Coca Cola fully Integrated Campaign

In 2009 Coca Cola released a global integrated marketing campaign called “Open Happiness”, which stays in line with “The coke side of life” brand outlook. Wieden + Kenned worked with Coca Cola to create this campaign, the global agency for the brand since 2006. 

The campaign launched on American Idol and also worldwide over the weeks following. The message for this campaign was to take a break and open a Coke, which refreshes them and helps them enjoy life’s simple pleasures.

Open Happiness was the platform for all the integrated marketing, which included:

-       Television

-       Promotions

-       Point of sale

-       Outdoor

-       Print

-       Digital

-       Music

-       in-store executions

-       mycokeawards.com – online component

All of these components were trying to invite positivity to people, engaging them with optimism and fun. Creative messaged were updated often and the campaign helped to develop a clear role for Coca Cola. The shopper experience was enhanced by a lot due to this campaign.

This campaign gave a clear call to action at the point of purchase for consumers and it was a success. Using a fully integrated campaign helped Coca Cola a lot. 

Brand Utilities

The brand utilities that I use most often are on my iPhone. Things like the weather in different locations, drink mixes, Weight Watchers, iSkins, new book applications, sleep cycle monitors and even games all apply as utilities to me. It makes me one with the brand, they are offering me things that I either need or find interesting. It really helps me to build a relationship that will stand the test of time in this era.  

I honestly can't think of any missed opportunies at the moment. Almost all utilties I could ever think of are at my fingertips…

A few brands that I think could offer utilities are Lululemon offering some sort of sizing app, Petsmart having an interactive adoption option and I could list many, many others but I'm sure in the near future they will exist. 

I think brand utilities are a great way to interact and give consumers a reason to want to know your brand. The future of branding is looking to be a very deep one between consumers and their products. 

Broadband Challenge

Ahh, the broadband challenge. It’s a challenge to spend a whole week, NOT using traditional medias like TV or Radio, and instead looking to newer things like Internet. Well, that certainly wasn't a problem for me. I have an iPhone and a Mac, in fact even before these things, I never watched TV. In my car I plug my iPod in and I get all my songs from online. Basically, this entire week was the same as any other week for me.

I find all of my songs, TV shows and check my emails and stay in touch with people all online or by iPhone. I even bought a kitten this week (she’s awesome) and I found her online! 

I think the point of the Broadband Challenge is to challenge people who aren't up-to-date on the reality of access through new medias aka the Internet. 

Thank god for me, I already fit into the "in" crowd on that level, funny the in crowd is now what we would usually call nerds. 

Social Media Monitoring

I tried out the social media, monitoring tool called www.socialmention.com. Its really cool how you can just go right onto the website and type in whatever your interested in discovering. There are options for all social media tools and you can identify which one you want to cover or choose them all. 

I typed in "whose going to win the Oscars?" and got a lot of predictions. 

The prediction I thought most obvious was that Bieber would take home tons of Oscars with relative ease. Beiber fever is hilarious in my opinion. I also saw mentions of Adam Sandler taking home some prizes.

   Some other nominees of the event are Colin Firth, who is expected to win, Natalie Portman whose also expected to take home some best actress and Mila Kunis, her co-star. 

Movies to be nominated are: The Social Network, The Town, Winter's Bone, Black Swan, Inception, The Fighter, The King's Speech and many more.

I really think these social media monitors are a great idea, they not only connect you with the information you may be looking for on a particular social dimension, but they also allow you access to a million other social medias to find out even more desired info. 

Social Media - Lululemon

I chose to monitor Lululemon Athletica on Facebook for the past week. I went on about 4 times throughout the week and read all the way back to the beginning of January.

My perception of Lululemon has always been that they are a very high-class yoga wear company. I have made many purchases from there and have always noticed that the customer service is impeccable and the employees really take a genuine interest in their cliental.

As I followed Lulu on Facebook, I came to realize that employees of Lulu lemon and their followers are all very enthusiastic about not only Lulu clothing, but also yoga, and a healthy lifestyle. Positive thinking is also very prominent in the posts and blogs associated with Lulu Lemon.

Some of the most interesting things I found out are:

• -       Most locations do yoga and healthy living classes
• -       They have events in store to promote their brand
• -       They offer personal help to clients
• -       They post all their new products online
• -       There’s a huge fan-base and all the feedback I saw was very positive.
• -       They have a blog on their website
• -       Manifesto – positive messages/encouragement
• -       They are involved in organizations such as marathons, worldwide.
• -       They have a page for their top rated products.
• -       Each store has its own personal community calendar for events and classes
• -       They are associated with iPhone and suggest applications on Facebook.
• -       They offer music playlists on their Facebook page
• -       They have tutorials on how to set up a yoga studio
• -       They want to help boost values and reignite goals in their cliental

After seeing all these awesome, positive things that Lulu does, I support the brand so much more. I even “liked” them on Facebook. Their products are extremely expensive but I’ve come to realize that may be due to the fact that they are selling a complete lifestyle. They promote health and wellbeing and I think that they are a positive brand that I will continue to follow just due to their positive outlook and positive feedback.

