Are you experienced?

Summer has finally arrived after months of the usual anticipation… Spring Racing Carnival , the arrival of daylight saving and watching your gym start to burst at the seams with that mad dash for the bikini body.
Tis indeed the season for being out and about and its one that opens up a raft of opportunities for brands to be ‘at one’ with their consumer. Have a look at Ticketmaster, Citysearch and the myriad of other event listing destinations and overwhelm yourself with things to get out of the house for, not to mention opportunities for your brand to bring out it’s best for.

A few quick ticket stats:

• In 2007, Australians bought more than 20 million tickets on live concerts musicals and plays
• More than 1 million aussies have been to a either a live concert or live sports event in the last 3 months… that’s rich pickings!
• 40% of revenue generated from event sales comes from rock and pop concerts

These stats would suggest we are keener to pay for the live experience more than we have been before…
“Spending by Australians on live performance has grown YOY compared to declines in spending on recorded music”
Live Performance Australia Chief Executive; Evelyn Richardson

PIGGY BACK RIDER OR PIGGY?

Media, as we all know is all about piggy backing on the right times and places for a brand to get amongst…
When it comes to the live experience or event, there are some truly inspiring examples of where brands have gone down the piggyback rider (sponsorship) path as well as where brands have clearly decided to create something where they get to play a starring role.

Red bull has made a rather impressive name for themselves with their bespoke and ‘energetic ‘events like the Red Bull Flugtag, where participants jump from a ramp in a do-it-yourself flying machine into a lake. The brand is bringing itself to life and communicating experientially that "Red Bull vitalizes the body and mind."

Moomba, held annually in Melbourne, is Australia’s largest free community festival and is a Yarra River waterfest to boot. The Birdman rally has an esteemed tradition a little like a local Red Bull Flugtag where crazy people who build a load of manmade flying set ups and then jump off a platform into water to see how far they make it before landing in the drink.
To launch itself as a new low cost car insurance operator in 2008, Bingle.com.au sponsored the Birdman Rally.

It’s quite simply a lovely fit to showcase themselves as a having a real Aussie sense of humour and appreciation for the ‘bingle’.

We’ve talked about these guys before but it’s worth a reminder - Innocent drinks in the UK.
They have a wonderful history for events that bring to life their values around all things to do with being natural and importantly doing good.

This comes to life quite ‘fruitfully’ via The Innocent Village fete that they held this year in August in Regents Park. You could experience all the classics there: the coconut shy, ferret racing, morris dancing, pin the tail on the badger, a flea circus and of course the fruit smoothie tasting tent…
Importantly profits went to three charities bringing to life their commitment to doing good. Check out their website, their blog, their flickr page or Youtube to get a flavour of how big brands can think small.

The Rooftop Cinema in Melbourne ran a strange and memorable experience for one of their sponsors Mini last summer to encourage test drives of the new Clubman. The campaign idea centred around the thought that ‘normal’ has become like a virus infecting the nation but the ‘anything but normal’ Clubman can help solve this problem.

The Rooftop Cinema ran a couple of Zombie (i.e. virus like) film nights and handed out breathing masks to all the customers. As customers left they were provided with specially bottled remedies which had the details of the Safe Zone / test drive time and place and a promise that MINI had developed a cure for ‘Normal’ that could be administered to all who turned up… A weird and wonderfully playful campaign idea that saw both Mini and The Rooftop Cinema work their brands in together to build an intimate yet highly measurable campaign experience.

No doubt about it, the music festival can be a great opportunity for the more youth targeted brands to do their thang so here’s a couple of interesting examples:

Wrangler jeans piggy backed the Lowlands festival in the Netherlands to not only add a much wanted service to the scene but to get as many people wearing Wrangler as possible.

