Creative

Apple iAds need to deliver with a punch

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I can’t remember the last time a new launch created so much discussion, and not all positive! It’s like Apple have used the same marketing people for their hardware on their advertising solutions. I can hear them now..it’s Apple, people pay for that name they always pay a premium for our glossy products..those conversations are likely to be happening in the US as well.

Well hello Apple, meet the UK trading Director, he is less interested in the gloss, or meet the average client, they want results as well as gloss. There are some lucky advertiser who may pay the huge rates but on the whole they want some results, some proof before they hand over £1m or no £500K or no £325K and on and on…I have read a lot of headlines in this area and none of them discuss how well they work, what they deliver, how they can help a client on its objectives. The headlines are all about the price which is not a great start for Apple.

I have met some of the team and I can say from personal experience the approach was one full of ‘self confidence’ shall we say, this needs to be mixed with some real world understanding and some great metrics to deliver against the price tag. I shall watch the debate with interest as I find it amusing to see the reality hit the marketing / sales people at Apple.

Good luck

Oh come on publishers..build a decent app

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So disappointing. All the major newspaper groups sat down in locked rooms and worked for days and nights to establish what to do with this new tablet world. After many hours they decided that it would be amazing if they scanned in their papers and you could click on the pictures to be taken to another page with a picture and some text. Genius!

There are so many options, independants like Flipboard have created a beautifully slick proposition, very visual, intuitive, interactive etc the newspaper apps are depressing in their lack of creativity, lets see what Murdoch comes up with. There was a moment there when my view that paid for content could actually win out but I have a set of apps now from the publishers that have been a massive let down and if they dont improve then they will get some one hit wonder payments and then thats it.

It annoys me that they have not done more in this exciting area, next we will be encouraging advertisers to create full page iPad ads that dont move, arent clickable and seem to be as dull as the content they are in..doh. Sorry Audi and the like.

Innovation is no longer having an ad in these environments, innovation is creating for the environment, there is a big difference, and too many award entries will be based on the very fact that they stuck an ad on the iPad..#fail. The only innovation on the iPad is the iPad, most of the other stuff is failing.

The Pool launch today

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As I sit at the end of the day we launched The Pool, Lane 4 I am pleased with how things panned out. We had our publisher partners turn up in the form of Channel 4, Fox networks and Youtube as well as a further large broadcaster. Colleagues from ZenithOptimedia and Starcom also came along as well as some of the technology companies we have been working with on the project.

Here is a view of today’s event as we wait for everyone to arrive

We launched the event in The House of St Barnabus, No1 Greek Street which was great as a venue and gave everyone a chance to catch up and discuss the latest on the project. Curt Hecht, Global CEO of the Vivaki Nerve Center set the context and explained the inspiration behind the Pool and touched on the project’s development in China, France and Spain. Our colleagues from the US gave an update on the latest results their work and showed the recently released results from Lane 2.

This project is new and challenging and we hope will get the market place excited and start to create a thouroughly researched project that leads to a scalable ad format for the globe.

Latest PR can be found at www.nma.co.uk

or here at www.brandrepublic.co.uk

or here at www.campaignlive.co.uk

or here www.mad.co.uk

Its a good start overall, lots more work to go!

Cannes Lions Festival – You dream it, we deliver it

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Monday to Thursday was the plan, but then work got in the way! So instead we went for a Tuesday afternoon flight, one that I of course missed by one minute, one minute that cost me 8 hours! I eventually arrived via Amsterdam and immediately got out into the thick of the event, it’s an impressive set up, there are not many places where you can meet up with all of your work colleagues from across the industry in one single city which is buzzing with both work and play conversations.

Down at the Gala event it was heaving with people from across the business, the business being very varied. Media groups, advertising groups, content companies, digital, film, music you name it, all here. A lot of drunken idiots as well to be fair, in fact some people were such imbeciles I was amazed they had been let in the country!

