okay. it's long overdue. let's talk about this commercial and marketing.
i recently read an interesting article about 'going viral' by Ivan Askwith from Big Spaceship on their company blog (ad agency in NYC.) ivan talks about what it means when a client asks for a 'viral marketing campaign' and how to deliver. i like his breakdown of it - essentially, a campaign cannot be made viral, unless the target audience decides to make it so - ivan expands on how to connect with people and make them want to share it with others. definitely a great read.
GETTING PAST VIRAL <------ link
old spice has been doing some awesome ad work lately. really great stuff. refreshing. every old spice commercial i can think of from the past few years have been great. give the director of marketing over there a raise.
let us not forget, however, that old spice isn't the ones making the commercials. they pay the big bucks to someone else to create. for this particular ad it was 'Wieden + Kennedy'
w+k website <----- link
the following is the making of video... it's pretty long but here's how i look at it. tool academy 3 is all reruns now... episodes you've already seen but for some reason you like to watch again (and by you, i mean me.) so skip those loud commercials and watch how they made this one :) smile face.
side thought: it's not enough to just have a website anymore. it's about CONNECTING with your target audience. how do most companies do it? they don't. that's the difference between 'success' and 'doing' - it's a really fine mixture of going to your audience + not suffocating your audience. people aren't stupid - you can't stuff your product down their throat. i use the word 'product' as opposed to 'brand' intentionally. (secret link of great ad that is a rebellion of stupid ads yelling at you to do stuff)
ingredients to approach audience without suffocating:
that last link there is kinda a big deal. companies have started to realize that there may be no plausible reason for actually visiting a corporate website. so instead of spending big cash monies on building and maintaining one... they've adapted. facebook. fan pages. i'm guessing that corporate websites are going to be replaced with fan pages within the next couple years
death of the corporate website <--------- link
i think the other HUGE thing is company blogs. i mean these things are wildly successful because you can get your audience hooked and coming back day after day. here are three huge companies that all have blogs.
adapt or die.