If you have ever been to a weekend festival and camped there you will be more than familiar with the handicap of your gear being sweat soaked and stinking with a day of festivities still to go! Wrangler set up a massive Laundromat where people could drop off their dirty laundry and when it was clean, they would receive a txt message to come and collect it. To add a dash of genius to this already smarty pants idea… they handed out black Wrangler overalls to anyone who used the Laundromat to wear whilst their duds were getting a good wash. Check out how it rolled: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQakGyUhSes

Telco brands and festivals are a cosy couple…
When Virgin Mobile wanted to create an experience at the Big Day Out they started with a great insight: There is nowhere to have a conversation on your mobile cause it’s so damned noisy.
They created ‘quiet booths’ for making phone calls that were not only visibly Virgin and pretty kooky but they were clearly being useful to the festival goers

SO DOES THIS STUFF DELIVER RESULTS?

Firstly it depends on what you want to your brand presence at events to actually do? Chances are if you are expecting to see a huge spike in sales straight after the event, you may be tad disappointed but it’s just like any other communication, know why you are there and have a benchmark for your expected success.

Having the client and agency teams working on the brand, being clear on what success should be about and have a strategy on how to measure the impact of the festival activity is a great start. Traditional tracking methods alone will not do the business so ensure you include a portion of the budget for measurement. And here’s a shameless plug for our OMD Insights team who have a whole raft of measurement approaches including mobile phones or PDAs and getting participants to keep diaries for longer running events such as sports sponsorship.

There’s no doubt that events offer a rich opportunity to get close to your consumer whether you create a bespoke experience or whether you piggy back on another event out there. For those brands that get this right, there are fantastic rewards so here’s a few thoughts to leave you with:

1. Make sure your brand has purpose and relevance at the event you’re choosing. Without purpose it can be a waste of time and money, not just for the advertiser but you could end up wasting consumers’ time, potentially leaving a bad brand taste in their mouth!

2. Remember to set a benchmark for success and to do this, you’ll likely need to think outside of traditional measurement

3. Ensure all stakeholders are involved in the planning process as events are at their most effective when they are built into an overall communication strategy. So don’t just see them as an ambient tack on, make them work hard for your brand by giving everyone a vested interest in the design of your brands next experience.

Economic Downturn’s effect on Media.

‘As new paths emerge, new opportunities emerge with them.’
Long and Winding Road, OMD, Yahoo Research

In 2004, consumers found themselves face-to-face with billboards and magazine ads featuring normal women in just their underwear. The ad’s promoting a skin firming cream for Unilever’s Dove, was the beginning of a campaign which challenged beauty norms and convention (campaign for real beauty). This was followed by the ubiquitous virals entitled ‘evolution’ and ‘onslaught’ which received over 7 million hits combined on Youtube. Despite the disproportionate amount of PR this campaign received Unilever has made a 360 degree turnaround which may revolutionise the beauty’s industry strategies of selling dreams and playing to womens’ hearts. The approach; focusing on the fundamental rational benefits of selling soap bars. This shift from the emotional to the functional may have more to do with the economic downturn than just a creative refresh from creative agency Ogilvy & Mather.

As the global credit crunch entrenches itself ever deeper into the globes consciousness, consumers are much more careful with their money, looking for the best offers and finding shortcuts to ensure they get value.

Consequently, a new path to purchase is emerging, with a particular emphasis on how people are using online to shop. Information gathering and price comparisons are all part of how online influences the awareness and consideration process. For considered purchases, such as auto and white goods online provides consumers a peace of mind, before parting with their money. We are even seeing a a trend towards online impacting retail goods (which normally skews towards shorter paths), where consumers are checking rrp before finally going into the store to close the purchase.

Hard times create opportunity

In Europe the recession, combined with the growth of digital media is encouraging advertisers and agencies to take a new approach, and be more creative in their executions. Christof Schmid, chief executive of Mediaplus, concurs: “Since media owners failed to sell sufficient classical ad space across all media, they have had to become more open to special ads and content integration.’ Although this requires more effort and support from specialists in the field, it is raising the bar by encouraging media innovation and strengthening the reputation of media in the industry.

