This impressed me! I mean the technical use of google earth could have been optimized bla bla bla, but the idea to use it and the way it was done in combination with all the other graphical elements and windows popping up was just plain cool.
Very cool (music too)!
Interesting different approach by Adidas. Still not beating Nike in my mind
World Cup 2010 is coming soon and we all know that means a lot of fantastic football and entertainment, but it also means a lot of big business. The eyes of billions of television viewers, an estimated three million international visitors and an unnumbered large sport journalist crowd will be focused on this event. Especially products directed to the male population fits right in at event like this. A high profile international event like this is a golden opportunity for the large international power brands to come out and play – Puma, Adidas and Nike are of course no exception to this.
In this blog post I will focus on the TV spots of the sports brands Puma, Adidas and Nike.
Adidas
Puma
NIKE
Analyzing a TV ad (or any other ads for that matter) is all in all very difficult as it all comes down to what ever objectives the advertisers have and in the end if the majority of the target audience are convinced by the ad. Therefore this post will be flavored with my own personal preferences.
To me a good football trailer/ad for a world cup like this could have the following ingredients;
The Adidas spot is 30″. To me it really is a tribute to the game with the kids playing in the bare feet. It doesn’t have any stars in the spot however but I am actually not missing it since it is a different story to tell here. It is definitely using the culture of South Africa, very well indeed -- this is actually among the strongest elements in this spot with the kids playing and kicking a home made ball. It is also in respect to the poverty in the country that they are not running around in expensive Adidas shoes and it is also in respect to this element (I think) that they do not use overpaid football stars. The music is spot on and supports the ad very well with its African tones. To me it doesn’t create any anticipation for the tournament at all, but again I don’t think that this was the purpose of the spot. The end with the characteristic three lines being painted on the foot is genius. It rounds up the spot and it embraces the universe that spot is made in.
The Puma spot is app. 1 min and 30 seconds which makes it more like a trailer than a TV spot. It is shot by Syrup (global advertising agency for PUMA Teamsport), and it is the latest in the LOVE=FOOTBALL campaign which is everything from chalk drawings and stickers to websites, billboards and now this. I think one of the strongest elements of the spot is the tribute to the game (Love = football). The passion for football is really showing and especially it conveys the emotions that football creates for the audience as well as players. It doesn’t have a lot of stars in it compared to the Nike spot, but it does some players in it -- nothing that would really impress a european kid (Samuel Eto’o, Gervinho, Emmanuel Eboue and Mohammed Zidan). As with the Adidias spot Puma also uses the culture of South Africa in their spot. Again here the focus is also on the fact that the host for the tournament isn’t that wealthy but still have the passion for football. It is for sure a strong image to convey as it is a sign of POWER and strong commitment, but from a marketing point of view it is not the best communication in my opinion from the sole reason that everyone uses it -- the positioning is therefore not that unique. The music is from Gnarls Barkley and I think it supports the spot quite well. The logo signature is only a few seconds in the end so if this is your first rendevouz with the campaign message (like it was for me) then you might end up not remembering who the sender was. I am not sure that I connect the campaign message directly to the brand. So all in all I think the spot is ok, but not really outside the box and I would be concerned that the audience wouldn’t remember the sender of the spot.
The Nike spot is a bit longer than 3 minutes. The spot is directed by the Hollywood Director and Producer Alejandro G. Iñarritu (21 Grams, Babel) and it is featuring all the famous soccer spree stars; Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Fabio Cannavaro, Franck Ribery, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Patrice Evra, Gerard Pique, Ronaldinho, Landon Donovan, Tim Howard, Thiago Silva and Ronaldinho. The latter has not been picked for the Brazilian national team for this tournament so I guess this has probably been a discussion at the executives weekly round table discussions at Wieden + Kennedy (Wieden + Kennedy shot the spot).
To me the Nike spot is the best of the three. They manage to show emersion, passion, how important this game is and they have a good emotional tagline with “Write the story”. I am as a viewer not questioning who the sender is as they manage to show their logo in numerous occasions e.g. the billboard, the sponsorship on the pitch etc. I think the logos are shown quite subtle without the integration getting too corny. What they don’t use is the culture of South Africa. Basically it could have a trailer for any tournament. It doesn’t bring the spot down in any way though, it actually sets it apart from the other spots out there. All three spots(+actually Coke and Pepsi) use the African culture in some way in their spot but Nike writes history. Thumbs up (I wonder what their budget for this was 
)
Coke an Pepsi both made a spot in relation to the upcoming Soccer World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Which one do you think is best and why?
I normally operate with marketing on the Nordic market consisting of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. People outside often see this market as one, whereas people living in on of these five countries all know there is a lot of differences amongst them. We can even break this further down in each country, e.g. in Denmark people will definitely say that there is a difference between Copenhagen and the people living in ”Jutland” and people in Copenhagen will also say there is a difference in mentality whether you are living north, south, east or west. Tons of articles and papers have been written on culture.
So I believe it is fair to say that if different cultures (tribes) exist everywhere then they will also exist in online communities.
So what kind of implications can this have?
