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Birthday Reading List

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So is it Monday or Thursday?

Doesn’t matter to me because today is my birthday and I am pretty much goofing off, playing with puppies and clearing out my feed reader of all that good stuff I "saved for later."

Enjoy!

Marianne Richmond in The Blogstorm: If you sell your soul, how much should you get for it? has some terrific insights on blogger relations.

The Common Craft Show, fast becoming a favorite for its simple explanations of complex Web 2.0 topics, explains social networking.

In the category of not to be believed, AdRants tells us of a client demanding that its agency AE ask permission to take a vacation…

Speaking of passive-aggressive, if you haven’t checked out passive-aggressive notes.com, do it today for a real gem.

And have a terrific weekend!

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Video contests aimed at the younger set — Chevy and Gourmet Station

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Last Friday (8th — I am VERY behind in my blogging), I learned about two video contests aimed at the "younger set," one from Chevy and the other from Gourmet Station.

Disclosure: my sources in both instances were women bloggers who were involved in the development of the respective projects, Nellie Lide for Chevy and Toby Bloomberg for Gourmet Station, and god bless them, they were asking for my opinion. Lucky for them, I’ve gotten my cranky post out of the way for today (see earlier "Forget Things Remembered"), so they don’t have to be too worried about getting what they wished for.

So, here’s the thing I find absolutely the most interesting thing about the two contests. Aimed at similiarly aged audiences — Chevy directly at college student, Gourmet Station at 20- and early 30-somethings, the approaches are very different. Now, of course, some of this can be laid squarely at budget. Chevy has lotsa bucks, Gourmet Station, not so much. In fact, the need to stay to a tight budget was acknowledged by the folks who developed the Get out of the doghouse campaign for Gourmet Station. 

Chevy’s contest asks college students to develop a TV commercial to "to reignite the love affair between Americans and Chevrolet."  It is supported by a standard format blog and a Web site. Chevy will produce the winning commercial and air it during the Super Bowl. Pretty cool idea. The PR effort used both the standard format press release, and a "social media press release,"  and you can read Nellie’s thoughts about that on the New Persuasion blog. Net: this contest is a good execution of a creative idea using a combination of new and old techniques, but it’s not revolutionary.

Still cool though and I’m very much looking forward to seeing the winning commercial since that’s the only reason I watch the Super Bowl anyway. Yeah yeah, I know, un-American. Your point?

Gourmet Station’s Get out of the doghouse campaign, on the other hand, is a grassroots marketing campaign. Folks are asked to create and submit YouTube videos talking about a time they were in the doghouse, and how they got out of it. The connection to Gourmet Station is the idea that a gift of a gourmet meal is one way to get yourself out. The contest site  is on MySpace and they’ve worked with comedians active on MySpace to attract a younger audience. Props to the company: they are also contributing to Borzoi Rescue as part of the program. So we’ve got a real revolutionary "smash-up" — YouTube, MySpace and Gourmet Station’s Web site.

I give Toby and Marianne Richmond, her partner in the project, credit for trying something truly new and definitely understand the desire to reach out to the MySpace audience. I  hope the MySpacers enter the contest. However, I find the site distracting and am not sure it does justice to the creative idea. The format is just too confining. Which is amusing, given how so many are using MySpace to express their individuality 🙂

I wish Gourmet Station had the budget to do a Web site for the contest that communicated the idea more clearly and effectively. They could still have used MySpace to engage the community, but not to tell the whole story. The MySpace site just feels too jumbled.

Now, I will be honest. I do not get MySpace. At all. Am I old and cranky? Perhaps. But it just doesn’t seem like an efficient way to convey information. It just reminds me of Web sites in the early days (94-ish) with or without <blink>.

My .02. YMMV. Possibly especially if you are younger 🙂 

Registration for the Chevy contest is closed, but the Gourmet Station contest is still open until early October. Check it out.

PS: Good Technology still hasn’t contacted us about the phone number problem.

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Watching/Not Watching/Wondering

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Watching

Rocketboom. Today’s was particularly funny, especially Broke Mac Mountain

Wikipedia.  Dr. Myra and the congressional staffers (and Marty Meehan is my rep to boot), and all the other recent transgressions. Don’t these people get it? You cannot screw around with a shared, global resource like Wikipedia. You will get caught. And outed. Apply your no doubt significant skills in some other fashion.

Not watching

The G- D—y Super Bowl commercial. Incest isn’t funny. And that is all I can think about when I remember last year’s commercial:  the G- D—y bimbo shaking her boobs and butt saying the inevitable. It is just yucky. No links. No more discussion. If the commercial comes on while I am (sort of) watching the game, I’m going to take my bathroom break. Seems appropriate somehow.  Added: Tip of the hat to Media Orchard for a link to the putative schedule. Now I know when I can safely pee and not miss some play that my husband wants to "discuss." Yawn.

Wondering?

Okay, I cannot be the only person on the planet who finds the latest Gawker media venture a wee bit disturbing. Am I? Just about every blog I read it on today (lots) reported it matter-of-factly or with relish. I’m just thinking, eeww.

Tags: Advertising, Blogging

More on advertising

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Advertising seems to be the topic de la semaine.

Bob Bly posted Is Madison Avenue Advertising a Total Fraud. While I am not sure I’d say total fraud, one of the points he makes is that agencies value creativity more than sales, which is not in the best interests of the client. Now, not all agencies are clueless about the need for actual SALES RESULTS, but I do agree that awards and "cool ads" seem to be more valued than the perhaps less exciting but maybe more effective ad that actually drives response. As I said in my earlier post this week, the message and getting the prospect to take action are the important elements. Art and design help get the message across, they aren’t the goal.

Jennifer Rice (What’s Your Brand Mantra), commenting on an earlier Bly post about the Madison Avenue Branding Rip-Off, makes some excellent points about advertising and branding:

IMO, there are two core issues here: first is the fallacy of ‘brand advertising’, and the second is that agencies are usually not well-suited to do brand strategy.

The brand-advertising fallacy:
As a client, I was told by my (nationally recognized) ad agency: "no, we cannot do response-oriented advertising until we’ve run ‘brand’ advertising for at least 3 months." Sorry, but that sets off my bullsh*t meter. The imagery, tone of voice, tag line, copy… there are plenty of elements that can deliver the brand message in conjunction with a sales promotion. CFOs don’t have the patience for so-called ‘brand advertising’ anymore, and marketing is now accountable for results.

Absolutely!! Your advertising is ALWAYS brand advertising (even if you don’t realize it). Best to do a little selling as well. As well as realize that everything in the business impacts the brand. You can’t create a brand image separate from the reality of the organization or the product. It won’t work.

Which I suppose bring us back full circle. So much advertising DOES seem to try to create a brand image not grounded in reality that it is ineffective, leading to a conclusion that advertising doesn’t work.

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On a completely different note, thanks to David Parmet (Marketing Begins At Home) for posting about this non-Christmas carol. If you are getting sick of Jingle Bells and Drummer Boys, you’ll get a kick out of it (even if the music itself isn’t your favorite genre).