Have you seen this Ad? It's crap.

Was having a read of Sport on the Tube last week and the first ad I saw was this one



Nothing remarkable you say, and you'd be right but then I look over to the companion ad on the right hand side and see this



Which is a total rip-off of this



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...which I think is genius (the cat ad not the Chevy ad).

I've spoken before about ripping stuff off and whilst perhaps the original doesn't have a huge reach and therefore isn't considered plagiarism by the creatives who steal the idea, if you're going to rip something off at least place it in the right context.

There’s a whole host of things wrong with this, firstly it's just a boring ad with nothing particularly memorable about it but more importantly, the idea of changing the perspective to make something funny/memorable has been totally lost. I don't need to explain it but the reason the cat poster is funny is obvious but the Chevy ad doesn't give the reader anything.

They couldn't put it on a lamppost because nobody loses their car and puts up posters for it and there's no other vehicle for the joke because you need the context of the lamppost to distort else it doesn't really make any sense, you end up just telling the reader to look for this car because it's awesome. As a consumer I'm thinking… Is it awesome? Why? Personally I think it looks like radioactive snot which is pretty low down the awesomeness scale.

I don't have a problem as such with copying ideas but only if you either improve on them or keep them exactly the same and even reference the original piece. As mentioned in my earlier post about this, Car Phone Warehouse did this really well with Kristopher Storm where they loved what he did, got him on board and paid him to do the ads. This is much better and doesn't make your brand look like a total faceless corporate automaton who will just buy themselves ideas instead of actually investing in the talent.

Brand Diversity

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I’ve been asked by a friend for some advice on getting sponsorship on an event they’re running. The event is the Euro Gamer Expo and has grown exponentially over the last few years, so much so it now attracts some 20,000 gamers from all over Europe and is being held at Earls Court. He was asking me whether there were any brands who were more mainstream that could be attracted to an event like this and weren’t just the obvious TV and hardware brands that regularly get invovled.

So if I put my client head on for a minute, I suppose the biggest question is, ‘What value is there for my brand if I associate with an event like this? I understand that games are a multi-billion dollar industry globally and the audience reach is expanding all the time, (with the proliferation of family based gaming platforms (wii, DS) and games such as Buzz), but will being a part of a cutting edge event for a niche audience be beneficial to my brand or will it seem out of place?’

My initial thoughts (if I was a mainstream but non-endemic brand such as Sainsbury’s for example) is that there’s no obvious connect and for those brands that are more ubiquitous with a much larger audience (such as Orange), is there enough of a draw to present the brand in front of what is a specific, tech savvy audience, who make up maybe 5% of my total audience?

With that in mind, the next question to ask is ‘Are there any big brands who have a specific offering to this audience?’

Could Virgin promote their 50Mb optical fibre broadband with the promise that there would never be loss of connection mid-game?

Dominos could offer ‘buy one get one free’ during a national online tournament when you quote a specific code which is given to you when you register.

Gamers are probably fairly big film watchers, so perhaps Lovefilm could do a tie-in promoting not only their blu-ray DVD proposal but their game rental service too?

The amount of investment required is not huge and although there is such a big focus on value and brand perception at the moment, clients are also beginning to understand the importance of testing new areas. I told him that with some of our clients we add an extra 10% to the budget in order to test new sites, formats, channels etc, which shows that clients are willing to investigate, if the proposal is presented in the right way.

The proposal my friend sent me didn’t pitch in quite the right tone for getting brands to explore and discover, it was asking for out and out sponsorship assuming that the audience understands the benefits of what a sponsorship would provide. I’ve spoken before about the importance of understanding your audience and this is another case of making a few tweaks to get the right people engaged and responsive.

If I was pitching this project I would put together a wish list of brands that I wanted and find out exactly which part of their business offering would fit. I would then do my research and find out exactly what they’re trying to achieve as a business and match it with the different elements of the sponsorship. In support of this I would make sure that I had plenty of PR/Case Study material to help substantiate my points as from a planner’s perspective there is nothing more helpful when it comes to selling in ideas to a client then showing them what their competitors are doing!

The Expo is in October, let’s wait and see who they get onboard!

Screen Test

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Saw this nice bit of creative on the Diesel site.



I'm sure it's been done before in some other capacity, but I think it could very well be the future of online shopping. Imagine being able to watch a programme/film and have the ability (through your wireless enabled TV) to pause the content select an item (whether it's clothing, furniture or a even a car) and find out more information about it with a clear call to action to purchase.

Works on paper but in reality it might make from crappy viewing especially with other people in the room but it would redefine ASOS's offering!!