Using pop-up brand experiences and stores are well known but rarely well done in the industry. This was an interesting article from the Dallas Morning News about their use and a good reminder that the combination of creating purchase urgency and consumer discovery can make great things happen. 

Cope says: "Our slogan is, ‘The gallery guaranteed to close.’ I like the fact that it’s temporary, that you can only come on weekends. You kind of have to be in the know."

Strick believes that’s the value of pop-ups. "It’s that currency of being ‘in the know’ and also, you can be that current," he says, citing "Modern Ruin" as a prime example. "You can decide to do something, let people know immediately, and do it right then. You don’t have to buy ads or make a poster." 

Gotta love PETA.  The animal rights activists recently made news that they would mock the ubiquitous Tiger Woods sex scandal in a billboard reminding people to fix their animals:

Tiger Woods was not amused by a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) campaign which planned to poke fun at his sleazy shenanigans, the New York Post reported Friday.

The animal rights organization intended to run billboards bearing the golfing star’s face with the slogan: "Too much sex can be a bad thing … for little tigers too. Help keep cats (and dogs) out of trouble: Always spay or neuter."

But lawyers for Woods threatened to sue the activists if they used his once-valuable image in their campaign, which aimed to prevent millions of abandoned cats and dogs from being euthanized at shelters each year."

PETA has a brand that is known for its shocking methods for getting a message out.  Therefore, in this case, the mere threat/idea/notion tied to pop culture relevance became newsworthy and spread like wildfire. Millions of impressions in talk value and national awareness - try to find me a billboard that can do that…

Lesson: It’s the idea, not the tactic.

There’s a lesson in the "lesser Olympics" for marketers who are faced with building brands and generating interest in the unknown.

NBC successfully took an uphill battle with the Winter Olympics by building equity in athletes most of us never heard of like Vonn and Evan and so on. They did it by generating human interest stories that the general public could connect with.  And viewership followed.  NBC then beat American Idol at its own game at the ratings podium for the first time in a long time.

A real connection makes people care, and that goes a long way.

Interesting NYTimes article about the annual marketing exercise in subverting expensive sponsorship rights while cashing in on the cultural context. 

It is an American marketing ritual, a kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink around existing trademark law.

Only the N.F.L.’s authorized sponsors of this product or that service can use trademarks like “Super Bowl.”

Those without official ties to the league — even the ones spending at least $2.4 million for a 30-second ad on the CBS broadcast of Sunday’s game — are banned from using trademarked terms for fear that they will ambush the sponsors.

Stay tuned for March Mayhem too. 

The public gets it.  Sponsorship, marketing, etc.  You can’t own social context as a trademark; a big game is a big game by association with this time of year.  But per the example above, Super Bowl sponsor says something different than Big Game. And for those in the official sponsorship game, I do think there is a consumer sense of premium-ness or authenticity for those brands associated with the actual sponsorship. But I also think that alone rarely justifies the expense of the property. 

The better assessment is related to how the property or sponsorship can appropriately build the consumer takeaway one is reinforcing about one’s own brand.  Awareness is one thing, but the right awareness can be another all together.  The sponsorship should reinforce your brand as a tool; one’s brand and benefit should not be retrofitted to make sense for a sponsorship.

This campaign for employment of American’s with disabilities (thinkbeyondthelabel.com) made me think about a common point we make to clients all the time.  No touchpoint should be underestimated, and every one is an opportunity to make a memorable impression for a brand.  Oh, it’s just a direct mail piece.  Just a business card.  Just some body copy. Psh. 

 Well the folks in charge of this campaign for state agencies might have said the same thing - just a Public Service Announcement.  Instead, they are paying for media and trying to send their message into people’s heads in a creative way. (Plus, The NY Times Ad can’t hurt - good employer target and all)

Typically, ads that seek to make a case for employing people with disabilities run as public service announcements. That makes them dependent on the kindness of media outlets to place them prominently on television, in print or online.

“We’ll never have enough money to oversaturate the media,” said Barbara Otto, executive director at Health and Disability Advocates in Chicago, which is overseeing the campaign, “but we wanted to do something different, something that didn’t look like a P.S.A.”

To that end, the campaign takes a light-hearted tack rather than a sober or earnest tone. The ads try to challenge conventional wisdom about workers with disabilities by offering humorous examples of people with “differences” already employed.

