Personally I'd rather get that look by burying my face in a bag of cheetos. In fact I'm wearing it right now, I look hot. *chomp chomp crunch*
Perhaps it's simply Chester being more mischievous than ever, fooling us all into looking like fools."Felicia... Yes..... wear the Cheetos Chapstick. Go on. Mmmmmm." You have to obey Chester.
Some virtual detective work by Advertising Age -- and rounds of phone calls -- reveal the marketer behind the effort is General Motors Co. But neither the company nor its agencies would say exactly what the campaign is for.
"I'm glad it's getting out there," but no one wants to talk about it until next Tuesday, said Mike Rosen, president of GM agency Starcom, New York, who then declined to offer further comment.
A Chevrolet spokesman said he had no information on the 230 site and whether it was linked to the Chevrolet Volt, GM's upcoming electric car. He added that GM has scheduled a press conference for Aug. 11, but he cautioned it is not necessarily related to the 230 teaser site. He declined to make further comment.
The most frequent guess pins the campaign to the plug-in Volt, which will likely get its juice from the 230-volt outlets used to run heavier appliances such as air conditioners and washing machines. (UPDATE: Another guess being made by commenters and now being backed up by industry insiders is that the 230 refers to the miles per gallon the Volt will get. Though we'd love to see that math!)
Either way, why run a teaser campaign for a car that doesn't go on sale until next year -- and one that's been known about for some time? After all, the marketer has been beating the drum for the car for more than a year.
Another contender is a just-announced Buick cross-over SUV plug-in hybrid. According to auto blog GM-volt.com, the vehicle will be launched in 2011 "and is expected to be the first commercially available plug-in hybrid SUV produced by a major automaker."
Other guesses floated on the web included a prototype for a 230-mpg car (seen in this CNN video clip from last year), something to do with Apple, or the conversion of the entire U.S. electrical grid from 120 volts to 230.
Despite the curiosity in some quarters, though, the mystery and frustration haven't exactly spread like wildfire. There is a whatis230.com site, a Flickr photostream, a blog, a YouTube channel and a Facebook group -- none of which seem to be gaining the sort of traction that would make such a viral effort a true pop-culture phenomenon. (Though it does seem to be flirting with a backlash.)
Indeed, the Facebook group was one of the biggest clues. Meghan Winger, a staffer of Chicago agency All Terrain, is the creator of the What Is 230 group. She also posted a teaser about the campaign to the "What is 230?" YouTube channel. All Terrain, which among other things is touted as a "social-media expert" on its website, lists Chevrolet at the top of its client roster. Others who oversee the Facebook page include: All Terrain marketing coordinator Noor Aweidah, who today Tweeted that "should know what 230 means"; Jeff Schwartz, who lists GM and Chevy Riders as his favorite products on his Facebook page; and Ashley Berlin, a media planner and buyer for Starcom Mediavest Group, a GM agency.
So yes, "What is 230?" is an ad campaign. It's for a GM product. But that's all anyone's saying at this point.
----update________
DETROIT (AdAge.com) -- Fritz Henderson, CEO of General Motors Co., admitted this morning in a live webcast that the automaker was indeed behind the mysterious, unbranded website whatis230.com, as first reported here last week.
GM expects to produce roughly 60,000 of first-generation Volts, which are scheduled to go on sale in late 2010 as 2011 models.
So why run a blind teaser campaign? Mr. Henderson said that in order to win a new generation of buyers, "we need to relate to people between 16 and 30. They communicate differently and we need to make sure we plug into that. It's going to change advertising and it's going to change marketing and, over time, how we sell cars."
Campbell-Ewald, Warren, Mich., created the 230 site. Chevrolet's longtime agency of record subcontracted with All Terrain, Chicago, which activated street teams to distribute hats and T-shirts with whatis230.com in several major cities.
GM also is ready to start its car-selling pilot on eBay, which Mr. Henderson announced a month ago in a webcast the day the new GM exited from reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Mr. Henderson said the program extends the showroom into Americans' living rooms and "makes the customer the center of our universe."
