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Personally, I’m completely avoiding any sort of shopping facility for the next little while. Shopping malls of any kind are totally off limits—if not for any other reason than solely the lengthy drives in parking lots searching for the slightest remnants of a parking spot.

Anyhow, this is a great spot run in 2009 and 2010 by Target, which I think embodies most of the actual ‘spirit’ this time of year….shopping. This also of course leads for some serious advertising oppurtunities, but let’s be realistic–everything’s gonna get sold with such a high demand for presents this time of year. Have a good winter vacation, if you’re lucky enough to have one, and again, enjoy this short ad.

So, in the midst of a brutal exam schedule at UBC, I’ve still found the time for my shortest blogpost yet….

5 letters.

2 acronyms.

VW, WTF?

Classmate and group member Megan has a pretty awesome post on her blog about students and procrastinating. Her post can be found here. She’s talking about how easy it is to procrsatinate while trying to get work done, a problem that every student surely encounters. Her list goes from things like a disctracting screen saver to a good old comfy bed. I’m not so sure about that screen saver one…it seems a little tooo boring for me. But, the bed I can surely relate to. However, I think Megan is missing one thing on her list: blogging. I’ve come to realize that blogging is an unbelievable remedy or simple solution to procrsatinating. It can fall under the umbrella of productivity (especially when it counts for marks in a commerce class!) and at least it keeps your brain moving, unlike many other forms of procrastinating. Consider this my official revelation–if you’re bored, BLOG. It will only bring good things, plus it can still be relaxing and mindless if you want it to be. Most importantly, if that big old comfy bed is really drawing you away from your schoolwork, you now have an excuse to lie down and sink into your pillows–just make sure you’ve brought your laptop along so that you can blog in the meantime…just like I am now 🙂

As a huge Madmen fan, and in the midst of the depression of the boring intermediate period between seasons, I was quite happy to come across fellow classmate Josh’s recent blog post found here.  Like Josh expresses in his post, I was pretty shocked to see that Don Draper lost his characteristic cigarette, which in my opinion is quite difficult to spot on the photo to begin with.

Two things came to mind when reading Josh’s post. First, times change. Of course Madmen is based in a time long ago when cigarettes were part of everyday life. Cigarettes were like chewing gum and had none of the rules attached to them like they do today. You could smoke in restaurants, cars, and even hospitals. There were few health restrictions, no warnings on packages, and most of all, you could advertise. Sterling Cooper Price’s (the agency in the show Madmen) main client is Lucky Strike Cigarettes. Evidently cigarettes are a huge part of Madmen, but Apple decided that just as the smoker is frowned upon today, he shouldn’t be represented in their product even as a figment of the past.

But Josh mentioned another point that is obviously much more subjective. He speaks about the “social responsibility” that companies and their marketing departments are endowed with. I totally agree that companies can make impressions on people and even inspire actions, lifestyles and more; however, after thinking about this for just a few moments I realized how ridiculous this characteristic of our society really is. People today look towards products, celebrities, and television to find their morals. What happened to religion, philosophy, teachers or at least politics? It’s true that Apple has alot of influence on the world today, but who the fuck put Steve Jobs and company in charge of what we and our children eat, like, do and think? Surely they, and other major or minor corporations, should not be the ones to have that place in our lives. I’m sure with some thought, most people would agree with me on that.

So, good for Apple. They can take away cigarettes in hope of making society a healthier place. They can even put them back in the picture, like they did, in order to preserve history. But in the end, I think nowadays people have to take a minute stop thinking about how their favorite television character acts, or what their favorite model eats for dinner and start thinking about what they think about these things. After all, Don Draper may be my idol, but I definitely don’t smoke cigarettes.

Money, money, money. Usually marketing isn’t really associated bringing in the dough. Advertisers typically plant the idea to purchse in a consumer’s mind, but the final people that put the bread on the table are salesmen, retailers and the like.

Well, I’m not going to try and convince anyone that this isn’t true and preach that marketers do so much more than create copious costs for companies. I don’t necessarily have the credentials to comment extensively, but from what I gather, marketing departments sure do cause plenty of costs without bringing in much profit (at least not directly).

But for now, we’ll say that’s okay. Because evidently marketing departments, ad agencies and major corporations can actually bring some justice to our world. Recently I’ve come across a couple commercials brought to us by charitable, non-profit or governmental institutions selling the fantastic product of knowledge and opportunities while asking you to pay nothing more than your time, awareness, and appreciation.

