MORE THAN ADVERTISING

Most of the time student ideas get lost somewhere in their portfolio. The Cannes Future Lions give them a chance to show their work to the world’s leading agencies.

The brief last year was pretty simple: “Shake-up the advertising world with an idea that would not have been possible five years ago.”

And with a great case students’ of Berghs School of Communication won. Their corporate partner has been Fortum, one of Sweden’s and Scandinavia’s largest energy companies.

“Our challenge was to make people see Fortum as not just another boring energy giant you’re reminded of only when your monthly bill arrives in the mail”, says aspiring Art Director Gustav Johansson.
“Our aim is to involve the customer in their own energy consumption in a creative manner.”

Gustav Johansson, Erik Högfeldt and Rasmus Keger created an amazing campaign around the basic idea to involve people into their energy consumption. You have to watch the case movie…

Congratulation guys and I hope more students will start to shake-up the advertising world! We desperately need it.

Watch the case study video here:

“Major sporting events don’t need beer sponsorship. You do!”

This was the starting point for TBWA Vancouver to create an integrated campaign for promoting their clients craft beer. Instead of sponsoring big public events the Okanagan Spring invested his ad dollars directly to its drinkers.

Party hosts could submit their ideas on sponsormespring.ca from their small-scale, backyard or basement social gatherings to party’s like “Hanging Around After Ed’s Soccer Game”. People could vote on who should get supported and by the end of every month sponsorships where given out to the submissions with the most votes.

The documentary pictures of the events could not only be found on flickr and other social media portals but also became part of the official ad campaign.

A great idea that sells, in the frist month of the campaign sales went up by 30%.

Unfortunately they don´t sponsor events in Germany.

Via Creativity Online

Recently Musiol Munzinger Sasserath published a study on Digital Teenies on the Web and the implications of this on brand marketing. A very important topic for many brands in Germany so I´m glad to present you this guest post today:

“We’re not trying to start brand democracy all of a sudden”

An interview with Christiane Wenhart, a partner at the Musiol Munzinger Sasserath management consultancy in Berlin, conducted by Ingeborg Trampe.

Mrs Wenhart: You have just completed a study on how young people make use of Web 2.0. Many marketing professionals are unsure as to how they should deal with Web 2.0. What have you learned from your study?

Our study was primarily focused on social networking sites, taking as a starting point those myths and half-truths which we are keen to dispel. For example, let’s take the notion that if you adapt a classic message and plant it as an idea, it will spread of its own accord like a wild-fire of recommendation on social networking sites.

In contrast, the facts show that brands are not yet an integral part of social networking sites and that their presence per se is irrelevant. Quite the opposite in fact: the obstacles that need to be overcome in order to “infiltrate” essentially private networks such as Facebook or SchülerVZ as an impersonal brand are considerably higher.

What is more, the real state of affairs is often considerably more complicated than is frequently assumed. There is no single definitive social networking site, there is in fact a whole plethora. They all serve a different set of needs and user motives, have different technical nuances and are continually developing, so that each social networking site needs to adapt in its own particular way going forward.

So what are the consequences?

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Jolie O’Dell talks to Bob Nanna of Threadless on using social media to create a brand-lovin’ community.

Threadless is a fascinating company. Their whole business model is based on the thought of ‘community creation’ -  people can submit their designs and vote for the ones they like best.

Social Media is build in their DNA, but the folks at Threadless have also proven that they understand how to use it, from CRM via Twitter to Facebook live video contests.

Another great example for embracing online enthusiasts are their ‘Twitter Tees by Threadless.‘ :

The media aspect of social offers some exciting opportunities for brands, but the potential of the social web can be significantly greater if the power of community is fully realised.

Via: Sebastian Garn, Nick Burcher &  Read Write Web

Social media is probably one of the most discussed topics in the last months. Everybody talks about how it is changing the advertising business and how difficult it is for companies and brands to participate.

But social media is much more than just a new tool for marketers, it can actually improve your business and turn your whole organization upside down.

A great example on how a company can adopt and embrace social media is Best Buy. The retailer is using it to create connections between their employees, and help them to collaborate and share their knowledge.

It works. The usage of these tools have an huge impact on the customer buying experience and sales plus the participation also motivates their staff.