He also vowed to put more of GM's communications resources to its four core vehicle brands -- Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC -- instead of the GM brand, because "we don't go to market as GM." This move is likely to severely slash the amount of work handled by McCann Erickson, Birmingham, Mich., which has GM's corporate account.
The GM chief's webcast today followed a session yesterday with invited consumers, many of whom he described as past GM owners and "thoughtful critics" of the automaker on its blog at fastlane.gmblogs.com. GM today launched a microsite called The Lab, which will feature future projects and will be another place for consumers to share their reactions. The marketer said visitors who provide detailed demographic information may be invited to participate at a deeper level in future sessions.
In other announcements today, Mr. Henderson said:
Here’s a strange thing: everyone is increasingly desperate for attention and yet we spend more and more of our leisure time in rooms with other live humans in them, ignoring live humans and doing things alone online. The people we know – husbands, wives, siblings, children – sit on the sofa while we engage with the people we don’t on the internet.
We’re all desperate to interact, to have our voices heard, but we find the nameless masses make a better audience than our near and dear. Is this a terrible disaster? Is it yet another nail in the coffin of “traditional” family life?
Wanting to be heard is a newish phenomenon in itself: not so long ago the thing to do was quietly potter through life, head down, drawing not an iota of vulgar attention to oneself. Today it isn’t just children that crave attention – grown-ups have found a voracious appetite for it, too. Adults, already prone to feeling like so many teeny-weeny little ants, scuttling about unappreciated and unnoticed, are eager to have their ant-voices – or their great big lion-roar, for that matter – brought to as large an audience as possible.
Technology has obligingly come to the rescue: if you feel like saying something about this article and are reading it online (for free! Um. Yes. Anyway. Moving on), you can avail yourself of the comment space or the e-mail address below.
If you have thoughts that you’d like to share about anything at all – from politics to child-rearing via artichokes or shed-building – you can start a blog; it takes about four minutes to set one up. If you’d like new friends, you can join a social networking site; if you want a date, you can trawl the singles sites; if you want a recipe for strawberry jam, you can ask strangers in a foodie chatroom. If the stuff that you watch on television or hear on the radio or read in the paper triggers a chain of thought, you’re free to share it with the people who made it at the click of a mouse.
All of this attention-seeking (and I don’t mean that pejoratively) takes place while we are in the physical company of friends and family with whom we are apparently failing to interact at all.
A report released last week by Ofcom, the communications regulator, painted a fascinating picture of family life – or rather of family life at play. Whereas 60 years ago people might have gathered around the wireless after supper, and 20 years ago around the television, today they are more likely to be in the same room, possibly on the same sofa, doing completely separate things: one watching television and checking Facebook at the same time, one tweeting away, one downloading music onto their iPod, one updating their blog. The Communications Market Report shows how reliant Britons have become on the internet for entertainment, and the net, though it links you to millions of other people, is a physically solitary pursuit.
Ofcom’s report presents a picture of a country multitasking in the most frantic way: 36% of those questioned, for instance, said they were online at the same time as they watched television – and this is after a long day at work. Ofcom’s director of market research said: “What we find is that there has been a trend for people to converge on the living room, to watch the 37in high-definition television, but when they get there they start to do something else like surf the internet as well.” The report suggests that although television viewing is holding up – three hours and 45 minutes a day is the average – it is only holding up because people are doing other things online at the same time.
Previously, teenagers were alone in indulging in what MTV calls “connected cocooning”, where someone is at home but spending all their energy communicating with the outside world. However, the older generations are now catching up.
We all know that multitasking is exhausting and that it has its limits, so the question is: will this level of engagement fry what remains of our brains? Will people’s already lamentably short attention spans fizzle away to nothing?
I don’t think so. I spend countless evenings in the sitting room with my two older children: the television is on; I’m at my desktop computer; one of them might be checking Spotify on his laptop; the other gaming online, with strangers from Arkansas or Fife, with an earpiece and a microphone so he can chat to them. If anyone – usually much older – suggests this is odd, the middle son shrugs and says that the people he’s chatting to are as real as you or me or “friends” on Facebook. They are just not physically present.
