Ok. Gonna tell you a little secret….
I know we can get caught in our rut of, “how much bigger do I have to make this logo,” “must EVERYTHING have to be sketched, comped, and spelled out to buy off on just the concept?,” or “do I have to work with the brand marketing all-star team from the 60’s?”
But on my way to meetings yesterday, I got a quick reminder of how lucky we are. I was riding on the interstate and saw a car on the freeway hit the guard rail only to be thrown into oncoming traffic. This reminded…
“After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars. On Feb. 23, the company announced it would bow to consumer demand and scrap the new packaging, designed by Peter Arnell. It had been on the market less than two months.”
It never fails to amaze me how we spend so much time, money and effort looking for answers and then so little time listening or learning from them.
A great example of this are focus groups. A staple of advertising and marketing insights and behavior. I have never stopped learning from consumer insights.
It’s the venue that is used to extract value that I am calling out here…
Focus groups really work my last nerve because the setting is not congruent with the shopping experience. I put a lot of stock into surveying shoppers in the aisles at retail, the point of impact…
“PepsiCo… is bowing to public demand and scrapping the changes made to a flagship product, Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice. Redesigned packaging that was introduced in early January is being discontinued… and the previous version will be brought back in the next month.”
What Can You Pack Into A SNAPSIL? A great delivery system that is so unique in it’s product innovation, I believe that we will be seeing a lot of SNAPSIL for a very long time. Remember that you heard it here first!
SNAPSIL is a proprietary portion control sample and utensil that combines both an industrial design sensibility that makes so much sense and it’s tactile ease-of-use for a high level of functionality and flexibility. The promotional possibilities and opportunity SNAPSIL offers is the icing on the cake. This is an outstanding example of problem solving at it’s best and it richly deserves…
I learned about this company On Product Publishing about a year or so ago and was intrigued by their unique delivery system of combining promotional publishing content in a multiple of formats and varied executions.
Besides stupid people and abject nonsense, they’re a given. We all do things that don’t help our own cause and make what we normally do very fluidly, into a battle and a struggle. Shalu Wasu a creative consultant with a terrific website that offers some great “reminders” on how not to be your own worse enemy. It is a simple, effective read that will be useful: http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/15-elephant-tethers-that-stop-you-from-being-creative/
Here’s a taste of what Shalu Wasu identifies as the many things creatives use to tether themselves to failure:
1. What will people think?
2. But I’ve never had any great ideas!
3. What is the right answer?
4. I don’t…
Successful branding is all about “BEHAVIOURAL MOMENTS” that are a set of actions that happen in the real world that actually drive sales an repeat business. “Once you decide, We Are Not In The Image Business, We Are In The Behavior Business, It Empowers A Different Conversation About Everything.”
PRISM is an industry-wide Shopper Marketing initiative that was universally well-received, intended to measure in-store media on a par with other media using similar measurement standards.
10 – Our Troops all coming home ahead of time, safely and being appreciated for doing an impossible job!
9 – More Talented, Smart Creative people being rehired in Advertising
8 – The Ad Industry coming to their senses that Creatives are the muscle that drives our industry
7 – The economy rebounds from the current melt down as fast as possible!
6 – The price of gas continues to plunge and we’re paying under a buck a gallon by February and it doesn’t stop going down there… (Oil companies going under would make my millenium!)
5 – Wall Street Interlopers, Scum Bag Politicians, Predatory…
10 – More Jerry Seinfeld-Bill Gates Microsoft commercials (Give up, you suck!)
9 - More GEICO Caveman and GECKO commercials (Unwatchable)
8 - Any Advertising of any kind with Paris Hilton in it (Just go away already)
7 - Any Political Campaign ad or commercial… (I think we had our fill in 2008 to last a lifetime?)
6 - Any Politician saying “I approved this commercial.” (If you can’t put together a good tv spot,
how can you think you can run anything?”)
5 – Stop talking about “Change We Can Believe In” (and actually start DOING some of that change!)