Whereas investment in brand advertising may suffer during recession (harder to measure ROI, Conversion rates etc) investment in Direct marketing is the least risk averse channel to invest in, more accountable, closer to the money, less risk of reach wastage. There is also an argument here that Econometrics becomes more important than ever for clients, as long as it can provide the comprehensive measurement structure between media investment and business outcomes.

The Curio - Celebrating Media Creativity

With Think Fresh ‘08 upon us, we thought we’d look back at the life of media creativity and celebrate 10 of our favourite examples of great creativity and bravery from around the globe that you may not have seen before.

San Fran Zoo - Bringing out the animal in you….grrrrrr

The San Francisco Zoo have produced a beautiful campaign using a series of local bus shelters adorned with horns, butterfly wings and oversized ears representing all the animals at the zoo. The idea is, you get your photo taken in front of the sites to upload onto the Zoo’s website. The best pictures will be chosen for the Zoo’s advertising campaign. This is a new campaign but already hundreds of people have uploaded their photos. We love this idea quite simply because its fun, it has people interacting with it, and it hits the mark with sending people to the website. Check them out here: http://www.oursfzoo.org/


Making TV Advertising Event Viewing
Honda made TV history this year with 2.2M people tuning in to watch their TV ad in the UK. The 3 minute stunt took up an entire ad break in peak time on Channel 4 and saw sky divers jump from a plane to form, one letter at a time, the word Honda. The amazing thing about this is it was all done live. The media and creative agencies along with Channel 4 worked closely together to bring this great example of bravery to life. It could have been done as a pre-recorded ad, but they took the tag line, Difficult Is Worth Doing literally and did it the hard way. Garnering huge amounts of PR and discussion, before and after the airing, Honda’s UK media agency said: "It is the biggest, smallest campaign ever, just one spot but look at the impact.”


Dialing Up Creativity
When the 118 118 directory service launched in the UK, the brand was up against the category behemoth British Telecom. With two hirsute 70’s styled runners as the brand heroes, the campaign was truly brought to life through the unconventional comms: -Tens of 1000’s of 118 118 singlets were hung on washing lines in key cities for people to steal and wear -The runners travelled around the country for 8 weeks in a retro ice cream van entertaining consumers & giving away the 118 118 singlets -To make the shirts an icon in their own right, they were framed and hung in private health clubs throughout London. Within the year, 118 118’s prompted awareness was at 95% and the brand stole and has maintained the leadership position in the category.

These examples are a couple of our favourite Grand Prix winners from the Cannes Advertising Festival. Yes, one is from our very talented cousins across the Tasman…we’re not being biased…this one is GOOD! If you want to see more great media work that’s won at Cannes, visit the site: http://www.canneslions.com.au/

Biomat Cleaning Religiously
To grow market share, Biomat washing powder specifically targeted the Jewish Orthodox sector in Israel, a market almost unreachable via traditional media as many don’t own TV’s or radios. Orthodox Jews have strong beliefs associated with aiding the weak, so Biomat connected their idea to this belief and developed a way to help the needy. “Bring your unneeded clothes to us, we will wash them with Biomat and distribute them to the needy” A Biomat-branded truck fitted with a giant washing machine was the main feature of the campaign. The details of the truck’s locations were communicated via street posters, at point of sale and in Orthodox press. Biomat's shares in the Orthodox sector, 15% of the Israeli population, grew by 50% after the activity, and the campaign has continued on.

Pago – A License to Print on Money
Pago is a virtual wallet linked to a bank account allowing users to text money to and from mobile phones. A great tool targeted at a young ad avoiding audience keen on innovation and technology. OMD NZ found that innovation and new media was the key to connecting with their target audience.
•The campaign used Hypertag and Bluetooth technology in bus shelters to give away free money vouchers, directly motivating registration.
• With permission from the Reserve Bank they created a media first by stickering $5 notes with the Pago image. The notes were then put into regular circulation, surprising the audience.
• An interactive billboard was made up of 30,000 post it notes for consumers to peel off so they could take the Pago message with them.
The campaign exceeded awareness results by 21% 2 months from launch. With a fresh and creative approach to out of home media as well as a coming up with a media first, this campaign was a great success in delivering a new brand and a complex message to a tech savvy target audience.