It would be easier to scoff if we didn’t know of the amazing success – I don’t mean just in terms of numbers but in terms of helpfulness and support – of giant websites such as Mumsnet, where strangers, normal people, not weirdo nerd-heads, also form friendships that are entirely real, even though they happen through the medium of fibreoptic cables.
The thing is, there’s necessary multitasking, of the kind you do at work, but there’s now a new and different kind of multitasking that we do for pleasure. Checking Twitter updates while cooking, for instance, may sound demented to the uninitiated, but it isn’t wildly different from listening to Radio 4 – both consist of people telling you interesting stuff. Admittedly, some of us have Radio 4 on while we cook and text, and while the sauce reduces we might even text about Radio 4. I do realise how peculiar this sounds unless you do it too, but it’s hugely enjoyable.
As for family life: I’m in favour of anything that has everyone in one place. We may be differently occupied, but we’re hanging out together, each doing our own thing. Nobody would be throwing up their hands in horror if we were all reading our own books or staring into space having our own thoughts – so why be appalled by the idea that we might all be involved in our individual bits of internet?
To me, the picture painted by Ofcom is rather reminiscent of a gentler age, where one family member played patience while the other read and a third caught up on some sewing. I can’t see anything wrong with this: then, as now, being together in the same room is sometimes enough.
+ The TUC has proposed a motion, due to be debated at next month’s conference, arguing that high heels in the workplace are demeaning to women and contribute to long-term health injuries and as such should be replaced by “sensible shoes” with a 1in heel limit. Is there a more unattractive combination of words than “sensible” and “shoes”? The TUC, which is mostly made up of men, might as well call for a return to “sensible slacks” and “drip-dry blouses”.
Besides, I have recently discovered that it is entirely possible to injure yourself through the wearing of completely flat shoes, or indeed of wearing no shoes at all as often as possible. Not only do you get hobbit feet – well, hobbit-shaped, not hobbit-furred – but you also get weird aches and pains, which are basically your feet sobbing for Louboutins.
Also, it’s 2009. I think we can probably safely assume that if women felt “demeaned” by wearing high heels they wouldn’t buy, or wear, any. Instead, many go into paroxysms of ecstasy at the mere word.
Bless the TUC, but really. What next? Perhaps a motion proposing that chocolate is bad for your teeth and causes unsightly stains when melty and should therefore be banned from all tea breaks
How do you use Facebook? Is it to connect with long forgotten friends or share fun tidbits of your personal life with extended family? If that’s you, well… you are not alone. A great majority of Facebook users maintain Facebook profiles exclusively for personal networking and do not feel Facebook is appropriate for professional networking. I disagree with this approach. Facebook social networking experience should be what you want to make of it and more and more professionals turn to Facebook to maintain professional and/or business presence in addition to a personal one.
Nothing really. LinkedIn is definitely the channel of choice for professional networking. However, Facebook continues to grow and mature making its security and sharing options more and more robust. All this to ensure that you have choices and your social networking experience is precisely what YOU want to make of it. While you won’t post pictures of your family vacation on LinkedIn, a balanced mix of professional information along with a limited and tasteful glimpse into your personal life could prove to make Facebook the new LinkedIn for those who what to use Facebook for both.
Charlene Kingston in her blog post advocates keeping two separate profiles on Facebook: your personal profile for friends and family and your professional one by creating a “fan page.” This works great for small businesses where the owner of the business has the authority to set up and control the fan page. What if you work in a big company and do not have that luxury? You can still use your Facebook profile as a professional networking tool as long as your follow some basic rules.
Let’s start with some basics which includes using your real and full name in your profile. This is not only important to ensure that you are easily found on Facebook and on Google when your profile is indexed but also to keep the profile professional. Don’t use nicknames, fictional names or maiden names unless that’s the name you are using in your professional life. Remember to secure your facebook vanity domain name to make it easy to direct others to your Facebook profile with a clean and easy to type in URL.
