Cool Marketing Thoughts

January/February will be a month of reviews in between advertising rants and campaigns, because yesterday I offered to review a book from Jaffe Juice, and today I got contacted by John Rosen who was kind enough to put me on his list to review the Stopwatch Marketing book. I am delighted to have some new books to put on my bedside table or to read on the train rides back and forth from Amsterdam, and I’m looking forward to write down my findings for the readers of this blog. Stay tuned for that. Below is a short overview of Stopwatch Marketing. More information can be found on the dedicated blog.

Sometimes shopping takes minutes, but is still too long; sometimes shopping takes months, and the shopper is sad to see it end. In Stopwatch Marketing, you will learn that time isn’t money; it’s much more important than that. Understanding how much time and energy consumers are willing to spend shopping for a particular purchase – their shopping strategies – is the single most important (and overlooked) thing you need to know in order to succeed in selling your product or service to them.

In Stopwatch Marketing, we identify four basic shopping strategies – impatient, reluctant, painstaking, and recreational – and show how to analyze, evaluate, and exploit the time that represents every shopper’s most important resource; how to understand and measure the length of time your customer will spend searching for your product or service; and how to make absolutely certain that your product or service is close to the front of your customer’s queue.

Many of America’s best-known and most successful companies are using the principles of Stopwatch Marketing™ every day to achieve spectacular growth in both margin and market share. The book includes fresh company examples such as Tempur-pedic, Microsoft, Goodyear and MasterLock as well as completely original interpretations of popular case studies like Lexus, Charles Schwab, Apple, Commerce Bank and Whole Foods. Our book not only shares their stories, but offers step-by-step guidelines for building an entire marketing strategy around stopwatch principles. Our success in applying these principles to our clients’ businesses gives us confidence that we are on to something quite new and interesting in the marketing world: the criticality of the customer’s time demands in reaching a purchase decision.

This certainly seems to be an interesting read, and to be honest, seeing Microsoft in their list of examples made me quite curious to know which of the techniques or tactics are being applied. (I work for Microsoft, in case you missed my switch). Other than that, I really look forward to dig deeper in the strategies to get consumers to spend as much as they can in the shortest amount of time possible, without blasting them over with an overload of teasers or bombing them with spam. To be continued…

Living up to its brand promise, Axe came out with a tasty new commercial a little while ago. Unlike the ‘we make a nerd be loved by gorgeous women’ approach, they now offer you the real deal. Using their deodorant, you will be changed into a yummy chocolate man and all women will want to have a piece of you. I think I’m going to move to the US, buy the deodorant and then sue Axe for not living up to its promises. Hah!

Video: Axe Chocolate
Thanks for the clip, Arns

If you thought you’ve experienced it all and advertisement could no longer shock/bother/make you think anymore (pick one), then here is quite the eye-opener for you. To protest against whale hunting, a poster of a whale has been hung against a wall, the whale is sliced open so that its guts come out (apparently a normal procedure), and below the poster on the floor are… some remains of intestins. I hope this ad ran in well-ventilated areas only, and I also hope that there was no restaurant nearby. These concerns put aside, this thing comes smashing in your face like a fly on a bicycle ride. And if you have my kinda luck and the fly happens to be right there when you’re talking and flies right in your throat, the effect would most likely be the same.

Done for IFAW, the international fund for animal welfare.

Agency: Republic of Everyone/Happy Soldiers, Sydney, Australia
Creative Director / Art Director / Copywriter: Happy Soldiers
Photographer: Adrian Lander
Retoucher: Electric Art
Released: December 2007
Via: AdsOfTheWorld

Arns just sent in a funny commercial I just had to post. Might be a bit older already, seeing that it’s from a beer brand from down under, and it sometimes takes a while for those campaigns to reach this part of the world. Nevertheless, I thought it was pretty cool to see a beer brand sponsor a philharmonic orchestra on the one hand AND supply all of their instruments on the other. Must have taken aaaaages to set this all straight to the right tones and to tune the contents of the bottles to create a synchronical melody out of it with such a group of people. Nice job!

Video:Victoria Bitter

In case you didn’t know: Australia’s favourite full strength beer, Victoria Bitter or VB as it’s fondly known, has a tradition of rewarding hard work and hard play, dating back to the 1890s. More info on their beersite.