We couldn’t call ourselves advertising people if we didn’t showcase some of the brilliance from the OMD network.

Making a Tiny Budget Work
In a bid to increase their share of line rentals in the Dominican Republic, Tricom made the cost of phone calls to the US the same price as local calls, less than 1 peso. With only US$5K to promote this, OMD placed stickers on 1 peso coins delivering the message “Start calling the US for less than this”. They stickered 150,000 pesos and distributed them in busy supermarkets, circulating the coins at rapid pace. The coins spread throughout the country and within 1 year line rentals with Tricom grew by 260% with no other major activity in the period.

Breaking the Mould of Book Marketing

With the Disney’s adaptation of Narnia; The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe about to launch, this was the perfect time to reignite excitement about the book that started it all. OMD UK came up with a campaign to Read it before you see it. Copies of the 1st chapter were sampled extensively in cinemas and on public transport where the audience are looking for a read. Downloadable samples were also available online. This campaign broke the mould of book marketing in the UK and proved a success with the €145,000 budget increasing sales of the book by 800%.

A lot of great creative media work has been done with outdoor and as a channel it has been keen to showcase new technology and methods that deliver on creativity. Here are some great examples that we love showing how the outdoor medium has helped make the message stronger by encompassing the immediate surrounds.

Amnesty Brings Suffering to the Streets
Amnesty ran 200 poster sites throughout Switzerland to illustrate the Human Rights abuses that are taking place each day. Each poster image was matched to the surroundings and gave the impression that the victims were literally sitting on the streets of Switzerland. Orange-clad and hooded Guantanamo prisoners looked as if they were shackled and left on the Zurich pavements.
The campaign was discussed on over 400 blogs, triggered a editorial features about human rights abuse and achieved a twenty-four fold increase in traffic to Amnesty International’s website.




Making the Medium Fit the Message
TBWA in Brazil used one of the most polluted tunnels in one of the world’s most polluted cities to promote World Car Free Day. Instead of pasting a billboard in the tunnel, they scraped the grime caused by car fumes from the walls of the tunnel to write: “Walk. Ride. Bike. Take the bus. Use the subway for less pollution. 9/22 is World Car Free Day”. This idea won on PR by delivering $6M in earned media value and reached 4 million drivers in the city.



Heinz Souper Billboard
A giant 3D soup pot positioned on an outdoor site that faces three lanes of traffic heading out of central London for Heinz has been seen by an estimated 1.2m people each fortnight as they head home for dinner. The live pot is programed to emit steam and look like a boiling cup of soup. A great way to speak to hungry commuters on their trip home on cold winter nights.

Retailtainment - putting you in the mood to buy.

With the anticipated launch of the Apple Flagship store in Sydney, last month, we we're discussing the role retail plays in the channel planning process. This got me thinking about a term which I came across back in the UK [when I was working on the Nokia business] and looking at ways of showcasing the features of the Nokia NSeries range instore. Defined as 'Retailtainment', this spoke volumes about the importance entertainment plays in sustaining the dialogue consumers have with brands right to the point when money is exchanged with the sales representative at retail.

In his book, Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption (1999), author George Ritzer describes "retailtainment" as the "use of ambience, emotion, sound and activity to get customers interested in the merchandise and in a mood to buy.”

If we think about OMD’s Checkmate Framework– apertures are essentially the times our customers are most likely to be in the mood to buy. The criteria below may help identify Retailtainment at its best:

· Must be Entertaining
· Gets you to interact with the brand
· Enriches the consumer journey
· Converts from Awareness to Sales.
· Leaves you wanting more.

What does Retailtainment consist off and which brands in the world are doing this best? In the book, The Experience Economy, Pine & Gilmore demonstrate how a coffee bean can be graduated up four stages of value from a commodity (at $1 per pound) to an experience at $5 per cup, by enveloping the actual purchase of coffee into distinct experience.

