Complex human nature

There might be an average person who corresponds to the image created by research companies. For example aged 25-35, works, has 2 kids, a dog and drives a Toyota. Stereotypes are easily adapted, but to really reach somebody, a marketer has to realise the complexity of a human nature.

Most marketing people make decisions according to research data. It’s not so black and white. Communities cross and if a person belongs to one group, does not matter that he/she can’t belong to another. For example if a customer flies first class and has higher income than average then it does not automatically mean that he/she likes to drink beer from glass and wear a white shirt and a tie.

Is cause marketing mainstream or not?

Cause-marketing is, to put it simply, when a non-profit organization and a business combine forces in a good cause. Usually non-profit organization provides PR and business provides ”resources”. A good worldwide example would be Product Red®. It was created to support The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria and includes companies such as Starbucks, Apple Computer, Motorola, Giorgio Armani, and The Gap as participants.

In Estonia some large corporations show their social responsibility mainly during Christmas time, where donations are collected for children, dogs and disabled people. In everyday advertising and PR noise cause-marketing messages do not make a relevant percentage, so they would be noticed enough.

While Estonian people seem to show some compassion only during Christmas or via shock advertising, then in US cause marketing seems to be getting mainstream. According to marketing survey by Cone, Inc. 89% of Americans (aged 13 to 25) would switch from one brand to another brand of a comparable product (and price) if the latter brand was associated with "good cause". The same study also indicated that a significant percentage surveyed would prefer to work for a company that was considered socially responsible. Asked if people hold a more positive image of companies that support causes, 92 percent said, “yes.”

A survey by Golin Harris showed that American consumers cared about:
1. Environment, Pollution

2. Education

3. Energy Conservation

4. Human Rights (e.g. - race, gender, lifestyle)

5. Consumer Rights

Estonian consumers have totally different priorities, which can be seen from the preferences made by corporations choosing partners for cooperation.

One very good and colourful example from cause-marketing in Estonia, in my opinion, would be Kaubamaja, a Department store.

Kaubamaja opened a newly renovated department for youth fashion. The colourful messages in the campaign spread the message of joie de vivre and all the profits from the badges sales go to social entrepreneurial program for youth called SINA. Not only is this campaign positive and full of life, it also carries a social message. People, who are not the target group, walking by and not getting very deep into the campaign, understand this just as a positive thought spread by Kaubamaja during hard times. This is like 2 in 1 campaign, which makes it even more genius, as it first seems.

As some parts of the world have discovered already the positive side of good causes and positive corporate image then let’s hope that in here more companies start to notice others around them also. I m not talking about the large corporations. They know already how to make it work for them. This could be a very good way to position themselves for a medium or small business and get the publicity and recognition needed. Only thing to remember is that the good thought could turn into bad publicity in a second, as consumers smell greediness. Sincerity sells.

Kit Kat launched "intriguing" website

Kit Kat launched a first worldwide website where nothing happens. The idea is to “have a break” form flashy websites.

http://www.thefirstworldwidewebsitewerenothinghappens.com/

• It’s not the first. In the majority of websites nothing happens actually. Nothing relevant to be accurate. 
  
• The address is so intriguingly long, that I do not even want to bother to type it in. Only way for people, who really want to see it, is to click on the URL somewhere - like in here.
  
• Luckily they have thought of the people who can't spell right and registered URL- s with some words misspelled. As this does not direct to the correctly spelled domain, many people truly believe that Kit Kat has made a mistake in registering the domain name. This creates a buzz. Buzz is good.  

Y Water

Ever heard about the “impossible” tasks to sell ice to the Eskimos etc? Mission impossible seems also to sell water to the children. Although water is essential, water is boooooring as hell and tastes like... nothing. Well, if you can’t sell plain water, think further and add something little extra, to make it special. Add functionality that attracts the parents and design that makes kids go crazy.

Y Water is playful, interesting and seems to make kids healthier, opposite to the traditional beverages sold in stores. It comes in four options: brain water, immune water, muscle water and bone water. Even if the children have consumed all the content and the bottle is empty, they can link all the bottles together with knots and live out wildest fantasies constructing whatever comes to their mind and give a new life to the empty bottles.

I like the website. Its childlike and playful, yet gives factual product information to the parents at the same time.

But still there is on little but. There is still sugar inside. How can you call it "water", when it contains also sugar? So here’s a lesson. How to sell water to children? Put sugar inside and make it colourful. Some little extras like design and functionality would be nice also.

Tricky social marketing campaign for teens

Syke seems to be a new hip energy drink. Campaign has taken over US TV, print, Internet and music events targeted to teenagers.

