This past week the teams were tasked with creating a new brand of cleaning product. The teams had to create a look for the product itself, as well as a television and radio ad to support the product.

In recognition that the products of both teams were similar, let’s take a look at the campaigns of both teams from a strategic corporate image perspective.

Alex’s Team: The Germinator

Key Elements:

• Black bottle, a red label with the image of a tough female.
• Tag line: “It terminates germs and dirt”.
• Television ad: A little boy can use the Germinator to clean gravy better than a strong man, because he has the Germinator product.

Chris’s Team: Octi-kleen

Key Elements:

• Orange bottle and pastel label with the image of a smiling octopus.
• Tag line “Eight hands are better than two”.
• Television ad: A mum can clean the house like an octopus, very quickly, as if she had eight hands.

The scope of this task was very unrealistic, the teams had to create product packaging and two supporting ads.  Unfortunately this Advertising task only asked the teams to consider a very limited scope of deliverables, and did not portray an integrated marketing cycle.  Although product packaging is important and most products, especially new products, benefit from television and radio ads, neither team discussed a strategy, a potential target demographic or even a corporate image as a whole.

As well, neither team developed a great brand name. Some of the questions to be asked when developing a strong brand name (Cow and Baack, 1997 p. 40):

• What are the brand’s most compelling benefits?
• What emotions are elicited by the brand either during or after the purchase?
• What one word best describes the brand?
• What is important to consumers in the purchase of the product?

Neither team discussed the relative benefits of the brand in comparison with others, or even attempted to portray an amount of competitive advantage. The Germinator had packaging that made it appear as though it belonged in another aisle, but neither team had any idea of what their brand equity would be.

Neither team actually considered the needs or desires of the target audience. Considering that the majority of consumers who purchase cleaning products are female, neither product or campaign targeted females specifically. Alex’s Germinator was a very masculine looking product, and Chris’s Octi-kleen television advert was very old fashioned and focused on the man of the house relaxing while the wife cleans up with her eight hands.

Lord Sugar certainly imposed on the team that there is much more to an effective campaign than making a snappy commercial. As he used the Titanic movie as an example, it won many Oscars but it was a poor advertisement for a cruise ship.

Ultimately, the critical failure of the Germinator was that the goal of the use of the product in the television commercial was to clean gravy, whose core function does not match with the name Germinator. Considering that a product is the most critical component of a campaign, the Germinator name was ill suited to a product that removed stains and removed kitchen grime.

Overall we were very disappointed by the efforts and results of the advertising task!

When we’re born a very important record begins, our medical record. Whether in a secure computer database or in a file at your family medical clinic, somewhere there exists a comprehensive description of your medical history. Doctor’s visits, ailments, medication history and family background are all included. This medical record is not overly relevant to your every day life, but can be very helpful to a specialist in making suggestions to improve your health whether a routine visit or an emergency situation.

Let’s say your doctor retires, you move to different city, or find yourself in the emergency room in the middle of the night. Whether time sensitive or not, in order for the doctor to make an accurate and helpful diagnosis, a key tool that enables them to recognize the problem and construct an optimal recovery plan is your medical record.

Meet Joe. Despite regularly getting a full night’s sleep and trying to eat right, Joe is always tired and never feels refreshed. Joe decides to go visit his doctor to see if they can suggest possible causes and recommend treatment. The doctor examines Joe’s medical history and makes a recommendation based on all the available information.

Joe’s doctor is a specialist in asking the right questions and in analyzing data provided by Joe’s medical records. Without knowing Joe’s medical and family histories and list of current medications, the doctor would not have been able to prescribe an effective and appropriate treatment plan that would be medically appropriate to improve Joe’s health and well being.

Think of your friendly neighborhood integrated marketing agency as a family doctor. An integrated marketing agency, just like a doctor, needs to understand your company’s personality and family history in order to provide or suggest the best possible course of treatment. Similarly, doctors have to ask patients questions to find out certain pieces of information that a patient may not deem relevant. If doctors were only able to diagnose based on the information provided by patients and were not able to ask questions and run tests, the treatment plan provided by the doctor would not be very effective in healing the ailments, or improving the patient’s condition.

If Joe is your business, and an integrated marketing agency is your doctor, one of the most valuable and critical pieces required to correctly identify areas of improvement is information. In order to provide an effective solution or make recommendations, an integrated marketing agency needs to have all the facts, even facts that you don’t believe are important so that they, as specialists in their field, can implement solutions that will improve your return on investment, boost sales and address any other areas of opportunity.

Your doctor is a specialist in what they do, but is a generalist for your health. In the same way that you can’t go straight to see an ear nose and throat specialist when you have the sniffles, an integrated marketing agency can help ask the tough questions, analyze the data, and be your specialist who is a generalist, who can implement a treatment plan that gets at the root of the issues- the real root, not necessarily that root that you’ve identified.

I have been in too many meetings, where someone suggests that as a promotional tool, the organisation should create a viral video. Why didn’t I think of that? What gives a video its viral nature? What makes one commercial any more exciting and newsworthy than another? Sure any organisation, person, or smartphone can create a video, but an extra special amount of luck, intelligence and finesse is required to create a video whose popularity grows to unimaginable size, that news agencies feature it in primetime, show it on the evening news, or perhaps feature it on their homepage. The best way to demonstrate the components of viral videos is to first watch the videos. While watching these videos, as yourself the following questions:

• How does the video make you feel?
• Have you seen anything like this before (before the first time you watched it)?
• What was the motivation behind the video?
• Who else would feel this way about the video?

