Recently in Advertising Category

If you've been barraged as I have with Levi's (and Wieden+Kennedy's) "Go Forth" campaign, I say to you: wait, there's more.

Levi's launched a workshop in San Francisco last month (to be followed by one in NYC this fall) with a focus on printmaking. From their workshops site:

"During July and August we'll be hard at work teaching classes on classic letterpress machinery, screenprinting designs, setting type, and getting our hands dirty... The Levi's® Workshops have mapped out a series of collaborations with local businesses and community groups to create original artwork and inspired designs that honor their respective passions and ideals."

Those last folks include Alice Waters and The Women's Building.

You know, part of me wants to align with the guys at AdPulp and say this is a strange campaign,:one that started out focusing on Braddock, PA, a town devastated by the steel mills closing, when Levi's is in fact a company that closed its last American factory in 2003, looking (I'm guessing) for more inexpensive labor overseas.

But then again, part of me wants to just say, "Shut up, put on the printer's apron, and have some fun."

What's going with fast food restaurants' marketing?

Something going on recently that is big.

And fatty.

And salt-laden.

What you see pictured above is KFC's Double Down Sandwich. Which features, "two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel's Sauce."

For the Original recipe sandwich here's the nutritional breakdown:
Calories: 540
Fat: 32 g
Sodium: 1,380 mg

An odd thing? I got those figures from KFC's own site, and they were sitting right below the sandwiches' promotion. Odd, because if you wanted to find out the nutritional information on any other menu item, you'd click on a button and it would download (every single time) a PDF nutritional fact sheet of all their menu items. Not what I'd call convenient. Now, maybe this is just because it's a new item. Or maybe their playing up just how big and calorific this sandwich is. The latter seems to make sense in light of their TV ad campaign.

But this is only one player in the "Yes, Bigger, More" fast food sandwich category. There's Wendy's Triple with Everything and Cheese (1700 mg sodium, 960 calories, 26 gms of fat) and the Burger King Stacker Quad (1770 sodium, 1020 calories, 69 gms of fat).

According to Melanie Warner, who used to cover the food industry for The New York Times, "The biggest achievement of the Double Down, though, is the way it's succeeded in getting attention."

Attention, which, of course, moves more sandwiches, soft drinks, buckets of chicken, etc. when families putter over to the Colonel's.

The ironic thing is, for those of us who remember that far back, KFC used to be named Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I've always assumed the name change came because the chain didn't want the word "fried" associated with their products and achieve a healthier perspective by the consumer (it was also around the time they introduced grilled items and salads that were made of lettuce, and not macaroni or potatoes).

So is this officially a marketing concept? Lure the dads and lads in with their hankering for the big honking menu offering, then give them something to bring back for the wives and wee ones back at home?

If it works and the numbers go up, then yes, it works.



(Photo by Mike Saechang)

The name of the game is speed.

With the insanely rapid pace of information on social media, keeping your brand intact by responding to consumer issues ASAP, or even before they happen, is absolutely essential.

According to John Thomson, CEO of Saepio, "Whether it means pulling ads featuring a controversy-laden spokesperson, changing messaging that is offensive to certain cultures or not leading with a product that isn't performing at its best -- you need to react quickly and just as important, consistently."

Otherwise you might just catch the tiger by the tail. (Sorry!)

The full article is over at MediaPost's site.


(Photo by Keith Allison)

Since the 1990's SunChips have been Frito-Lay's healthy option for their snack line.

For years, however, the brand never really seemed to take off. In fact, sales seemed to stall over time.

Then a few years back, their brand team discovered that many of the people who buy brands like SunChips also happen to be environmentally minded. In an interview with BrandWeek, Frito-Lay VP of Marketing Gannon Jones said:

"We started to see that there was an intersection of people who were concerned with their health and with the planet's health. Out of that was born the hypothesis that we could begin to connect SunChips more prominently with the environment so [the brand would become] a small step for me and the planet."

The brand seemed to take the message to heart and remake themselves - and not just greenwash their image.