Guerilla Marketing

Guerilla Marketing is a really inexpensive but exciting way to gain brand awareness. Usually it happens in bigger cities with a dense population so that the campaign doesn't go completely unnoticed. 

Living in Ottawa hasn't been the best for experiencing guerilla marketing. I actually don't think I've ever seen any around here and I've been living in Ottawa my whole life. I guess some radio promotions where moving around the city looking for artifacts like the lost "T" for Hot 89.9 could be considered Guerilla Marketing. That's about as exciting as it gets here in Ottawa. 

Now on to the fun part! I have a ton of guerilla marketing that I think have been really well executed and I'll share links to them all now.

http://weburbanist.com/2010/08/28/guerrilla-takeover-activists-replace-ads-with-art/

Toronto's Street Advertising Takeover (TOSAT) was responsible for this. They plastered 41 illegal advertising pillars and 20 10′-by-20′ billboards with 85 prints by a variety of artists, from graffiti-style urban art to whimsical drawings of birds.

http://weburbanist.com/2010/08/24/bus-artbus-art-transportation-with-style/

Everyone loves cool bus ads. 

German condom manufacturers Condomi promoted the “Ultra Thin” line with this print and outdoor advertisement showing a condom-shaped bubble. The Bubble was developed at DRAFTFCB Kobza in Wien, Austria. The “Condom Mob” had 230 people in a condom against AIDS.

Beheaded Santa: The slogan is “Don’t cut a dream.” It's against the decrease in advertising investments during the economic crisis. "Creativity is that extra bit of magic that can turn communication into a dream. And there is no crisis that can justify the killing of a dream."

And here is a link to some more cool guerilla examples: http://weburbanist.com/2009/05/31/13-more-extremely-effective-guerrilla-marketing-stunts/




I agree with the sentiment expressed in Urban Spam. Too much of a good thing turns it into a bad thing, no matter what. I think that creative advertising is a great way to engage the audience but if they can't even see your piece in the sea of others, then its really not going to be impressing anyone. The more people are forced into living with advertising in every aspect of their lives, the more they will begin to resent the lack of privacy and resist the ads. 

The Social Contract, in my words.

The Social Contract is an unwritten contract formed between brands and us - the people they target. The contract implies that because brands need awareness to sell, they have to first gain our (the audiences) attention. The trade off is that we give these brands our attention, they gain awareness and we get a bunch of freebies like, cheap TV, free events, free radio etc. Through this unwritten agreement we give brands the   full permission to advertise. 

Following the Social Contract brands are considered active and we are considered passive. They control the format (how the advertisement is delivered, like TV or Radio) and the context (the way it should be percieved). But things are getting a little more complicated these days. 

Online has recently come along and put a big dent in the Social Contract. The reason for this is that sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social outlets are completely controlled by people - aka the audience. The people are now creating content that is increasing awareness and gaining attention. This causes purchase decisions to be swayed through different recommendations and brands can't just rely on the Social Contract to gain our attention and awareness anymore. Disintermediation, meaning the lack of filtering content has formed Online into what it is today. Active audiences are the roots of Online’s great success, and brands are going to have to change and mould to fit into this new era of communication.

Forced advertising will no longer be effective because we are now able to share and express our opinions on brands so easily. If one person doesn't like it, the news will spread fast and no traditional, forced advertisement can outdo the relationship between the people. 

Yet, knowing all this, brands are still advertising in a traditional way online. Using banner ads and other non-communicative forms of advertising just won't cut it these days. 

Here are a few examples of traditional advertising in this new medium:

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/

On this website there are two advertisements that are traditionally used and one that is a little more interactive.

The top banner ad for the movie The Social Network, is in my opinion very ineffective. It completely blends in and would be ignored easily. 

The Left Side banner ad for Earth Share is the same as the top banner ad in that it has no way of interacting with the audience and will be ignored easily. 

However the Microsoft Office ad at the right side banner is much more effective as it has a flash aspect added to it that will attract the attention of the viewer, it attracted mine. 

None of these ads would amount to something I got told to view on YouTube though and this communication and interactive advertising is in my opinion, the future of advertising.