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Ad Creativity: Leo Burnett Sao Paulo

Lately, I've found myself interested in advertising in cultures outside of the United States. So, in between studying/going to concerts/my Netflix queue I've been seeing what some of the larger agencies with branches around the globe are up to.

This led me to Leo Burnett Tailor Made/Sao Paulo:

Basically they [secretly] employed the eccentric Brazilian millionaire Count Chiquinho Scarpa to draw media attention for the Brazilian Association of Organ Transplants. 

Scarpa began posting on Facebook that he was going to bury his favorite car, a half a million dollar Bentley, in his front yard after being inspired by pharaohs that buried their most prized possessions.  The post created a media frenzy and soon every Brazilian talk show was criticizing him and calling him crazy and selfish.  After inviting media to attend the burial ceremony, Scarpa halted the procession and gave a speech agreeing with the public’s opinion of the absurdity of burying a valuable car, but then challenged, “the vast majority of people are burying far more valuable things than my car.” 

I just renewed my driver's license and you can bet I checked the organ donor box then chuckled at the thought of a Brazilian millionaire burying his Bentley.

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Where's the Stop Sign?

Recently, in one of my advertising courses we've discussed advertising ethics in pretty great detail. When does marketing your brand as "sexy" reach the point of inappropriate and offensive? Is it okay to advertise to children? Are certain brands responsible for irresponsible behavior?

These are tough questions that I unfortunately don't have the answer to. I have my opinions, as do advertisers, parents, professors, teens, and the list goes on. Sometimes overlapping, sometimes not. The point is Advertising Ethics is controversial and not something to be taken lightly.  I am grateful that this particular course allowed me to broaden my scope of who to consider would be offended when placing ads.

Note: I'm calling these type of posts Blurbs from Class I Don't Want to Forget. These posts serves more as a reminder for me and less for readers although it may make ya think.

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Advertising on Snapchat

Snapchat - one of the more recent social media forms to capture the attention of younger generations. For those of you not familiar with the iPhone and Android app (/you're living in a cave), it allows you to send pictures to another Snapchatter for up to 10 seconds then disappears. Of course, you can screenshot the image but then the sender is notified of your snapchat taboo. 

In the past two years, Snapchat has become huge. I'm talking more than 30 million users and over 400 million messages sent per day. So naturally the first thing that pops into my mind is- that is a s@*! ton of people that are easily accessible.

Snapchat, however, currently does not allow advertising on their app, but that's not to say it isn't in their future. Some hackers/tech wizards also agreed with me and recognized the potential for advertising though because I received this [sketchy] advertisement from an unknown user on snapchat a couple of weeks ago:

At the top of the snapchat, they even had inserted a "hello " + my username (which I decided to block out in case any of these tech wizards happen to stumble upon this). No idea as to how they received my snapchat username, but it does make me wonder what advertising possibilities will be allowed on Snapchat in the future.

P.S. if you work for snapchat, ya may want to check on the security measures in place

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#Hashtags

Preface: I am 21 years old. I use hashtags. All the time. 

I think they are great. I love clicking on hashtags on Instagram and seeing more pictures of the same concert,event,topic, etc. I personally believe hashtags are a key player in making the world even more connected (hello globalization). Also, in the advertising world it creates an opportunity to collect metrics (which isn't always the easiest in the digital world) on your brand. Greatness.

Lately, however, I feel like hashtags are popping up everywhere. I mean everywhere.

I'm a Dallas Mavericks fan and was lucky enough to go to the Mavs v Spurs Game 3 yesterday (Vince Carter's game winning shot ok #amazing), but throughout the series thus far I couldn't help but notice the use of hashtags on the top of the backboard. Every time an instant replay is shown on TV and the Big Screen, they always switch to the camera angle looking down on the shot as it goes in. And what else is in view in that angle? #goMavs Not just once either. There are two hashtag goMavs framing the hoop. I haven't heard any negative feedback about this; in fact, me (and some friends) are fans of it. It's short, sweet, and Maverick's fans see it at their "windshield moment" when their team scores and they are the most pumped/inclined to tweet/post something positive about the Mavericks. goMavs advertising team.