First we have a hilarious health awareness commercial backed by the health department of New York City. The message is really so simple, and so direct that it really makes you think twice about what you put into your body. It may be easy to slurp down a soda in seconds, but when put into perspective, you really don’t look much brighter than that goof who’s chucking packets of sugar in the original form down his throat. This quick campagin uses a blatant social reference group, of which most of us consider dissociative, however in actual fact we’re probably direct members of it in one way or another.

The second clip I wanted to talk about was quite a serious segment created by St. Johns Ambulance. The dramatic short was made in order to inspire people to learn first aid–basic, easy, but life-saving skills that everyone should have. I have some pretty extensive first aid training myself, and I try to renew my certifications every few years so that they stay up to date, and so that I’m aware and capable in any situation. This piece certainly inspire those who are not a direct member of the social reference group of people with first aid training, to make it an aspirational group of theirs. The clip really does get this message across–that any one person in a crowd can be that special person who saves a life. Let that person be you. This message is pretty blatant at the end of the clip when the screen in the movie theatre flashes white with caption: “You can be the difference between life. And death.” Otherwise, I love the clip for a few other reasons as well. The ironic setting of a movie theatre intertwined with the example of choking on popcorn is a clever choice. I was also fairly moved by the fact that noone in the audience barely squirmed for the first half of the child’s suffering. It really showed that people are relatively unwilling to help or do something about a situation like that. Finally one lady had the courage to take part, and luckily (suspend your disbelief now) she was able to run on screen and save that poor kid’s life as his parents sat their foolishly helpess.

One last clip, which is really the kicker. Marketing a message. This commercial was huge in 2008 and I really don’t have much to say about it. You’ve got to watch it for yourself–beginning to end. Marketing a message…a teenage boy has totally mastered it (or I guess it was the writers of the spot). I’m really just lost for words with regards to this one. Take a watch, I hope you enjoy, and I hope you can now see that marketing can and does bring more than just money to our world.

If you had the chance to watch this ad or see it live on TV, you’d understand where the animal rights activists are coming from with regards to their recent disapproval of Bundaberg Rum. Exploding the beloved Australian reptile surely isn’t an acceptable solution to a golfer’s ‘unfavourable lie,’ but who really takes liquor ads seriously?

Anyhow, Bundaberg put out an apologetic commercial in order to make ammends for their mistreatment of crocs. The apology can be seen here on Devour. However, as you can see, this apology isn’t quite as righteous or sincere as those animal activivists would probably have hoped for…

So Bundaberg sent out this second apology, again with the typical sincerity you would expect from a liquor company. Evidently Bundaberg knows its target demographic fairly well and doesn’t give a shit what those animal rights people think about them… Some controversy surely is not the worst thing that could have happened to them, or any company for that matter. They’ve taken a stand, clearly picked their side and dealt with their opposition accordingly. Whether the ‘apologies’ had a calming effect on their complainers, I’m sure the rum drinkers got a good kick out of it all.

The Country Brand Index has recently named Canada as the best branded country on the map. The title is given by a New York-based consulting firm called FutureBrand.

In 2009 Canada ranked a distant 12th place, but after the Olympic spirit made our country its home just over 8 months ago (though it seems like years),  global tourists clearly have a whole new view on our great country–something I’ve always known to be true. However, as a consulting firm and not a specifically a tourist servie, FutureBrand has really concentrated on the brand that Canada and Canadians have established for themselves. Apparently, the effort to improve our national brand was well underway well before the 2010 games came to Vancouver. Canada had to work hard to reposition itself from the long engrained preconceptions about natural beauty, cold weather and all those other great Canadian truisms. And don’t think that these things aren’t true or attractive, they really are. But, Canada didn’t exactly have a sexy side to show off to the world like it does today. With the help of some strong brand management skills courtesy of the Canadian government and tourism services this repositioning was made not only possible, but completely succesful, as shown by the ranking from FutureBrand. A full article about the survey and Canada’s rise can be seen here.

Now Canada is no longer to be known simply as the source of a great dogsledding expedition, friendly people, fishing/camping/hiking grounds, or hockey games.

Now Canada is new. Now Canada is fresh. Now Canada is the best.

Come visit for wine tours, shopping oppurtunities, film festivals, unique wild-life viewings, and of course, topped off with a ‘Gold Medal’ Olympic experience if you’re lucky. And don’t worry, just because we’re new, doesn’t mean we’ve lost our old style friendliness and hospitality.

So if you thought that the government could only help out with politics, or that something as big as a country like Canada couldn’t be branded, let alone rebranded (not to mention so quickly and effectively), you may want to think again–never underestimate that beautiful flag.