Campaign is divided into three phases:
1. Introduce Syke through extreme ads to the target group and make them interact with the brand. Syke is presented as the ultimate drink making life awesome.
2. Introduce 9 new “super awesome” ingredients that are also actually the most dangerous chemicals found in cigarettes.
3. Total public collapse of Syke energy drink and shame. It is being introduced as dangerous as cigarettes and fake chief executive of the fake company disgraced and the fake product pulled from fake shelves.

The marketers believe that the target group first acknowledges the brand and takes it seriously. The bad things happening to the energy drink and the final revelation are believed to be refreshing and they believe that teenagers take the message coming from Syke more seriously as from some unknown advertiser.

The Warren Commission Report report says the highest rates of smoking are in the subcultures whose identities are tied up in a look and an attitude. Syke firsthand creates an attitude and look level teenagers want to look up to and after speak to them from that platform created.

As average teenager is not anymore as “Mainstream Floater” but far more complex, then campaign created is supposed to reach everybody who is not a “Mainstream Floater”. They built their strategy around the tastes of a composite subculture. Pretty funny content on the web site. Go check it out. Although I’m not sure about the outcome of this campaign. Scary pictures of tainted lungs work well for me. But I’m not a teenager either.

Indigestion problems?

Simple and clear campaign for GastroMilk, an indigestion medicine.

WOM via Product Placement

First look at these two videos and tell me how many differences do you find?





Reasons for this concealment are not today’s topic, perhaps because I really do not know the reasons. WOM is.

Lately I have gone deep into WOM strategies. Totally useless. The foolproof ones are the ones that always work 100 %. I’m talking about e.g. product placement through celebrity key influencers (where choosing the right one, concerning the target group, might be the only science). The cost of this foolproof strategy might be high to pay. I do not even want to know how much Bentley and Rolex paid to be in James Bond movies, or M.A.C, DeSquared and Motorola paid for A&M Records to be in Fergie's music video showed above. That’s where some other WOM strategies seem to come handy. Although WOM is not generated for free, there are less expensive and cleverer ways to keep the good word circulating. And wouldn't it be exciting to create some all on your own... someday.

Love me tender... or else

Valentines Day is coming. Do not forget it… or else.

It does not matter that you think its Hallmark or Interflora day. What matters is that majority of people (read: women) think it’s the day celebrating romantic love. Why not take advantage of it ?

Here’s Agent Provocateur giving you a soft reminder aswell. Watch video.

"Welcome to Estonia" brand to be hijacked

It was 5 days ago when I was wondering that “Welcome to Estonia” should be reconsidered. Didn’t take even a year. Done.

The new approach to the “Welcome to Estonia” changed the slogan “Positively transforming” into “Positively surprising”. Good choice. I like surprises, who doesn’t? Digging deeper into the new brand book and website, released by EAS, I realize that this all is a big brief to what’s up to come.

Instead of directing all resources out of Estonia, this time the attention in pointed to local inhabitants, to enhance the self-consciousness of local people, so they could be the best delegates to the world. In case somebody has forgotten our roots and essence, EAS has put together very thorough brand book. A guide to the Estonia (n)‘ s soul. It also gives guidelines what to tell when creating an advertising message for “Welcome to Estonia” or for somebody who is just short in words. Guidelines are created for four major groups:

• Tourists (tourism) 
  
• Businessmen (business) 
  
• Temporary students and inhabitants (immigration)
  
• Native Estonians (inner-tourism)

The workgroup seems fairly professional, the studies conducted thorough and time passed from previous campaign has been long enough to learn from mistakes. As we are dealing with “surprises” here, then I believe in Estonian people’s creativity and boldness. We are the people of innovation. We are small, we can afford it.

At least now nobody can say that the new campaign is boring, bad or ineffective as everybody has a chance to speak up or create their own communication ideas, which are better.

It seems that the workgroup has also read the book by Alex Wipperfurth “Brand Hijack- Marketing without Marketing”. Giving the power to the people. It has many pros and cons, in this case i hope the pros will win.

Commitment

Commitments share a common line of behavior. I’m talking about the commitments that start thunderstorms and really exist, not those de jure commitments, that nobody cares about. Husband and wife, parent and a child, employer and employee, brand and the people. You have to work for keeping it strong and vital. Sometimes the work pays off, sometimes all the efforts turn into peanuts. Even Coca Cola has to work for a stronger commitment level. Here’s a thought: even if you have it all, dont stop trying.

Destination promotion

Brilliant, just brilliant. Give the potential clients what they want and they do all the work for you. Especially in the economical and psychological situation as we live in today, where everybody is just looking for the perfect getaway.

Lately Great Barrier Reef madness has taken over the world. They call it “The Best Job In The World”; I call it “The best advertising possible for the destination”. This is so brilliant it makes me shiver.
According to The New York Times within 24 hours, more than 200,000 prospective applicants had visited the Web site advertising the job, islandreefjob.com. Applicants must submit a 60-second video application, and 11 finalists will be flown from their home countries to the island in May for the final selection process. The application deadline is Feb. 22.