When does brand experience become retailaiment and when is it just a way of generating brand awareness?
The following quadrant map plots out these differences to help us understand the role media must play to influence these two territories.


Having identified the difference between brand experience and retailtainment, we can begin to plot out the channel selection to help enliven the path to purchase so that the journey is as stimulating as the retail experience at the end of the road.

Since being founded in 1964 Nike has, in partnership with agency Wieden & Kennedy, consistently been one of the world’s most creative & innovative companies. Throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s they set the agenda for dynamic & influential marketing via legendary campaigns for Air Jordan, Air Max & many more. Over the last 10 years Nike has continued to innovate by extending its brand identity & experience into its retail environments.

For its 2002 World Cup sponsorship, Nike’s creative campaign was led by a global 90sec TVC showing competing teams of football superstars playing ‘Scorpion Knock Out’, a dramatic variation on traditional football played in a menacing arena. Nike extended this idea into their retail stores around the world by constructing 30ft x 80ft cages in which local youths could compete in their own 3-against-3 Scorpion games. This activity remains one of the most effective examples of a creative campaign being extended through the line all the way into the retail environment.

Most recently, the NIKEiD project enables consumers to design their own shoes. This can be done at either NIKEiD.com or in the NIKEiD design studios in select Nike stores around the globe. Customers can mash up any number of styles, fabrics & colours to create their own personalised Nike’s. In some stores the behind-the-scenes laboratory construction of the shoes is then broadcast on external plasma window displays for passers-by to enjoy. For everyone from sneaker freakers to kids this makes for a hugely immersive & entertaining retail experience.

Activities such as these continually reinforce Nike’s credentials as an innovator & yield a genuinely 360 consumer experience, where purchasing a pair of trainers becomes just as involving & entertaining as the campaigns created to promote them.

OMD’s point of view is that once you understand how the dimensions of retail and brand experience fit together, you need to understand how the client’s brand can fit into the retailtainment quadrant. We think there are many different ways of approaching this which might depend for example on whether you are working on a service brand, a product brand or a retail brand.

St George bank (which we can consider as a service brand for our purposes here) is currently using a successful strategy in Victoria where they are a relative newcomer. They have moved off TV and mass media to a grass roots strategy and they have invested in a St George ice cream van which goes around Melbourne dispensing free ice creams and building the St George brand. The challenge for them is to make sure that the ice cream van does translate to product sales somehow.

Product brands face the problem that they usually don’t control their own retail experience – often Woolies or Coles will be botching it for them and making sure they’re seen as a pure commodity. Brands such as Levis, Nescafe, Cadbury, Lipton’s and more have taken retail into their own hands so they can control their own experience. It can be quite feasible for a product brand to extend its retail channels and take them to the consumer (through for example pop up stores, online or new distribution channels), although in recommending this one has to be aware of contracts with retailers which may prevent direct sales of the product. One of our skincare clients has a site in the US where they have begun to sell direct online and it represents a great advance in retailtainment compared to the supermarket where it’s normally sold. Part of the challenge in recommending new retailtainments to our clients is to make sure they see it either as a brand experience with retail benefits, or a distribution channel with brand experience benefits. If it falls between two stools it can often be too hard.

Retail brands, i.e. retailers themselves have the most control over the customer experience. But conversely in Australia it seems that they have the biggest challenges keeping up with the rest of the world in retailing best practice. Our client Telstra recently opened another T-Life store in Melbourne to go with the one in Sydney opposite the Apple store. When our clients do build these retailtainment experiences, our job is to close the gap between the client’s mass media and the instore experience. How do we get as many people as possible in through the door, how do we sell it as an amazing experience worthy in its own right of attending? Our perception is certainly that Australians are excited by great retailtainment concepts and that PR, ambient and branded content could play a heavy role in this instance.


Ultimately, it does feel like Australia is well behind in the area of retailtainmet, but with more case studies demonstrating the impact of this arena, surely we are on the verge of a brave new world of retailing.