It was a fantastic evening, I met with Christian and Kate from AOL at their own party on a roof top, very civilized and a great ease into the evening, obviously as a reciprocal arrangement from zeitgeist, who should I see there but Damian Burns, Global Head of Agency Relations and Ben Faes from Google. Later in the evening there was Tom George from MEC, Stephen Haines from Facebook and a few other golden oldies. Although of course most of the talk is social, there is some interesting conversations about what has been seen and heard during the day. Apparently the Ben Stiller/Yahoo event was a little weird and did not entirely work, that said by then we outside the cleverly Yahoo sponsored ‘gutter bar’ which was the end destination most evenings and stayed open until way beyond you should have been in bed, luckily it was next to the Martinez where I was staying, so that worked!

The next morning after 2.5hrs of sleep Vivaki and Microsoft had their ‘steering committee’ meeting which lasted for some hours and covered the state of the nation between our two companies, an interesting meeting with some grand ambition which I am looking forward to working on in the coming months. After a lovely lunch a couple of meetings around ad exchanges (my topic of choice at the moment) and then on to the football. Microsoft hosted a great event with all of the UK people seemingly choosing their beach club to watch, great atmosphere not least as the US were playing and the Americans were getting very excited about their game too, we exchanged cheers through the afternoon, although i suspect they were less sure what they were cheering for!

Later at the awards I took my seat, waiting to see what award winning work looked like, there was some great stuff, I loved the recruitment work from one agency that distributed a calendar with a resignation letter for each day, waiting for the day you had had enough. The Aides campaign from TBWA France was also the rudest thing I have seen on the web, a willy chasing a vagina round a homepage and eventually having sex once safely inside a condom was pretty risqué, but brilliantly done.

All the winners can be seen here

An evening spent with Google was very entertaining and good to be on the inside when they win a big lawsuit with CBS! It also appears that I was sat down to one of the men who has contributed most to the uk digital scene, our own Bruce Daisley, winner the next night at the NMA awards for the accolade. I am very pleased, if disbelieving for the lad, he is a great practitioner and a great guy, he is just no good at hosting jollies as he reminded me of our jaunt to Germany for the football.

The next morning I got the chance to see the Microsoft Experience centre, packed full of their three screens, windows 7 phone, Xbox and Kinect. All of them looked amazing and full of potential for an advertiser. As I went round though It just reminded me of how little of this stuff the average planner or advertiser has seen or experienced. There is a gap between the possibility and the reality, I don’t think advertisers see how a touch sensitive table could drive their crm or sales. The Xbox is a home entertainment system with connectivity, content and games, do advertisers see this? I don’t think so and even worse I don’t think the agency folk are much better. If you get a chance go experience it!

As my trip came to an end and I got a chance to catch up with some other agency friends on the way home I thought to myself what a fantastic event, yes there is a lot of fun and drink and socializing but it’s a chance to bring a lot of very interesting people together and the opportunity to see some great work and technology.

A 4 hour delay on the way back, rounded the whole trip off. Thanks to Microsoft, sorry I did not make it on your video blog, I must have been as dull as my blog. When I got home I had an iPhone 4 waiting for me, that’s my next post..

Au Revoir

Politics needs a brand makeover

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Marco Bertozzi: 10.05.2010

Outdoor advertising during the elections has always been a little flippant. Although amusing at times, I feel more and more like my dad is trying to come up with jokes to be down with the kids or worse me making up jokes to be down with the kids. These Ads also give me the feeling that they think we don’t understand anything complicated. I can hear them now back at M&C ‘keep it simple lads, those white van men wont understand anything more than a picture and a one liner.’

They might be right but I feel like the Parties desperately need a brand beyond a logo and a strapline. With all the Parties doing tit for tat Ads and even using each others art work I had no idea who was behind which Ad. I think they need to stand for something but I also think there needs to be some visual triggers, some brand guidelines, do some targeting! The rest of the advertising community aim different Ads at different demographics, they target by media and channel, they make DR Ads different to their brand Ads but all in all they try to retain some key brand identities. It’s this I think has been missing.

