Ice Box Locks?

Everyone knows Ben and Jerry’s make some of the best ice cream around.  In fact, once a pint goes in the fridge, it’s hard to control those ‘everyones’ from eating ‘your’ ice cream.

Thus this pint-sized invention.

Instead of spending money on hidden cameras that survive deep-freezer temps, the marketing guys at Ben and Jerry’s found a less expensive solution:  the “Euphori-Lock”!

This combination lock attaches to the lid of a Ben and Jerry’s pint so you and only you can get that much needed calcium.

While we know this is somewhat fanciful (right, midnight-snack Dad?), the genius of marketing this is the implied irresistibility of Ben & Jerry’s creamy concoctions.

And the lengths lactate lovers will go to protect their Cherry Garcia or Americone Dream.

Maybe to extend this ‘campaign’ B&J can set up text alerts with functionality, reminding you of your ice cream break -- or alerting you to an ice cream break-in.

Social Media for the Social Drinker

In honor of Oktoberfest starting late September, we’d like to honor innovations brewing in beer marketing.

Many beer brands have joined Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.  Hey, drinking’s a social thing.

But a tip of our hat (or tap of the pint) to the Guinness marketing team for devising a clever campaign that includes QR codes. 

Sure, everyone does QR codes now. 

But Guinness has done the rest one better, putting their QR codes on beer mugs.

And since Guinness beer is a dark, or stout beer, the QR code becomes visible only when the beer is full.

When you scan the mug using your smartphone, it tweets about your pint, updates your Facebook status, checks you in via Foursquare, downloads coupons and promotions, invites your friends to join you. 

Now your significant other can log on to Facebook, see how many pints you’ve really had, and check out which bar you’re at via Foursquare. 

Sorry all you light colored pilsners – your mugs won’t work.  Of course, depending on your significant other, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Prust.

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/guinness-qr-cup-reveals-scannable-code-when-full-140602

Got a Light, Bulb?

Anti-smoking ads are as plentiful as butts at a nicotine convention. And they’re often mocked by the intended target audience for trying too hard.

But this Thai anti-smoking campaign from Ogilvy has a core idea that grabs even smokers in the act.

It didn’t take graphs, spooky facts, scare tactics, or even riffs on classic cigarette ads, as some anti-smoking spots have done.  It simply highlighted an age-old tack of having those addicted warn others not to make the same mistake.  

The effect hits hardest when the audience sees the light bulb go off for the smokers – as these planted kids cause the smokers to simply warn themselves.

As we see it, this ‘advice to kids’ angle might be an interesting insight to help highlight a number of things adults do that they’d warn kids against doing.  Bike helmets, anyone?

So yes, kids say the darndest things.  And they also can cause us to question the darned adults we have become.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u-rhnV4l08

London Olympics a Non-Event?

Many advertisers don’t appear to be as hot with Olympic fever this year.

For example, the London Evening Standard thought they’d end up with a bunch of cash from media sales, but their eBay-style ad auction proved them wrong. The bidding war (or lack there of) surprised many when expectations came in lower than the score on a pole vaulter using a bendy straw.

As a result, there’s still plenty of room for outdoor advertising around London. So, if you’ve got an extra hundred million (pounds, that is) laying around, put it to good use.

Overall, the the games cost $15 billion, but the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has only raised $2 billion in sponsorship gold.

For that $13 billion differential, they could buy out the real Olympic birthplace, Greece, post-default….

The LOCOG have also installed some tight rules to ensure non-sponsors don’t get in the games:
• Logos from non-sponsors are being covered up with tape in public places (including the ‘loo!’)
• Athletes are restriced from using Olympic symbols in blogging/social media (#freedom of expression?)
• “Advertising police” can raid any potentially unauthorized advertising areas and fine offenders 20,000 pounds

Like rampant parking meter maids, that’s one way to gain revenue. But whatever happened to love of the game…or Games?

http://www.businessinsider.com/london-olympics-advertising-restrictions-2012-5#heres-how-london-envisions-your-olympic-experience-10

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/london-2012-olympics-sponsors_n_1546466.html?ref=advertising

Oodles of Google Doodles

Google’s frequent Doodle homepages add a splash of sparkle to our web surfing. 

Would you have known Earth Day if Google hadn't transformed their logo in tribute?

Nice calendar reminder function, eh?  Bet you didn’t know when Frank Lloyd Wright’s birthday was either.  More indispensable water cooler trivia.