* They started producing some of their chips in a Modesto, California manufacturing plant that is completely solar powered. (It's one of their eight of their manufacturing facilities.)
* They buy green energy credits to offset the electricity to produce their snacks.
* They partnered with National Geographic to launch a "Green Effect" contest, which encouraged people to submit environmentally-friendly local projects. They would fund the winners' ideas for up to $20K each.

And, if you managed to miss their barrage of ads during the Olympics, they've just developed the compostable chip bag to be release in America on (of course) Earth Day. Yes, in a mere 14 weeks, that pesky SunChips bag in the vacant lot across the street will be dust. Or plant materials, more likely. (They've retained both Ketchum and OMD to get the word out for their compostable bag).

So, how's all this greening of their brand working out for them?

According to Frito-Lay, sales grew 17.6 percent to $201.8 million in 2008 and has tripled its household penetration in the past four years.

I don't know about you, but those sound like pretty sustainable numbers to me.
 

(Photo by cogdogblog)

According to BusinessWeek, Apple is looking at replacing Google with Bing as their default search engine on their iPhone.

Yes, it turns out the rivalry between "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC" isn't as strong when it comes to Apple battling Google in the smartphone sector. According to sources at Apple, now that Google has released its Nexus One, "Apple and Google know the other is their primary enemy". Moreover, "Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle."

Meaning, it's okay to battle Microsoft on one front and take them out for drinks on the other.

Which is I believe how The Hundred Years' War was fought. But then again, history has never been my strong suit.

So here's my marketing question. How does Apple exactly cover itself brandwise, here? It tells its customers that PCs stink, yet uses Bing as the search engine on their phone. How do you handle that without coming off as, um, insincere?


(photo by Incase Designs)

You know, I have no idea what the people at am pm or their ad agency are thinking.

The small print indicates that you'll only taste the ampm burritos twice, so I guess you'll be safe with a hot dog or quesadilla.

(photo by jesthered)

When I was at university, my all time favourite subject was Consumer Behaviour.I loved learning about the relationship between organizations, their brands and their customers.In those days though, most marketing messages were delivered via a one-way street - broadcast from company to consumer.

Today, the dynamic growth of digital channels, and in particular social media, has truly shifted the communication paradigm. Marketing as a conversation has arrived!

There's no better example of this than the recent case of Vegemite iSnack 2.0. I'm sure there isn't anyone in Australia that is unaware of this saga but for our friends elsewhere I'll give you a quick overview:

Vegemite (http://www.vegemite.com.au) is an iconic breakfast spread that has been enjoyed by Aussies since 1922.They recently decided on a brand extension, adding a Vegemite and cheese spread.As was the case when they named the original product all those years ago, they decided to choose the name of the new product through a competition. iSnack 2.0 was the winning name but it didn't resonate well with the public. (http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1101797/Backlash-kills-off-iSnack-2.0)

The new name was revealed last month during the Football (AFL) Grand final.I was enjoying the game but also had an eye on Twitter and saw an avalanche of protests appear before my very eyes. Not long after the social media uproar commenced, traditional media jumped on the bandwagon and for days the naming of this product was headline news.

This story got me thinking about a case study we had looked at in class years before. It was the Cola Wars and Coca Cola's introduction of 'New Coke' in April 1985.Coca-Cola did the unthinkable and changed their secret formula.They too received an 'instant' backlash. Consumers wrote letters of complaints (Remember them? They got delivered by snail mail). They phoned the company and talk-back radio stations and wrote letters to newspapers. The outrage was enormous!

(http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_newcoke.html) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke)

There are a lot of similarities in these two stories. One could argue that decisions were made without enough research and consultation with their customers. Anyway, both cases required a reversal of decisions made by the marketing and management teams.The difference in the stories is the speed of reaction:

- Time to change Coke back to its original formula = 3 months
- Time to change the name of Vegemite iSnack 2.0 = 3 days!

If you're a 21^st century marketer, engage in conversations with your customers! The powerbase has definitely shifted and consumers are speaking - are you listening?

PS - The new Vegemite product was renamed Vegemite Cheesybite. How was the name chosen? By an online poll :)