God - who dat?

Admittedly this is The Curio from Easter time but we wanted to post them all up in one place and this seemed appropriate so apologies for the rear view mirror.

After the Easter season we all felt we were left with our bellies full of chocolate and left over hot cross buns in the freezer, but it got us all thinking about where religion fits into it all. Have brands started to fill some of that space we used to allocated to faith? And with brands jostling to be a bigger part of our day to day lives, which are gaining our trust and creating a following?


CHURCH NUMBERS FALLING
According to the ABS, there are 185,000 less practicing Christians and related denominations in Australia since the 1996 census. Currently, 3.7M Australians say they have no religion. That’s an increase of 750,000 people over the last 10 years taking their faith elsewhere.




MEDIA OFFERING
Approximately $4.8M was spent in media by church organisations in 2007…the biggest spenders were the Anglicans followed by Hillsong. Their preferred channels…DM, TV and of course, billboards.



GET READY TO BE AWAKENDED
Credited with creating a ‘confessional’ form of media communication, Oprah has been spiritually educating huge audiences for years. A brand in her own right, Oprah has developed a following big enough to rival the total number of religious followers in Australia. Devotees tune in every day, buy her magazine and favourite books. Her most recent book club recommendation has been brought to life, with the help of spiritual teacher and author Eckhart Tolle. Together they’re offering formal, spiritual instruction via a free weekly online download. 700,000 registered to receive the first lesson in ‘A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purposes’ this month. Kathryn Lofton, a professor of religious studies at Indiana University who is working on a book about Oprah as a religious icon says; "The only limit to your religious choices is your imagination, and your sense of loyalty to a particular brand.“ I guess this is how we’re seeing religions more and more…as brands!


TRUST
So which brands do we trust and why do they occupy that special place in our hearts?

THE MOST TRUSTED BRANDS OF 2007
1. Cadbury 11. Streets
2. Panadol 12. Dairy Farmers
3. Band Aid 13. Bunnings
4. Colgate 14. Arnott’s
5. Sony 15. Peters
6. Nokia 16. Gillette
7. Canon 17. Elastoplast
8. Nestle 18. Johnson’s Baby
9. Kellogg’s 19. Kraft
10.Qantas 20. Sanitarium



The Aus Centre for Retail Studies Director, Steve Ogden-Barnes asks “Can you be loyal to a brand you don’t trust? I don’t think so.” The more trusted a brand is, the more likely you are to buy that product. For the top-ranked brand Cadbury, a massive 48% of respondents in the Reader’s Digest survey, said they would always buy that brand.

Look at which well known Aussies are the most trusted: http://www.readersdigest.com.au/content/40015/


WHY TRUST BRANDS?
One of the reasons we want to trust brands is simply because it makes life easier. 80% of Australians say its safer to choose well known brands and 71% think brands are useful because it helps them to judge quality and value. According to Roy Morgan 47.5% of people trust well known brands, which is up 3% since 2001. Nice to think we’re helping people out!


TRUSTING YOUR CONSUMER
When Radiohead released their latest album online, they gave consumers the power to choose how much they would pay for it, essentially putting their trust in the hands of fans to do the right thing. Prices varied from zero to 100 pounds (the latter probably from their PR manager). The band’s manager Bryce Edge said "We're prepared to take a risk and we might come out looking very foolish. But we believe if your music is great, then people will pay for it." Now that’s what we call faith!


STARTING A MOVEMENT
A group of devout Christians in the Philippines are trying the quick way to god by live crucifixion. The “Kristos” are nailed to a cross, Jesus style, and hung up for 5 minutes. Post crucifixion, they can quench their holy thirst thanks to Coke and Pepsi, who have set up stalls at the site. Another case of these big brands going where the people are. So what about bringing people to your brand? Here’s a couple of cases to how it has worked and hasn’t!



