What a 2 € donation can do is visualized in an interactive poster at Hamburg airport.

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Why does this news from Sky get such uniform approval and huge anticipation of an improved product to boot ? This in direct contrast to it’s moving to ITV some years earlier despite their excellent coverage.

Lord knows when it was,but back in the day of Sunday afternoon football, played on Somme deep muddy pitches with a ball that increased in weight as the match progressed the news came through that Sky had ” nicked” the footie for themselves.
“whose going to pay to watch football on TV” was the response from the negotiation team – the rest is history.

It’s because that when they “nick it” they invest in the sport at every angle at every level and don’t stop.At the recent Ryder Cup I was lucky enough to watch some of it in 3D no idea what the hole was but it was a par three and Sky rather than do the normal had the hole filmed from a blimp above the said hole and in 3D I don’t imagine it was easy I don’t imagine it changed the rating, the camera man must have frozen -but the effect was dramatic – bigger and better coverage than anywhere else before.

So back to Formula 1 a commercial beast – as commercial a beast that Sky is in many ways the perfect match.

The TV Ad and online promo have begun to give a flavour of what to expect,fast cut and fast paced with an HD gloss and no doubt 3D to come.

Despite the promise of an uninterrupted ad free race you can be sure that there will be plenty of advertising and marketing opportunities.A whole channel to play with a chance to trial powerful product placement and Ad funded programming across the day and week of the race….. And as it turns out in Dolby Digital Surround Sound.
.

FI attracts some of the most critical fans of any sport, so the ‘Believe in Better’ tag line will be well and truly tested.

One of my colleagues told me that whenever he comes into close proximity with little old ladies, say in a supermarket queue or squished in a bus, he gets the faintest whiff of boiled onions in his nose.  For reasons best known to herself his dear departed granny frequently liked to lunch on a single boiled onion, the aroma of which became all pervasive in her house and became the all-pervading memory of his visits to her.  He fears this repeated experience has resulted in the unfortunate conditioned response he now has to old ladies.  Unless of course it’s just that they do all smell of boiled onions.

Given the power of the sense of smell to create such long lasting memories it’s perhaps surprising that advertisers do not exploit it more.  So bravo to McCain Foods for their innovative campaign in support of their Ready Made Jackets brand.  These 10 bus stops in major cities have been transformed into a multi-sensory experience.  At the touch of a button on the poster the big potato will warm up, emit the smell of baking jackets and dispense a money-off coupon.  According to McCain “These outdoor specials are really going to stand out and drive sales by bringing the tasty oven baked smell to warm the consumer”.

Bus shelters have been the source of much inspiration to restless advertising minds in recent times.  Fitness First installed scales on the seats of bus shelters cowing unwitting travellers to their clubs by displaying their weight on the poster.  IKEA has transformed bus shelters into cosy living rooms fitted out with an Ektorp sofa and Emmie Knop curtains.  Absolut employed a similar re-furb tactic with a makeover of bus-shelters into shocking yellow bars in support of their ‘lemon drop’ brand.  Vitamin Water installed USB phone re-charging into bus-shelters to promote their ‘Alternative Energy Source’ positioning.  Elsewhere bus shelters have been transformed into goalposts, fully heated ovens and aquariums, have used movement sensors, offered video games and dispensed sun cream.  But smell has always been conspicuously absent.

Scientifically McCain is definitely on the right track, at least according to howstuffworks.com:

“The olfactory bulb is part of the brain’s limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it’s sometimes called the “emotional brain,” smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously. The olfactory bulb has intimate access to the amygdala, which processes emotion, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for associative learning. However, smells would not trigger memories if it weren’t for conditioned responses. When you first smell a new scent, you link it to an event, a person, a thing or even a moment, your brain forges a link between the smell and a memory.”

Hence for my colleague old ladies = boiled onions

As much as all this might be true I remain sceptical about the future of smell in advertising.  The trouble being that artificially created smells rarely smell authentic.  Katy Perry’s cotton candy scented ‘Teenage Dreams’ album notwithstanding, the history of scratch n’ sniff technology has enjoyed only patchy success for a reason.  McCain is savvy enough to know that the value of their bus-shelters does not reside in the smell they produce, but more in people like me talking about the smell they produce.  Because in itself the exploitation of the olfactory bulb’s intimacy with the amygdala is pointless when there is a real danger that the response being conditioned is that ‘Ready Made Jackets smell of dog fart!’

Tara is a Research Director at Ipsos ASI. She would like to thank her colleague James Mundell for his illuminating story about old ladies and boiled onions.

Join CMO of Radian6 David Alston, VP APAC of Radian6 Charlie Wood and Brian Giesen Regional Director of Social@Ogilvy Australia and others for an exclusive, frank panel discussion on how social media listening should be the first step in establishing a meaningful social media strategy for a business – one that is lasting, engaging and rewarding for both customers and stakeholders.

This free event is the first in 2012 from the newly rebranded Social@Ogilvy team in Australia, and we would love to see you attend.

WHEN: Thursday, March 1st, 2012 from 5:30 – 7:30pm

WHERE: Ogilvy Sydney – 72 Christie St, St Leonards, Sydney

Secure your seat for this event below.

Nationwide Insurance knows how to put the message out there.

Advertising Agency: TM Advertising, Irving, Texas, USA

Old commercial, but funny how the imagination does all the work. See the faces everywhere.

The most prevalent example of this right now is email. (And let’s not get into how good some specific brands are, or aren’t at doing email marketing, that’s a topic for another day!).

This lunchtime I met with one of my (recent) old bosses. He’s a digital guru. I’m more your data type. Now that those two are to all intents and purposes the same discipline, I felt suitably empowered to tell (show off to) him with much enthusiasm about the new Facebook activity we’re doing at Albion for giffgaff, our very own Crystal Ball which is a one to one messaging platform that sits within the walled garden of Facebook that fans can opt in to (I know, I give great lunch date material).

Anyway, what we’re doing is posting personalised messages direct to a fan’s wall, using their own information, which they can then choose to share with their friends or not. But where it adds to the existing social media fan page management 1-2-1 marketing, i.e. ‘respond to comments’,  is that it does so on the same mass-customised data rules driven basis as email. So we don’t need to broadcast to everyone the same, or with limited segmentation, in the newsfeed. We can post a relevant message to your wall, at a time that’s relevant to you. So we don’t get lost in that ever growing stream of newsfeed updates.

At this point he reminded me that well over 18months ago (it must be because I haven’t worked with him for that long) he had pointed out to me in my capacity as Head of eCRM (which broadly meant “runs email clients”)  that Social media and CRM should be one and the same. Why shouldn’t social media messages be automatically personalised? Why aren’t we serving direct one to one messages on people’s walls?

And it made me think about why now it is a great idea, but back then it wasn’t. And I know exactly why:-

a)       There was no proven tech that allowed us to do that then

b)       Facebook felt like too precious an arena to make it likely that individuals would sign up to any form of direct brand communications on their wall

c)       And the second point lead onto the fact that not enough brands wanted to take a chance on pushing automated messaging in Facebook, it just felt too intrusive and not ‘consumer friendly’ enough

So what’s changed my opinion?

