Our stud intern, Jeff Swartz is now in the ranks of quoted ad critics- all from the Blog we require our interns to keep. Jeff’s favorite topic is beer ads- and his comments about the “Men of the square table” campaign for Miller Lite got him quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Then there’s blogger Jeff Swartz, a Dayton, Ohio, college student whose age and gender land him squarely in Miller Lite’s targeted demographic.
“The commercials are funny and effective,” said Swartz, 21, who’s pursuing a career in advertising. He posted an item about the campaign on his Web log, www.swartzonmedia.wordpress.com, after repeatedly hearing friends quote lines from the TV spots.
Although Jeff didn’t know it when he wrote about it- it’s another campaign by Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Once again there is a website to go along withi it: www.manlaws.com that allows the consumer to write their own manlaws.
While some critics have questioned the selection of the men at the table- Jeff has his own opionon:
Swartz, the University of Dayton student, said the ads stand out in a crowded advertising landscape. He also said critics of the ads are off base when they claim Burt Reynolds, 70, is too old to be relevant for 20-something beer drinkers.
“People my age know who Burt Reynolds is,” Swartz said. “Our moms had crushes on him, and stuff. He’s a man’s man, and that’s what (Miller) is going for.”
And so far- he’s already got a call from Miller marketing guy trying to get him to switch brews (Jeff prefers Bud light).
At this point there are 27,990 Man Laws on the site- which says to us, it’s doing the job:connecting drinkers with Miller Lite in a way that isn’t “advertising.” Other beer companies should take note: no chicks wrestling in the mud- no “drink this beer- get a babe” etc.
We were also huge fan’s of Crispin’s “Twin Label Technology” campaign for Molson which actually made the beer packaging more valuable than the beer. No matter how you look at either campaign- Crispin shows insight into connecting with beer drinkers- including- our intern Jeff.
So the client looks at the proposed budget for the TV spot- and swallows hard. Those are big numbers- especially on the FX (effects) – green screen, miniatures, models etc- big cast- and then- they see- almost as much cash to make a “Making of the spot” documentary- and the clients says “Over my dead body.” So the agency account exec whips out a pistolo, shoots the CMO and off they go to make the spot- plus the documentary- which by the way- is only available online (not even on the clients site- click image on right to view in a new window)- and you have what Ad Age calls the most liked spot of the month: The Burger King Stackers spot- made by the hottest shop on the planet: Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
So- was this little documentary a wasteful indulgence? Not if it gets people to sit through 3.5 minutes of entertainment featuring your brand.
Would this have happened on a conventional compensation plan- where no media is bought to run this bit of agency extravagance- no. Would the brand have the buzz that BK is enjoying now? No. Is there hope for other fast food feeders to still own a piece of the “Meat head” market segment of men, aged 18-25 who are likely to eat fast food 3+ times per week? Not if you play it safe, and worry about offending some segment of the market. I can just hear a brand manager at P&G worrying about offending small people with this spot. Hence, P&G hasn’t been able to master the buzz machine of the Internet.
There is a burning question on my mind about Crispin’s Internet delivery strategy:
Are they purposefully avoiding putting work onto the client site so that it doesn’t seem to be delivered by the client (as a sort of distancing mechanism) and forgoing the measurement tools from the site stats-
-or-
is it that they don’t care about utilizing the information that can be gleaned from having the customer on their own server- watching where they go- and what they do?
To someone who believes in the power of webstats to provide insight into customers minds- the first option seems reckless. However, if the focus is on velocity of concepts- which seems to be a key to Crispin work (the factory concept)- measurement doesn’t matter- until they have a client that is actually selling online (like Gateway- who didn’t listen to their advice to streamline their product lines).
Either or- how a client justifies the expense of these can only be by one method- have sales increased – and word on the street is that Burger King is seeing results at the registers. Was it worth the extra money- absolutely, would most clients spend the extra money- no.
What do you think? Is Crispin missing out on opportunity to connect with customers by using Google video to distribute content instead of their own site?
