Category: Marketing Strategies

Project Re:Brief

In 2011, Google partnered with four global brands in an advertising experiment. Their goal was simple – how can the ideas that defined the advertising industry in its infancy, inspire a whole new generation of creatives and marketers? So Google set out to re-imagine and remake the most iconic ad campaigns from the 1960’s and 1970’s with today’s technology, led by the same creative legends who made these campaigns…

With all of that said, here are the results of the best of the old with the best of the new… 😎

Re-imagining Coca-Cola’s “Hilltop”

Re-imagining Volvo’s “Drive it Like You Hate it”

The re-imagining of the Alka Seltzer and Avis ads are due soon on the official Project Re:Brief website. So stay tuned!

The Flying Banner

The AR Drone is the ultimate geek toy. It’s a quadricopter that one can control with an iPhone or iPad. So rather than explain all of this, Beacon Communications Tokyo created an interactive online banner that gave people a chance to control a virtual AR Drone through their iPhone. All the users needed to do was scan the displayed QR code to setup the link…

What makes the banner stand out from others is that it does not use standard messaging to sell the product, but actually replicates the product experience to deliver the message. 😎

Electronic Arts “SSX Shakes”

Gaming giant EA has recently released SSX extreme snowboarding for the Playstation and Xbox360. But before SSX officially hit the slopes in Belgium, EA wanted to generate extra buzz and free press. So their ad agency Duval Guillaume Modem from Antwerp created an exclusive “SSX Shakes” event for a limited audience of popular bloggers and journalists. During the event, they brought the audience in the right mood with booze, snowboarding, music, chicks, tricks… and game play.

The slope had a cocktail bar where the invitees got to choose 1 of the cocktails that were named after a typical snowboard trick. The cocktails however, were not shaken by bartenders but by pro-riders who performed the corresponding snowboard trick and handed it over freshly shaken. Afterwards every blogger and journalist received a personalized movie with the making of his SSX shake to share with friends, fans & followers. 😎

The movies and photos are now available at www.ssxshakes.be

American Express “Twitter Sync”

In July last year American Express launched a first of its kind application on Facebook called “Link, Like, Love” that allowed their card members to link their cards to the app and receive deals based on the likes, interests and social connections of the card members and their Facebook friends.

Members who used this service did not have to print coupons to redeem at a store. Instead, they just loaded deals onto their AmEx account by hitting an online button (in the app) and the reward would be given to them when they swiped the card at the time of purchase.

Now in their latest social venture, they are allowing card members to sync their cards with their Twitter account at sync.americanexpress.com/twitter. After the sync, card members have to follow @AmericanExpress and re-tweet its “special offers” that come with exclusive hashtags. The re-tweet would in turn load their card with a couponless reward e.g. On tweeting #AmexWholeFoods the card member would get a $20 statement credit which would get adjusted when a purchase of $75 or more at Whole Foods was made.

Pretty cool, but the Facebook and Twitter sync work only for US card holders.

Ikea Beröra

To launch the iPad version of the Ikea-catalogue in Norway, ad agency SMFB created a brand new Ikea product called “Beröra”.

“Beröra” was a sewing kit with a special conductive thread to sew into say the index finger of your favorite gloves. Once the operation was done the gloves would work on a touch-screen.

The promotion generated a lot of interest and 12,000 of Ikea’s sewing kits were distributed for free in just two weeks.

Share a Coke

Despite healthy brand tracking data, 50% of the teens and young adults in Australia hadn’t enjoyed ‘Coke’ in the previous month alone. So to increase product consumption amongst the masses Coca-Cola jump started some real conversations with people they had lost touch with.

After 125 years of putting the same name on every bottle of ‘Coke’, they decide to do the unthinkable. They printed 150 of the most popular Australian names on their bottles and then invited all the Australians to ‘Share a Coke’ with one another…

The result…

The Invisible Car


 
To demonstrate the zero carbon impact of its new fuel cell vehicle, Mercedes-Benz along with ad agency Jung von Matt/Elbe have created an “invisible” car that uses LEDs and a camera hack that transmits images from the opposite side of the car to blend the vehicle with its surroundings. 😎

Valentine’s Flight Seat Challenge

Brazilian airline GOL created this Facebook campaign to grow its online community and raise brand awareness in a highly competitive airline market. Their ad agency AlmapBBDO had the insight that a trip is the most romantic Valentine’s gift to receive.

So during the Valentines weekend they launched a competition in which a series of images containing empty seats were uploaded on the company’s Facebook wall, without warning. The first users to see the image and comment the seat numbers won a pair of return tickets to any of GOL’s destinations.

In span of three days, the Facebook community grew from 12,000 to over 200,000, thereby becoming number 1 in their category.

Mercedes-Benz Tweet Fleet

The ‘Active Parking Assist’ from Mercedes-Benz recognizes empty parking spaces by simply passing them. That brought ad agency Jung von Matt/Neckar to the idea that if the car knows where the empty parking spaces are, then everybody could also be informed.

So just before Christmas when parking spaces were hard to find, they launched the Mercedes-Benz Tweet Fleet with its Active Parking Assist that tweeted empty parking spaces in downtown Stuttgart.

The MBTweetFleet cars automatically generated the tweets with GPS data via Arduino an onboard electronic and a PHP Relay. People could then follow @MBTweetFleet to find empty parking spaces near them on twitter and be navigated there by the linked Google map.

The man who gave everything away

Homecenter is a large retail chain in Latin America that deals in goods related to home improvement and construction.

To create buzz for the opening of their new store (in March), Young & Rubicam Colombia got Juan Miguel Cure to give away everything from his house…