Batelco| what you can "be"

First established in 1981, Batelco (short for Bahrain Telecommunications Company), has grown to be the biggest provider of internet, mobile and telephone services in Bahrain, partly because until recently it was a monopoly, but now that two more mobile competitors are in place, Batelco needed to update its identity. Originally designed by Landor in 2003, the new identity has been designed by Futurebrand.

Our logo symbolises this bold direction by evoking the idea of what you can "be" with Batelco. Our new identity celebrates Batelco as a Bahraini icon, linking us in colour and with the letter B to our country. The bilingual logo, which reads as both an English and Arabic letter B, also resembles an infinity sign, further communicating Batelco's omnipresence throughout Bahrain.
— Futurebrand Project Description

English and Arabic (read right to left) versions of the logo.
The previous logo was remarkably dull and generic — but given that Batelco is owned by three Government agencies, it somehow seemed appropriate — and would have been impossible to convert into an exciting consumer brand. The new logo, in contrast, is remarkably strong and memorable. The "B" icon is simple and elegant and looks great big or small (perhaps it's a little too big in the lock-up, but that's a minor complaint). The infinity concept is good even if the execution strays a little from what we would all recognize as an infinity symbol, but the effort in making the icon look like a Latin and Arabic "B" (it's just the lower u-shaped part with the dot) is really nice. The wordmark verges on appropriate and weird, with the "e" and "c" standing out like sore, square thumbs against the other characters which have curved corners… I guess it could be worse. The applications, from web site to signage, feel stylish and trendy without going overboard. A pretty great update, even by infinity standards.

Launch event of new brand.

Pepsi Hit Refresh

In January 2010 Pepsi takes to the streets with one of the heaviest weight outdoor campaigns in Australia’s history: Hit Refresh.
Hit Refresh introduces the evolution of the renowned Pepsi globe logo with a massive outdoor campaign hosted by newly announced MTV VJ Erin McNaught and stable mate Darren McMullen.

Hit Refresh outdoor advertising encompasses large format billboards, bus shelters, street furniture, bus sides, bus interiors, mobile outdoor sites and will run from the first week of January to mid February.
While the outdoor headlines the campaign, the core of Hit Refresh is a partnership with youth channel MTV and a social networking based scavenger hunt, as well as online media, in-store media, in-store promotions and product sampling.
Through the MTV partnership, the pay TV channel has created and produced multiple television commercials (1 x 60, 2 x 30, 2 x 15 second). The Hit Refresh commercials launch from 1 January 2010 on MTV, VH1, Network Ten and Nine’s digital GO! Channel.   In the spots, MTV VJs Erin McNaught and Darren McMullen literally “Hit Refresh” by being transformed into a different scene each time they Hit an oversize Pepsi logo, or “Refresh” button.
The commercials support the HitRefresh.com.au website, the hub of a social network scavenger hunt via which consumers can win one of 101 Pepsi Refresh Cards loaded with $250 to “Refresh their world” however they choose – be it their style, lifestyle, destination, tunes, social life.
With over $25,000 worth of Pepsi Refresh EFTPOS cards up for grabs, the “Hit Refresh to Win” promotion takes place through 101 hunts over 40 days in 8 cities around Australia starting from 4 January and requires consumers to follow Pepsi’s twitter or Facebook pages.  Winning a hunt requires a consumer to locate and be the first to “Hit” the Pepsi Refresh button by following clues “tweeted”  & “Facebooked” during the hunt by a Pepsi team member, known as a Pepsi Refresher.
HitRefresh.com.au aggregates the Pepsi Twitter and Facebook sites in a single location to give consumers the opportunity to schedule hunts in their area and follow the clues. The activity is further supported with online media as well as street activations.
At a retail level, In-store media extends the reach of the outdoor into the retail environment both in and outside stores such as Coles, Woolworths, Caltex and 7-Eleven. PepsiCo Beverages business partner Schweppes Australia has activated account specific support and promotions in Coles, Coles Express, Woolworths, Woolworths Petrol Plus and 7-Eleven.  These will run in conjunction with a traditional route (up and down the street) trade promotion offering the chance to win a share of $25,000 in instant prizes.
Australia is the first PepsiCo International market to launch the new look Pepsi trademark across the four Pepsi brands – Pepsi Max, Pepsi, Pepsi Light and Pepsi Light Caffeine Free. The new look packs started appearing on Australian shelves in October 2009 and are a major update to the Pepsi globe which was created during the World War II period.
In the US, the new look Pepsi was launched a year ago during the American Presidential inauguration.  A year on, the latest US campaign – ‘Pepsi Refresh Project’ launches 1 February 2010.
The latest iteration in the Refresh Everything campaign sees Pepsi pull its entire Superbowl budget - a staggering US$20 million - in favour of a CSR initiative.  The move will mark the end of a 23 year investment in the game. The Refresh Project is a US-based campaign set up to reward those with big ideas for improving communities across the areas of health, arts and culture, charity, ecology, neighbourhood and education.