In a value-based era of marketing like today, this is exactly the type of commercial you should expect to see. Don’t buy just because. Don’t buy for someone else. Don’t buy just anywhere. Buy because you want to; buy for yourself; and buy from us. That right there is the major difference between an old fashioned sales-based era and today. And that is exactly what Burger King has set out to accomplish and succeeded with this 30 second commercial. They’ve even done it with a hilarious twist — though the sense of humor is admittedly odd.

The ad is entertaining and all, however it’s the tagline at the end that really did it for me:

“How you’d impress your date, if your date were you.”

In the end it’s all about you. And through this ad Burger King is letting you know that they agree.

On a side note, this peculiar commercial comes from a great little ad agency called Zig. Zig is based out of Toronto and Chicago and represents a number of notable companies such as Unilever, Molson and Ikea for starters. Just recently Zig is moving on, growing up and remodelling. Under new management, Zig will be merged with CP+B Canada and dropping it’s former name. Hopefully this change only adds to Zig’s legacy and we’ll surely be waiting to see what cooky commercials they come up with next. Check out the hyperlinks for company info.

37signals is a small (though they would argue that they’re simply suitably sized) software company that I came across on one of my favourite blogs Uncrate. The couple guys who run this company are truly entrepreneurial geniuses (they they would also disagree with the term entrepreneurs). Anyways, they have a blog, which is one of their many tactics to connect with their customers (now followers). The blog usually speaks about their products, but often has opinion pieces about the business world. The post I recently came across when looking for a marketing related topic, was just that. One of their many dedicated followers posed the question of how they market their company. 37signals aptly responded with a list of 10 guidelines, which I can only describe as formidable. The post is called Ask 37signals: 10 ways to “get ink” and here’s a quick list of the tactics they elaborate on:

1. Provide something of value.
2. Know your hook.
3. Stand for something.
4. Get your face out there.
5. Try to build real, sustained relationships.
6. It’s the message, not the amount you spend on it.
7. Give stuff away for free.
8. Ride the wave.
9. Be in it for the long haul.
10. Be undeniably good.

Some of these things are pretty straightforward and logical, in fact most of them are. What’s really crazy is that though they’re so logical, many businesses don’t act accordingly. A few favourites of mine are points 1, 3, and 5. They say that you must stand for something: pick a side. Theories in organizational behaviour try to create a culture or a mission statement for companies. The guys at 37signals are not only telling you to do this, but to anounce it to the public as well. Obviously some things are controversial and you’re company may not (and shouldn’t) be on the fence about things; however, by picking one side, you’re going to acquire incredibly loyal followers from that side. Much more loyal than you would by sitting on the fence like most of your competitors. In addition, you’ll gain tons of press by the opposing side too, and if you’re product is a good one, maybe you’ll convince them as well. This brings me back to point 1: provide something of value. Firstly, you’re product has to be valuable and worthwhile–this is obvious for you to even consider success. However, what isn’t so apparent is that value comes in your advertising as well. Don’t limit yourself with fancy tactics, flashing lights and million dollar campaigns…wait, these things will limit me? Yeah, they really will. Customers are PEOPLE. They will appreciate quality in your marketing. 37signals are quite adimant that this comes from things like educating your customers. This is something that is of high quality, will last, and they’ll truly appreciate it and your product more. Lastly, point 5 is another great guideline taken from the real world. Just like real people like quality things, treat your customers like you would treat anyone you want a  long term relationship with. This means no one-night-stands. They say in their blog “guys who spend lots of money on gifts and dinners to woo a woman,” surely don’t get the kind of relationships you want to have with a customer.  So to summarize these three points, you should really just be smart, be courteous, and be yourself.

If you have a chance, read through the full blog post (linked again here). It’s really worth your time.

Don Draper never does anything inside the box. When asked to rework and re-popularize the wheel he prepares a presentation that not only revolutionizes the concept of technological fads, but also brings us a genuine and relatable message about advertising. His words of wisdom begin saying that technology is merely an initial attractive flash and doesn’t sustain for too long. What really sustains in a customer’s mind is sentiment, and even moreso if they connect that sentiment with your product. Of course, in our society hooked on gadgets and material things, we love that initial flash of ‘new,’ but that only gives us so much…what we really need, says Don, is nostalgia–something that tours you through time to the memories that matter most to you. If every company could tie nostalgia into their product like Don ties it into the carousel, I think our world would be a much more fulfilled place–plus alot more products would be sold. This is one of my favourate scenes of all time and surely the best sales pitch of the AMC series ‘Madmen.’ Between the brilliant delivery, admirable morals, marketing techniques and, of course, the ad itself, this clip exemplifies anything and everything that’s good about marketing. Once again, I’m amazed by the one and only Don Draper. And if you haven’t yet had the chance to get to know Don, you still have time to catch up to the current episodes of season 6. Trust me, it’s worth it.