1/ When you drive new consumers into the pool of your online community (e.g. fanbook fan page), you should consider what the new recruits would give to the community.
So if you for example own a facebook fan group that is normally very active and seldom super negative to your updates, your consideration might be that it would be very nice to double the size of that community. The impact of doubling your fanbase can be quite significant on the culture. The comments can be more harsh (or more positive), the comments can increase, the quality of the comments can degrade or increase. It all comes down to what the new opt-ins carry in their luggage in terms of online culture.
2/Sub cultures can emerge
If we continue with our example of doubling the size our Facebook fan page, then I believe that emerging subcultures is something to consider. Lets say that the values of the existing culture are something that is really established in the community. What happens if you bring another group into the fan-site of almost equal size but with a different view on some of the existing assumptions?
I could foresee some potential conflicts – these could be resolved quietly amongst themselves but it could also go the other way and result in conflict handling that requires heavy moderation, bans, warnings etc.
At least this is something that arguably should be considered when you want to grow your opt-ins.
3/ Damn it is complex
Culture is very complex and difficult to harness. The culture of your community is not only influenced by your inputs but also the users and not least all the other tribes and communities that they engage in. This makes it almost impossible to control, but this is also what I think is the beauty of online communities. None the less I still think one should consider how to grow the communities in a prober way. It is not fair for the existing community that has been loyal for years to bring in some new opt-ins with a completely different view and need for information. In this case I think that the purpose of the formum will fall between two chairs and eventually everyone will leave the community. If you really want to bring in a larger consumer group with a completely different culture you might want to consider making a sub-community and letting them co-exist.
Remember it is people and they cannot be manipulated on a longer term and why would you? It is the consumers’ honest opinion that makes your product/service/whatever better.
Let me start by stating than I am no better than the rest. I also love to “hate” / dislike some of the so called celebrities that has gained space in the press during the last few years.
I don’t know how it is in other countries, but in Denmark we have seen more than a handful of these celebrities arise from some of the popular tv shows as the likes of Robinson, Paradise Hotel, “single life” etc. Some of these newcomer celebrities has become some we love to hate. This made me think about this phenomenon within the frames of what I in earlier post refer to as social groups.
The interesting thing about these celebrities that really break out of the show is that they do not fit in the largest social groups (they of course have some sort of niche fanbase), but in general we hate/dislike them because they do not fit in. If we look at the reality stars that actually are like the most of us, they never really seem to break out of the show and do something new with their career. However those that are different than the “normal” norms seems to get more exposure in the media.
Key here is of course positioning. They are different and bring something new and fresh. The fact that they are different “originals” is what got them casted in the first place and this is also what gets them promoted via PR in the tabloids afterwards. We love to agree that they are not fitting in our group.
So why is it these persons get hired for photoshoots, as bartenders, get free drinks at nightclubs etc?
First of all, the mere exposure from the reality show is of course an important factor not to forget about. They are of course hugely exposed during the time when that runs on TV. The question that remains to me is still, how they make a living out of the fact that eveyone dislikes them?
I think their “anti”-popularity is primarily driven by their fantastic PR. They are so good at getting coverage that they often appear several times per week in all the biggest tabloids. I think that to some extent it is just a good story to spread. We love to agree with peers and here is a golden opportunity to agree to the fact that this reality star is out of place. So this is why we want to have them at parties, bars, photoshoots etc. – to mock them and to point our fingers at them while we all agree that we would never do that.
E.g. in Denmark there is a reality-star called Sidney Lee. He has roughly 9.000 fans. The counter fan group called “can this pineapple get more fans than Sidney Lee” got 28.000 fans in 24 hours!!! It has 182.000 fans now. To comparison the more well-known famous actor Brad Pitt has 27.200 fans. This clearly shows the emotions of “hating” someone is way stronger than when you think good of someone.
What do you think?
(picture taken from billedbladet.dk)
EDIT: I stumbled upon this article that I found very interesting in regards to celebrities (DANISH ONLY, sorry): http://politiken.dk/kultur/tvogradio/article983033.ece
I am not directly involved in this case and I don’t have any inside information about the case. I purely write this from my point of view 
What Danske Bank surely has discovered during the financial crisis is that the consumers thrust in Danske Bank and the financial sector as a whole has dropped significantly – add to that there has been some very negative stories in the press as well.
To anticipate this, Danske Bank initiated a campaign to regain thrust. Normally companies (especially dull financial ones) would keep this 100% internal. They would conduct an analysis of their consumer’s satisfactory level and start a process of fixing some of the problems identified. The issue with that is that is so damn hard to convince their customers (and potential costumers) those changes now has happened. A costumer who is already disappointed about their bank is particularly a stubborn consumer to convince, thus resulting in an expensive price per reach afterwards.
Seeing is believing! What I think that Danske Bank has done very well is that they dare to engage in a completely honest and open dialogue with their consumers. They started their campaign on TV by urging customers as well as non-custumors to openly say what they think about Danske Bank. This ended up with 3.500 comments and even videos(!) on their site, a lot of them was negative and very skeptic about Danske Banks intentions and working method.