For instance, in a television commercial, a worker in a wheelchair points out her colleagues who “you could label as ‘different.’ ” Among them are a woman dressed in a nightmare wardrobe of clashing patterns, who is “fashion deficient”; a klutzy young man at the copier, who is “copy incapable”; and a shouting man who suffers from “volume control syndrome.”

 

Coke is a brilliant marketing machine - you’d have to be to try and "own" something like happiness.  All with simple, gleeful executions like this. 

This video just happened to climb beyond 1MM views in less than 3 weeks. Took a brand-centered, buzzworthy event and packaged it for the world to see over and over again. 

Interesting video showing the how/why of Facebook success for IKEA.  The promotional overlay is an interesting twist to get the buzz ball rolling.

This video I heard about from TechEBlog made me think. It shows real people (how real, you never know - thanks CGI) encountering one-in-a-million occurrences, all clipped together for 3 minutes of "Huh, can’t believe it." 

It reminded me of this as it might pertain to marketing and consumer engagement:

When our lives are all truly connected like this as never before in the world, one-in-a-million happens more often than the common cliche is supposed to mean.  So, it’s important that we build brands that can communicate about and respond to those one-in-a-million consumer encounters with our products and services. Good and bad, these encounters are available for the world to see. And they can take on a life of their own if we don’t earn the consumer respect as real, honest brands that get the benefit of the doubt - as echoed here by Seth. 

Marketing is the mouthpiece of the brand.  And it is also the earpiece.

Tough economy meets elevated retailer expectations meets Holiday volume period. The annual game is on, and this year, online retailers are getting all woot.com, the Dallas-based company that created a cult following around the one-a-day deal. We have mentioned how we like what Woot does and how they do it, and now the big dogs are taking notes.  From The Dallas Morning News (full article here):

Countdown clocks are ticking all over the Internet with deeply discounted 24-hour deals this year.

J.C. Penney Co. has added a "daily deal" to jcp.com, and Target.com has one-day-only "daily deals." Penney created screenbusters, playing off the brick-and-mortar world’s doorbusters.

Walmart.com calls its urgent deal the "value of the day" and offers several online-only specials "while supplies last."

Plano-based Dealtaker.com, an online coupon site, recently launched Newatnoon.com to feature 24-hour specials from retailers looking for more of a multi-channel reach. It recently featured 24-hour deals from Gordon’s Jewelry, Overstock.com, Kohl’s, Penney, Aeropostale, buy.com and others that have Web sites but want a bigger reach online.

The 24-hour concept is similar to that popularized by Dallas-based Woot.com, a Web site that offers one-day deals. But Woot also has branched out to offer limited-time discounts from other retailers. On Friday, it featured a $15 men’s waterproof, quilted puffer vest from Macy’s.

Consumers aren’t parting with their dollars like they once did (way way back when, it seems). And the brands that will capture their attention are ones that go beyond a transaction and into a memorable experience.  Deal-a-day brings a little suprise and delight (and urgency) worth talking about to the shopping process. It worked for Woot, and now other retailers are hoping for a little Holiday magic of their own.

Lesson to all marketers: How can we get beyond the transaction and add a little value to the experience our brands can offer?

A printer we work with once asked me a question: what’s the difference between junk mail and direct mail?  The answer: the person reading it.  Very true - value is defined by your audience, and our job as marketers is to connect value between the target and the product/service. In fact, we’re not picking on direct mail here at all - the tactic really doesn’t matter if it doesn’t connect relative to the investment. It’s just junk.

So, this week I got a piece of direct mail’s virtual cousin, an e-blast.  I get them often, and the ding is usually followed by Delete.  But I played this one out, with added curiosity since it’s from an online usability resource - got to be good, right?  So I’ll ask you - e-junk or e-mail?

[NOTE: This is not an endorsement for Omniture - Ignite has not worked with them to date]

The email:

Click to play the game: (couldn’t see the whole screen when I played, so I missed out on some info)

Likes:

1. Well targeted, and qualifies the audience upfront in the subject line

2. Challenging (with no commitment) call to action to learn more

3. Clever, interactive way to prove expertise - a lot better than a boring series of case studies

4. Unique enough to tell a friend - heck, I’m talking about it here

Opportunities:

1. Dial up the creative - I know you’re going for Pac Man era, but still

2. Use a more graphic-friendly introduction in the email itself

3. Not formatted for small screens, and I imagine a lot of the audience is rolling laptop