Some time ago I compiled a rather entertaining presentation about Nando's and some of the incredible work they've done in the marketing world since walking the old lady into a street pole. (See the end of this post)
Well, last week Nando's did it again, releasing the "meal for 6 campaign" featuring Bob Mugabe and some of his buddies, including PW Botha, Amin, Hussein and Guddafi.
The ad itself is hilarious, and a little controversial, which we know to be a good mix for social success. What I loved about the campaign was the fact that Nando's could probably have stood back and watched the views come in, but they still went out to handpicked bloggers around South Africa with a guy dressed as Robert Mugabe holding a Nando's USB and a meal voucher. Nando's do an incredible job of leveraging WOM in South Africa, and later today @Whatleydude should be sharing a few more thoughts on that over at 1000heads.com...so will keep you updated.
In the last week I've become pretty obsessed with advertising and marketing campaigns...in fact, what actually happened, is that I had a shot of advertising-heroin when I went to the Cannes Lions festival in France last week thanks to the work I get to do for Nokia.
Cannes didn't inspire me to achieve something that seemed glamorous or unobtainable, it showed me that I'm already doing something that I love and find fascinating on a daily basis.
For someone who's been in this industry for almost three years, I'd like to think that knowing who and what David Ogilvy was all about would be a standard, but the way I see it, three years isn't a very long time...and I'm not here to feed you rubbish, so I'll be honest...I knew the agency, but I never knew the man.
Last week was the 100th birthday celebration of the late David Ogilvy, I looked into who he was when I got back to London yesterday and came across the awesome video you see below (via AdWeek) Watch and then read on...
After seeing this video, I realised just why it is I love my work...
Advertising encompasses a variety of disciplines, finely crafted together to bring great ideas to the surface and well executed campaigns to the consumer.
We appreciate, study and atempt to predict human behaviour.
We interact with, respond to and approch new people every day
And finally, we take art, film, philosophy, mathematics, music, geaography, history, language and a variety of other ingredients to use in the marketing mix of awesome!
We have an immense potential to learn and teach...how we choose to do those things is what will differentiate us in the end.
Just some of the "many" quotes from Ogilvy that will surely stay with me throughout my career:
"If you can't advertise yourself, what hope have you of being able to advertise anything else?" David Ogilvy
"Be more ambitious, don’t bunt. Aim out of the park. Compete with the immortals" David Ogilvy
"Try and inject into every commercial you make, a touch of singularity..."David Ogilvy
"It's the lack of ambition which cripples most people and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising creative business" David Ogilvy
"Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating. You can't bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them in buying it." David Ogilvy
I've become obsessed with Ted talks...I've seen everything from a 22 year old poet who brought a crowd of people to their feet, to a sexy sounding South American who talks about monkeys who solve conflict by having sex all day...it's been interesting.
So today I settle down to watch the latest in these delicious eye-ball treats for my odious journey home on the tube. My choice: "Handspring Puppet Company: The genius puppetry behind War Horse"
Then I realise...I'd actually love to see that oddly incredible puppet thing walk the stage in real life...so off I go to Google, only to crash as I realise the poster below is the actual play in which the horse performs...
Why strange? Well besides the fact that the play is now over, my eyes must have glanced over that poster around 100 times since I first recalled seeing it 3/4 months ago. I could actually remember the times I saw your annoying horse eye peering at me while I ignore everyone on the escalator. For all intents and purposes, you may as well have shown me this:
What marketers and the knobs who put the War horse poster together need to learn, is that perceptions will always influence a persons idea of what you're trying to sell.
You put a giant horse on a picture with a cool name, I'm going to assume it's something boring...or horse racing. If I'm a fan of horse racing, I'd most likely prefer a pint and football to an educated experience at the theatre...so who are you targeting? The educated few who know the production and wonder why bookies have defaced their precious master piece? Even better...would you find these educated few in a tube station?
If you have a story as awesome to tell as the one in the TED video, why in Charlie Sheen's name did you not use it to sell your brand? And yes...it's a brand. Tomorrow someone could easily reply to my post with a "But we sold out every day for 3 months you shit!" that's great Sparky, but if you didn't advertise like a knob you'd have spent 1/4 of the costs next time round. So basically - go save a family in Africa or produce another dumb ass poster.
I'll make your job real easy...
There! Done in Powerpoint in under 5min...now pay me £20,000+ you idiots.
Between bloody walls in German nightclubs, zombie stationary and interactive horror movies, 13th Street is by far one of my favourite sources for inspiration in the world of marketing & advertising.