As to the first one, with the right knowhow there is the tech to deliver this. (yes, we have that know-how)

The second one is more of a cultural shift – social media isn’t quite the precious walled garden that it was. Don’t get me wrong, you can’t use it as for flyposting, but it’s not quite the ‘no-no’ it was – or at least felt like to the more traditional CRM view of the world.

Which brings me to the most challenging point – how do you ensure that any personalised messaging doesn’t feel intrusive. That is the creative challenge which brands are now addressing and resolving. For giffgaff, where the social community is king, we are giving our fans total transparency about what we are going to communicate with them and what it will be about. They also have the choice whether to share what we post or not.  And we are telling them it’s a test and letting them decide how helpful it is.  Each brand will have its own approach to the value exchange with their fan base, and I still believe this is the critical point to get right – but it’s totally do-able.

So it’s one thing to have seen the future 18months ago, but quite another for it to have been a practical reality. And now, and it’s only recent that it is, at Albion we’re making everything we can of it for our clients.

Many brands are jumping on board. This raises the obvious question as to whether Pinterest is worth the energy and effort now or whether brands should wait. Is it essential to your business? Or is it an innovative platform for you and therefore worth some resources? Or is it simply beguiling – waiting to charm or enchant you and divert you from more meaningful programs? This last risk is a big one.

In Altimeter’s latest report on Content: The New Marketing Equation, Rebecca Lieb cautions,

“Bright, shiny objects, i.e. a fixation on newer channels and technologies, can distract from foundational channels, e.g. search, written content, such as blogs, and educational content.”  

Certainly many marketers are skeptical and even disgusted with the amount of attention Pinterest has earned. As a marketer, I don’t worry about that. None of us really know whether Pinterest will become a significant platform or become the next Empire Avenue (hey, even MySpace is making a comeback!)It’s more important to evaluate this platform and the others vying for attention and resources based upon how it can help your business today.

It’s Essential

If you are an ecommerce offering catering to women, you should jump on board now. Many retailers are doing just that. The number one ecommerce retailer in this space is Etsy. The haystack nature of that marketplace seems ideally suited for the visual curation that Pinterest delivers. The most remarkable Pinterest quality is really the women. While Instagram is also big with women, it doesn’t have the same referral traffic as Pinterest. If you have a product collection well-suited to this curation, have a storefront/product page to point people to and sell to women, then Pinterest is an easier choice. While you are figuring out the value of the “engagement” metrics (pin-ing and sharing, essentially), you can still look to count the referral traffic which is already a valuable KPI for online stores. 

A Worthy Innovation   

I certainly know plenty of big brands who are going all in on Facebook. Anything else – even Twitter – is a distraction. That may be a dangerous single-mindedness. We are all pushing our organization’s ability to adapt to new customer and stakeholder behaviors. We need to learn. We need to learn how to cope with the flood of choices available to people out there. Should you be on Google+? I think that one is a good bet. It may take another six months to understand its business impact but experimentation via limited investment is the only way to figure it out. 

If you want to specifically engage women who are energized by fashion, food, home design, graphic design or hobby, then it may be worth some effort and investment. These categories do seem to dominate and you can see it in the most followed users.

If you have a collection of visual images to share that are of natural interest to people or if your brand intersects with a theme/meme already gaining traction, then that gives you one more good reason to engage. It doesn’t make sense to take this platform on if you don’t already have the picture content or the theme that lends itself to pinning (bookmarking) images.

Give yourself a time constraint like 2-3 hours a week. Pick out the likely KPIs that might show progress from click-throughs to followers and likes. Benchmark yourself against other similar brands or against ones you aspire to being compared to. Every brand should have some tolerance for innovating on new platforms. With a logical decision tree and quarterly evaluations, it’s possible to keep the level of effort reasonable. 

Just Plain Beguiling

The simplest filter is women. If you are trying to engage C-suite decision makers (let’s face it - predominantly men) you are pretty far off your target. If you have no picture assets (e.g. catalogs) or objects that capture people’s interest, then the level of effort to create them and hope they are of intrinsic interest to people just isn’t worth it. The reason we are intrigued by Pinterest is the natural growth of the platform. Our job must be to understand it and make use of it, not try and game it.

SEO Blogger is skeptical of Pinterest's value today. He outlines a scenario to evaluate its potential based upon a crude ROI model. As a solo-practitioner, his criteria makes sense. For brands considering the platform, we are way off any ROI that matters. Simply know the platform, judge whether it is essential, innovative or merely beguiling and go from there. 

Great Pinterest pages:

• Etsy - probabaly the top page, how else can you find these must-have rings 
• West Elm - I love their collections. If I was currently shopping for furniture, thsi woudl definitely make it easier and more enjoyable
• Michael's Stores - how else can you make sense of all the craft supplies these guys sell? 

In this crazy and fast-paced “digital ecosystem”, the power of producing a diverse range of branded content is almost as important as maintaining a presence on more than just Facebook.

Why?

E-Marketer’s article above shows two things:

• The Good News: 54% of US respondents stated that “Liking” a Brand on Facebook increases their purchase intent of that brand
• The Bad News: 47% of US respondents stated that it didn’t make a difference at all

1. The Opportunity - like any other brand activity, brands have to think – what is a universal truth about our business? What would people want to hear/see from us? What is new/original/hasn’t been done before?

2. The Enabler - how will the brand enable this content? Will the brand sponsor/fund the content, or will it help creative people do the amazing things they’re already doing?

3. The Platforms – Where will the content be hosted? Owned/Earned/Paid channels? Will the brand simply curate content, or will it create it?

Si vous l’avez raté, je vous invite à le lire ici (rien que le titre, déjà…).

Parmi mes morceaux choisis :

- « Le monde des blogueurs – ces particuliers qui ont créé un site Internet auquel ils confient leurs passions et leurs expériences du quotidien, à la manière d’un journal intime – intéresse de plus en plus les grandes entreprises spécialisées dans les biens de consommation. Elles y trouvent un moyen de communiquer sur leurs produits auprès d’un canal médiatique très prescripteur. » – on en était à ce niveau de compréhension il y a 6 ans…

- « Chez But, par exemple, on a fait en 2011 un point presse rien que pour eux (les blogueurs). » / « Une marque spécialisée dans le petit électroménager, qui souhaite garder l’anonymat, a ainsi organisé au printemps 2011 une conférence de presse pour les blogueurs à l’occasion du lancement d’une série spéciale. » – un point presse ou une conférence de presse, c’est pour la presse hein…

- « Ce sont eux qui fixent le prix, et on voit si cela nous intéresse, en fonction de la fréquentation de leur site », explique-t-elle. « Il y en a même qui demandent 1 000 euros rien que pour assister à un déjeuner, avec un cadeau d’un montant minimal », ajoute-t-elle. « Les billets sponsorisés coûtent environ entre 300 et 1 500 euros », explique un autre conseiller en relations publiques. – Ce sont donc des responsables RP qui parlent d’une action publicitaire ou d’achat média (rappelons que les RP consistent à faire porter ses messages par une tierce personne libre, indépendante donc non rémunérée pour le faire). Je passerai sur l’image données de blogueurs qui fixent leurs tarifs, peut-être existent-ils mais je ne les ai jamais rencontré même dans le cadre de mon travail.