Who can remember an Ad – if you were asked to describe one now, what would you say, you may remember Life on Mars but which party? That’s the challenge, I think the Party that could be remembered in the mind of the voter through their advertising may have the advantage – brand recall anyone, recency studies? These could all teach the parties something, it feels like it all gets thrown out during the campaign.

As well as differentiation between Parties being confused there is also the consistency within one party. A myriad of different leaflets, posters in different styles, no guidelines, it comes across disorganised, scrappy and in most cases pretty bland. I believe that more consistency in the advertising styles would make a Party stand out and be more memorable. Its fine for O2 with bubbles or Orange with orange but they have invested tens of millions over many years, they can afford to stray a little and try new things but these political parties have a short while and they need their advertising to stack up, right from the first leaflet to the largest 96+ sheet.

Lets face it their advertising does not work as we have ended up with a hung Parliament..next time act like a brand and see where you get to.

Tiger Woods Ad is impressive..on the part of Nike

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Marco Bertozzi:8.04.10

I have to say I am mightily impressed with the Nike Tiger Woods Ad. It probably says so much more about Nike than Tiger, and they probably know that, but never the less its impressive.

How do these things normally play out? Celebrity messes up, brands drop said celebrity, world moves on for a bit, debate about whether brands should use celebrity endorsement, sponsors come back and re sponsor when the dust has settled and off we go again.

A refreshing change from Nike, who have lived the whole episode, taken the flak, ridden the highs and lows and even been willing to jointly work through the relationship to what I can guarantee will be one hell of a come back.

This Ad is both rare and somehow quite addictive, draws you in, cuts out the hype and makes you think..shit this guy is having to really put himself out there and in this case so is Nike.

Loving the Heineken Inter vs Milan event

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Earlier in my blog I highlighted the great ‘concerts in a banner’ work, well here is another extremely clever and engaging piece of work which brings together media, PR, viral and stunts all into one idea. Take a look, it is genuinely impressive.

Most praise has to go the wives and girlfriends that managed to get them to the event!

The Superbowl still captivates a nation, a UK perspective..and the TV ads

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Marco Bertozzi:14.02.2010
Having been in the US for the first time whilst Superbowl was on, I was struck by what an immense event it is. On the night there were 100 million viewers in the US! Those numbers are mind boggling and even more impressive that they were the highest viewing figures for the game ever.

Who says TV is dead? So how does the Superbowl weekend play out? I always had a simplistic view of the advertising around the event. I imagined a few great Ads in the centre break and then some discussion over how much each Ad cost and whether or not was it any good. I was completely wrong, on all the channels in the run up to the game there was almost as much discussion about the Ads as the game itself. In fact studies showed that watching the Ads was the best bit for many viewers. As an example the web was white hot with rumours about the Google Ad, with many even tweeting that hell must has frozen over for them to take a break in Superbowl.

Once in the game my idea of a ‘centre break’ was naive there were about five plus centre breaks each crammed with ads, some of which were good others less so. What struck me was the lack of an epic. There was no Honda Cog full length or a Tango Classic, just attempts at funny ads. I was sat in a bar when the favorite Dorito Ad came on (the one with the electrocuting dog collar) and the place erupted with laughter, success for Dorito on that one!

Here is a selection of the best:

Post game and on into the next days everyone talked about the ads, amazing coverage, they polled them, they critiqued them, ranked them, it was prime time news. The Internet viral effect was and still is massive, the more people talk about them, the more people go and search online, this is TV and online working together brilliantly. You can see why advertisers go for this, the exposure is enormous, there is simply nothing like this in the UK.

On balance I think it is slightly over the top but you do get dragged into the occasion, it’s also the biggest test of the theory that there is no such thing as bad publicity, woe betide anyone who made a dog of an Ad because that fact was repeated over and over again, would be great to see the sales of an advertiser who produced a bad Ad for Superbowl.