Highest rated is this public service video from Starbucks Give 5 campaign. Sign up and pledge 5 hours help to the community, as part of the new US President’s call for national service, and you’ll get a free coffee from Starbucks,or at least you would have last week. The offer is now over.
The Superbowl season has started on YouTube and from Bridgestone tyres you have this cliffhanger – will Mr and Mrs Potato Head survive a collision with the sheep on the road.
Then we have a question about what is the hottest thing on 4 wheels, seemingly set on the moon.
Lat on the list, Coca Cola Brazil have a slightly surreal ad out there, how Coke makes your world colourful and fun.
Earlier, I wrote about the Virgin Atlantic Red Hot ad, mentioning that it was annoying that there was no embed available for the video. Alison from Virgin came back with this comment
we didn’t have full usage rights for the advert to enable the file to be embedded but this is now resolved.
In this day and age, where the web is such a strong component in word of mouth and influencing, how can this have happened? How can any brand deliver an ad, create some video, take some images without getting the digital rights? This isn’t just a complaint about Virgin, because I’ve seen it in plenty of places but today, there is little excuse. But here’s a couple of reasons why they may not be obtained:
Marketers – and lawyers – who do not realise the impact of the online space. They just don’t understand that almost all forms of advertising can have a digital element and forget to include the rights. Why would you want global digital rights for something that is going to be on the TV or just in a national paper? Because you have to assume that everything can be digitised, put on the web and spread around. One solution is to review all your standards and policies and make digital rights mandatory.
Cost. Global digital rights, especially perpetual ones, can be expensive, especially if you have a piece of music, which can get pretty ridiculous, or have a piece of someone else’s video. Most rights tend to be time-limited when it comes to traditional advertising which is why you often find that brands never display old campaigns. There’s also the problem for ‘classic’ ads, the web was not around so the rights have to be renegotiated, so it may not be worth the effort and the cost to do so. I had experience, for example trying to put up some of the old Guinness ads. Why do you need perpetual rights? Well, basic web principles, don’t break the web! If you put stuff up, it should stay up. But most brands never play this game, throwing up campaign sites, ‘microsites’ or burying things deep in flash with no permalinks. If you make something you want to be considered as a classic, make sure it can be found.
This was sent round the office this morning, from The Telegraph. It’s an add from Veet, a hair removal creme. Love it! Although it’s a pity they could not change the site for the day to reflect it.
Many of the videos in the YouTube lists for last week are TV grabs from the US Air plane ditching in the water, there’s plenty of copies from different news broadcasts. The highest ranked product video is this one from T-Mobile. Filmed on Thursday 15th, on the TV on Friday, Saatchi’s use the idea of a flashmob to bring a few minutes of manic dancing to Liverpool St station, the location for many a previous real flashmob. Here, they work with the station (well, I assume they did) to get the music played over the system so everyone can here it – and join in. The video below is not actually the one with the most YouTube views but is a higher quality version from the T-Mobile Channel Life’s for Sharing . The higher views are from a grab of the ad shown on TV; JonJonBaker suddenly had a hit on his hands with the ad and got luckier with the search results. Although looking at the numbers later, the official version is increasing its views, probably due to the ads on the YouTube:
TMobile Dance (Screenshot from site)
They reached out to local bloggers such as @flashboy to get them to come along and did a heavy outreach to bloggers with the video later:
Ulike Chris, I like this, I smile when I watch it. Yes, the flashmob thing has been done before and this is a blatant rip-off of the Improv Everywhere events but it’s done well here, it’s fun and you can see people getting involved. However, I feel they could have been slightly more transparent with what they are saying in the YouTube commentary:
Watch the moment hundreds of commuters danced in a train station and see how they pulled off the event with exclusive footage from behind the scenes
Given they give you rehearsal footage it’s obviously not a random group of commuters as is implied, it’s a group of professionals. They could put the right slant on this and give credit where credit is due for the idea. Interestingly in the blog post from Richard, a commenter discusses having seen scripts where they use the freeze idea, from Improv, so there’s been a few attempts at this.
With what looked like none of the same PR push, a Spanish ad for what Eristoff Black Vodka is up there as well. I was going to take a look at the brand, but it has such an annoyingly, huge, slow loading flash file that I gave up looking for product information as it took too long to find things. A brand that definitely needs to rethink the digital part of the marketing.
Adfreak brings you this new ad from GlaxoSmithKlineBeacham for their vaginal protection creme Lactacyd. It’s in your face and not for the feint-hearted. Where WAS the camera?? Would love to read the brief for this shoot and the director instructions.