La mauvaise nouvelle, c’est qu’avec ce type de niaiseries, on peut s’attendre à des demandes de grandes marques qui invitent à la rémunération des blogueurs, tout en attendant le même impact que celui d’ambassadeurs librement convaincus. Car, entendons-nous, je n’ai rien contre la rémunération de blogueurs dès lors qu’une production de contenu leur est demandée sur un espace de marque. Mais écrire dans un article « selon les chiffres de Mediamétrie pour 2011, 88 % des internautes sont influencés dans leurs achats par les recommandations trouvées sur le Net » sans préciser que ces recommandations trouvent leur point de force dans l’adhésion spontanée des auteurs des billets, commentaires, twitts… indique un manque de compréhension des mécaniques d’influence.

Avec ma casquette de blogueur, je me suis positionné clairement sur le sujet. En 2009, j’écrivais :

Lorsqu’en août 2005 j’ai créé ce blog, je ne savais pas bien quoi en faire et encore moins ce qu’il allait devenir. De toute évidence, ma principale angoisse du moment était de ne pas laisser croire que je voulais jouer au journaliste. Un débat qui parait à la fois d’un autre temps et pourtant toujours filigrane dans pas mal de conversations en ligne. Dès le départ, mon blog était un laboratoire, un lieu utile pour expérimenter de nouvelles approches de marque, comprendre jusqu’où tenait le mélange des genres vie privée vie publique, comprendre les bascules de l’existence virtuelle aux liens dans le réel et inversement. Si j’ai toujours refusé les sollicitations (pourtant parfois exagérément alléchantes) qui m’invitaient à transformer mon blog en « arbre de Noël pour marque » de type billets sponsorisés, j’ai plongé à chaque fois qu’on me proposait de vivre quelque chose de nouveau dépassant la description d’un produit qu’on m’aurait offert. Par intérêt et conviction plus que par éthique.

Encore une fois en tant que blogueur, et même si c’est mon nombre de followers sur Twitter qui m’amène le plus de sollicitations, je mesure qu’il y a de moins en moins d’initiatives de marques qui invitent à l’expérience tout en laissant la liberté d’écrire ce qu’on veut à l’arrivée. Mais ce n’est pas une fatalité, l’une d’entre-elle m’ayant permis de vivre une super journée hier.

Tout a commencé par un concours sur Twitter : il s’agissait de montrer son soutien à son équipe fétiche dans le cadre de la rencontre de la 18ème journée du TOP 14, Stade Français – RC Toulon. Initiateur de l’opération, le Stade de France prenait le soin d’expliquer l’ensemble de la campagne dans une vidéo (étape que bon nombre d’annonceurs oublient) :

Fan de rugby depuis tout petit, mais dans une version plutôt retransmission télé que sur le stade, j’avais très envie de vivre l’expérience. J’ai donc joué, gagné ma participation et pu profiter d’un moment exceptionnel dans les coulisses du Stade de France qui avait intégré une mécanique de compétition entre 2 équipes bien décidées à gagner la bataille du livetwitt, sans autre bénéfice que le plaisir de la victoire. J’ai redécouvert sur place la dimension spectacle insufflée par Max Guazzini il y a près de 20 ans, rencontré une partie de la communauté rugby sur Twitter répartie en #TeamSF et #TeamRCT et participé avec plaisir à la production de contenus prévus dans le dispositif pour faire vivre la journée au-delà de twitter.

Parmi les grands moments, nous avons eu l’honneur de précéder les joueurs et d’entrer dans le Stade de France (encore vide) par la grande porte, guidés par la (très) charmante Gaëlle qui en a profité au passage pour nous apprendre plein de choses sur le Stade de France, ses secrets, son organisation et ses exigences en matière de sécurité.

Bravo au Stade de France et à Ludovic pour la belle journée et la démonstration qu’une « opération blogueur » pouvait faire mieux que rémunérer des internautes pour se rendre à une conférence de presse. Et si toutes les marques ne sont pas égales, la plupart sont en mesure de proposer des expériences plutôt que de la transmission d’information. C’est justement le travail des agences.

臨時起意  給大家介紹一下 2012年的新車子

若你還有印象   影音加一句短評  還是我自己的特色

Red Bull Racing  RB8 紅加藍 LOGO貼不完的車

McLaren MP4-27  最銀又閃的車錢多到連音樂都好聽

Ferrari F2012 防毒軟體帶頭衝的紅車帥啦

Mercedes F1 W03 每個贊助商都有特寫的獨家影片(暈車者千萬勿入)

Lotus E20 車身超清楚(CLEAR)的高雅設計 (內含KIMI訪問)

Force India VJM 05 撒哈拉沙漠帶著跑的新車

Sauber C31 就是愛留白(沒有贊助商)的純粹設計

Toro Rosso STR 7 二軍就二軍音樂有需要這麼驚悚嗎？

Williams FW34 很有家族傳統的顏色(詞窮)

Caterham CT01 有好聽的音樂  和不知表現會如何的車子

HRT F112 乾淨純白贊助不多的車

Marussia MR01  我找不到啦

(繼續閱讀...)

Social@Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Director Thomas Crampton, Ogilvy & Mather CEO Adam O’Conor, and David Ogilvy himself welcomed guests to toast the exciting fun, fame and business opportunities of Social Media.

Under the glow of viral videos and social media memes projected around the venue, guests were encouraged to grab a custom Bingo card and stamp and play Buzzword Bingo to win a Bingo Night t-shirt.

After Marion McDonald, Asia-Pacific Planning Director for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, brought down the house with a social media song to the tune of “Another One Bites the Dust,” and guests shot down tweets about Social Media Week in “Twitterhunt,” a motion-based interactive game built by the Ogilvy team.

The party brought together a mix of influential attendees that went well beyond advertising to include some of Hong Kong’s most prominent academics, journalists, business and creative minds. Thanks to all who turned up. We had a blast!

Ogilvy Hong Kong CEO, Adam O'Conor, and Regional Planning Director, Marion McDonald, having fun at Bingo Night

Ogilvy PR APAC CEO, Steve Dahllof, and APAC Social@Ogilvy Director, Thomas Crampton, getting social

We were joined by the crew from Facebook, Jayne Leung, Terry Iu and Benny Chu

Guests played Social Media Bingo throughout the night

Props from our photo booth taking a rest

Regional Asia-Pacific Social@Ogilvy Team

However, there is one aspect of daily drudgery that all but the smallest agencies cannot avoid – lifts.

Let’s face it – lifts are dull. They take ages to arrive and when they do you’re often forced into closer-than-you’d-like proximity with other people. As Gestalt scholar and social psychology pioneer Solomon Asch and a 1962 Candid Camera episode discovered, they also have a strange ability to prompt conformist behaviour.

