Impressive online page takeover

This is good. Click here to see it in action. Well worth it folks.

Found it here.

A good press ad should grab your attention.

A good press ad should grab your attention. This one would I think.

The copy reads "It's not acceptable to treat a woman like one". Found via AdsoftheWorld. Reviews of it were not great, but I think this would stop and make me look.

Free coffee if you have an iPhone

I like this.

7-Eleven in Sweden, have developed an app that let iPhone owners get a free coffee and biscotti in their stores. You just plug in your number, get a voucher code and show it to the guy behind the counter. No purchase necessary. It was only valid for one coffee in the month of April. But if you're in Sweden this month - you can get a free ice cream. More here.

Loney Duck produced the app - which also has a store locator.

Found via chroma.

Let a stranger drive you home

Watch this a couple of times. It will grow on you.

Found W+K Portland

Lawrence Lessig makes new book available for free

Author, Lawrence Lessig, has made his book, Remix - Making art and commerce thrive in the hybid cconomy, available to download completely for free under a creative commons licence. Fair play.

Mr Lessig is a smart and very articulate writer. I'm sure this will be good. I've downloaded this but not got stuck into it yet.

This novel beats most business books

I can't remember who recommended The Goal to me. I was recently thinking about some of the most useful books I've read. And this popped into my mind. I read it a couple of years ago. It is written as a novel. And is based on manufacturing - something I've no experience in, or any real interest in.

However, I strongly recommend it to you if you are a manager or business owner. Over at Amazon.com, I see it has a 4.5 star rating from 326 people. Not bad at all.

It is about a plant manager that needs to turn things around before he is closed down. It is also about discovering what decisions need to be made, and the consequences of these decisions. If you've read and liked books like The 80/20 Principle or Moneyball - you'll enjoy this.

Tumbleweeds...

Image courtesy of jpdodd

Below is my contribution to the recently published book - 'Connect. Marketing in the social media era', although my article in the book is titled "It's not that we don't care. We do. But our structure is wrong".

Today, many marketing departments are structured to launch advertising campaigns. We push out messages to the marketplace. We go live.

Six weeks later, we go off air. We retreat and get ready for our next campaign. We use all relevant media, including online. We may choose to build a presence - a page - on Facebook, myspace or bebo. We post messages on our page, maybe organise a few competitions and chat away enthusiastically with customers that drop by.

Then, just when our customers are beginning to think there are real people behind the brand, we disappear. We don't want to 'go dark'. We were actually beginning to enjoy the conversations. But we're busy and need to get another ad campaign out the door. Our jobs are to make the next TV ad, or get the next suite of online banner ads ready. Nobody is officially responsible for responding to comments. Nobody is responsible for the fix if a customer is not happy or negative on our blog or social network. And we have to fix their problem. Apologising is not enough. Who decides if a specific customer is entitled to a refund or replacement product? Who's budget does it come from? And of course, once we're onto another campaign, our Facebook or twitter page become a ghost town. Tumbleweeds...

Our intentions are good. It is not because we don't care. We do. But our structure is wrong. For many companies, Marketing and Customer Service are different departments. Different teams. Often different buildings. Definitely different objectives and different mindsets. One sends out messages to customers. The other group is tasked with responding to these same customers.

The solution? Merge these two departments and encourage both groups to talk with their customers. Have the same people talking with our customers in our ads, at our website, on our Facebook page - and any other blog or forum where our brand can add to the conversation.

We will still launch campaigns. Yes, I still plan to make TV ads. But they should be just a conversation starter.

As a rule, I don't talk about O2 here, but...

As a rule, I don't write about O2 here. I keep my personal blog separate from my work. We all know how boring it can be listening to people talk about themselves and their own stuff all the time.

But I'd like to break this rule just for today.

Today we launch our latest tv campaign. It's about priority tickets at The O2. I really like this ad and want to thank and congratulate, the very talented, Emer McCarthy, for this spot. (Please nobody try and poach her).

The ad itself is very simple and beautifully executed. It was directed by Nima Nourizadeh, the man behind the wonderful House Party adidas ad. The haunting voice you hear is that of Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine.

