While in Starbucks I stumbled upon this cool little piece of branding. A branded chocolate coin:
Such a simple idea with relatively low cost. If you’ve got a small business or startup and you are handing out flyers or stickers, maybe a gold call will be more memorable, and leave a good taste in peoples mouths.
I was so impressed by Dylan’s Candy Bar – they get it.
It’s just perfect in every way. The understand the following important factors in branding, retail, business, marketing:
In fact, instead of me raving on…. here’s a huge photo essay I took. That should give you the idea. Enjoy.
I am absolutely flummoxed at how deep the media channels flow in the USA.
I’ve never such visual pollution in one city. So much advertising.The thing I’m most surprised about is the ethical (pun intended) pharmaceutical category. TV advertisements for Drug X, encouraging people to go to the doctor to see if they have disease Y, in which case they should ask the doctor to prescribe drug X. This is so wrong, on so many levels. Start ups out there, please be in business for good – sales should be your secondary objective – helping people your first.
Sure, Times Square is kind of cool to look at, a real visual orgy. But it just never ends.
If you’re in the media business in Australia or Europe, there are plenty of new spaces which can be leveraged. I’ll provide a summary of new media channels with a photo essay at the end of the trip. But in the interim here’s a link to an historical advertising photo stream I found on flickr. Quite interesting.
Here’s a little thought experiment I did on paper while flying from Dubai to New York. I think it’s important to visualise our thoughts. You never know what our toughts might turn into. This one is a bit obtuse, but might be worht a close look.
The photo below is on the car of the guy I am staying with in Dubai. Have a look at the wheel cover on his 4 wheel drive, of which there are more than sedans on the road in said location.
You’ll notice that it has a cover on it for ‘Danube’ which happens to be a building materials company. Funny this is ‘Michael – the car owner’ doesn’t work there. He told me one day he returned to his vehicle to find it placed on his spare wheel. I asked him if it annoyed him, and he proceeded to tell me, it doesn’t worry him as it protects his wheel, and it is a bit of a hassle to remove. Yep, he hasn’t got around to removing it yet…
Subsequently I noticed these on many cars in Dubai. Seems the other owners of the hijacked cars haven’t bothered to remove theirs either.
It’s an interesting piece of advertising and media invention. It is giving an item of value to the hijacked, that is the wheel cover, but on the same token it’s very interruptive. If the cover get’s thrown away, it becomes a costly exercise for the advertiser. I’m not sure it would be tolerated in a western market, but it’s innovative non the less.
This is clearly a very ‘entertaining’ piece of advertising:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riVFSIYUnh8]
The above piece of film is just awesome, entertaining, memorable and even worth ‘talking about’. But here’s how that discussion will flow….
“Have you seen that awesome ad with the little kittens doing the Ninja, break dancing stuff… it is so cool.”
“No I haven’t seen it, what’s it for?”
“Not sure, I think a car or something, it’s just the coolest thing, the cats just look wicked, I wonder how they did it. I love it.”
The above conversation says it all. Great entertainment value, but little brand recognition, or call to action. This piece of advertising can therefore never be ‘Radvertising’.
Startup blog says: Advertising should sell, entertainment is at best, ‘a bonus’.
So after the last blog post I had a quick response from Cheng Lau on Twitter.
I was a bit confused at first but just followed my instinct and clicked. Then I was WOWed! It makes the point much better than I did.
Thanks Cheng!