American comedian Steve Wright offers his own explanation as to why people behave differently in lifts:

“When I was little, my grandfather used to make me stand in a closet for five minutes without moving. He said it was elevator practice.”

Going up?

Given how little people enjoy the experience of using lifts, it’s ironic that they hold a special place in the lexicon of advertising and sales.

We use the term ‘elevator pitch’ to describe the ability to present an idea or value proposition quickly.  It’s not clear where the term originally came from, although the use of the word elevator, suggests that it’s a cultural import from the US. Regardless of the source, being able to deliver a great elevator pitch is still a good test of effective communication.

However, like the plumber with a leaky tap at home, many communications businesses struggle to deliver effective elevator pitches to describe themselves. Very often people working in the same building aren’t aware about what their colleagues on another floor or in a sister agency do.

Lift off

This week, Engine London (where I work) decided to solve this problem by bringing the elevator pitch to life. Allowing each of Engine’s 13 agencies the opportunity to take over a lift for two weeks. Each one has been given the challenge of communicating creatively what they do and what they have achieved.

It kicked off with Partners Andrews Aldridge going head-to-head with WCRS and Jam, Engine’s social media agency.

The result has been a huge word-search puzzle; a ‘complete the end line’ quiz, and most bizarrely, a human bee carrying out ‘buzz research’. (No prizes for guessing which agency came up with that idea).

Obviously there is a social element to it, with each team competing to get more mentions on social media of their hashtags: #PAAlift, #WCRSlift #Jamlift. (Again, I’ll leave you to guess who is currently winning this particular challenge).

While this has led to some friendly rivalry in the building, it also has helped Engine’s staff and visitors understand more about what each agency does. But there is one important additional benefit. It has made taking the lift FUN.

It reminds me of the excellent TED speech delivered by Rory Sutherland who describes how advertising creates intangible value. To illustrate the point, he describes how a group of engineers were once set the challenge of making Eurostar train rides more pleasant. They came up with a solution that involved redesigning the rail tracks at a cost of £6 billion to shave 40 minutes off the journey time.

Rory’s “naïve advertising man’s” suggestion was to hire the world’s top supermodels and pay them to walk the length of the train handing out free Château Pétrus. He estimated you’d save about £3 billion and people would ask for the trains to be slowed down!

I have yet to be offered a free glass of fine wine in the lifts at Engine, but then this is only week one.

An interactive video screen using Kinect motion-sensors to raise awareness for Autism Speaks. The little girl avoids eye contact; one of the most prominent signs of the disorder in children.

A couple of superb examples of retail activation at the premium and luxury end of the spectrum. Interestingly, both are examples of companies relying heavily on associations with the past, in particular nostalgia. It’s no surprise that people want to forget their current predicaments, and presumably the upcoming Future Laboratory trends briefing – Not/stalgia – will touch on this.

Louis Vuitton is cementing its cultural ties with bygone eras and modern masterpieces. It is lending “support” – presumably financial – to the new fourth plinth installation at London’s Trafalgar Square. Variety magazine reported last week that the brand has also signed a “three year partnership with Rome’s venerable Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, comprised of sponsoring scholarships… tutoring and… workshops”. Zeitgeist has been to the Louis Vuitton store in Rome a couple of times over the years, and always thought it a bit small. The addition of a bookshop, let alone a cinema, to the list of requirements, was far from expected. The brand, whose heritage stretches back to 1854, has recently unveiled a new flagship store in the eternal city. According to PSFK, “The Louis Vuitton Maison Etoile Rome includes a book room dedicated to Italian cinema… It also features a 19-seat cinema, which will screen short films, documentaries and original creations.” It is a beautiful-looking store that leverages its own history by using complementary environmental, geographic and artistic devices. Zeitgeist looks forward to visiting soon.

Those readers in New York might recently have found themselves briefly feeling like they had stepped back in time 90 years or so. Boardwalk Empire is a critically acclaimed and popular television series produced by the pay-cable channel HBO, of whose merits The Economist elucidated in detail recently. The programme’s Facebook page recently reached 1 million fans. It is a story set in the era of Prohibition, a time of sharp suits, Trilby hats, suspect crates and conversely a large amount of liquor. Faced with a stagnant market for DVDs, HBO conjured a bespoke shop, exclusively to celebrate the launch of the boxed set. But just as the bootleggers of the day had to be nifty and mobile, so did the brand also set up streetside vendors. Simple but imaginative, effective and inspired.

This week, we welcomed the launch of Social@Ogilvy, Ogilvy & Mather’s global, cross-discipline team of social experts from across all of Ogilvy’s businesses.

We have been designing and executing social media marketing and communications programs for more than seven years as 360 Digital Influence – a specialty practice born out of Ogilvy Public Relations. We quickly grew to deliver social solutions for all sorts of marketing and communications clients. Now we have grown into Social@Ogilvy. We are a true global network with a common approach.

The whole PR vs. marketing battle is moot. Social media will inform every discipline and deliver business value for the foreseeable future. Social media as a standalone specialty doesn’t make sense. All the power and potential in social-based solutions comes to life when you integrate it into marcom and other functions.

Read more about Social@Ogilvy and connect with us online in the following places:

Social@Ogilvy on Facebook

Social@Ogilvy on Twitter

Social@Ogilvy on LinkedIn

Social@Ogilvy on Slideshare

How to play? Just mark each square when you hear a buzzword. Once you get five in a row, take a photo of your card and post to Twitter with #BINGO and #SMWHK.

What to win? We’re giving out Social Media Bingo t-shirts to all winners while supplies last!

Prize for winning Social Media Bingo • Credit @joeywan

Of course, while you’re having a bit of fun, consider too that social media marketing should be focused on real business impact, not buzzwords. Congratulations to some of our early Social Media Bingo winners!

@tricialing posing with her #ogilvy #SMWHK #Bingo t-shirt

Congrats @moninafu for winning the #SMWHK #bingo and a free t-shirt from #ogilvy

A shout out for @jessicalee87 for winning the social media week #Bingo and a free t-shirt from #Ogilvy

We’ve also been following Hong Kong’s top ‘movers and shakers’ via our Social Media Week Hong Kong  Twitter leaderboard.

#SMWHK Leaderboard

We’d like to shout out to the team at Kred.com for helping us develop this. Believe it or not, we’ve seen some intense competition for people vying for the top!

Tokyo department store Takashimaya has teamed up with Dr Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University to install a new visual merchandising concept using a lifelike android mannequin that has shoppers stopping in their tracks. Used as a Valentines Day promotion, the female android mannequin smiles, nods and even yawns as it interacts with passersby.

Although Brazil is getting more important in the worlds scenario, only 5% of brazilians speak english. How could Red Baloon, an english school for kids show the importance of english in kids future? We start by asking Red Balloon students from our 30 units in Brazil a simple question: What do you want to be when you grow up? Based on their answers, we made Kids Business Cards. Portraying kids real and unique dreams, we were able to make a point: that every dream starts with english. Kids were so proud of their cards that they handed it out to friends at their primary school, neighbourhood and family turning them into a sales force of 12 000 kids. In the end, we had more kids believing in their dreams, more parents believing in the importance of English on their kids future and a 11% raise on subscriptions.

