Here's a twist on the user-generated ad craze: instead of asking consumers to create an ad for their company, Frederick's of Hollywood is asking people to design their own corsets! The winning design will be shown alongside designs from celebrities such as Nicole Kidman and featured on the runway during its annual "Clothes Off Our Backs" charity auction.
Lots of companies are jumping on the consumer-generated craze. Dorito's asked users to create their Super Bowl commercial. Last week, we blogged about Heinz's contest asking users to create a t.v. spot for them. PayPal is getting in the act with a contest for developers. They're paying a whopping $10,000 to the developer who can come up with the best Facebook application using PayPal.
But none of the contests has my hubby's attention as much as the Frederick's one.
It was bound to happen eventually: online video recruitment. Sean Combs (a/k/a "Diddy") is looking for a helper to fill the shoes of his former assistant. But instead of résumés, Mr. Combs is accepting only video applications uploaded to YouTube. Qualifications? You've got to be able "to read," according to Diddy . . . oh, and you need a college degree. YouTube viewers will be able to vote on the finalists before Diddy makes his pick.
'Multi' Is the Most Dangerous Word in the Dictionary
Every time a new medium arrives, older media players think, "What an opportunity to extend our franchise." So magazines and newspapers and radio and TV outlets are jumping all over themselves to digitize their brands. Al Ries says it doesn't work and it won't work. Remember Al Ries? He and Jack Trout coined the term "positioning" decades ago. . . their book was required reading at my university. He makes an interesting and compelling case in this article.
Have a little ketchup with your Dorito's . . . Dorito's was the first big brand to ask users to create a commercial for them (the winning spot ran in the SuperBowl earlier this year); now Heinz is trying the same tactic. Look for special ads promoting the contest ON THE KETCHUP bottles themselves and on ketchup packets. The contest is being cross-promoted all over the place . . . from print ads in the NYT and USA Today to a custom YouTube site. (Photo is of my nephew cuddling up to his ketchup bottle.)
It worked for "Jericho." Can fans keep a magazine alive? Rumor has it that Time is shutting down Business 2.0 after its Sept. issue due to declining ad revenues (based on a bone-headed business decision to consolidate ad departments) even though circulation figures are strong. There's now a Facebook group dedicated to saving the magazine: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2420762508&ref=share.
What's the matter with Faith Hill? Well, since you asked . . .
Everybody knows (well most women know) that the women in ads and magazine spreads are seriously Photoshopped. Arms are made skinnier, moles are removed, wrinkles erased, etc. But we don't often get to see the "before" and "after" pics. Well, the folks at Jezebel thought we should see what the folks at Redbook were up to with a recent cover of Faith Hill. Once you get past the annoying animated "before" and "after," there is a link to a still photo of the before with notes on exactly what "improvements" were made. Ahem . . .
Advertising Age - Digital - Google Print Ads Now Used by 225 Newspapers
The Googling of newspaper ads. The newspaper industry has seen its ad revenues spiral downward for sometime now. Google came along to help by setting up an auction of sorts to sell newspaper's excess ad inventory. It worked well enough that they've now made it official and are offering ads in most major U.S. markets. Even the New York Times is for sale through Google Print. For those of you who thought Google was a search engine, think again. They are an advertising machine.
Now you can finally have a Homer ringtone. For the first time ever, The Simpsons are making mobile content available. Just in time for their big movie release. D'oh! Mmm, mobile: 'Simpsons' go cellular
CEO panned rival in anonymous Web postings | Tech News on ZDNet
When good companies go bad: The chief executive of Whole Foods Market posted messages on a Yahoo chat forum under an alias for years, talking up his own company while predicting a bleak future for Wild Oats Markets, the rival it has since sought to acquire. Company CEO John Mackey posted messages on a Yahoo financial forum under the user name "rahodeb," which is an alteration of his wife's name, "Deborah." The postings come across as mean-spirited which is at total odds with Mackey's reputation as a spiritual businessman who has created one of the fastest-growing companies and a perennial "top place to work." Not sure what he was thinking. Remember: every chance to interact with a customer is an opportunity to reinforce your brand. He blew it with this. (All the more so given how tech-savvy his customers likely are!)
You've heard about media convergence and you see more and more examples every day. Today's marketers are blending advertising, product placement, and plain old fun promotions all into one big marketing melting pot.
Take the promotion for the new "Bourne Identity" film, for example. Google and Volkswagen have product placement in the film. Google is featuring an online game (www.google.com/bourne) for which Volkswagen is providing the prizes. Mastercard and a few other companies are in on the prize deal, too.
All this and a cool way to promote what my hubby and I hope will be a cool movie.
PR Meets Web 2.0 and the "Social Media Press Release" is Born
Old-school press releases have been a dying breed for a while but the industry is just getting around to figuring out what to do next. Some of the major PR companies are now releasing multi-media releases that include rich media, text, and links and resemble blogs more than news releases. It's about time!
User generated content (UGC) is a big part of what is known as Web 2.0. It consists of sites where the content is provided by its users rather than by a staff of editors, writers, etc. The best-known UGC sites include MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia. They are more popular with the young, but are gaining traction with the over 25 set. And advertisers are taking notice.
To quote this article in AdWeek: "Ad spending on Web sites that have built their traffic on user-gen staples like social networking, photo sharing and amateur video is expected to soar to $4.3 billion in 2011, according to a new report issued by eMarketer. That's a whopping increase of 330 percent versus the $1 billion expected to be spent in the space this year—which is itself more than double the $450 million in ad revenue tracked by eMarketer in 2006."
I remember when I first started selling advertising on the web (back in 1997), the heavy majority of web users were male. That shifted quickly. Expect to see some form of UGC take off in the business world. Imagine using personalized "MySpace" technology to power your site's user groups, for example. (It already exists. Check out Atlanta-based ThePort.) Do you have any ideas on how UGC can be used in the business world? Post them in the Comments section.
Here’s the basic idea. If you’re willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone.But when it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all.In other words, if you have a wireless router at home or at the office, all your calls would be free and would not use any of your minutes. If you're at Starbucks, your calls are free, etc. The only time it can't call out over a Wi-Fi network is if you're at a place where you have to initiate through a web page first (like a hotel). But then you would use your regular minutes.