Also, don’t forget to include your photo in your profile. No avatars, no images of kids or wedding photos please. A simple, tasteful head shot of you will do the trick.
Include detailed information about your area of expertise, your company where you work including website and any other social media channels where corporate presence is maintained. Your contact information and all of your social media channels you maintain presence on should also be listed.
What might be appropriate to share with your family and close friends might not be appropriate to display or share with your colleagues or professional contacts. Don’t just assume the default security settings will keep you out of trouble. Take the time to go through each link in the Privacy area and make adjustments. Nick O’Neal has a great blog posts that will guide you to choose wisely when adjusting your privacy settings.
Consider setting up friends’ groups to control what information is viewable by whom. The groups are also IMPORTANT because according to Facebook you soon will have precise control of what gets shared with whom on the level of individual wall post. You will be able to direct your weekend planning posts to just your family or friends and send posts about the latest whitepaper you’ve read to just your colleagues and professional contacts. Having your friends divided into logical groups will make appropriate sharing a snap. Here is more info. about Facebook’s new privacy settingsincluding the timeline for rolling this enhancement out (courtesy of the Marketing Pilgrim blog).
There are tons of applications available for download, but it does not mean that you should go for quantity rather than quality. Yes, you can send virtual gifts to people, play games or display love quotes, but aside from being great time wasters these types of activities will greatly diminish the quality of your profile. Opt for socializing with others through conversations, asking and answering questions, sharing resources and advice rather than playing games.
Similarly to LinkedIn, finding and joining quality Facebook groups opens up great opportunities to network with professionals who are interested in what you are interested in and who will pay attention if you display your subject matter expertise there.
Not sure how to find groups? Search for them and see what groups your colleagues have joined. If you find that there is no group that matches your expertise create one, but before you do that please think about your own commitment to maintaining the group. There are a lot of dead groups on Facebook. Don’t let yours be one of them.
There is nothing more powerful than personal interaction. Facebook excels at it and gives you lots of opportunities to engage. Remember though to separate your personal posts from your professional content.
For your professional network interactions consider the following activities
But don’t attempt to send bulk commercial or self-serving messages to all your friends. Maintaining a professional presence is about finding and developing relationships and not spamming people.
Many people have emailed to point out the handheld-boob trend going on right now. EURO RSCG Warsaw, did an ad explaining experience in lingerie by showing a much older womans hands cupping the breasts of a young model for Aniela. They all pointed out that ALMAP/BBDO already did this for Meias Liz Underwear.The whole campaign for Meias Liz shows mens hands as various lingerie items, a bra, a demi-cup bra, a pair of knickers.
The newspaper ad for the Practical English Programme has been running since 1960. Photograph: Public Domain
It has outlived the greatest marketing campaigns of our time; the chimpanzees that drank tea, the gorilla playing the drums, even that bright orange man who used to attack Tango drinkers. But how has what is probably the longest-running advert in newspaper history managed to survive for nearly 50 years? While language, newspapers andadvertising have evolved around it, this simple ad has remained almost exactly the same.
The first thing that strikes you about the advert is that it reads like a newspaper article, complete with a headline asking, "Shamed by your English?" The text then claims that the solution is the Practical English Programme, a correspondence course in speaking and writing based out of Bowden Hall College in Cheshire.
The company's managing director, Ian Travis, estimates that 400,000 people have taken the course since its inception in the 1950s. There is, he says, no standard customer profile. People from all walks of life, from 15 to 90, have read the words "Shamed by your English?" and thought, Yes, yes I am. Tell me more.