13th Street is a tv channel specialising in action, suspense and horror...which means we're off to a pretty good start already :)
Their use of experiential and Guerrilla marketing has truly made using these "buzz" words plausible. So below are a couple examples from 13th Street I could find and a short description of what they're all about. I can only hope there's more to find and more to come, as the level of awesomeness here would probably have W+K pissing on the street corner if they knew what kind of budgets these guys were working with.
1. "Blood bath" room installation
13th street wanted to promote the channel to their key audience in Germany, whilst sticking to the themes of the channel and obviously doing something that people would remeber. That's why in the video below you can see what the agency, Jung von Matt, did to drive that nail in the head...
2. "Last call" interactive horror
To keep this short and to the point, the challenge here was that the audience should experience horror as never before. The idea, the first interactive horror movie in theaters.
3. 13th Street "Stationary of Horror"
Not a lot of explanation needed here, the pics below are what you'll see if you ever get a fax/proposal from 13th Street in Germany. This is their corporate stationary and something I'm sure any employee or potential client will surely never forget.
4. 13th Street print ads
So moving away from Germany, another country who has a dedicated 13th Street channel is Spain. The wicked print ads you see below, playfully mock the stereotypical furniture/home ads you usually see every day. I'd love to see the billboard jackers pin these up all over a home store sometime ;)
I really love finding cool shit like this online, simply because inspiration is all we need to innovate. Once you have a desire to do something, improve on something or completely change something that inspires you (or pisses you off)...you have the two key ingredients: PASSION & MOTIVATION
Anyways, props to JVM, the agency behind each of these great ideas, glad to see that even though I can't speak your language, you guys are still showing me your awesomeness in videos and pictures. 13th Street FTW!
Let me start this off by saying that these ads are NOT the actual voice of actor Morgan Freeman, they are the works of American comedian/actor Josh Robert Thompson who's got some pretty funny Holywood impressions up his sleeve (see video below this picture), and secondly...they're still pretty awesome :)
A few months back B.J. Lawsonand his "Lawson for congress" campaign raised quite a stir when the fools used a Morgan Freeman sounding voice in one of their ads...not stupid...but publicly announcing that it WAS Morgan Freeman when it clearly wasn't is when they screwed the pooch.
On a lighter note, the below ads have recently been released by insurance company Morethan, and even though they're treading the fine line between brilliance and Morgan Freeman's prison boot up their ass...I kinda dig it, and the fact that they stuck to the Shawshank Redemption theme makes them all the more brilliant in my opinion.
Well, we'll wait and see the reactions...little bit of bitching happening already from what I can see. You can also check the making of video at the end of this post...any initial thought are more than welcome, just don't even think about ripping off Shawshank Redemption as one of the greatest movies of all time ;)
Making of:
Pete Markey, marketing director of More Th>n, says "We want to build the brand – More Th>n is now 10-years old. Insurance is a serious business, and although we want to continue to show intelligent humour [in our ads], we don’t want to be silly."
BMW have created one seriously wicked cinema advertising campaign...one that takes you back to the good old days when you'd stare at the sun and close your eyes to see how long the image would stay burned on the backdrop of your eyelids!
The vid below shows how they went about using this same concept (without burning your retina) to offer a pretty cool experience to the viewers in the cinema.
No logo was used in the ad at all, and the ad itself featuring Ruben Xaus happens to be pretty awesome, which makes the whole thing work a lot better.
These guys aired an ad back in 2007 for the "Made of lovely stuff" campaign which seemed like an episode of Cake boss crossed with My little pony, anyway, this was all for their Skoda Fabia, a pretty dull looking car that probably carried enough fuel to feed a zippo.
Now...in the menacing year of 2010 they've released an new ad! And this is where the story gets pretty awesome...
The new ad has taken a very clever twist on the original to promote it's new version of the Fabia, the vRS, which Evo describes as "...but with 228lb ft of torque it has Alfa 147 GTA-humbling muscle"
The new ad is so incredibly opposite to what the original was, that I wouldn't be surprised if the guys at Fallon, the ad company, sat around their oak desks sipping whiskey and smoking cigars while contemplating the idea of a 3 year long ad campaign..."Ok, so get this...we make the car...out of cake! But then, but then...in the future when they finally learn how to make faster engines...we have an ad with vipers and samurai swords!"
Anyway, the new campaign is called "Made of Meaner stuff"...simple, effective, awesome! Enjoy the vid:
Check out the website as well, thanks to AdFreak for always getting me fired up enough to write something ;)
Just saw the ad aired on TV tonight...it's amazing how, no matter how many places you've seen an ad or heard a song...it always seems to solidify itself in TV/RADIO