Banner ad with twitter embedded in it. Nice

This is new. To me anyway. Banner ads with twitter updates embedded in them. Click here to see it in action.

Via Contagious.

McCann Erickson have a (nice) blog

The folk in McCann Erickson have a new blog.

Actually, their entire website is a blog. I'm impressed. We've had a debate before (the world doesn't need any more websites) on whether most companies really need a static website and a blog. For me, this suggests they know what they are doing. Good stuff.

Wonderful TV ad

This is a wonderful ad.

Everybody will get knocked at some stage.

As a kid, I was a massive fan of Michael J Fox. Despite the stick I got from mates, I insisted he was one of the finest actors around. I loved Family Ties. I'm still a big fan of his - for other reasons which I'll explain in a moment.

This post is not about advertising or marketing. I want to talk about set-backs.

Actually I made a note to write about set-backs just over three months ago. Not sure what triggered these niggling thoughts. Might have been all the talk of the recession. Or maybe Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Black Swan theory was rubbing off on me.

So sitting down at my kitchen table one morning about three months ago, I scribbled the following few words in my notepad "everybody will get knocked at some stage".

What was on my mind was this: Things don't always go as planned. Bad things happen. You don't get the promotion you deserve. You get let go from your job. Or you mess up at work. You lose a client or an account. Or you get sick. And these things knock your confidence. They make you question your competence, your motives, your career - even the way you live your life. Now, here's the thing. I guarantee it will happen to you. Because it happens to us all. And we never see it coming until it smacks you in the face. We're often left in shock.

The reason I wanted to write about this was to point out that...we recover.

I'm an optimist. I've been very lucky all my life. I know I'll hit bad times. I don't know what it will be, but I also know I'll eventually get through it. We all will. We're resilient.

I never got to write the post that day. Literally hours after I'd written the note, I got a call to say my granny had died. She was sick but I hadn't realised how sick. Exactly one week later, my auntie died. She'd been diagnosed with cancer just weeks before. My poor mum - her mother and sister, both gone within one week. Then weeks later, I discovered an old friend, aged just 36, had been diagnosed with a serious stage of breast cancer.

I suspect we can all relate to this or a version of this.

This brings me back to Michael J Fox. He wrote a book about six years ago about his fight with Parkinson Disease. Titled Lucky Man, he talks about how he has found more happiness because of his illness. His humility and courage was impressive. His new book Always looking up continues with his story of resilience and optimism. It's inspiring and hopeful. I'm listening to it on audio - read by the man himself.

I do believe everybody will get knocked at some stage. Just knowing this won't stop it but hopefully it helps us make sense of it and recover.

Good (+short) article on social media

Good article by Faris on social media, titled "Be nice or leave". Worth a download and read - here.

twitter whore...

Good test for effective outdoor ads

Nick, ad man and copywriter, left a comment last week, musing why so many brands mess up outdoor ads? I find it hard to believe that brand managers do not know the main principles of good outdoor. You can be sure most agencies know what it good and what is clearly not good.

So why poor ads?

I suspect there are other reasons. One might be the time-pressures to get a campaign live. Or perhaps there are internal struggles within the client's organisation. Everybody has an opinion on advertising. And many marketing departments do not have the clout or power they need. So the final result is not the single-minded piece of communication it started out as. But as this video demonstrates - compromise is not always a good thing. It might be good for relationships in the company - but not always a good thing for the end result.

In fairness, Heinz know how to do outdoor. Even from this distance, it is obvious this ad is for Heinz. The photo quality itself isn't great. And even if you can't read the copy - the tomato image suggests this message is something about being fresh. Simple.

If you can't figure out the intended message and the brand from this distance - the ad has failed.

adidas Originals House Party - simpsons version

Simpson's take on the adidas Originals 'house party' tv ad. If you don't know the real one, you're missing out.

Latest TV ad from T-Mobile

Latest TV ad from T-Mobile - a sing along in Trafalgar Square. It's not bad, and is true to the 'Life's for sharing' idea - but thought the first one was more interesting to watch.