But the advert's question hasn't always been the same. Numerous variations have been experimented with, such as "Does your English let you down?" or the more presumptuous "Why are you shamed by your English?" But the text has been left almost totally unaltered. Over the years, various photographs have been used as illustrations, although one in particular caught readers' eyes; a portrait of a man named Derek Derbyshire, an accountant who posed for a modelling agency while briefly out of work in the early 1960s. He was 33 at the time, and his fee for the shoot was three guineas. When, 37 years later, Derbyshire died, the Daily Telegraph printed an obituary, speculating that his face had appeared on their front page more often than the Queen, Tony Blair, "or even Posh Spice".
Bob Heap was managing director of the course in 1963, when it was known as the Psychology Publishing Company, a subsidiary of his father's mail-order business. "The original ad was written by an American copywriter for a company called Marcus Campbell in Chicago," he says. "We . . . well, the correct word is plagiarised, we plagiarised that ad – considerably amended, of course – in about 1960."
The irony of plagiarising an advert for your own writing course isn't lost on him, although he defends the decision. "We played about with the copy and we still could not find a formula that was as good as this one," he says. So why has it been so effective for so long? "One of the reasons is that initially the reader thinks it's part of editorial. We used to match the typefaces of the newspaper it was printed in."
Another explanation is that it often appeared on the front page, the most desirable spot in newspaper advertising. You might be surprised that a simple correspondence course was consistently able to afford such a prominent placement. Heap explains with a chuckle: "We never paid the full rate. We used to have arrangements with the advertising people of the major newspapers. When they hadn't sold a front-page ad, they'd ring us and offer it to us at a discount."
Heap estimates that the usual rate for a front page advert was £400 in 1963, and had risen to £1,900 by the time he retired in 1997. But the rising prices have never been a problem. "That advert paid for itself from the very first time it ran," he says with pride.
Travis points out that "we don't get offered the front page any more", but confirms that the advert continues to pay for itself. Although he has given it plenty of thought, he can offer no explanation for its success. "We have produced new adverts that we thought were better. We expected them to do really well but they've just been awful. When we switch back to this one the inquiries flood in again. I honestly don't know why it's so successful." All he knows is that he won't be retiring it any time soon.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Paragon of Rust Belt manufacturing and an icon since World War II, Zippo wears its American-ness on its sleeve. So does its VP-sales and marketing, Mark Paup, who has spent his entire 15-year career at Zippo and now leads all sales, marketing, design and product development for the Bradford, Pa.-based company. A smoker who rides a Soft Tail Nightrain Harley, you could say Mr. Paup, 44, fits the psychographic of the Zippo consumer.
Now reporting directly to CEO Gregory Booth and overseeing the closely held company's $6 million to $10 million marketing budget, he's charged with finding new markets for the brand while weaving it tightly into subcultures beyond smoking, such as music and motorsports.
Social media is the focal point of Mr. Paup's marketing strategy right now. Proof positive of Zippo's continued brand relevance is its ubiquitous iPhone app, created by Moderati, which has been downloaded 5 million times. Zippo is actively participating in social networks under the handle ZippoDude1932, and it has launcheda Facebook page, which is getting an app with a Twitter feedcreated by Buffalo-based indie agency 15 Fingers. But by far the most popular Zippo-themed Facebook page has nothing to do with the company. (Memo to Facebook user "Zippo:" The guys in Bradford would like to speak to you.)
But the question remains as to whether Zippo can participate in the conversation with its core audience of 18- to 34-year-old males and whether that will translate to a needed sales boost. It's weathered the anti-tobacco movement, airline regulations that for years after 9-11 kept lighters off planes and floods of knockoffs from China, but the 67-year-old company's U.S. sales are down 7% so far in 2009, after remaining flat in 2008. The company, which produces 10 to 12 million lighters a year, laid off 117 employees in the past year.
Still, Zippo expects to sell its 475 millionth lighter this year. It continues to diversify its offerings, broadening its base in the United States beyond its core of smokers with "multi-purpose" lighters sold in places like Bed Bath and Beyond. It even has a line of outdoor products planned, to be sold in outlets such as Dicks, REI and True Value.
In an interview with Ad Age, Mr. Paup discussed Zippo's new markets and how it's capitalizing on brand affinity on Facebook and Twitter.