The Wedding Dance, 53,000,000 views The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, 11,000,000 views Charlie Bit my finger! 216,000,000 views Evolution of Dance, 148,000,000 views The T-Mobile Dance, 22,000,000 views What is it about this list of both corporate and genuinely sincere videos that make them so popular? How was it that Dove and T-mobile were able to get such media coverage and an unthinkable number of web hits for the cost of producing the video? How is it possible that a video of a kid biting another kid’s finger is one of the world’s most popular and most seen videos?

1. Emotion

What do all these videos have in common? Emotion. In many instances videos that are funny get shared, while videos that are heartwarming become a sensation. The best example of the sensational potential is The Wedding Dance. I’m sure that when the two lovebirds decided to get married they didn’t consider how they could make the biggest worldwide splash- they were just genuinely trying to have a wonderful wedding day. What’s emotional about the T-mobile dance? I just watched it again and it made me cry, again, even though I’ve seen it at least ten times. I knew what was going happen- but this clever ad for T-Mobile does what most talk-shows aim to do, show genuine audience emotion. Fifty strangers performing choreographed dances in the middle of the day doesn’t make me cry, but the genuine, heart-warming reactions from the crowd as they dance, certainly does make me tear up. These innocent bystanders are actually excited about being there to capture and share the moment (on their T-Mobile phones) and then we see that lovely unsuspecting older ladies are just having a great time dancing- something that would never happen by chance in Liverpool Station. Who doesn’t love a cute kid who sticks his finger in his brother’s mouth, while his younger brother can’t help but bite on something that’s been put in his mouth, and they both have a laugh?

2. Something Unexpected

Anyone can make the equivalent of a T-Mobile dance these days but no one can ever be the first again. No one can ever deliver something so heartwarming, so close to home and so unexpected- because from now on it’s just a copy.

Everyone knows that models and celebrities in magazines don’t actually look like that. Because we never get to see models and celebrities up close, with only 10 minutes of makeup as they are running to catch a bus or a train we never really know how close they actually look to the pictures we see of them. The Dove video shows us that the people on billboards aren’t necessarily any more beautiful than we are. It is revealing the truth, which is very unexpected. This video also just happens to support an ad campaign that is running concurrently…

3. Human Nature

Having been watched more than a 148,000,000 times, I honestly cannot explain why The Evolution of Dance is so popular. It’s so popular perhaps because in six minutes it relives decades of dance, decades of experience, for many viewers. I don’t think I’m in the target audience, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you think the Evolution of Dance is so popular. What other videos do you think should be on this list?

The key thing to remember when suggesting that your organisation make a viral video, is that to have very low expectations. Unless you have something unexpected, or can show your product alongside genuine emotion in a way that has never been tried before, you will have just made a commercial. There’s nothing wrong with commercials the difference is that people choose to watch and share a viral video without realising at first that it has a hidden agenda.

Good Luck!

Whilst sitting at the traffic lights on the busy Talgarth Road junction near Earls Court, my attention was drawn to a For Sale sign on one of the very attractive buildings fronting the carriageway. It reads ‘RememberTheWindow.com‘. 48 hours later I was sat at my desk and guess what popped into my head for no conscious reason?

Through a stroke of pure memorable relevance and then personal intrigue, I was drawn in to the Blog site of Christian Braun and his family who, having had no success through Estate Agents, are trying to sell their home privately online.

I’m not in the market to part with £1.395M for a slice of England’s not so green and pleasant juxtaposed A4 despite the buildings beauty, but you have to applaud this chaps strategy and passion for promoting this house. It’s certainly drawing a crowd. Good luck Christian.

Check out RememberTheWindow.com and also see the coverage he got in The Sunday Times.

As the cars pile up during this global recession, interesting to see Nissan’s strategy for encouragement and customer reassurance is blatant and bold within it’s latest communications -’Just in Case’ cover, which includes 12 months’ free unemployment cover with a new vehicle.

If you haven’t read the succinct news report offered by The Guardian’s Media Monkey this week, following their alluring offer of an interview with the illusive Banksy, I suggest you read on….Even when interviewed, this great English graffiti artist maintains quasi-anonymity….

Banksy; painting a False Picture – The Guardian Guide offered readers an interview on Saturday with famously reclusive street artist Banksy, who shared his thoughts on Rolf Harris, Top Gear’s Stig and his ambition to paint a “giant comedy cock” on the walls of the Guide if he ever broke into its offices. If only. As the Guardian’s readers’ editor said today: “An interview purporting to be with Banksy in last Saturday’s Guide (One last thing … , 18 July, page 98, the Guide) was, it transpires, conducted with someone impersonating the graffiti artist. We apologise to Banksy for this error and for any offence and inconvenience caused.”

Ever wanted to write your message in the sky so every one can see it?

Well now you can. A couple of Hollywood special effects guys have invented a machine that can pump out 4ft foam clouds in the shape of a company logo at the rate of one every 15 seconds.

Flogos (flying logos), are made up of helium filled soap bubbles that can travel 30 miles at up to 20,000ft before disappearing, according to the Flogo website.

Disney, Apple, Audi and Nike have already signed up and others have expressed interest. Looks like it’s only available in the US at the moment, but I’m sure it won’t be long until they take off here!