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The panel, hosted by Thomas Crampton, Ogilvy & Mather’s director of Social@Ogilvy Asia Pacific, covered key challenges global brands face in planning, scaling and hiring for social media positions. According to Dingle, all employees at a company should be responsible for social media. This doesn’t mean a brand can’t have a social media center of excellence to help steer the company’s point of view for social media marketing and communications. But, essentially everyone should know the basics and be able to participate.

Dingle also stressed the importance of listening in social media, saying, “”You MUST be listening to what’s being said about your brand. Your brand is what people SAY your brand is.”

Ali Bullock listed the variety of tools Cathay Pacific uses, both free and paid. Particularly for customer service, having a social content management system (in the case of Cathay, Context Optional) enables them to capture customer feedback and put it into a workflow.

He also discussed the importance of content in developing direct relationships and in driving everyday engagement among fans. For example, when Cathay posted a photo of an engineer changing the tire of a 747 on Facebook, they received 890 likes and several comments. The response has inspired the company to create more content along these lines.

Ghafur stressed the importance of experimentation. Before brands can see value and success in social media, they must be willing to try different techniques on different platforms. Now with 50,000 corporate accounts, SINA Weibo is seeing continued growth in branded uses of their micro-blogging platform. At 250M users and 100M posts per day, SINA Weibo continues to be a key platform to watch in Greater China.

Before we knew it, the hour was up, Twitter was crowded with #smwhk and #ogilvy, and the panelists were quickly rushed by the crowd. Thanks to everyone who participated in Ogilvy’s sold out panel today. Looking forward to the rest of Social Media Week!

You set me on fire

It’s an exciting day for us. This morning we announced the launch of Social@Ogilvy, a worldwide practice connecting all of Ogilvy & Mather’s social media experts to deliver solutions across all areas of business.

Born as a specialty practice within Ogilvy Public Relations in 2004, 360° Digital Influence is now a part of a much larger business – Social@Ogilvy. The 360° Digital Influence brand has been retired, and the team members are now part of Social@Ogilvy.

Why Social@Ogilvy?

We know there’s a new customer and stakeholder journey defined by the increasing impact our networks have on purchase decision, opinion and our behaviors. We design integrated social solutions that combine deep disciplines – like CRM, advertising, public relations and shopper marketing and are rooted in what drives behavior.

This shift in the journey is happening in one way or another all over the world. That’s why we have grown the world’s largest global team to deliver social solutions that are relevant in each local market.  We are a true global network with a common approach. And more than just marketing we design social business solutions that use the collaboration and advocacy strengths of social media to drive value internally and in customer relationships while at the same time managing risk.

The development of this new, expanded practice across our network is another proof point for how we have mobilized world-class digital and social expertise and integrated that expertise into all agency sectors.

Simply put, as of today you can learn all about us, read our new and improved blog, join our social networks and subscribe to our global feeds at https://social.ogilvy.com. We look forward to connecting with you there.

(this post is also found in s similar form on our new Social@Ogilvy site)

The Social Imperative

Brands will spend between 17-18% of their total marcom spend on social media within 4 years. They will spend more on social business solutions. They are seeing value and expecting more every year. 

The key reason? 90% of us look to friends and family for the most trusted recommendations on products, service and issues. 70% of us count on consumer opinions online above traditional media. And it’s only going to grow. Millennials are three times more likely than Boomers to look for a social opinion on choices they make. 

The future is brand advocacy. And it cannot be faked, gamed, or outright ‘bought.’

There are only three ways to connect with and build a strong relationship with customers and stakeholders these days. 

1. Deliver highly relevant content or service. This could be advertising, media relations or what we call ‘owned’ content (including valuable services). Now it’s all highly targeted and tailored. No more 360 degree ‘onslaughts’ of interruptive advertising. Now our messages must be deemed highly relevant to our targets to earn their attention. Lets use the ‘10 degrees’ that matter. Useful content to run a sustainable business from DuPont. Better ways to use member ‘points’ from American Express. 
2. Be discoverable in search. When people search Google, Baidu or Yandex, brands need to be there for all the topics that intersect between a person’s intent and where the brand can add some value. Ford on fuel efficiency. Hellmann’s on Real Food recipes. 
3. Earn our way into their ‘social graph.’  To succeed in social media, we must become genuinely valuable to the people we serve and earn their attention, their advocacy and their business.   Inviting people as VIPs into the launch of the new Ford Explorer in Facebook. Sparking a social conversation about the dreams of the next generation of Chinese from Johnnie Walker. Helping Hong Kong parents celebrate their baby pictures in a much bigger way from Huggies.

How we form opinions about products, services and issues is constantly changing. It’s imperative that we make social a new way we do everything.

What is Social@Ogilvy? 

Social@Ogilvy is the global, cross-discipline team of social experts from across all of Ogilvy’s businesses delivering social solutions to all parts of our clients’ business. This is new. This is bigger than before. We have been designing and executing social media marketing and communications programs for 7+ years as 360 Digital Influence – a specialty practice born out of Ogilvy Public Relations. We quickly grew to deliver social solutions for all sorts of marketing and communications clients. 

Now we have grown into Social@Ogilvy. We are a true global network with a common approach. 

Integrated Social Media Matters More 

The whole PR vs. marketing battle is moot. Social media will inform every discipline and deliver business value for the foreseeable future. Social media as a standalone specialty doesn’t make sense. All the power and potential in social based solutions comes to life when you integrate it into marcom and other functions. 

We design integrated social solutions that combine deep disciplines like crm, public relations and shopper marketing and rooted in what drives behavior.  We plan around owned, earned and paid media working together for a compound effect and at its heart our work is ‘social by design’ – phrase used now by Facebook but that captures what we do quite well. 

A Global Shift

We do believe there’s a new customer and stakeholder journey defined by the increasing impact our networks have on purchase decision and our behaviors. How we buy, vote, and form opinions has changed. We tap into our 130 friends (the Facebook average) to discover, consider, compare, decide and rave about products, services and issues.

This shift is happening in one way or another all over the world. Growth markets like China, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey will define the next episode of social media use. They are all growing their social network use and outpacing western markets including the US. That’s why we have grown the world’s largest global team delivering solutions relevant in each local market.  

And it’s more than just marketing, we design social business solutions that use the collaboration and advocacy strengths of social media to drive value internally and in customer relationships while at the same time managing risk. 

Join Us

We will be participating or hosting 23 events in and outside of Social Media Week this week in NYC, London and Hong Kong not to mention a dozen other markets. Join us as we launch this new ambitious business. It's been a wild ride to get to this point and we would love to see you. You can find out more at our new Social@Ogilvy site.

Mike Fox, director of global vertical marketing at Facebook, kicked off the panel with some tips for how to move marketing and communications efforts toward the concept of Social by Design. According to Fox, all brands must build their presence from the ground up, keep it simple, put friends at the center of their messaging and scale, scale, scale.