Ad Age: Zippo is synonymous with lighters; can the brand be something more?
Mr. Paup: Flame is our core competency, but we've already proven we can move into other flame-related products. Our biggest success has been with the female audience in accounts like Kohl's, Target, Yankee Candle and Bed Bath & Beyond. These would be establishments that would not be selling Zippo pocket lighters. We've done a lot of research that tells us we can extend into the outdoor market in various categories in flame, such as heat- and safety-related gear, barbecuing on the patio, and possibly grills.
Ad Age: How do you increase lighter sales when smoking is in steady decline, or is that no longer the goal?
Mr. Paup: Lighter sales are what feed us every day. We know it is a declining market, but it is still a large market. Our objective is to continue to drive and increase our share in a declining market. If we can do that there is still a healthy, viable business for us.
Ad Age: How is the effort to have 50% of your revenue come from non-smoking products by 2010 going?
Mr. Paup: We were sidetracked a bit. We're moving into camping; we bought Zippo Fashion Italia and W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Factory. There was also a major development in our core lighter business, the Zippo Blue Butane Lighter. We wanted to make that in the United States, but it took us longer to develop than we anticipated. This is a much higher-end refillable butane product that appeals to a cigar smoker. But it wasn't a great time to introduce new products in the market. We could have gone to Asia and easily sourced this product, but we wanted to make sure we could stand by it with our lifetime guarantee and say it was made in the USA.
Ad Age: Who is the Zippo buyer and how do you reach that person?
Mr. Paup: We call him "Sean," an 18- to 34-year-old high school grad with maybe some college. He loves music, doesn't go anywhere without his iPod. That is the universal lifestyle we look at and what ties it all together. It is a place in which we can stay relevant, engaged and in support their lifestyle, and they will support our brand. [To cultivate that target,] we started several years ago with the concept for the Zippo Hot Tour. With it, we were supporting bands and they could upload music to our website and they could vote on it. We sponsored the rock stage for several years. This year we tied in with Live Nation in 10 markets for 200 shows. ZippoEncore.com, a partnership with Rolling Stone and Shinedown, further ties Zippo to music. We're also giving away a Harley and the company is offering two exclusive Harley Davidson lighters on the site.
Ad Age: Your iPhone app was released last September and has become one of the Apple Store's most popular. Does it have staying power?
Mr. Paup: We do see people continue to use it and recommend others to get it as well, which is encouraging. There is a novelty factor, and there may be a short period when they actually use it. We are looking to release an update before year-end with a concert mode, a left-handed version, and perhaps trying to monetize it -- by upselling some designs that aren't available on the free version that we license with artists or brands or other properties.
Ad Age: Your official Facebook page is dwarfed by one set up by Zippo fans. Have you tried to work with your fans on Facebook, and perhaps partnering with them, as Coca-Cola did earlier this year?
Mr. Paup: We are discussing that and contemplating that right now. We haven't been able to contact him, but we're checking with Facebook to see if we can reach out to that individual who started that. You want to be amicable with the person that started that page because they have an audience of 25,000 Zippo fans and could speak poorly of Zippo if you make the wrong step. However, Zippo is our brand and our trademark, and we want to be careful with how people use it.
Ad Age: Zippo has a huge profile on YouTube. Have you thought about how it can leverage video on the web?
Mr. Paup: Some guy started zippotricks.com; we engaged with that person, who was from Norway, in 2003. He created a platform where you could upload and vote on videos. But in the end we became concerned that the age group was getting to the point where we didn't want to be promoting playing with fire. We backed off and turned it back over to him and it becamelightertricks.com. We didn't want to put our thumbprint on it.
Ad Age: Is there any evidence that your social-media presence has affected sales?
Mr. Paup: It is challenging to measure the return because in most cases we are selling through wholesalers and retailers and a lot of those retailers we don't know. It's hard to measure sales as a result of the coolness of the iPhone app. We do see some nice increases this year in our online sales, which are up more than 20%.