In exchange for the $100,000 pay, a free stay in an oceanfront villa and plane tickets, the employee will be required to “manage” the island and what’s most important keep a blog about the everyday life. That’s what gives this campaign a longer lifecycle and gives reason to the world to talk about.

Another good example to promote a destination via what people really want: www.pomegranatephone.com , which is great viral for Nova Scotia.

Should "Welcome to Estonia " be reconsidered? Kadri Tuisk

What’s good about today?

• Market is full and saturated and seems that there is only room for a big clean up and reorganisation.
  
• As people are frustrated, they believe in the new messiah.
  
• Highly qualified people are available or looking for new opportunities.
  
• Everything collapses in order to reinvent itself in the new molecular level.
  
• What an amazing opportunity for marketers to do something that could actually change something. Just be brave enough and pick up the berries.
  
• Every end is the begging for something big and new.
  
• And it seems that grass is also greener today - or is it just me? Kadri Tuisk

The American Dream

I’ve been following a marketing stunt made by Doritos. It s not a very innovative idea, totally ordinary in fact, but as the stakes are high, it caught attraction. Everybody had a chance to earn/win 1 million dollars by making Super Bowl ad for Doritos. The reason according to The Wall Street Journal is that PepsiCo wants to outmaster Budweiser who has been number one in Super Bowl ads. The creator of the chosen ad wins million dollars, if the ad tops number one in USA TODAY'S annual Ad Meter.

Where did they advertise and what was the responce?

The five lucky finalists are

1. "Free Doritos," Joe Herbert, Batesville, IN

2. "New Flavor Pitch," Oren Brimer, New York, NY

3. "Power of the Crunch," Eric Heimbold, Venice, CA

4. "The Chase," Chris Roberts, Burbank, CA

5. "Too Delicious," Michael Goubeaux, Los Angeles, CA

The excitement is held in the air and the winner will be not revealed before Super Bowl Sunday.

My favorite is "The Chase".

Cross-channel purchase journey

Last month our agency was visited by a Finnish duo from Oneexperience ® who talked about determining a customer’s shopping route. If you know how your customer acts, you know when is the right time to contact him/her. This gives the marketer the possibility to correct the channels used for reaching the customer. For example you could find out that nobody read the direct mail you spent fortune on last year or the buying decision was made while talking to friends, so message on TVC should be reconsidered, to tell the customer what they really want to hear at that certain time.

Definitely a very useful tool for companies who have one certain field of activity. For example car retailers, mobile operators etc. It's pretty expensive toy though, but I’m sure in the longer run optimizing the media mix pays off and no need for producing marketing materials that annoy everybody, are expensive and useless. Who does not want to learn the art of pushing the right buttons?

Make My Logo Bigger Cream

Finally something reasonable for the marketing managers who are struggling with ad agencies over a logo size. Do-it-yourself kit. Marketing manager is happy for not having to pop up this embarrasing request, again, to the ad agency and ad agency can produce creative solutions with unnoticeable small logos which do not ruin great art work. Suitable for sending to competitions.

Great self- publicity though. I like. Kadri Tuisk

The biggest discount ever

While driving to work every morning I used to enjoy the witty, sometimes silly radio spots that entertained me. Now all I hear is biggest discount ever, sale, cheaper prizes etc. Unsatisfying - I switch the channel. In the evening, while watching TV, I used to enjoy advertisements even more than the program itself. It engaged me with its entertaining content and made me think. About the product, company behind it, brief and the creative process. Now I see short flash animated numbers showing me how cheap everything is. Where is the creativity? Now is the time to do something different, although I understand the lack of budget…but still I want to be entertained and engaged - not sold the prize to. I do not connect to the numbers, I connect to emotions. Please somebody surprise me (easier said than done).

Dark Temptation

While watching an ad always the first thought in my head is - how was the brief written. In this ad this is so easy to predict - everything is clear. Every (healthy) man dreams that a woman would tell him “ I wanna eat you up”. What if all women would want to do that? Majority of women loves chocolate. What happens when we combine these two thoughts? We get a product that makes men sweet as chocolate and all women craving for a bite. Axe Dark Temptation - View video.

Although the idea is brilliant and simple the website seems to repel people older than teenagers, which makes me think who is the target group? Young teenage boys dreaming of female attention?

GOODVERTISING and BADVERTISING

Since Contagious has taken into use the term GOODVERTISING to illustrate advertisers positive role in ethical marketing and business practice, It has created unwillingly another term BADVERTISING. Or actually I do not know weather the egg came before the chicken or vice versa. It does not even matter. What matters is that advertising creates emotions, buzz and reason to talk. And reason for me to write this blog.