In 2011, Sweden became the first country in the world to let go of an official communication channel and hand it over to our citizens. Together with the Swedish Institute and Visit Sweden, they decided to break all branding principles and revolutionize the voice of a country.
Target recenlty revealed its new micro-niche retail strategy. Like many retailers they are picking up edgy trendsmart shops from Miami to SF—and plugging these mini boxes inside the larger Target retail box.
Target typically does this right. If the concept takes off with consumers, we can look forward to more boutiques and more categories. I ponder what the online implications of these boutiques will be? will it be a gilt like object or something much more location-based social networking centric?
The media landscape is a very different beast today than it was even 5 years ago. Then agency-led television commercials dominated how we channel our marketing. The very fact you are reading this here proves that things have changed. With splashes of Henry Jenkins’ spreadable media concept, experiential marketing, Sir Ken Robinson’s whiteboard execution and Coke’s sophisticated marketing aplomb, the videos take us on a discovery that is as startling as it is revelatory.
Coca Cola have always been at the forefront of innovation. In this video Jonathan Mildenhall, Vice-President, Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence at The Coca-Cola Company is the person responsible for leading global creative vision and strategy for the Company's portfolio of global brands. He explains how Coke will leverage the opportunities in the Post Digital landscape and transform one-way storytelling into dynamic storytelling hoping to add value and significance to peoples lives.
The challenge of content creation in an enlightening way, reminds us that every contact point with a customernis a point of judgement that should tell an emotional story. The importance of a content fludity model is also referenced. What is most surprising during the nearly eighteen viewing minutes is how willfully the soft drink marketer peels back the layers of their organization to reveal what’s been working and what hasn’t.
What these videos do is demonstrate is that the world has changed and the largest marketing organization in the world has changed with it. Have you moved from one-way storytelling into dynamic storytelling or from consumer insights to provocations thus potentially adding value and significance to people’s lives. For those of us who have been building liquid and linked content through transmedia storytelling this is simply refreshing. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Burberry has approached traditional advertising with a great new entertaining spin to introduce its Summer 2012 Eyewear Collection. The fashion brand has teamed up with a selection of emerging British musicians, who have all created a new track for the campaign. The bands are then shown performing the songs in a series of videos, where they also sport sunglasses from the new collection.
The project is curated by Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey, and the videos have all been created in-house. Burberry is releasing them weekly on YouTube during April. Three tracks are out so far: shown here are videos for One Night Only, Marika Hackman, and Life In Film.
A fourth video, starring The Daydream Club, will be released next week. The tracks are also available for download from iTunes and the bands will headline Burberry showa that will take place on May 3 and 4 in Paris, Milan, New York and Sydney.
May the 14th is World Fair Trade Day and Ben and Jerry’s is encouraging consumers to donate any leftover characters in their tweets to a linked story, which will extol the virtues of Fair Trade. It’s a nice way of using Twitter to do something good and also generate positive sentiment for the brand.
In the latest Britney Spears music video features her own personal fragrance Radiance, Make Up Forever eye-shadow, Sony electronics, and the dating website PlentyOfFish.com which was said to be the only paid placement. According to the New York Times, “Plentyoffish.com, has made a name for itself by engaging in one of the more traditional forms of branded entertainment: paying to have itself placed in scenes in music videos.
Declining record sales is driving bands, singers and other artists to integrate products into their performances. I think that the line between what is the right amount of brand integration and what is too much is a fine one.
Check out the “Hold it Against Me” video. What do you think, does product placements spoil the art?