Would you like to earn a life long calling credit of € 150 amonth? Or maybe one year of free flying with Air Europa? Would you sacrifice your phone for that too? If the answer to all of these questions is a loud and clear ‘YES I DO’ the dig up your finest Spanish and surf your funky behind to Haz volar tu móvil?, a small microsite far a campaign by Pepephone, a Spanish mobile operator. Participants in the contest are invited to put their clips on YouTube (of all places) and if you’re the lucky bird, you might even win € 5000 for your entry. That should be enough to buy you a brand new phone. Thing is… if you don’t win… :-) Ah well. You’ll win, right?

Video: Blow Up Your Phone
Via: BuzzingBees | Bajo La Linea

T-post is a wearable magazine. Subscribing to T-post is a lot like having a subscription to a magazine but instead of receiving magazines in your mailbox, you receive T-shirts. As a subscriber you receive a new t-shirt every six weeks based on a current news item. The topic is interpreted by select designers and the written story printed on the inside.

“What’s fascinating about T-post is the interaction. Nobody asks you about the article you just read in the bathroom. But if you’re wearing an issue of T-post, people tend to ask what it’s about. The next thing you know, you’re talking about the ethical treatment of robots or some bank robbers in Brazil who got away with 45 million bucks, you’re forming your own opinion, getting someone else to think about the topic, and it just keeps going. That’s what’s magic about this media, it gives everyone a chance to interpret a news story and communicate it in their own way.” said Peter Lundgren Editor-in-Chief at T-Post.

This is yet another superb idea, to convert people into living billboards. If you find people ready to do this, then I guess there is some sort of market for it. But I’m also guessing it would be limited to some sort of countries/seasons. I mean, looking at Belgium… how many months are there in a year in which you are ‘just’ wearing a t-shirt, and not a pull-over too. I’m thinking, june-july-august and maybe september too. All the other months… I’ll be dressed with a little more than a t-shirt (apart from shoes and pants, obviously). That said, it’s weird to see this sort of innovative trend come over from Sweden, since I assume it is even colder there than it is here. Still a good idea though. Could appeal very well to fashionistas.

Here is their latest issue: Sexual Confusion by FormaFantasma

Capture quote:

It all started out as an experiment, a fun project amongst friends, but as of today we have 2500 subscribers from over 45 countries. We don’t think a bunch of T-shirts are going to save the world. We just want to get people talking and see what happens after that.

Feel like you’re up to it? Subscribe here, at T-Post. A subscription is 26 EUR per T-shirt, and can be delivered anywhere in the world. All shipping costs are included in that price.

Fido, a Canadian wireless provider, created the billboards in conjunction with Bos, Toronto to celebrate the holiday season and promote wireless video calling. They feature a man and a woman each projected onto separate buildings. Initially both are static and then suddenly the young couple begins to interact with one another as video is projected onto the buildings throughout Toronto’s downtown core from December 6th to December 29th. They are being projected by BC-based Media Merchants using high-power light projectors.

These is a nice way to grab the attention of passers-by, since it will trigger curiosity and invites people to either watch what happens. It’s also a good conversation starter because it’s definitely something that you don’t see every day. Love to see some of these around in my country. Such a nice change to see instead of those dull ones that are all over town.

There’s also a movie to illustrate what the concept exactly holds:

Video: Fido Toronto
Agency: Bos Toronto
Creative Directors: Roger Gariepy, Chad Borlase, Gary Watson
Art Director: Ibraheem Youssef
Copywriter: Mwewa Frederick Nduna
Client Service: François Mailloux, Erin Gooderham
Production: Todd McLellan, Sugino Studios
Post Production: The Studio Upstairs
Projections: The Media Merchants
Video Production: Stone Canoe
Seeding: Glossy Inc

As much as I like the concept of sand art, and as much as I like really nice sculptures… it sometimes is a bit weird to see variations on the concept because you then immediately start to compare. Unfortunately I only have one movie, which is the most recent example of the lot, but just to illustrate that the concept definitely has been used before I’ll put in the images of older campaigns for different brands. I have a hard time choosing, because I kinda like them all.

So: First the video from Skoda

Video: Skoda Sand Castle

Next: The Sega Rally for Xbox360 sand car

Next: Two for Smart