Bragging

With the Olympics in Canada this year many of the nation's businesses, big and small, helped fundraise and donate money to our athlete's with hopes of helping them make it to the podium. This marketing/communication tactic is great because it works for everyone, consumers feel warm and fuzzy about a company that coordinates a fundraiser like that, the athlete gets funding, and the sponsor gets good, positive exposure.

But is there a need to brag about all you've done for these people? It's not the quote-unquote "canadian way", and it certainly takes away some of the good will of what you've done. Take a look at this Shaw website and definately have a play of their advertisement.

Here are my problems with it:

1. Shaw is asking for donations for the athletes, which people have gratefully done, and then Shaw spins it to sound as if they have given it themselves (maybe they have given a large chunk themselves, but the numbers they advertise on their cheesy "we are the world" type ad match up with those of their ticker on the page)


2. It's all about them. "their" company and what "they" have done for the athletes. The oldest team sport saying in the world has got to be "There's no 'I' in Team", well clearly Shaw forgot about that


3. The tone of the tv spot is just way too over-the-top cheesy. I saw it on television the other day and laughed out loud. It doesn't make one feel patriotic, it makes one embarassed to be a Shaw subscriber. Trying to copy the "we are the world" style for a patriotic commercial is just shoddy.

It's great that companies like Shaw support our athletes and help raise donations towards a relevant cause, but don't brag about it. People know you have been helping athletes, thats why they are donating. They know you have been putting in the effort, so don't act like a 10 year old kid that needs recognition. Are you going to throw a tantrum if we don't acknowledge you? You don't see Molson Canadian bragging about all the money they raised.

Great musical commercials

One of my original posts on this blog was about using music to help create a memorable commercial. Well lots of ads have used this technique since I wrote about it, and its not like my post was anything earth shattering, and some of my recent favourites are these:

Honda Accord 2010 Crosstour commercial


Nissan Titan



Alexander Keith's Beer Birthday commercial


A little different, but a movie trailer (technically still an ad) for Dear John


The musical editing provides the tone and feel for these commercials and draws you into them deeper as a result. They are all really well done and the musical selection is incredible. It still impresses me each time I hear a song in an ad that i've never heard and how powerful it can be to grab the attention of the viewer.

Have you seen any ad's like this lately that utilize a good background song?

Pour some ketchup on me...

Your supposed to be singing that title to yourself to the Def Leppard classic "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and if you weren't before, i'm sure you are now. Have fun listening to that all day in your head, a gift from me to you.



Anyways onto bigger and better things. The ketchup packet has been remade! 40 years is all it took for a ketchup company to create something that gave their consumers the ability to "dip and eat it on-the-go" according to company Vice-President Dave Ciesinski.

It's actually a pretty cool new concept for the company and should please both the "squeezers" and the "dippers". I'm not sure if it should have taken them 40 years to create a new one, but at least they got there.

Makes you wonder if this new design will last another 40 years because where can you possibly go from here. Although that kind of near-sighted thinking wouldn't have allowed them to come up with such brilliant ideas as blue ketchup, and we all know that was a huge success. Is there a way to keep a brand like Heinz on the cutting edge of the Ketchup market? This new package clearly signals that they want to be there, but are efforts like coloured ketchup just a waste of time and money for the company. It certainly created a buzz in the condiment industry for that time period, but the lasting power of the product was minimal.

I wonder what is next for the high-tech ketchup market......what else can there possibly be. Should be an interesting battle for the marketing team, innovating when there is seemingly nothing to innovate....although I guess that is also part of the joy of innovation.

Lamp post on steroids

This is what happens when your lamp post stops playing by the rules and starts shoving needles into it's ass.

Although in this case the shot of choice seems to be caffeine. It's a great creative example from the folks at Cossette West in Vancouver. You have to give credit to whoever thought up this idea, because this is definately thinking way outside the traditional box. A quick google image search didn't return any other examples of using lamp posts in such a way, and it also told me that I was way behind on this story as the image had been used in at least a dozen other blogs. Hmm maybe that's why no one reads my blog. Anyways kudos to the creatives that came up with this idea and Kudos to Vancouver for allowing it to be done. I'm sure it was very effective for passersby, but I wonder if it worked as well on people driving by. I live in the area and drive by that corner once a week, for the life of me I can't remember seeing it. Props to Vancity Buzz blog for the post.