Some of the comments said that Danske Bank was greedy, had no moral, etc. etc. Danske Bank have to date answered 766 questions. I haven’t read more than a few, but some of the answers were written not only by mere web-guys but by higher ranking personnel in the company as well.
They ended up with 23 things that they wanted to change and they just recently made a video public where they stated their current process in their ambition to become a better bank.
The things identified range from openness to education, but are surely points that the consumers can look at and find that it in some way will benefit them.
If you understand Danish then check the link to Danske Bank to read more, if not have a look at the pretty pictures http://www.danskebank.dk/da-dk/bedrebank/documents/bedrebank.html
Kudos from me for being brave and honest with the costumers, let’s see if it pays I am not sure that this alone can pull it off. Personal wealth is something that is very emotional for consumers.
That was what I was initially thinking. But then I went down to the gas station and bought a bag of HARIBO candy. Then I started to think about whether this a brand choice in a social context – obviously not. No one would see me throw all the wine-gums down my throat faster than a Olympic champion on dope ran the 100 meters back in the 80’s.
This purchase was solely for me. I might have considered the social context if there were some people in the store that I knew. In that case I perhaps didn’t wanted to show that I were planning to eat a full bag of candy, but I would have bought a bag of carrots instead.
If e.g. I had an overweight then I might be considering the signal I was sending by buying the bag of candy, meaning I would think about what the cashier would think and maybe other people in the store that I didn’t know either. So the same buying situation could be both solely individual as well as in a social context depending on a lot of factors. I think a term for this could be social involvement. The involvement would then be influenced by a number of factors such as the persons individual mind set.
I fell in love the iPhone! I couldn’t buy it in the states as the phone was locked to the phone company AT&T and the Mac personnel wasn’t really helpful in assisting me to import it to Denmark (probably a policy they have).
Anyways what really interested me was the buying behaviour I had. I don’t think that I have seen any ads for the iPhone that I had noticed at least. I have of course seen some call-to-action ads from some of the danish phone operators but nothing that really convinced me. I have a passion for gadgets in general but I haven’t in particular had a very strong interest in the phone. I have seen a lot of PR and I have only heard positive word-of-mouth. However the magic moment happened when I had the phone in my hand and tried the smooth interface, saw some of the great applications and experienced using the phone as a browser. Everything worked very well. My mind when in to spin about all the different opportunities I could have with this phone; blogging, browsing my NAS server, controlling my squeezebox, going online in the sofa, using it for email, using it for work, you name it.
I went totally nuts. After the message that I couldn’t buy it in US, I actually considered buying the iPod Touch just in order to get the functionalities and I visited the store 4 times in all just to see the iPhone (..and the Macs as well).
I found my self neglecting all the bad things; camera not the best, no MMS support etc. The fact that I actually considered buying the Touch model said it all.
So this was a VERY strong urge to buy. Why was that? Why is Apple so successful in creating this urge in me? I think that the product it self convinced me. I suddenly discovered needs that I never thought I had. I suddenly realised all the things I could do after this purchase and I suddenly understood the very intuitive interface.
If I consider this in a social context as discussed elsewhere in this blog, then I think I was a bit inspired by the fact that so many had the phone in the US. At E3 almost everyone had it and was using it as both as a working tool and entertainment system. I also have some friends in DK that has it so I knew that I wouldn’t be out of place if I bought it, so it was a safe buy in that sense.
I didn’t buy it! … and still hasn’t. I came back to DK and i started to think a bit more rational on the purchase. In US when I was exposed to the phone and held it in my hand I started to think a bit emotional I think. Even though a lot of the things I was interested in was the practical features, I actually think that the cool interface and the sense of controlling everything with a finger touch impacted me somehow. Now that I am back in DK, I am still interested in the phone but I am in a bit more cognitive state now; a new iPhone has been announced maybe I should wait, should I buy a new window for my house instead, is it really necessary for me to own the phone, i would rather buy a used one because of the price etc.
I don’t know what the conclusion really is, but I know that the urge for the phone that Apple created for me was a strong emotional urge – well done. That is marketing at its finest. If I was a US citizen I would have bought it in the Beverly Center last week.
PS. Apple if you read this please sponsor one
I was just checking my twitter the other day and the last 15 updates was from Lance Armstrong. I have been enjoying following his way back to the Tour De France, but these many tweets actually made me consider to un-follow him. I have actually quite recently unfollowed a “specialists” in the social marketing discipline – solely because of too many tweets.
Normally you would think that the reason for why I follow a guy like Lance Armstrong was to get a lot of info on what he is doing, but the level of info is getting too much now. I see it this way; there are different target groups. I am interested in the sport and the training he is doing, maybe a few insights from the sport e.g. all the doping controls. I am not interested in the person Lance Armstrong as such, therefore I am getting a lot of irrelevant information about him.
My point is that the consumer will see it as spam if the he/she gets irrelevant information so the marketeer should wisely consider what information that is relevant for his/hers followers. The same goes for social media specialists (and me!).
The downside of Twitter is really the lack of possibility to segment your tweets to different segments. That would really improve the power of Twitter as a marketing tool.
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