out how many likes they have now

They are offering two free tacos to every person that shows up between 2pm - 3pm at their stores on every day that Mexico wins ANY Olympics medals.

This is a clever promotion for quite a few reasons.

Their Facebook page comes alive with this each day Mexico wins a medal

First of all, when you are running a food outlet, any time you are not earning money, you are losing money. Between lunch and dinner time, your staff are being paid to wipe down the counter, talk to each other and stare blankly into space. It is better to use that time to promote your products without cannibalizing your lunch and dinner sales. Giving away two tacos is a small amount to pay for introducing your tacos to potentially a first time customer. This is especially important when you are a new kid on the block.

Secondly Salsa's is increasing their mindshare amongst the general public (that know about the promotion) by making people think about Salsa's every time they look at a medal count.

Thirdly they are linking customers' word association with Mexico to Salsa's so that next time you think about Mexican food, their shops come to mind.

Fourthly if they do get a nice long queue in front of their stores at 2pm, it will make people around their stores wonder what's going on. Not only is word being spread on social media, people in the immediate proximity of the stores will also notice a fast food chain that they might not have noticed before.

So what do you think?

Thursday, June 21, 2012

EDIT Comments Now Allowed on Facebook

Facebook has just rolled out a feature that is just another step in the right direction for the social media juggernaut. They now allow you to edit comments that you make to your and other people's posts. The edit history can also be seen. The only exception is that you can't edit your original post which makes sense because you could have a thread like this: Go Miami Heat Nah, Miami sucks, go Thunder! EDIT original post Go Thunder Nah, Miami sucks, go Thunder! So do you like the new change that facebook is rolling out? You can finally go back and make corrections to those typos in your comments rather than sheepishly deleting the comment and re-posting it.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

CBA Can-pain revs up for Olympics

Commonwealth Bank who was the subject of various ambush marketing campaigns when they launched their CAN campaign, has started to roll out the CAN ads with quite a clever inclusion of their upcoming sponsorship Olympics. I can admit that during my workout after seeing these ads, CAN'T suddenly came to mind.

NAB Rolls Out Honesty Campaign

Once again answering the perennial question about how to convince an audience that a bank can be trusted is the National Australia Bank's latest ad campaign "Honesty shouldn't go Unrewarded" where a lost property stunt is staged to acknowledge honest bystanders who hand in lost property in a shopping centre.

When the person hands in the lost property, their photo is taken and then re-broadcast on various digital screens around the shopping centre acknowledging their honesty, with one even superimposing the do-gooder on a supposed news item. Check it out and tell me and leave a comment if you didn't smile at this promotion. NAB, great strategy!

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Nokia Australia's Amazing Everyday Begins Tomorrow

We've been told that Nokia will be going all out in promoting their Nokia Lumia phones starting tomorrow across the country with a promotion strategy that you will be hearing about very, very soon. 1 March 2012 people will start googling and coming to this site hoping to get some answers. We hope that everyone will leave their comments about what they've noticed in their city.

Nokia print advertising has already started to appear in Melbourne's TimeOut publication featuring Windows tiles which are characteristic of the Windows Phones. How big is this promotion? Let's see tomorrow... but for now, check out what's been happening for Amazing Everyday promotions in Belgium, Denmark or India..




And Nokia in Singapore


If you were wondering where you heard this "Amazing Everyday" promotion before, perhaps it was Hyundai's "Everyday Amazing" ads earlier last year?

Monday, February 13, 2012

How does a Multinational Monitor Social Media?



How does a multinational company such as Nokia watch how you behave on social media with their brand? Here is a video of a "heads up display" view of Nokia's social presence which has been set up in Nokia's headquarters in Espoo, Finland. This six screen command centre gives Nokia employees the opportunity to see how people around the world are reacting to their new product launches and where they sit in terms of social media conversations. You have to admit, that is a pretty awesome set up and one that probably your social media specialist (if you have one) ought to have running in their office.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Bonds 12 Days of Christmas

Over the Christmas holiday season, TV viewers were polarised by the BONDS Aussie remake (or rather distortion) of the 12 Days of Christmas. Here it is for the sake of argument. Ad makers say that when the audience is polarised, then they have succeeded with their ad campaign. So I guess you call this success? Well it definitely stuck in my mind, but not sure whether it made me want to buy BONDS for someone's Christmas present.. thoughts?

Thursday, January 12, 2012

#smokedbywindowsphone at the CES

At the CES 2012, every promotion
1. bring in a crowd
2. leave an impression
3. send people off with a message to share

This promotion was very simple. Give away $100 to anyone who is able to update their Facebook and Twitter with the same message message faster than the Windows Phone representative. However, if you lose, you need take a mug shot holding up a sign that says "My phone just got smoked by Windows Phone". Check out the video for the execution. Great strategy!