Google has created 300 Doodles in the U.S since ‘98 when their genesis was actually laziness and happenstance.

Their first Doodle displayed the Burning Man image, and told users the site

would be running unattended, like an “out of office” note.   But the

Burning Man bloop sparked a revolution, or at least a habitual bit of differentiation on the tabula rasa that is Google’s starkly simple home page. 

 

Now Google creates many Doodles commemorating events like the Venus transit, LEGO’s 50^th anniversary, and Robert Moog’s birthday – ya know, the guy who invented the electronic synthesizer.

Anyway, Google Doodles are fun, visual reminders about events or random facts you can’t live without.  Kinda like what Google gets you every second of every day, right?  

 

Why the Long Facebook?

Considering the public’s limited attention span, Facebook should be proud of its longevity in Net years. Surveys show, however, that its popularity is fading -- and not just on Wall Street after the botched IPO:

"The online poll (Reuters/Ipsos) also found that 34 percent of Facebook users surveyed were spending less time on the website than six months ago"(Reuters)

So if users are expressing a decrease in satisfaction, why do they keep using it?

Connection is a key component, of course.

But also, long before the web, we’ve had an innate desire to broadcast to others about ourselves, from wearing logoed clothes to putting alma mater labels on den walls or car windows.  Social media simply provides us with another outlet to satisfy this desire.

Plus, Facebook has made it more constant, and convenient.  

In fact, comments posted on articles discussing dissatisfaction with Facebook were posted on none other than...Facebook.

So despite analysts predicting its imminent demise via dwindling satisfaction, we won’t stop using it unless something else becomes more appealing, more convenient, or, as they say in college where Facebook started, more ‘popular.’ 

But buying Pinterest, auto-face-recognition for tagging, and having loads of cash would make anyone popular on campus, right?

Bump It Up

Bump is a new app that allows users to transfer photos from phone to computer, wirelessly.

How is that anything new? Well, all you have to do is bump your phone (iPhone/Driod) to your computer and, voila, the pix on your phone are transferred.

By tapping your phone to the spacebar, the sensors and Bump’s cloud activate, and it transfers the pics. So, for those of us who keep losing our connector cords, we love the wireless ways of Bump.

The spacebar is not just a spacebar anymore -- now it’s now pic magnet.

And if Instagram sold for $2 BN, maybe this app will see a valuation…bump

GET ON YOUR BUTT AND GO TO COLLEGE!

Yale, Harvard, MIT, and other big name institutes of higher learning are now putting some if not all of their college courses online for FREE.  Amazing.

Not to be political, but do we really need a big push for government-backed college loans?  Especially when that debt burden alone is almost $100 Billion?

Feels like Pell grants should shift to Dell grants -- along with free Wi-Fi for the nation.

Partisan for the artisan comments aside, it's thrills us to know all one needs is a healthy internet connection to tap into the biggest brains that are teaching the biggest brains on the planet.  

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/march/online-courses-mitchell-030612.html

http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

The implications are pretty huge:

• knowledge is now even more democratized than ever

• there are no place-based boundaries even to higher ed

• there's hope that continued unleashing of knowledge will raise humanity up higher, Guttenberg-revolution style

Of course, motivation, wisdom, and the ability to apply learnings are what make the difference between productive intelligence and well-read sloths.

Plus, these classes are basically online audits.  There is no credit, or diploma given.

But given Zuckerberg, Gates, and other notable billionaire innovators dropped out of Harvard and the like, maybe higher ed is really about learning that you were smart enough on your own to begin with -- and that sheepskin ain't all that it's worth.  

That said, we'd say FREE is worth a lot -- coupled with a motivation to succeed.

That 90's Look on Facebook

If Mark Zuckerberg were born 10 years earlier, would Facebook have been invented in the ’90s?
Maybe not, given the Web was still in version 1.0.

But thanks to technology and humorists, we can now picture a past where users crank up their dial-up connections to browse “The Facebook”...in Netscape...mailing in grainy pictures to slowly upload at “The Facebook Company.”

This intentionally hokey video underlines the light-speed evolution of the Internet age and how comfortable we’ve become living a far-more digital life.

Better yet?  Enjoy what Google might have looked like If it were invented in the ’80s

Of course, there’s also humor If Angry Birds were an ’80s home computer game.

So few pixels...such a simple time.

http://www.squirrel-monkey.com 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrYRH3PYYT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8vCEg5k_d4

Social Media, Mass Media, Me Media

As Twitter and other social media outlets continue to gain 140 character traction, it's worth noting how old media is leveraging it.