THE PEOPLE'S CAR

VW wanted to reclaim their position as ‘The People’s Car’. They created a character that typified most Germans, Horst Schlammer, and send him on an 8 week quest to become a licensed driver. The online campaign began without mention of VW but the association became more apparent as Horst favoured the VW Golf. His popularity grew with videos spreading virally and visits to his blog exceeding all expectations. With more than 4.7M video downloads, Horst became a celebrity and provided 90,000 qualified leads for VW making it Germany’s most successful DM campaign ever. Consumers didn’t seem to mind that a car brand was behind Horst. The campaign had built enough value through its entertaining content for consumers to want to spend time with as well as share with others.


ZERO MARKS FOR COKE
It could just be “teaser fatigue” , but it seems Coke went about starting a movement the wrong way. The teaser campaign for Coke Zero began with un-branded street posters asking consumers to visit a blog to discuss topics such as: Why can’t every weekend be long? and perhaps where things went wrong, Why can’t you have the real thing with Zero Sugar? Once the teaser was discovered to be the work of Coca-Cola an angry online community responded branding the idea an intrusion and dishonest.

Check out the Coke Zero damage on: http://www.thezeromovement.org/

Comedy in Communication

THE WORLD’S FUNNIEST JOKE

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

Ah yes, humour…such a divisive thing.
In this Curio we wondered how humour works in communication and is it the best medicine?
This joke was part of a year long experiment by the scientist run Laugh Lab in the UK to discover the world’s funniest joke. 40,000 jokes were submitted and 1.5million consumers voted but why did this one win?
It overcame all the same hurdles that hinder
funny ads working in the advertising domain;

• It bridged the culture divide
• It crossed the gender division
• It is classically amusing, not bowing to any particular time or fashion in humour

THE EVOLUTION OF DANCE follows the universal humour rules and on Youtube is currently:
#1 Most Viewed Video
#1 Most Discussed Video
# 1 Favourite Video of all time


It has now has had more than 86.5m views…!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

Humour has a great history in advertising; disarming people with laughter has been an often debated means to win the heart but does the mind follow?
It was David Ogilvy who said that nobody buys from a clown but little did he realise how humour wears many a different guise.
Surprisingly, It’s actually an area that we seem to know quite little about from an advertising effects point of view. How does humour work in advertising?
sometimes it works, makes a whole lot of us favour a product or brand and then often it doesn’t. it seems that one of the biggest problems is that as consumers we are so preoccupied with the entertainment value of the joke, we miss the brand or what those advertising types are wanting us to do… not just like the brand more, but love it and buy it..

It’s no big surprise that it all works best when the brand and it’s benefit is an integral part of the execution and there are some classic examples of when this has worked. The We Love Our Lamb campaign with Sam Kekovic turned around an 18 year decline in lamb sales.
Why did this work?

It’s a damn good rally and cry for Aussies, timed around Australia Day - a patriotic high note for good media planning. It’s a celebration of lamb & 91.5% of the population (who don’t consider themselves a vegetarian) are all invited.

GORILLA TALES
Has anyone not seen the Cadbury Gorilla playing Phil Collins?
Cadbury claim it has increased sales by 8%. Amazing really. There’s no real integration between joke and brand. It’s certainly incongruous which is why it’s funny but how do you account for the results?
A theory I favour comes from Mark Sinnock, the SCO at Fallon London (who incidentally created the ad). He talks of Chris Anderson’s long tail theory applying to great communications. This ad was launched in August 07 and there are 966 related videos on Youtube today. The original ad is now tailed off with a multitude of copycats spoofs which will long continue to celebrate the love of this campaign, a phenomenon which Sinnock references as helping ‘to make ideas more permanent, and help brands establish a more permanent position, inside a persons social world’.
Still, this would have been a post rationalised explanation of a brave road travelled by client and agency and we say bravo for bravery for this is the stuff which sees all stakeholders working towards bold greatness!
All you Bonnie Tyler fans, check out the Gorilla doing Total Eclipse of the Heart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdgI0j1odkY
Or for a more academic read, check out Chris Anderson’s site; http://www.thelongtail.com/