Is Blue a little red of Green?

Something popped into my head the other day as I was bombarded by green-vertising.

How did "Green" become the word/colour/brand for environmental awareness?

It's like there was never a choice. Green was always the answer, it symbolizes nature afterall. Trees are green, grass is green, plants are green.

But if you're blue, aren't you a little bit pissed off that you were never considered? Blue symbolizes the water, the sky, and cleanliness/freshness. All things that are being attacked by the "green"house gases, pollution, and other unfriendly aspects of this earth we inhabit. When looking at an image of earth from outer space there is more blue on the planet than green, yet Green was the ultimate choice. Maybe it's the connotation of "blue" meaning sad that ultimately won the battle for Green, but wouldn't a colour that was sad better show how the earth felt about the lack of caring for it?

To me Green feels like the Paris Hilton of colours - Using any and every opportunity to get it's name used in the tabloids, television or any other kind of media. It will sell out it's good name to any company to try and promote itself.

"Hey Green, Walmart will turn off their store lights at night if you'll let them use your name."

"Done!"

I bet Blue would be a little more cautious about having their name bandied about all willy-nilly like.

Maybe i'm just getting sick and tired of every company talking about how "green" they are though. Especially these companies that have realized they can save money by being "green" and then try to spin it like they are doing it for the environment.

You may be green, but ultimately you haven't gotten the "Blue" stamp of approval yet.

Great casting can make lasting impact

I don't know that I have ever seen a Banking commercial on TV that has actually made me think about switching banks.....until I saw the Ally commercials in Canada. Absolutely brilliant. They cast the perfect actor to play the role of the "big bank" and the children that they cast to act out the role of the confused consumer are budding stars.

Here is the latest ad from them that has me laughing everytime I see it.




That combined with this ad, which was the first one of theirs I saw make you seriously consider switching to Ally if ever your bank pissed you off.




Brilliant casting leaves a lasting impression in your mind. There are many different ways to make an ad a classic in peoples mind, and casting is clearly one of the best. Just think about the brilliant casting job Apple did for their recent apple v. mac ads, these Ally ads have much the same feel.

Wake up and smell the desperation

McDonald's has made no bones about trying to take a big chunk of the coffee market away from such companies as Starbuck's and Tim Horton's. They pursue this for a good reason, the coffee market is a massive one worldwide and McDonald's already has the distribution and locations in place.

They have tried a number of different marketing tactics from the McCafe setting to advertising their coffee as being high quality for a lower price. Well they seem to have settled on the "free sampling" idea in the end. It seems like every week I am seeing a McDonald's commercial offering people the ability to try one of their coffees for free. And the period of time keeps getting longer and longer - the latest one I saw just yesterday was offering two weeks of free coffee time.

The tactic is a pretty good one, you get people to try your product because you are confident you're making a quality product. The people try your coffee, love it, and become hooked on McCafe coffee! Unfortunately now it is starting to get desperate in my eyes. What it may break down to is coffee snobs who enjoy a fresh brew to start the day, just don't trust the guy that works the fry-olator to make their morning fix. Understandable. There is a certain message that is communicated based on the type of coffee cup you show up with in the morning. Maybe McDonald's isn't matching up in that area.

But how would McDonald's go about fixing those areas? They already have tried the McCafe setting unsuccessfully, and the overhead of hiring a professional barista to work the morning shifts wouldn't make economic sense. So maybe sampling is all they have left, and is somewhat working for them. God knows they could use the revenue.

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.