On the flip side, some hashtag placements seem out of place to me.  Case in point: my yogurt this morning

So what do ya think- are you a fan of hashtags?

Y'all know my position (see hashtags below every post...oops)

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Windshield Moment

I've been fortunate enough to stumble upon some amazing people while being a student at the University of Texas. What do I think makes someone amazing? In this case, I'm talking about people who teach you something that you know is going to stick with you the rest of your life.

One of my teachers in the TexasMedia sequence shared with me a story about experiencing what she calls a "Windshield Moment". My first reaction when she prefaced the story, was probably the same as yours- where is she going with this? Well, soon my question was answered.  She had been driving her usual route through a hilly (with lots of gravel) part of Austin when a rock flew up and cracked her windshield.  A couple of minutes after the crack had formed in her windshield, she noticed signs reading "Need your Windshield fixed? Call ###-####". Sure enough, she called the number and a handyman met her an hour later at her house to fix the crack.  

There were other details of the story that I won't go into now, but the main point of her story was the brilliance and effectiveness of reaching your target at their "windshield moment" -- when the product or service is most relevant to the consumer. 

So simple, yet so genius.

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Yahoo! Motion and Splash Ads

Since my last post on Native Advertising, I've come across Yahoo!'s advertising for advertising on Yahoo! (bear with me here). Basically Yahoo! is stepping up their game as a vendor.  

After looking into Yahoo!'s Ad Specs more, I became curious about their naming of the new type of ads they offer... Yahoo! Motion Ads and Yahoo! Splash Ads.

Motion Ads were unveiled a couple months back and brilliantly, in my opinion, play off of the younger generations' love for GIFs and interactivity. My first gut reaction was I love the detail of this type of ad. I'm a believer in little things/details making all the difference between a good and a great ad. Plus the use of subtle movement in an ad versus an in-your-face pop up video is less invasive in the target's online experience. For example, I came across a FIFA Yahoo! Motion Ad that was a still image of a soccer player going up for a header. The catch was the jersey was rippling in the wind, while everything else was still. Awesome. My other favorite example comes from Kraft (this may or may not have something to do with my love affair with cheese): Click here if the motion isn't working.

Splash Ads are the latest type of ad Yahoo! has decided to offer. They classify them as "high impact, immersive, large-canvas visual ad" that are "highly integrated into the content of our digital magazine home page and article pages."  Hold up... integrated  into the content? Isn't that a native ad? Yep. It is. After looking at examples like this m&m Splash ad featured in the middle of Yahoo"s Food recipe page:

I realized that yep Splash ads = Native ads. My impression is that Yahoo! just gave it a new fancy name that is more marketable to clients (and avoids the publicized controversy associated with Native ads).

Why call them Splash ads? I have yet to find concrete evidence on this, but I'm guessing they're hoping to advertise them as making a splash in the consumer's online experience.

Thoughts?

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Native Ads: A New or Old Trend?

At the beginning of this semester, the first assignment in my Advanced Media Strategies class was about researching a “new advertising trend”, which ended up being Native Advertising. 

All secondary research my group and I found led to Native Advertising as a form of paid advertising that mimics the visual and functional conventions of the medium it is placed in.  The most commonly cited examples my classmates and I found were sponsored articles on the New York Times Online, promoted tweets on Twitter, and suggested posts Facebook.

So after researching if Native Ads are effective (they are) and moral (controversial subject depending on the type of ads and audience of the medium), I went back and started thinking more and more about the definition of a Native Ad~ it mimics its surroundings.

Then it hit me while I was in my prime deep thinking zone (waiting in line to check out at a grocery store)-- Native Advertising isn't a "new advertising trend" at all. It has simply become more transparent in the digital realm and given a fancy name. Magazines have been filled with sponsored content seamlessly entwined with their articles. Shape Magazine, for example, was paid to include some products on their "Summer It List." (They did note "Special Advertising Section" in the corner to keep some transparency).

So what do ya think? Is Native Advertising a new trend or a rebranded tactic from the past?