Looking at this from a digital perspective, the only site that seems to be on the web is the UK one, but this has NO connection with the ad, which is colourful and in your face. The site is discrete, polite and, fundamentally, boring. Why push in one channel but not reflect that elsewhere? If you are going to do something outrageous, then follow through!
I get a news article about Top Gear through RSS today from NMA, probably derived form a press release from somewhere. I quite like Top Gear, so I thought I’d take a look.
Top Gear has launched an online viral campaign to promote the recently relaunched TopGear.com.
1. Don’t call it a viral campaign. You can’t plan for anything like that, you can put all the pieces in place and it can still flop- you can say later that something spread in the manner of a viral infection. And why would you want to start an bad infection of something. Yes, it’s a common complaint of mine, but I like to bring it up occasionally. At least they’re not calling it a successful viral campaign, which I’ve seen in some press releases.
2. Why does the NMA online never add links? I’ve put my own in there.
3. Where is it? Where’s the campaign? There’s a news story out and I see nothing on the sites which seem to be the videos mentioned. The BBC have over 100 videos on the Top Gear channel, but nothing as described. I’m assuming the Facebook fan page is the correct one, although the fact that it links to a YouTube video that has been taken down by BBC WorldWide makes me question that, but there is nothing to suggest another group is more official.
If you’re going to chase press for a digital campaign, it really should be working before you talk about it.
My favourite product video this week is not really a product video but it so easily could be – it’s also the only product video on the list, if I ignore the Fail Blog ones.. From the satirical site The Onion, here’s a video about the Apple Wheel
This week, a series of bus adverts launched across the UK, as part of the Atheist Bus Campaign
The Atheist Bus Campaign began when comedy writer Ariane Sherine wrote a Comment is Free article in June 2008 about the Christian adverts running on London buses. These ads featured the URL of a website which said non-Christians would burn in hell for all eternity. Ariane suggested that atheists reading her article could each donate £5 to fund a reassuring counter-advert.
They raised over £140k, enough to do a national campaign.
Atheist Bus in London
Now the Advertising Standards Association has received a complaint from Christian, who are complaining about the lack of evidence behind the claim. In the BBC article, Stephen Green, the National Director says:
“There is plenty of evidence for God, from people’s personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world. But there is scant evidence on the other side, so I think the advertisers are really going to struggle to show their claim is not an exaggeration or inaccurate, as the ASA code puts it.”
That very standard is why the word ‘probably’ is in the copy – to avoid falling into that area. If it works for Carling, why can’t it be fine here. Although the the concept that there is plenty of evidence of a supernatural being’s existence I think is stretching it a little! But at last we have the chance for an authoritative ruling by a neutral party on this 2000 year old question – because we’re only talking about the Christian God under this complaint. Do you think we can extend their remit to cover Zeus, Odin and Ba’al why they are at it?
Image used under Creative Commons licence. Image by intranation
As the Virgin Still Red Hot ad gets played more and makes its way round the blogs, it’s fun to see the different reactions.
Chris had a similar reaction to me, bemoaning the fact Virgin Atlantic forgot to put in a good way for the video to be shared over and above the YouTube copies. He also says in the comments:
Who’d have thought it. Relax gone from banned by the BBC to advertising another British institution.
Zoe did not like it at all, with her reaction and conversation about the ad on Twitter.
Oh Virgin, if only your ad was ironic and post-modern, rather than dated & sexist.
I had a bunch of different reactions on Twitter:
Andresvarela: Customer 15+ years but don’t understand why they’ve done this (so overtly). Was the ‘VirginAtlanicHubbaHubba’ domain taken?
emmapotter: Very cool. Maintains Virgin’s brand positioning as glamorous and fun. Beats its competitors out of the water, as ever
Brodie_san: Asteroids! Awesome! Also, the tallest women I have ever seen. With the biggest aura too!
A completely different reaction from another who focused on the background, not the main images
“A blast from the past!! Our Price records!! Bought many an album there… Ahhh Vinyl!”
Over on Scamp’s blog, you’ve got a whole load of reaction, from it being sexist, to numerous sexist comments about the women in the ad to the absolutely pedantic:
Does anyone know what the record is that the lad in OurPrice store is holding?
Big Country – Steel Town. Released in November 1984 so about 11 months early for a 25th anniversary ad.
Is it good? Is it sexist? It’s definitely noticeable, cutting through a lot of the stuff that’s on in the ad break.
But the key thing? It’s being talked about, it’s polarising and people seem to love it or hate it. The worst thing for a brand is apathy, nobody interested in one way or the other.
