A combination of cheap kid's meals and Xbox games means increased same-store sales for Burger King compared to last year, which has executives in the company doing a more than a little embarrassing happy dance in the corporate hallways. While busting a move they're also prepping for the launch of their breakfast value meal, which they're hoping will lead to more happy dancing.- Saatchi went a courtin' they did right....hambone. Saatchi went a courtin' they did right...hambone. Saatchi went a courtin' they did right, the Wendy's account is out of sight, Saatchi went a courtin' they did right...hambone.
- Pampered pups get park promotion. The story about high end canine fashion earns my eternal gratitude for including the phrases "doggy style" and "rich bitch."
AdAge in 6 Sets of 10 Seconds
Slow down for cardboard cop
I don't think I'm the only one who's often fooled by ersatz police cars. If a car has any kind of device or attachment on the roof (like a bike rack) I immediately think it's a cop car. I often panic, veer off the road, drive into a cornfield, and unload my cargo of bootleg Barry Manilow CDs and counterfeit Bibles before ditching my car in a nearby river. Then I murder a hobo and wear his face like a mask until I feel it's safe to be seen in public again.
Anyway, this billboard for a bank in Turkey where you can pay traffic tickets has a fake police car placed behind it so that drivers will instinctively slow down and see the billboard, which reads, "Pay your traffic tickets on time without waiting in line." I think it's a clever idea, and if I were a cop, I'd actually hide my patrol car behind the fake one. That would really mess with a person's head.
Unfortunate billboard placement number 2438
FishNChimps found these two billboards. There's nothing wrong with either of them, really. They're not spectacular, but they're simple and get the point across. Unfortunately, when you put them together it doesn't exactly send the most positive message. I don't pretend to know everything there is to know about advertising, but having a recruitment billboard for the Marines hanging over another billboard advertising a funeral home just doesn't seem like a good idea. Although, if you think about it, the placement doesn't really hurt the funeral home at all. if anything, they should consider more juxtapositions like this.Please, please watch the Oscars
ABC is hoping you will watch the Oscars and has tapped host Ellen DeGeneres to star in a series of spots to help convince you. The ads, according to the New York Times, are humorous in nature as an appeal to a mass an audience as possible. That's a departure from the campaigns from previous years which tried to use the mystique of the Academy Awards as the primary incentive to watch.In addition to the DeGeneres starring ads there are also TV spots directed by Spike Lee showing movie fans reciting famous movie dialogue. That same dialogue is the central focus of the official poster created for the 2007 awards. Outdoor and print ads featuring individual lines of dialogue will also be released.
The size of the audience, though, is largely dependent on the type of films nominated for awards. Mass market films will draw a larger audience than a ceremony filled with niche films. That's an important point for ABC since projected audience is, of course, the number it will use when negotiating commercial advertising rates with potential buyers. The Oscar telecast is viewed as the second-most important TV ad outlet of the year after the Super Bowl. Because of the more female-skewing nature of the Oscars a different set of advertisers often show up. Dove, for instance, will be promoting its Cream Body Wash during the ceremony.
The price ABC is asking for the Oscar broadcast is a far cry from the Super Bowl's, though, at $1.7 million for a 30-second spot compared to the $2.6 million CBS has listed for the Super Bowl.
101 Dumbest Moments in Business
So many dumb moments in business, so little time. But Business 2.0 mag has their picks for the 101 dumbest of 2006.
Wal-Mart is #1, for hiring a big firm to create their "Candidate Wal-Mart" campaign. #2 is Northwest Airlines, for giving their employees a "How To Save Money" booklet after laying them off. #3 is the contest McDonald's held in Japan, with the winners getting free mp3 players with a virus on them. The rest of the top 10 are GM, Kazakhstan, Steve Wynn, The New York Times, Spirit Air, Porter County, and Comcast.
There are 101 in all, so grab a hot beverage and get comfortable. You can't see the entire list on one page, which is a little annoying, but there is a handy scroll function at the bottom.
GPS users don't want ads either
Yesterday I posted on how people didn't really want to watch ads in exchange for free online video. Similar stories have been written about mobile devices and the slowness with which people have become comfortable with ads being delivered to them. Next up are GPS devices. While the gadgets are beginning to become more popular, with 30 percent of U.S. households now having one or planning to buy one this year, their usefulness as an ad platform remains murky at best. 75 percent of respondents have voiced extreme displeasure at the thought of receiving unsolicited ads on their devices. That's likely because GPS systems are utilitarian in nature, serving to replace paper maps and make finding things easier because of the ability to search.
Less than half of respondents to the survey, 44 percent, even express a willingness to have directions to restaurants and attractions delivered without their asking for it. While the MediaPost story doesn't give explicit numbers on this, it's easy to assume based on the other responses that a good deal of GPS users would be open to ads being served to them if they were permission-based or were part of a profile the user had filled out signaling certain areas of interest.
Clarkson signs with NASCAR
Kelly Clarkson, formerly of "American Idol" will be appearing in a TV spot for NASCAR and also begin making appearances at racetracks across the country. This is the first time NASCAR has used a non-race celebrity in its advertising.Wait, this is real? What do you mean? I thought I was dreaming this. Oh my...I don't know how to process this. Someone tell me this isn't actually happening...it puts the lotion in the basket...it puts the lotion in the basket....