The campaign website will launch officially on January 13th on which users can submit their big ideas. From February 1st the public can cast their vote to decide the most worthy causes. Grants will then be awarded up to the total value of $1.3m per month over the course of the year.

The project will also be closely tied with an online reality show titled 'If I Can Dream' which will track five youngsters trying to crack Hollywood. Frank Cooper, SVP and chief consumer engagement officer, Pepsi-Cola North American Beverages said the show, which will be aired across Hulu and MySpace 'is one of many innovative ways the Pepsi Refresh Project will be featured in the digital space'.

The campaign follows the announcement by Pepsi that it will increase online advertising by 60% from 2009 expenditure. Cooper went on to say 'In 2010, each of our beverage brands has a strategy and marketing platform that will be less about a singular event, less about a moment, more about a movement'. 
Website www.HitRefresh.com.au
Twitter http://twitter.com/Pepsiaustralia
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/PepsiAustralia

How Ford Got Social Marketing Right

Ford recently wrapped the first chapter of its Fiesta Movement, leaving us distinctly wiser about marketing in the digital space.
Ford gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. And away they went. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, "agents" used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

The campaign was an important moment for Ford. It wanted in to the small car market, and it hadn't sold a subcompact car in the United States since it discontinued the Aspire in 1997.
And it was an important moment for marketing. The Fiesta Movement promised to be the most visible, formative social media experiment for the automotive world. Get this right and Detroit marketing would never be the same.
I had the good fortune to interview Bud Caddell the other day and he helped me see the inner workings of the Fiesta Movement. Bud works at Undercurrent, the digital strategy firm responsible for the campaign.
Under the direction of Jim Farly, Group VP at Ford and Connie Fontaine, manager of brand content there, Undercurrent decided to depart from the viral marketing rule book. Bud told me they were not interested in the classic early adopters, the people who act as influencers for the rest of us. Undercurrent wanted to make contact with a very specific group of people, a passionate group of culture creators.
Bud said,

The idea was: let's go find twenty-something YouTube storytellers who've learned how to earn a fan community of their own. [People] who can craft a true narrative inside video, and let's go talk to them. And let's put them inside situations that they don't get to normally experience/document. Let's add value back to their life. They're always looking, they're always hungry, they're always looking for more content to create. I think this gets things exactly right. Undercurrent grasped the underlying motive (and the real economy) at work in the digital space. People are not just telling stories for the sake of telling stories, though certainly, these stories have their own rewards. They were making narratives that would create economic value.

The digital space is an economy after all. People are creating, exchanging and capturing value, as they would in any marketplace. But this is a gift economy, where the transactions are shot through with cultural content and creation. In a gift economy, value tends to move not in little "tit for tat" transactions, but in long loops, moving between consumers before returning, augmented, to the corporation. In this case, adventures inspired by Undercurrent and Ford return as meaning for the brand and value for the corporation.
Undercurrent was reaching out to consumers not just to pitch them, but to ask them to help pitch the product. And the pitch was not merely a matter of "buzz." Undercurrent wanted consumers to help charge the Fiesta with glamor, excitement, and oddity — to complete the "meaning manufacture" normally conducted only by the agency.
This would be the usual "viral marketing" if all the consumer was called upon to do was to talk up Fiesta. But Undercurrent was proposing a richer bargain, enabling and incenting "agents" to create content for their own sakes, to feed their own networks, to build their own profiles...and in the process to contribute to the project of augmenting Fiesta's brand.
Fiesta's campaign worked because it was founded on fair trade. Both the brand and the agent were giving and getting. And this shows us a way out of the accusations that now preoccupy some discussions of social media marketing. With their gift economy approach, Ford and Undercurrent found a way to transcend all the fretting about "what bright, shining object can we invent to get the kids involved?" and, from the other side, all that "oh, there he goes again, it's the Man ripping off digital innocents." It's a happier, more productive, more symmetrical, relationship than these anxieties imply. Hat's off to Farley and Fontaine.
The effects of the campaign were sensational. Fiesta got 6.5 million YouTube views and 50,000 requests for information about the car — virtually none from people who already had a Ford in the garage. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign.