It’s long- it’s full of off topic comments- and it focuses on the darlings of the ad world “Crispin Porter + Bogusky.” It started with an observation that some of the VW outdoor- looked a lot like the mini campaign.
I placed a comment at the end- that probably deserves reposting here- so here you go:
Ripping off oneself isn’t illegal- it used to be called “having a style” and- if something is proven to work- and the client is in deep shit- do it.
Some of you seem to have missed bothering to read the CP+B site- they build advertising like Detroit builds cars- not for long lasting practical lives- but like throw aways, planned obsolecence. It keeps them in business- and it keeps audiences entertained. They don’t strive for “Just do it” or “Got milk” - they are like a comedian on tour- each show has to evolve- or the audience won’t laugh.
Ad people and CMO’s are the only people who know what agency did what- most consumers just want to know who did that catchy little ditty on the Rabbit- “multiply” spot. Most consumers aren’t stupid enough to go out and buy a VW because of it- they still know that the cars suck.
Which brings us to a major point about CB+P- they actually go outside the halls of advertising- into the brand world the product lives in- and work on the touchpoints- that’s more than advertising and pretty pictures- that’s real marketing- something lost on most advertising students- I still believe CB+P thinks about actually selling things- as opposed to creating pop-culture (which from reading this thread- seems waaaay more important than discussing how to sell crappy cars).
For all of Crispin’s strengths- they still make mistakes- esp. with how they use the web to connect with their customers- they still are using it as a broadcast medium instead of a 2-way exchange.
And on BK- no one mentioned “subservient chicken” or “Ugoff”- both of which were brand changing positioners.
As many of you know, we run a seminar on using a blog (specifically WordPress) as a content management system for a business website. The news section of The Next Wave site (where you are now) was added in January of 2005 and now accounts for most of the traffic on our site.
Although we got an early start on having a website (our first site went up in 1994) and we soon figured (back while everyone was still on dial-up) that Flash wasn’t the way to build an entire site (later we looked really smart- since search engines and Flash don’t go together very well)- we were pretty slow to realize how important webstats are to providing customer feedback and marketing opportunities.
The reason: when our content didn’t change often, neither did our web stats. That all changed with the news/blog- and analyzing web stats has become one of the most important parts of our seminar. As you add content- people find your site using different search terms- and link to you for different reasons- these are all opportunities to do business or learn about your customers.
It’s how we decided to begin the seminars- and it’s also taught us a lot about how to build websites for our customers- so they can get more customers. Just like there are keywords- or trigger words in print advertising (Free- being the “best” one), search terms can tell you a lot about your customers hot buttons. For us, guerrilla ad campaigns, viral marketing, and non-traditional advertising have been hot topics- as have low-budget ads. In a highly competitive media environment, it’s become obvious that just spending more on traditional media isn’t a cost effective solution. The flip-side is, many of these potential clients aren’t willing to pay for the services to get the “more bang for your marketing buck” to the agency for coming up with the “big idea.”
One of the places we find the big idea for a client- or at least get a start on the idea, is by searching through their well crafted website stats- where the search terms can show what’s on customers minds. Think of a website stats package as a way to eavesdrop on your virtual sales floor- as if you had a way to listen to every single customer that had an interest in your products.
When we land a retail client, we like to do site studies- where we observe customer interactions with our clients staff, the environment, the product, the sales process- and then make suggestions on improvements. We also visit the competition and do the same analysis. We want to discover what drives your most profitable customers to shop with you – and how to find more like them. We can do the same with visiting your sites backend- analyze, review, and build new strategies to connect and close the sale.
To repeat what we’ve said before- it’s imperative for a business to post all marketing materials online, in a place with a unique url link, and in a format that can be shared. Let the customer print your ad, own your TV spot, be able to listen to your radio spot over and over if they so choose. Even better- let them link back to your page, comment on the ad, be able to find out everything they can about it- because it most probably is what brought them to your site in the first place (isn’t that the reason you ran the ad in the first place). One of our most popular posts was where we scanned and posted a BMW motorcycle ad, and placed the copy in a Google friendly format (remember, search engines can’t read flash- or the text in the contents of a jpg file) – another was where we compared an Apple TV campaign to a Burger King TV spot- which brought us mad traffic for information on the BK spot. For all the creativity Crispin Porter Bogusky showed in the BK spot and the strategy, they made it hard for people to find out where “I am man, hear me roar” came from.