He also mapped out four ‘dimensions’ for social marketing impact, namely connect, engage, influence and integrate.

The panelists downplayed the importance of apps, saying that most brands are lucky to get 2% of their fan bases engaging with apps. Of course, this doesn’t mean brands should shy away from developing applications for the platform, but rather, brands should focus on who they’re looking to engage and ensure they are engaging the right people.

Two other points that really resonated for me:
1. Brands must have an ‘always-on’ strategy as well as a campaign-based strategy. It’s not one of the other.

2. Planning a social media strategy in silos (consulting, creative, build) will inhibit brands from reaching the continuum of Social by Design.

Packed house at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong

Of course, we wouldn’t be at a Facebook event in Asia if someone didn’t ask about China. According to the panelists, it’s a ‘non-goal’ for now, meaning it will be a while before Facebook can enter China in a meaningful way while still staying true to the platform.

And last, but not least, a preview for what’s to come on mobile! Well, not exactly, but a hint that the platform is reorienting itself around mobile with an experience that will begin to reward behaviors coming soon.

All in all, I wish we had more time. Just as the questions started going, our hour was up and it was off to the next event of Social Media Week. It’s always reassuring to hear ‘straight from the horse’s mouth,’ and I look forward to seeing more growth on Facebook here in Asia!

Dave Trott gets round it
By blogging like this
Which must make
It easier to check your
Grammar and spelling
I can’t do that
And anyway it’s his style.

I’m not making any excuses,more a warning to anyone who ventures out into Blog World.
The other thing to be aware of is that you’ll get re-tweeted and sometimes a comment left,sometimes a good comment (not yet) and sometimes a bad comment (last week).

And so it was last week that a couple of Campaign Live
followers left their mark,Andy Page and Tom Wnek who in summary said ‘what a load of slapdash TOSH’ I’d not had a comment like that before in fact I’ve never had a comment well not since my History Master Mr Headrapson wrote “what a load of slapdash tosh’ on my mock O Level Paper on the Crimean war – note though his tosh wasn’t in capitals.

Andy ‘an ex adman,now into general grumpiness’ and Tom I presume Bretts ex partners brother were both right on my style and detail but not on the intention or thought on the article re the Wolesely.
To mark and condem bloggers as you would an English A Level Student completely misses the point and power of all the platforms being afforded to ill gifted amateurs like me.Its why Facebook will be worth £100 billion and Twitter God only knows.

The explosion in comment and view let alone ‘liking’ and ‘RTing is huge.I saw the news about Coppello resigning from a Paul Bainsfair re Tweet and that was from someone else’s rumour .That’s why the BBC and SKY clamp down on their own Journos tweeting news looks so odd.Someone will have it and publish like it or not.

Whilst the internet has connected us all the platforms have given us the ‘paper’ to write on, broadcast on, podcast on and apart from your time – all for free.

So in conclusion Tweet and Blog like you’ve got days to live just remember that folks you’ve never met or want to meet are there to remind you what a load of Tosh you’ve written.

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I’d just ordered when on his way out the handsome and chiselled Brett Gosper dropped by to gloat on England’s performance in Dubai adding on parting that he and Jeremy King once considered swopping roles for a week, I’ll conclude with the probable results later but the exchange did prompt me to think further and try and analyse the incredible experience that walking into and dining at the Wolseley surely is.

Jeremy King and Chris Corbin’s Vision is a brand in motion a literal living breathing example of how to do it right, from the clapping on the queue while you’re waiting on the phone booking line to the slight nod from the twinkle eyed doorman as you alight your cab.

One enters the bosom of the restaurant via the jet black, blackout curtains that shield the greeting staff from the chill of the street.First timers eyes light up at the room before them and for the irregulars without fail someone remembers your name and engages in informal conversation, listens to you and guides you to your table.

It is never empty the concept of 24 hour dining works, this means that from about 8am to midnight atmosphere is guaranteed with a gentle ebb and flow of clientele along the way.

Outside it may be austerity but in here, in the Wolsey there is that feeling of life ain’t so bad.

As I had mucked up my guests date and time I dined alone and took the chance to have a proper look on how it works – discretely as rubber necking is seriously fround upon, no place here for the ‘seen to be seen with crowd’ By the way as soon as I mentioned my predicament a newspaper appeared, as if it had always been there.

It’s obvious really, it’s about the staff or the colleagues as we are now supposed to be called ! The Ratio must be 2 to 1 this means you really feel like you are being served not accommodated – part of the atmosphere the theatre of the whole place , p a pleasure to be a guest there.

There is an expression to describe an Agency that starts to slip “the chef has left the kitchen” or the “Captain has left the bridge”
I cannot ever imagine this tag ever happening with the Wolseley.I have never ever been to any of the restaurants that they own and not seen either Jeremy or Chris weave gracefully amongst the diners tables and staff pausing along the way for a small discourse here and there or moving on if deeper conversation is happening between diners.

Two other characters dominate the proceedings, Mitchell and Robert, Robert you’ll know as he’s often mentioned as his best in class by Michael Winner no mean feet and Mitchell you’ll recognise as the man that I doubt Martin Johnson could have got passed !

These two characters must know almost every diner whose ever eaten in the West End from their history at the Ivy and other King- Corbin fine establishments.Their tune for the role they play is instinctive my wife Sue dined the week before and was recognised,welcomed and hosted as if she’d been there every day of her entire life, “you just don’t get that anywhere else’ she said, praise indeed.

Couple of things I noticed, by the time my napkin had slipped from my knee and heading south another was already on the table .The tables either side of me changed diners whilst I was there and I hardly noticed one minute there was the grey haired elegance of a pinstriped hedge funder and the next a couple of ‘ladies who lunch’ sat at a table as crisp and bright as it had been at opening time.

So what’s the point of writing this ? The point is that in our business, the ad business service counts and at the Wolsey you get it in spades.

Service is noticed here valued and paid for by both partners the business and the consumer .

Oh the imaginary swop of Brett and Jeremy ?

How’s this ?

“morning Brett, don’t worry everything is in order just let us get on with the job”

“morning Jeremy, Clients just resigned – Creative Director has resigned – procurement is in reception …….. and I couldn’t get you a table at The Wolesley !”

In case you haven’t heard, last night TechCrunch announced that Pinterest hit 11.7 million UMVs, becoming the fastest standalone site ever to surpass 10 million monthly uniques. This presents a huge opportunity for brands, as you might have already read about here.

The #1 driver of consumer purchases is word of mouth recommendations from friends, and Pinterest holds the power to drive authentic “word of eye” recommendations in a way that is changing the landscape of social commerce.

How? The landing page for Pinterest is an endless visual stream of subtle product recommendations from the very people who influence your purchasing decisions - friends and strangers with good taste. This means that there is an endless opportunity for your brand and its products to be seen by Pinterest’s 11.7 million unique monthly users as endorsements from friends in the form of repins.

