Digital Stuffing » US Marketing

Doritos and the Superbowl – Again

Rachel — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:40:12 +0000

Crash the Superbowl now seems to be an annual fixture, on its sixth iteration, , no longer real UGC but taken over by professional teams, competing this time to win $1million and a contract to work on a second ad. it’s all down to your votes, who gets to walk away with the prize and they’ve spiced up the voting system by giving away $10k to a randomly chosen (US) voter.

Although it no longer has the surprise factor it had, as it’s been done many, many times since, its still probably the biggest and most prominant of these types of promotions. But what sort of ads does it produce? Nothing brilliant in my opinion – then again, few ads are these days. Mildly amusing in a slapdash humour way.

I think I like the grandmother and baby one best, closely followed by the dudes with their voice controlled phone, although i think that would be better without the clising scene. The rest, nothing really to shout home about.

Old Spice Man is back

Rachel — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 06:20:24 +0000

Uploaded at the end of last week, the newest Old Spice video trickled out yesterday across Twitter. Interestingly, it was set to private, only accessible via link, for most of the day – I wondered if they were mapping the flow of the link through networks. Another good piece of work, announcing a new campaign, I’m guessing we’re going to see this guy around the Superbowl

US Navy Social Media

Rachel — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:46:19 +0000

The US Navy continue to be leaders in using social media to connect with service members, potential recruits, fans and other stakeholders. Here’s a presentation they’ve put up with some concrete examples and action plans we can all take something from

Snapshot Customer Service

View more presentations from US Navy Social Media.

MSI Butt Catcher

Rachel — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:15:01 +0000

The first thing I have to ask about this video is why. I’m obviously not the right target for this promo from MSI computers, I can’t even be bothered to ask how they managed to make the computer stick in his arse all the time (sorry, ‘butt’ is the US term). But it’s doing well in the viewing lists and in the number of copies made, which I often think is a far better test of popularity.

Mad Men Yourself

Rachel — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:11:41 +0000

Deep Focus, definitely one of the more interesting agencies around, bring us their latest web tool Mad Men Yourself. Nothing groundbreaking, it’s a ‘create your avatar’ app, with lots of options to choose from to create an image of the 60′s.

Mad Men Yourself selector (screenshot from site)

The whole thing is nicely done, with plenty of choices and some lovely touches throughout. One of my favourites is the use of the slide carousel to choose your scene, associated with one of my favourites scenes from the first series. There are a few niggles, with some of the choices being too small to see properly although the biggest one for me was about lack of payoff at the end – where do I go to see more about the series. It’s there, but not called out. (the new one starts 16th Aug in the US)

Madmen scene selector (screenshot from site)

At the end of the process, you get the option to download 3 versions, one for your twitter or other small avatars, one perfectly sized for your phone and the other for the computer. I’m expecting to spot a few of them around the web over the next few days.

Madmen Yourself (download from app)

Videos 13 July 09

Rachel — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:25:52 +0000

The only brand video on the list isn’t exactly a video for a brand, but is definitely about a brand. The band Sons of Maxwell travelled by United Airlines last year, who proceeded to load their guitars without due care and attention. So they broke them. Complaining didn’t get them anywhere, so they turned to what they know best, writing a song – United Breaks Guitars – producing a video and getting massive hits on YouTube with all the accompanying press. United would have been better just apologising and preforming good customer service in the first place. They have only just now offered compensation. The full story on Dave Carroll’s site.

Videos 7 July

Rachel — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:24:45 +0000

Work is completely taking over my ability to blog at the moment, so sorry for the lack of stuff. The things to write about is piling up, so expect a deluge soon. But the videos are pretty quick to review.

First up is the Evian Babies, a well deserved hit but full of very scary dancing babies. I’m trying to work out how it was done. (It’s far more entertaining than the myriad of Michael Jackson videos that are up there.

Then we have a film of a car driving around London. Not any old car, but a Citroen GT, which was designed for a video game and drew stares as it (slowly) meandered the streets.

It must be a car week. This is fun, from Seat

Videos 1 June 09

Rachel — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:17:14 +0000

Argghhh. There’s Britain’s Got Talent videos everywhere. The final on Saturday was watched by over 18 million people (that’s about 27% of the population, so equivalent to an US audience of about 81million) and it seems they all uploaded videos to YouTube and then watched them. The other key videos seem to be Jonas Brothers and Twilight previews and the odd bit of Champion’s League with Barcelona v Man U, so little else has a chance to get on the list this week.

But the e*trade babies have crept into there, as a trailer for an ABC Money special that was broadcast last Friday. They were big around Superbowl and have made a comeback here.

Videos 4 May 09

Rachel — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:29:07 +0000

The perils of a Bank Holiday weekend. I half write this…and never publish. Instead, I go to a village fete, watch some MayPole dancing, have a go at a Tug of war and stay off the web for the day. Then again, it never got published as there’s no product videos in the top ranked list for the last week. Instead, here’s something I’d like to see more of. A straightforward instructional video about the symptoms of Swine Flu from the US’s Centers for Disease Control. It’s a sensible decision for a government body to use social media for information, they’re going to be able to reach people who may not usually access the TV news or newspapers. Even more importantly, they’re not relying on a journalistic interpretation, which usually has a different goal, not information for to sell more papers or get more viewers.

Videos 20 Apr 09

Rachel — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:58:18 +0000

The first challenge this week is to get though the multitude of Susan Boyle videos, of which there are a lot. She’s definitely hit the big time in terms of online (and offline) attention – she totally owns YouTube this week.

Highest ranked product video is this one from Patrick Doyle, President of Domino’s USA doing damage control after a video was uploaded of two employees adulterating pizzas. They’ve also launched a Domino’s Twitter feed which seems to be doing a good job of being conversational

Another fast food brand and another controversy, this time Burger King upsetting Mexico with its ad for the Texican Burger. Apparetnly, it’s because they are using the flag incorrectly; they’re replacing the campaign, used in Spain and the UK, as soon as is ‘commercially possible’.

Finally, the Microsoft PC ads are currently making enough of a stir to have a parody made, always the sign of an ad that has hit home one way or another. Here’s Homeless Frank trying to find himself a laptop for under $1000, from Landline TV