Atlanta museum to host tribute to Cartoon Network advertising
If you wake up and find yourself in Atlanta between February 1 and May 19, mosey on over to the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) and check out "Design at Play: The High Design and Low-Brow Humor of Cartoon Network," an exhibit dedicated to advertising and promotional work created by the men and women of Cartoon Network, which is also based in Atlanta. The exhibit will cover three galleries at the MODA and will include formal demonstrations of how the company creates ads for television, billboards and the Web. Some of the shows featured in the exhibit will include My Gym Partner's a Monkey; Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends; Camp Lazlo; Ed, Edd and Eddy and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. The exhibit will also feature a look at the work of Craig McCracken, creator of The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.
Ads while you wait - literally
This has probably been a dirty little secret in the advertising world for some time now. Outdoor advertisers love traffic congestion and back-ups. Such traffic problems mean prolonged exposure to the billboards and other ads along the highways and byways as people commute back and forth. That means, as old-media as outdoor advertising might seem, it still has tremendous value and indeed revenue has grown consistently over the last five or six years. Here's the problem I always had with outdoor ads, though: How do you measure success? If it's just eyeballs then that's fine. Have fun with that. But is there a real way to draw a line between those eyeballs and sales? If you run a billboard in Oak Park (just outside Chicago) do you then figure X% of sales in Chicago were because of that ad? And if so, do you realize that's an arbitrary number? I'm seriously asking, where's the sales numbers accountibility when it comes to outdoor advertising? Seems to me that because of the fluidity of traffic it's the least measurable since where the person sees an ad and any subsequent purchase can be so far apart that measurement is almost impossible.
Pepsi messes with the packaging
Pepsi has announced two new campaigns, one revolving around the Super Bowl and one not, but both involving futzing with their packaging. The first is this push, scheduled to launch in February, that will have the soft drink company changing the look of its packaging every few weeks in 2007. Considering that's three times more than the look of the drink has changed in over 100 years, that's a big deal. The constantly shifting packaging is part of an attempt to become more of a "cool kids" drink and will also include asking people to design a billboard that will be displayed in New York City's Times Square in April.
The Super Bowl-related promotion also involves Pepsi's packaging, but in a much different way. As part of its sponsorship of the game's halftime show it's asking people to register and get a code at SuperBowl.com/pepsi. The person with the winning code wins not only Super Bowl tickets for life but also a jewel-bedecked can valued at $100,000. That's right, a $100,000 piece of Pepsi bling. If this is the rec room conversation starter you've been waiting for go register and good luck to you.
The future of digital billboards
First off, someone points out that those fancy digital billboards that are constantly shifting images might be a safety hazard. Where have I heard that before? Oh right, when I said it.Second, there's speculation - centered around a patent filing - that Google might be developing an automated system for the selling of and eventual display of ads on these digital billboards. Advertisers would bid on keywords like they do now in AdWords but then specify where and when they want those ads to be displayed.
As usual, Google getting into this would be a game-changer. I'm betting such a move would lead to the sudden creation of a ton more signs in order to capitalize on the opportunities suddenly available.
Chicago's Metra sticks with Clear Channel
Every morning I take the Metra train from the suburbs into Chicago and every day I reverse that commute. God willing, I'll continue to do that for some time and, should that come to pass, I'll have ads delivered by Clear Channel to enjoy while doing so. The rail service provider has just renewed their agreement with the outdoor ad provider until 2022, an agreement that will not only have Clear Channel continuing to provide ads to current inventory but also expand along with Metra. I was actually thinking about this yesterday morning and was surprised there weren't more ads within the train car itself. Right now ads are pretty limited to a couple of laptop-sized signs in the entryway to the train car but there's a lot more space that could be utilized. I'm surprised that, since I read every other week that the Metra leadership has fought valiantly to keep ticket prices down, that they haven't explored just how much potential ad inventory they're not selling.
Nickelodeon expands promotion in Germany with Nickland
Nickland, a new section of Movie Park Germany opening April of this year, will be the first Nickelodeon-themed attraction in Europe. The new "adventure zone" will feature rides, attractions and costumed characters from such shows as Jimmy Neutron, My Life As a Teenage Robot, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer, The Backyardigans and Danny Phantom.
Nickland will also allow Nickelodeon and Movie Park Germany to create co-branded campaigns within the park, and to increase advertising on Nickelodeon's German network, Nick in Germany as the popularity of the Nickelodeon brand continues to grow in Germany.
I'm not drinking coffee out of the street!
I'm sorry, call me stuck-up, call me pious, call me midwesterner (I am in fact) but I don't like to drink me coffee right out of the street. You don't know where that cup of coffee has been, or rather what (or who) has been near that cup of coffee. What if bird poo lands in it from the sky in mid-sip? What if Professor von Hadtoomuchtodrink falls in and pukes all over, I don't want that in my coffee, not to mention the safety hazards for whats-his-name falling into hot liquid while inebriated. Nothing against the professor. Nothing against Folgers, I just would rather have my coffee handed to me by an employee of a coffee establishment where I know that because of the morning rush, they haven't had my coffee in hand for more than a half second or so. When will they have time to put anything weird into my coffee like bird poo, puke, or gravel? Last time I checked, coffee joints (who don't put the coffee in the street for you) don't employ birds indoors nor generally have a professor hanging around with a hangover. Sounds good to me.Fake clams advertise seafood
Oh sure, putting fake clams on the beach with ads for your seafood restaurant inside them might seem like a good idea, but what happens when you mistake a real clam for one of these fake ones and the real clam drags you into the ocean into its secret underwater clam cave and you become the main course in an unholy clam feast, hundreds of clams around you chanting their horrible clam chants while you simmer in a gigantic fondue pot? Seriously, do these people think before they create guerrilla ads like this?
Hang on, someone just told me clams don't actually do that. I guess I do like this advertisement after all. Also, the International Clam Council has asked me to apologize, so I'm terribly sorry.