Currently available stats show the average Pinterest user spends 98 minutes per month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and 7 hours on Facebook. Pinterest is most popular in North Eastern states, among females (estimates range from 58% to 70% female), and with people ages 25-44 (59% of visitors).

How it Works

In case you haven’t already joined the millions of others pinning products, here’s a quick overview of how Pinterest works: Pinterest enables users to “pin” images found around the Web into categorized collections, or boards. Think of it like an interactive, shareable scrapbook. Or as I like to say, it’s your virtual high school locker. Pinterest can capture the brand essence, personality, inspiration for product design, or company culture through visual boards. It could also be used to organically grow your brand’s reach through an influencer re-pinning strategy, to further engage with fans through themed boards, and to inspire consumers to action, perhaps through a “best board” or a “most pins” contest.

Why People Love It

“It’s lovely from a visual perspective,” says my colleague (and Pinterest addict) Sophia Aladenoye. Apart from Pinterest’s tactile and user-friendly experience, it helps people make visual mental notes of a life they aspire to, like a vision board. “Pinterest is personally helping me with my 2012 vision board exercises… helping me to more easily remember the images that represent my goals, wants or benchmarks for 2012,” say Sophia. Others claim that the site is helping them to “de-stress,” to plan their wedding, or help redecorate their home. And some say they honestly just like the fact that is invite-only and feels exclusive (or perhaps felt exclusive before its recent boost). Men are also jumping on the Pinterest bandwagon - my friend and colleague Maury posts vintage cars, and Grassroots Modern blogger Creede Fitch posts photos of modern furniture designs he finds inspiring.

How Brands Can Leverage Pinterest

1) Create a new social commerce touch point

With 11.7 million UMVs and counting, Pinterest presents an opportunity for brands to expand their audiences by going where the masses are. Consumers are always a step ahead of brands and its important for brands to follow behavior rather than dictate it. Your brand’s presence on Pinterest will create another consumer touch point and a way to be discovered by new people. The visual Pinterest boards would help invite new people into the fabric of your brand by setting a mood or encapsulating a lifestyle, helping users to imagine how your brand’s products, services or culture fit their lives.

2) Grow influencer networks

Brands can leverage Pinterest to find influencers with whom to engage. You can expand your influencer networks by following influential Pinterest users and boards, and repinning items to our own Pinterest boards, giving credit to the influencer. Brands may also choose to engage with influential bloggers and have them curate a board on their Pinterest page.

3) Identify and engage super fans

Pinterest may also be a way to identify natural brand advocates or “super fans.” You can search for your brand’s products and discover who is most frequently pinning about your products and engage with those people. Surprise and delight super fans by rewarding them with products they pin to their boards. Eventually you may create a fan-curated board that allows super fans to add their pins.

4) Increase brand loyalty by sharing your brand’s culture

Pinterest is a fun, inspirational and highly visual atmosphere and your brand has an opportunity to engage fans in new and creative ways. Consider creating boards that align with product or service themes, for example, West Elm categorizes its boards by colors from its design palette, such as “Aquamarine.” Or create a board that reflects your company’s dedication to a CSR initiative. Or, compile pictures of everyday fans and influencers engaging with your brand, such as a board that features pins of people across the globe wearing a retail brand’s clothing.

5) Host contests for further engagement

Perhaps you can host a contest for fans to create the best Pinterest board with your products, and reward the winning fan with items from her board. Or, invite other users to co-create boards on your page around certain themes, and reward the winning team with product or a brand experience. For example, a travel brand can ask Pinners to create mood boards that reflect a destination like the French Riviera, and then reward the winning board with a trip.

7) Inspire repins (and purchases) through bold visuals

As mentioned earlier, the #1 driver of consumer purchases is word of mouth recommendations from friends, and Pinterest holds the power to drive authentic “word of eye” recommendations through a repin endorsement. To accomplish this, you’ll want to make sure that you have high resolution, professional quality, close-up photos to leverage. Photos of products should be taken in a way that enables the viewer to imagine herself wearing the product, engaging with an item, or taking part in the setting. Photos should taken in a way that makes them stand out in the visual stream that is Pinterest. For example, a bold-colored photo or a gray-scale photo might set itself apart from the photo stream.

Promote your culture first, products and services second

The trick with Pinterest is to leverage the “soft sell” and promote your brand culture over the products or services themselves. Pinterest is committed to maintaining a non-promotional atmosphere, and the hard sell could get you kicked off the platform. So to create the right atmosphere, think about what your brand has to offer and what the images say to people and what you want to ask, for example:

• A tech brand: “Do you like innovation? We’re innovative too, and here’s a photo of our developers making our first-ever app for iPhone.”

• A fashion brand: “Do you like bold, basic colors? We love everything bright and bold, and this painting by Matisse captures our upcoming line’s color scheme.”

• A home furnishings brand: “Do you enjoy a clutter-free living space? So do we, and here are three books we love that talk about a clutter-free home.”

• A credit card company or bank: “Do you imagine yourself living a lifestyle of luxury? Here’s a picture from the beach in the Virgin Islands where you could be right now.”

Through play and inspiration, Pinterest might just empower you to become the architect of your brand’s culture.

What do you think about Pinterest for brands? Do you think users will stay engaged once brands join?

Special thanks to Chris Heydt and Sophia Aladenoye of Ogilvy for their contributions.

Everybody encounters them from tine to time: Captchas. To detect whether the user is a human or a computer. Captchas are usually difficult to read. But some captchas are really hard to read…

Ironically, most of the ads were ‘leaked’ onto YouTube before the $3.5million media spot this year, probably turning the Super Bowl into the most expensive seeding strategy money can buy. The now (supposedly) viral films allow brands and advertisers to feel happy about their new-found control over social media.

Some of the 30 second Moments were entertaining, some annoying, others not worth mentioning but all are casualties of the fact that the Super Bowl is so very very popular. My thoughts on the whole shooting match are split simply into Likes and Dislikes.

Likes:

It’s a great way to get in front of a huge audience – 111 million viewers to be more precise. These people will not plonk themselves in front of the telly again at the same time for another year (In the west at least) – that’s got to be good.

This media event has the power to re-set your brand. It can change people’s perception of you, good or bad.

Dislikes:

Safe creative. With so much at stake the creative really suffers. Ads resorting to the old clichés of cute animals, celebrities, slapstick and the rape of pop culture, all lead to less inventive and less engaging ideas. (A particular low-light was Chryslers odiously patriotic inspiration fest to get people buying good old American products again.)

The ads are still very traditional. They bark out their message, longing for approval. Lacking in depth, engagement and the ability to spark conversation.

What price longevity? Beyond the back-in-the-office-Monday-morning-tea-break chat, how many will be extolling the virtues of your 30 second brand parade?

The ads are far too pleased with themselves. Notably, Volkswagen referencing its own TV ad of last year. This, in my book is like laughing at your own jokes – usually sign of some tragic character flaw.

What can we learn in the UK?

I doubt there will ever be a true Super Bowl moment in the UK (apart from perhaps the Olympics).