So instead of driving people to Burger Kings site, where they could have been rewarded with a special offer, or discovered additional information about the product- like the exact ingredients in a Texas Double Whopper- they were on our site.
One of the outcomes of the BMW ad- is that when people search for “BMW motorcycles in Dayton” they end up on our site- and are disappointed that we were mentioning that our market has lost it’s closest dealer- partially because BMW hasn’t been successful at driving traffic to the shops- in our opinion, because of lackluster advertising and a poor web strategy.
We are now getting a lot of traffic on our site for people searching out answers to marketing questions- so we’re starting a new category: Practical marketing 101. We will be writing about ways to build successful marketing plans- utilizing well built websites as a basis for formulating sales plans that generate high traffic- especially for smaller businesses- independent businesses and our favorite type of client- the underdog.
We hope this helps you understand what The Next Wave means when we say we aren’t just an “ad agency”- but a source for marketing and innovation.
What do you think?
The idea of the 500 channel world should be long purged from anyone’s vocabulary at this point- there will be content to watch until the world goes into self-cleaning oven mode- or freezes over like a hockey rink- but, there may not be many humans in the actual show. Take a look at Animusic videos of music making machines- or go rent the movie “Final fantasy” or start looking into virtual worlds like “Second life” and you realize- we can do much cooler things in a virtual world. By taking scenes from video games to illustrate stories, Machinima, anyone with a creative bone in their body will be able to create stories with a look equivalent to a Hollywood movie.
The big question will remain- what to watch? This is where the power of crowds and agents of influence will come into play. The best advertising agencies will be the ones who can guide the masses into unwittingly being their agents of mass propaganda. Strike the right nerve- and the reaction is exponential compared to the force of the first strike.
The key to the future will be how will these provocateurs be paid- in the free wheeling virtual world? Agencies have relied on the idiotic media commission system for too long. Will it come down to some kind of pay-per-click (or the 2.0 version- commission on sale)- or some other formula?
Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami has started to take equity positions in companies they work with- which should make people in corporate marketing positions start wondering how long they will be able to hang on to their cushy “C” level jobs where they just play General to the mercenary agencies that are hired to do the job or be the scapegoats.
Big changes are coming- all thanks to the shift in power from the ones with the most money- to those with the best ideas- and tools that put the power in everyone’s hands.
Would you purposefully put something on your label or packaging to get people talking about your product? If you wouldn’t, you aren’t interested in getting the most buck for your marketing buck.
Tom Bihn Inc. decided to have a little fun with their care labels by putting something in the French part of the label that isn’t in the English- you can read their reply on the Urban References Page above- but the translation is something like: “we’re sorry our president is an idiot, we didn’t vote for him.”
I’m not going to make a guess if this is about President George W. Bush, or the company president “Tom Bihn” as the company claims- but, it has made it onto the Urban Legends Reference page (snopes.com) where people go to check out if an e-mail is a hoax or not.
Now, I’m writing about this in 2006, and the answer about this tag was answered in 2004- so you can see, a good stunt can keep working long after the initial buzz is over. There are people who probably would never buy a Tom Bihn bag because of the label, and there are others that absolutely would- but, here is the zinger- this little stunt probably made more people go look up Tom Bihn than could have possibly be accomplished any other way for a lot less money than a conventional ad campaign. That, my friend, is the premise of both a guerrilla campaign and a viral campaign- and that’s the kind of advertising we at The Next Wave like (make that love).
Our stud intern, Jeff Swartz is now in the ranks of quoted ad critics- all from the Blog we require our interns to keep. Jeff’s favorite topic is beer ads- and his comments about the “Men of the square table” campaign for Miller Lite got him quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