There is an awful lot of aimless experiment in the digital space these days. A lot of people who appear not to have a clue are selling digital marketing advice. I think the Fiesta Movement gives us new clarity. It's a three-step process.

1. Engage culturally creative consumers to create content.
2. Encourage them to distribute this content on social networks and digital markets in the form of a digital currency.
3. Craft this is a way that it rebounds to the credit of the brand, turning digital currency (and narrative meaning) into a value for the brand.

In effect, outsource some of our marketing work. And in the process, turn the brand itself into an "agent" and an enabler of cultural production that is interesting and fun. Now the marketer is working with contemporary culture instead of against it. And everyone is well-served.


Grant McCracken is a research affiliate at MIT and the author of Chief Culture Officer (Basic Books).

Best Lynx Advert Ever

The AXE Effect - Women

Barbie| gets a makeover

Photo: CATERS

Barbie, the iconic plastic doll, is famed for her glamorous clothes and pneumatic figure – now in a new burka-clad model.
The look is part of an exhibition, backed by Barbie creator Mattel, of the doll in multicultural outfits by Italian designer Eliana Lorena. Two of the Barbies are wearing the burka, the loose fitting robe with veiled holes for the eyes which is worn by some Muslim women.

The collection of more than 500 Barbies is being sold at a Sotheby's charity auction in Florence, Italy, in aid of Save The Children.

The sale is part of Barbie celebrations for her 50th anniversary this year.

Britain's biggest Barbie collector Angela Ellis, 35, who owns more than 250 dolls, said: "I think this is really important for girls, wherever they are from they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them.

"I Know Barbie was something seen as bad before as an image for girls, but in actual fact the message with Barbie for women is you can be whatever you want to be.

"I like the 70s, 80s and 90s ones that have reflected my life and I picked the really outstanding ones, the really different ones that have a message for my collection.

"I have a Barbie in a wheelchair that was only out for six weeks."

Rosie Shannon, from Save the Children, said: "We are delighted Sotheby's and the designer chose to auction the burka Barbie dolls for our charity.

"Save the Children is committed to helping children worldwide.

"One of the Barbies being auctioned wears a ring made by Italian jewellers Bulgari who are working in partnership with Save the Children.

"The money raised will also help children get back to school."

The money goes toward the Rewrite the Future campaign which helps millions of children around the world effected by conflict.

Barbie was first launched in March 1959 by American businesswoman Ruth Handler. The doll was joined by her long-term boyfriend Ken in 1961.

Opticana - the 500$ Campaign By Mccann Erickson israel

McCann made good use of a massive $500 spend! They bought 10 domain names with a slight misspelling of some of the most popular websites in Israel and setup advertising on those pages to promote an “eye test” to help with the mistype!
Brand: Opticana 

Agency:McCann Erickson Israel 

Cesviamo Stop Aids| The Condom Mob

Cesviamo (www.cesviamo.org) is an italian social network created by Cesvi, a non-profit cooperation and development organization of social utility. The basic idea of the network is very simple: you can make a bet envolving all your friends in order to raise money for social issues. In this case, they had 3 goals: to increase the awareness of the website, to explain how the social network works turning fundraising into “funraising”, and to make people – and above all students – more conscious about AIDS, an actual and vivid issue. So they launched the biggest bet ever: the “Condom Mob” – 100 young person in a condom against AIDS! The word of mouth has grown up trough the main social networks (facebook, twitter, friendfeed) and the event took place inside two italian universities: the first one in Milan, well known for communication studies, and the other one in Genoa, specialized in medical studies. The result was beyond their expectations! In the first case they managed to reach 223 person entering the condom, while in the second case the person involved was 230! The media coverage of the campaign was and still it is beeing impressive (tv, radio, magazines, social networks and hundreds of website and blogs). In the end the bet was won, and Cesvi saved the life of a child in Africa preventing him from AIDS (in detail, Cesvi supplied a complete therapy that reduces nearly 100% the risk of aids transmission from a HIV positive mother to her child).


Advertising Agency: Now Available, Milan, Italy

Copywriters| A collection of working portfolios

Modern Copywriter is a new site from Jason Siciliano that celebrates the work of "fabulous copywriters," which he describes as "gentle souls in a rough biz.

Domino's listened

Domino's will be marketing their new pizza aggressively in the next several weeks with advertising on many top-rated entertainment and sports programs, sampling opportunities throughout the country and a strong web-based presence. They will also motivate trial with a special introductory offer of two medium, two topping pizzas for $5.99 each.
www.pizzaturnaround.com

Funniest Thing Ever

For the non-Arabic readers, that literally says “Microsoft launching “Google Wave” officially next year” :D