Yes, man on the street output on TV and consumer radio call ins have been feedback fodder for decades, but never before has individualized chatter been so readily rolled up to show opinion, buzz, and topic title trends with such speed.

Now Bluefin Labs, a social media measurement company, is working with ABC News to bring to life the aggregate of social media mumbling on the single talking head TV news reports.   

Together, they immediately ranked Super Bowl ads.  All hail the Doritos cat-snuffing dog.  And they showed real time reactions to GOP debates (not that the anachronistic talking head structure merits real time feedback, but still...)

An interesting 'mashable' of elements here -- social media showing up for partnership with old media.  And a one-voice, individual expression vehicle getting plugged back into a bigger megaphone by being rolled up into a mass voice once again.

Hmmmm -- maybe our #tinyURL linked blog writing on #social media, #Bluefin labs and #ABC, can be rolled up with others for #GeorgeStephanapolous' next script -- just remove the #tag.

 http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/02/abc-news-and-bluefin-labs-will-collaborate-for-social-tv-analysis-of-major-events-in-the-2012-campaign/

http://www.lostremote.com/2011/12/19/abc-news-debuts-political-site-with-social-stock-market/

The Tao of Brand Naming

As Western brands become increasingly ubiquitous in China, the business of translating foreign product names into Chinese has been elevated to the level of science.

Corporations looking to introduce a new brand to the Chinese market must contend with business, linguistic, market, and cultural factors.  Big brands like Coca-Cola and Tide employ consultants, analysis, and complex computer programs to choose names that are not only pleasing to the Chinese ear, but also to the Chinese heart and mind as well.

For example, Coke’s Chinese moniker (Ke Ko Ke Le) is not only phonetically similar to the English name, it literally translates into “Tasty fun,” capturing the essence of the global brand in a way that’s appealing and understandable to Chinese consumers.

There’s no one size fits all formula for choosing an international brand name, but it’s key to note that:

• Naming can be crucial in defining the core brand for a new audience -- OR can be an opportunity to redefine it
• Simple name translation isn’t enough; like domestic needs, alliteration, conveying an emotional high-ground, and more than one meaning, all will help with the impact
• Cultural sensitivity can make or break a brand -- for example, Microsoft’s Bing engine was renamed in China since “bing” connotes disease and virus in their language

As Chinese consumers become increasingly brand savvy, a well chosen name is a strategic move in capturing market share and long-term loyalty.

In the global marketplace, a brand by any other name is... well, profitable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/world/asia/picking-brand-names-in-china-is-a-business-itself.html?ref=asia
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/11/12/world/asia/chinese-products-in-translation.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

There's No Business Like Ad Business

A couple of wise guys in the ad industry (there are so many of them, aren’t there?) have created a series of Internet memes poking fun at various ad agency types.

There’s the Junior Copywriter, the Junior Art Director, and of course, the high and mighty Creative Director:

If you can’t get enough of the tongue-in-cheek satire, there’s also Douchey Account Guy, a Tumblr documenting inane bits of account guy speak such as, “We need to make this as clear, and as nebulous, as possible.”

Whether you're in advertising or another industry, the ability to laugh at yourself proves that you still have a grip on reality and your own ego.

We're all Mad Men after all.

http://www.quickmeme.com/Junior-Copywriter/popular/1/?upcoming

http://www.quickmeme.com/Junior-Art-Director/?upcoming http://www.quickmeme.com/Creative-Director/?upcoming http://doucheyaccountguy.tumblr.com/

Cheese or Font, That is the Question

Here at Bandwidth Marketing, we pride ourselves on our esoteric knowledge of many things.  For instance, discerning the difference between the name of a type face and the name of a cheese.

When we stumbled across a site that let us put our expertise to the test, it was like Christmas all over again.

Cheese or Font is a quick little time-waster that presents you with a series of words and asks you to classify each as a type of cheese or type face/font. Sounds easy, but it gets tricky and addictive.

With every incorrect answer, you feel the frustrating need to prove you are an educated, sophisticated person who can smell a stilton or kern a cambrian!

Cheese or Font is proof that a small, clever idea, simply executed, can be highly effective. The site now has 500 followers on Twitter and almost 1.5 million plays, so try it out for yourself.

Now why do we suddenly have a hankering for crackers and MS Word?

http://cheeseorfont.com/