The X-Factor or Champions League are the closest we will get but they do have far more niche audiences. This at least allows us to better target the message.

This kind of big bang media is great but we need to find ways of harnessing it and creating something that lasts a long time. We need to do more than the now certain “Like us on Facebook” call to action at the end.

The ideas need to have social at their heart – not just a broadcast message with a full stop at the end. They need some conversational rocket fuel, or at the very least, a good opener.

Gareth James is TMW’s executive creative director.

This lovely TV spot for travelling First Class on American Airlines, the latest incarnation of a campaign featuring Kevin Spacey, emphasises individuality above all else. Great iAds have been appearing for this recently in iPad apps for The Economist and The Financial Times. It’s disappointing then, upon arriving at the AA site, to be greeted with a data-heavy template that seems like it’s stuck in 2003, and the only mention of the campaign – ‘The Individual’, takes you to an unsatisfying pop-up microsite. This microsite URL is ‘The Individual Flyer’. Why not call the whole campaign that, as typing in ‘The Individual’ reveals no immediate organic or paid results for AA. What is worse, when you Google ‘The Individual Flyer’, the first hit on Google is for the mobile site. Similar in its failure to equate luxury with excellence in all fields is the newly launched – and undeniably beautiful – Four Seasons website, which, at a gigantic cost of $18m, attracted a withering review from eConsultancy.

“I want [a product] that treats me like me, whoever I happen to be”, Spacey intones. It’s no recent phenomenon that brands are trying to tailor their offering to every consumers’ whim, but what this ad hints at is that economies of scale just won’t work for luxury products and experiences. Unfortunately the digital agency who worked on the AA site have economised, and the site itself, much like Zeitgeist on a long-haul flight, is in need of an upgrade.

I could, of course, be talking about the great, and the not so great, ads that were made this year. About how advertising style sometimes seems to be like fashion – it follows a trend without anyone being aware of it. About how I noticed a general dog theme. And a general car fantasy theme. Not to mention the usual celebrity over-use theme. About how many advertisers previewed their ads via social media. And whether or not those lived up to the hype (ahem, VW). About how Coke took the retrospective path, similar to the brilliant Hovis campaign of yesteryear.

But I’d rather wax lyrical about the phenomenon itself. It’s built up gradually over time, for sure to become the event it is today. It’s difficult to explain just how much this day is about advertising – to some people it’s more about the ads than about the game. At Super Bowl Sundays many moons past, I’ve sat in a room full of people, most of whom were happy to talk throughout the game play but shushed each other loudly whenever the ads came on air. Today, people can rate them as they air across any number of sites and tools, thanks to the wonderful world of social media.

So, what exactly is it all about? First and foremost, it’s about being entertained. The bar has been set high, so people expect advertisers to come with something very powerful on the day. Mostly, they expect that entertainment. If your ad is serious, you’d better have an extraordinary message. This means that the rules of clutter are even more pronounced. An ad that has fabulous stand-out in the average every day world can pale in comparison to some of the gems that debut during the Super Bowl.

And of course, all of this makes it even more challenging to have an ad that actually does something for the brand – be that building a buzz, connecting emotionally or making people jump out of their chairs and rush to the shops. When ads are so powerfully entertaining, cluttered with celebrities, babies, dogs and all other manner of distractions, it’s difficult for the brand to stand out, let alone any sort of message. Hats off and waving to those who manage to do it (a la Doritos dog) and condolences to those that don’t. (I’d tell you who I think they are, but I can’t remember them).

Tara is a Director at Ipsos ASI.

As retailers find their feet in social marketing, it would be interesting to know why they started down the road in the first place. All too often the answer is, “Because my customers expect me to be on Facebook.” Often “So I can push promotions” tops the list. But isn’t it great when the answer is, “I wanted to learn more about a few of my biggest fans, and leverage their influence to generate repeat visits at end of the purchase funnel?” This we don’t hear often.

Social-savvy retailers understand that their platforms aren’t just another outlet for brand messaging and promotions. They are often great listening posts and active drivers of business value. A few thought-starters (and relevant posts) on the subject:

1. Look into curated collections. Search for your brand on curated platforms like Pinterest. When you find someone who is in love with your product, they’ll often have past collections that reflect shared interests, and you’ll be able to discern whether they have ‘tastemaker’ status or not. After a careful identification process, these curators can be invited to broadcast their perspective on your brand.

2. Remember the valuable minority. A few of your most valuable influencers (often less than 10% of your total) can drive significant business value. Irfan Kamal’s great post thoroughly illustrates the point.

3. Turn your fans into advocates. Build a network of endorsers. Or, as our own Gemma Craven put it in her terrific post, turn your attention to “looking at the empowered customer as the new powerhouse that must be considered and included in any advocacy program.”

When I refer to TV, I’m talking about the ads of course. The Super Bowl is a unique annual phenomenon where the advertisements become every bit as important as the game, with pundits analyzing who won and who lost in the battle for views and positive sentiment.

To an outsider, the Super Bowl feels like an event that is not subject to the normal laws of time and space. It’s as though the clock winds back to the days before the Cable TV and the Internet, when America is brought together as one nation under a one-eyed god.

TV reigns supreme

It isn’t meant to be this way. The established orthodoxy dictates that we live in world of media fragmentation where digital has overtaken television as the dominant medium, and ‘social’ is where it’s at. But like Momma’s Apple pie, the ingredients for the Super Bowl ads have largely stayed the same over the years.

There have been some experiments along the way. Doritos crowd sourced ads caused a stir a few years back, as did Pepsi’s decision to Refresh Everything. But it is notable that having refused to play ball in 2010, Pepsi was back in 2011 and their ad this year featured another timeless stalwart Elton John alongside Flavor Flav. – putting another nail in Hip-Hop’s coffin.

This refusal to move with the times caused frustration among my US colleagues at Deep Focus, who pointed to the missed opportunities by brands to really engage with their consumers. But I suspect that the Super Bowl is less about meaningful engagement and more about what Robin Wight refers to as the ‘Peacocks Tail’.

Survival of the Flashiest

The Peacocks Tail refers to the theory of sexual selection first described by Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species. Darwin argued that apparently useless displays of extravagance such as Peacocks tails are actually used to communicate important signals.

These flamboyant and wasteful spectacles send out messages of fitness and strength. It’s as if the Peacock is saying to the Peahen: “If I can afford to waste so much effort on this meaningless display, I’m worth checking out.”

It strikes me that the Super Bowl advertisers were saying much the same thing to us. The ads weren’t about engagement, fan growth, or calls to action. They were about entertainment, raising a smile, and putting on a show.

However, unlike last year when Volkswagen’s junior Darth Vader scored a decisive touchdown, this year the overall victor was harder to call.

But by the time the New York Giants had secured their place in American sporting history as the winners of the XLVI Super Bowl, it was clear that television had left social media in the dust for another year.

Images courtesy of Daniel Incandela, Benson Kua & Official U.S. Navy Imagery via Flickr. Reproduced under Creative Commons license.

Click on the invitation to request a seat! (or go to bit.ly/advancedfacebook)