4 – More New Brand launches…
Shopper Marketing is the employment of any marketing stimuli that has been developed based on a deep understanding of shopper behavior, and which is designed to build brand equity, engage the shopper and lead him/her to make a purchase. It can range from on?pack promotion to price promotions, placement, point-of-sales activity or sampling.
Shapeshifter Media has been at the forefront of this category with their patented process method for representing an image on a stepped surface and staircase. Very often, the more challenging the physical nature of the “odd ball” type of area to work with, the more interesting the result is. “Destination Brand Engagement!”
Professionally speaking, some people get all giddy over things that most others would find very strange. For me, it’s POP/POS/Displays! I always have and always will get a thrill, kick out of and smile from going out into stores and movie theaters and seeing what the brands and entertainment companies are doing when it comes to POP/POS/Displays. I went back to the stores a few thousand times to ask the managers for these displays, standees, POS, etc. They realized that it was easier to give in to me and give me the object my obsession, just to get rid of me. I loved the dimensional nature. The size. Maybe it was the stench of stale popcorn and corrugate? Who knows?
clients are always looking for maximum impact that is invertly proprtionate to the their acceptable level of investment! the secret of survival in trench warfare is “Adapt, Overcome and then Make It Happen!”
necessity in bad times always delivers creative and unique solutions.
Want a good laugh that you can share with your friends to end the week and start the weekend off with? Go to this site and have fun! I think that we all need it, all things considered! http://www.tatuagemdaboa.com.br Brazilian actress Juliana Paes has been the face of Brazilian beer company Antartica’s BOA Brand and is the reigning celebrity hottie in Brazil. Really cool rich media initiative here.
Take 30 seconds and enter your name on the first two entries and then hit “VISUALIZAR” and enjoy the fun. You don’t have to speak or understand Portuguese to get a laugh out of this…
Antarctica’s BOA Brand is…
The upcoming IN-STORE MARKETING EXPO, NOVEMBER 13-13 IN LAS VEGAS has far surpassed the annual GLOBAL SHOP Show in Chicago as the place to see the next big thing in Experiential Marketing.
We are really living in Bizarro World where the ambitious are savaged and attacked and become outcasts and the shortcut takers and the corner cutters of the world dominate the workplace culture to deem who is “in” and who is out! The standards set for creatives in the agency or design world are not a level playing field and the fact that we accomplish so much, but receive a disproportionate amount of credit or security for our accomplishments is proof positive of the inequities.
Marx, Stalin and Lenin would spin in their collective red graves knowing that Soviet Communism has been relegated to the dust bin of history and now they are capitalist marketing tools!
Many say that beer and liquor companies have an unfair advantage because they have massive budgets to work with. I say they do have an unfair adavantage to do standout work because they have the will to do what other brands only pay lip service to do.
I hate to see a couple get divorced, especially over an end-aisle display for beer. That was the catalyst for the very surprising Betty Draper reaching her breaking point that made her kick hubby Don Draper’s lying, cheating ass to the curb in this past weekend’s enstalment of MAD MEN. Their positioning statement of “Where The Truth Lies” was never more evident as the second season really heats up this fall.
Duck Phillips is apparently on a roll and he enlists Don’s help in getting Heineken Beer, thanks to stealth thinking to set up some in-store retail, end-aisle displays for the beer…
One of the great by-products of being on the Shopper Marketing – Promotional side of the ad 
industry is that we are finally getting the respect and budgets we sorely deserve. I feel professionally vindicated that as a part of the industry that was always derisively referred to as “Below-The-Line” with disdain by the general agency side. Not that long ago agencies looked at all things promotional like it was dirt under their fingernails and doing that kind of work was beneath them. Now the general agencies are trying to reinvent themselves as shopper marketing experts to prove to their clients…
Last night’s fourth episode of Season 2 of MAD MEN kicked up the intensity level a lot on multiple levels. Its never any fun to be in the position where you have to make a major pitch knowing that you have no chance to win a client’s business. Finding out that another agency has the inside track and your participation is an exercise in shaking up the status quo really sucks and is demoralizing. Happens all the time. It gets worse every time you go through it. Being invited to the party and not getting asked to dance really sucks on every…
Joel 