Best Buy social media case study:

Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson in conversation with Peter Hirshberg at Google Zeitgeist from peter hirshberg on Vimeo.

Via: Socialmedia Today

Let Gandhi Talk is Publicis’ latest campaign from India. It attempts to unmute every symbol that represents Gandhi. Aiming to breathe life back into the symbols that abound in the country, and resurrect his peaceful message.

A campaign that proofs you don´t need big budgets to engage people and spread the word.

Another great example of how a brand can reach out the people without wasting money on media . Instead of trying to compete with the big brands like Nike, Umbro, Adidas, and Puma via TV, print, POS or big sport events Nomis went directly to those who are actually using their products.

The agency Johannes Leonardo developed the Nomis Vanguard – a retail concept on wheels. They equipped a van with a mobile retail store and drive from sports club to sports club to give the local players the chance to test their products straight away. What I really like ist that the people who actually drive the cars are  coaching or playing football themselves. They can give useful tips and insights to the people testing the shoes instead of doing a stupid promotion only for the money.

In Europe are over 200 million registered footballers and in over 300 thousand clubs. This is a huge opportunity for Nomis. With campaigns like that the brand is not only creating a base of customers, but more important real fans and loyal believers.

via Brendan Miller – The Armory

From the past to the future Best Buy CMO Barry Judge tells the story of how Best Buy’s Marketing Capability talks (and listens) to its customers.
I really like their approach to help people to realize their “dreams”. Why? Because they focus on their customers instead of promoting themselves or their prices.
They also let them participate in their marketing decisions, for example they show unfinished ads and ask people for their opinions. For me the proof that even a huge retailers like Best Buy can participate in social media and join the conversation.

Let´s see if others like Media Markt or Saturn in Germany will get it too.

A few weeks ago I wrote the post “Tribes instead of target groups” inspired by Seth´s new book “Tribes”. Today I found on TED.com his presentation. Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and he always challenges the status quo. I love this guy…

Great to watch, very inspiring and the perfect video to end this workday.

“The Creative Revolution” was the theme this year at the ADC festival in Berlin. And they had invited some really good speakers to their conference which took place on Friday and Saturday. My personal highlight was Paul Bennett CCO IDEO and his presentation about the idea of thoughtless communication and Prof. Dr. Hans A. Wüthrich´s talk about how to break out of the ordinary. Unfortunately there was no WLan or mobile service available at the whole conference area, so it was hard to blog or twitter about it. But you can watch their talks on www.idee09.tv

Besides the talks I was interested in the awarded work. I was keen on seeing new innovative ideas and cases because this award is also an indicator about the status quo of German advertising.

But what I saw really disappointed me. Most of the campaigns were still very traditional print or TV ads and there where only a few truly innovative ideas.

One of them was the “23 Days- fan diary” from Kolle Rebbe which had won gold in the the category digital media and justifiably so.

During the EURO 2008, German director Detlev Buck and the YouTube community created the first fan movie made out of user generated videos. The movie was shown in cinemas across Germany.

Another great campaign was the Sony Ericsson “Fan Walk 2008″ from Serviceplan.

Sony Ericsson was searching for the biggest music fans on earth. More than 3500 music fans from all over Europe applied. Finally, 100 crazy boys and girls walked from London to Liverpool, to the MTV Europe Music Awards 2008. Documented online using all social media channels. The Idea was awarded silver in the category events.

The Project “House of Immagination” from Heimat was also awarded with silver in the category Events plus silver in media, gold in integrated communication and sales promotion and last but not least the grand prix.(I hope I didn´t forget anything)

A great campaign for their client Hornbach.

But my personal grand prix goes to Walker Werbeagentur and their project for Bindella “Tanti Aguri”. (they won silver in the category integrated communication)

To promote 31 local restaurants in Zürich the agency hired an author to write an book. The story plays in all these different places and in cooperation with local newspapers they created a lot of buzz and excitement to actually go and visit the restaurants in real life. The book became a bestseller. This campaign is for me one of the best examples for branded entertainment.

These are some great examples from the festival but it needs way more of them in order to start a “creative revolution.”  I hope that the success of those agencies will also shape the profile of German advertising and inspire other creatives to come up with ideas like that.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION