Doritos Loves Love 2009

Augmented Reality and social networking have been fused together in a lovefest for Doritos Brazil. Packs of Doritos Sweet Chilli - the latest flavour - bear a QR code directing users online to ‘release’ aDoritos Lover, a sweet and unique little cartoon like monster. The campaign, created by Cubocc, Sao Paulo has seen some fantastic results so far with 23,000 lovers already being freed in a week.http://www.doritos.com.br/sweetchili/

Upon being released, the Lovers are added to their owner’s Orkutprofile - the largest social network in Brasil - as a special app. Owners can take pictures of their Lover, create birth certificates or even put the unwanted Lovers up for adoption!

The most exiting part though is that the Lovers have a mind of their own... with built in AI, Lovers will interact with others online and can randomly ‘introduce’ their owners to other Doritos Lovers owners... amazingly, there are over 18 trillion possible Doritos Lovers combinations!

This follows news this week that the hugely successful and equally love driven ‘Bring slow dancing back’ Doritos campaign created by BBDO Argentina has been awarded a Platinum Sol, the highest acclaim of the Iberoamerican Festival of Advertising Communication. BBDO’s win marks the first time in the history of the festival that an Argentinean agency has been awarded the acclaim. Look out for the campaign at this year’s Cannes festival too.

Wataniya Telecom:::Open your mind

Published in Epica Book Twenty One, Europe’s Best Advertising. ISBN 13: 978 2-88479-106-9.

Client: Wataniya Telecom.

Agency: Impact & Echo BBDO

Country: Kuwait – 2009

New Media:::Movistar

GM ReBirth

GM is filing for bankruptcy and guess what? They owe a ton of money to the ad industry and are probably responsible for tons of Detroit ad folk losing their jobs. Way to go, gas-guzzlers. Maybe the Hummer brand should have seemed like a bad idea sooner?

Here's B|Net's breakdown;

• Starcom MediaVest Group: $121 million
• Publicis Groupe: $25 million.
• Interpublic: $16 million
• McCann Erickson: $4.6 million

Total: $167 million

Source: http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10002410/publicis-interpublic-owed-167-million-in-gm-bankruptcy/

Why GM Failed

Why do you think GM collapsed? A company which was started in 1909 went on to stay well ahead in the automobile industry for 100 years collapsed. I understand it is not all of sudden. What happened to their financial management?

GM is a very interesting case. Yes, it is certainly one of the great titans of U.S. industry and it's not any fun to see them go into bankruptcy.

There have been several opinions put forward at to why this all happened:

• GM makes cars people don't want


• GM is too slow to innovate because of its size


• GM is too bureaucratic and unable to adjust to changing markets


• GM's dealer network is too large


• GM sold off its formerly profitable financing business GMAC

GM stopped making a profit. The reason any company exists is to make a profit. When companies stop making a profit they fail. We measure profit using the income statement.

GM stopped making profit in 2005. Since that time GM lost more than $90 billion through the 1st quarter of 2009.

"why did those losses happen?" the key to GM's losses has to do with sales and fixed costs..

The problem for GM was that when the sales slowed down, they had trouble cutting costs because most of their costs were fixed. In other words, a lot of their costs did not go down as their sales went down. In most manufacturing companies, when sales go down, some of the bigger costs go down as well ,GM has tremendous fixed costs related to their union contract. Closing a plant, for example, did not necessarily mean the workers lost their jobs. Company pensions and legacy health care costs were fixed as well. So when sales went down, many costs stayed fairly constant. And that led to losses.

As the losses mounted and the economy struggled, these losses became so significant that GM could not survive as a viable business. In spite of billions of dollars of government support, the only solution for GM is to declare bankruptcy and try to lower those fixed costs through a court process.

Job 1 at GM

With the declaration of Chapter 11, GM is poised to enter a new era. The core of the transformation strategy is a separation of "New GM" from "Old GM." Essentially the company will be split in two with the assets of the old being sold or otherwise liquidated. So far, we know that several smaller units such as Hummer and Saturn will be disposed of, as well as one long-time GM brand — Pontiac. Up to 20 factories also will be sold or closed. More than a 1000 dealerships are likely to shut their doors.

In the auto industry the term "Job 1" is used to denote the first car of a new model that comes off the assembly line. It's a time when all the work to create the right product and the right process either comes together or doesn't.

So it seems fitting to use the idea of Job 1 as a metaphor for what the new leadership team at GM needs to get right during the transition period. What is Job 1 at GM? They need the right brand and platform architecture to drive the company forward. Because what has hobbled GM for a decade or more was an outdated architecture that was the legacy of the founding and growth of the company.

When GM was founded in 1908, it was a startup seeking to compete with a behemoth, the Ford Motor Company. Ford had changed the game in automobile manufacturing by introducing mass production techniques, notably the assembly line, supported by a fully integrated supply chain (Ford owned forests and coal mines). But Ford lacked the desire to customize its products to meet the needs of its customers, offering the Model T in, as Henry Ford famously put it, "any color as long as it's black."

Following a near collapse during the 1921 recession, GM was reorganized under CEO Alfred Sloan in 1923. Rather than meet Ford head on, Alfred Sloan and his team created a brand architecture, a five-model product line that ranged from the inexpensive Chevrolet to the premium Cadillac. Customers that bought a Chevy as their first car traded up as they became more affluent. To support this strategy, GM focused on styling and increased apparent customization through trim options that kept the core platform the same, but made the varieties built on it seem very different. (They also out-sourced much more component production to suppliers than did Ford and built dealer networks).

By the late 1920's, GM had become the dominant automaker in the US, forcing Ford to completely change the way it did business. GM became so successful that it virtually had to start competing with itself, ultimately leading to a proliferation of brands and a separation of the production networks and dealer networks for the company's various offerings.

And therein lies the heart of the problem that has laid GM low today — lack of a rational brand and platform architecture that would allow the company to compete with the likes of Toyota and Honda. The success of Toyota is founded on many factors, notably, its excellence in product design and manufacturing. But the heart of its success really rests on its simple brand architecture. You have Toyota cars for the masses, Scion for the young-and-hip, and Lexus for luxury buyers. And that's it. Toyota vehicles are built on a relatively small number of "platforms" — the chassis, suspension and drive train on which the shell is placed — that permit the company to offer a wide array of seemingly "different" vehicles. And the company pays a lot of attention to sharing parts between platforms to keep production volumes up and costs down.

The upshot? Brand and platform architecture are Job 1 for the new leadership team. Unless the New GM emerges with a simple, rational brand architecture, supported by the right approach to platform design and parts sharing, the company simply will not be able to compete with world class competitors, and we will continue to witness the decline and fall of a Giant

Mysterious bug invasion

Spanish travel and leisure site Atrapalo.com (meaning “catch it”) offers a range of products including restaurant discounts, theatre tickets, flights, hotels, tours and car rentals. It had a strong track record of effective marketing campaigns, and its challenge for 2008 was to generate awareness and buzz, engage with tech-savvy consumers and drive traffic to Atrapalo.com.
Atrapalo’s solution was “The Invasion”. The internet was invaded by strange, red bulbous creatures which looked similar to leeches. The innovative new ad format appeared to be “stuck” on websites outside of conventional banner space and did not disappear when users navigated to another page. People didn’t know what they were, who was behind them or even if they were dangerous their computer. The worms were spread throughout the most popular sites and blogs, including realistic photographic “evidence” portraying the creatures. As soon as a person was brave enough to “touch” one of the creatures with their cursor, a jar appeared, giving the user the opportunity to catch and save it. Meanwhile warning banners were spread throughout the web and this was supported by outdoor and radio activity which looked like public health announcements. The message was sent out that the creatures could come out of your computer and invade your house. Jars with models of the creatures were placed on the shelves of electrical goods chain, FNAC. The next phase saw the introduction of the exterminators (Los Atrapadores), with the leak of a video on YouTube and the launch of a site www.losatrapadores.com. Finally it was revealed that Atrapalo was behind the invasion and that users could catch the creatures to win prizes including holidays to Australia and South Africa.
As a result, brand awareness increased by 61% and there were 1million captured worms, with some users catching more than 400. Atrapalo received 60,000 new registered users.

BRAND:Atrapalo

BRAND OWNER:Atrapalo.com

CATEGORY:Travel/Airlines

REGION:Spain

DATE:May 2008 - Jun 2008

MEDIA AGENCY:Havas

MEDIA CHANNEL

BEST CAMPAIGNS TARGETING KIDS

Key take away facts

- Brand loyalty begins as early as age 2. The average 3-year-old recognizes 100 different brand logos.

- Toddlers cannot distinguish a commercial from a television show.

- It isn’t until age 8 that kids begin to realise advertising can be misleading.

- In 2000, $2 billion was spent on advertising to children in America. Today, that figure has increased to $15 billion.

- In a study of more than 1,000 U.S. families, researchers found that 40 percent of 3-month-olds and 90 percent of kids aged 2 years old and younger regularly watch television, DVDs or videos.

- In 2008 Coca-Cola and PepsiCo announced plans to stop -targeting under-12s in response to rising worries over child obesity.

Children have long been a desirable target for advertisers – reaching them at an early age helps build brand loyalty that will last for life. From the age of around three, children can identify brand logos, and basic forms of brand loyalty can start as early as two.

Kids' spending ability doesn’t stop at pocket money – advertisers can benefit from the influence of pester power, where children can actively have an effect on their parents' purchase decisions. Traditionally, campaigns that aim to harness pester power have been limited to those for purchases including breakfast cereal, drinks and toys, but smart marketers can expand their horizons to bigger purchases.

With the rise of tweens with more influence and more disposable income, kids are getting older younger. No longer content with dolls and teddy bears, children under 12 are choosing video games, MP3 players and mobile phones. This type of sophistication means that marketers must use more sophisticated techniques to communicate with them.

Captivating kids and targeting tweens

Don’t underestimate the sophistication of children’s taste

Parc Asterix (FREE)

Parc Asterix entices new visitors through a branded content strategy that attracts children to engage with the characters from the park.

Parc Asterix, the number-two theme park in France, aimed to engage parents and children with a TV campaign that could compete with market leader Disneyland Paris, but without Disney’s marketing budget.

Parc Asterix felt that the perfect children’s programme did not exist on French television so it decided to create one. The highest-rated show among kids was Intervilles, an adult programme that matches towns against each other in a series of games and sporting events.

In partnership with TV channel Gulli, Parc Asterix created Intervilles Junior, a new, prime-time programme that followed the format of Intervilles, this time with children and parents competing at Parc Asterix. The park got the kind of exposure no ad spot could provide and the fit with Parc Asterix’s brand positioning – The Gallic Mood – could be tailored to perfection.

The campaign received massive press coverage and the programme achieved 425,176 viewers. Some 374,208 of them were children aged 4-14. Channel Gulli is now the No 1 television channel for kids. The show has since been aired on other TV channels in France and beyond.

BRAND

Parc Asterix

BRAND OWNER

Parc Asterix Groupe Compagnie des Alpes

CATEGORY

Entertainment

REGION

France

DATE

Apr 2007 - Jun 2007

MEDIA CHANNEL

Think laterally to evade restrictions

Cheetos

Cheetos makes a cartoon cheetah the focus of a campaign and overcomes a big barrier to advertising on children's television channels.

Create long term engagement with appealing cartoon characters

Kajeet

Kajeet kids' cell-phone service targeted tweens through interactive animated webisodes starring cartoon characters who used kajeet phones.

Arrange family-friendly events

Happy Feet

Movie Happy Feet reignited the hype for the DVD following a successful cinema launch with family tap-dancing events near major retailers.

Pester power = purchase power

Make traditionally boring purchases child friendly

Pedrigree (Free)

A smart insight about pet ownership get kids to engage with a dog food brand.

Use children carefully to influence large family purchases

Renault

Renault increases brand consideration for its new Scénic model by engaging children in a design competition.

Tackle any parental worries about your brand

McDonald's

McDonald's raises awareness about some of the healthier options for kids on the menu and challenges parents' perceptions about the brand.

Use children’s marketing techniques to explain very adult issues

Windows Home Server

Microsoft creates a children's book to promote the concept of the home server.

Oman Airbus

Client: Iberia Airlines.

The above ad is featured in the following book.

Client: Airbus.

Published in the Economist “The world in 2009″. Inside front cover – DPS.

Client: Alargan Towell Investment Co.

Country: Oman

Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted | Goo On The Loose

Have a look: www.cremeeggtwisted.com

CMW unveils its new ‘Goo on the Loose’ campaign for the Creme Egg Twisted bar – the chaotic brother to the Cadbury Creme Egg.

The website, also created by CMW, www.cremeeggtwisted.com is the online home of the CIA. Visitors to the site can sign up as agents and are then tasked to track down Twisted bars as they create mischief country-wide. CMW uses a Google Maps mash-up and clues via a Twitter feed to the website to help CIA agents locate up to 16 targets, which have been ear-marked for a ‘gooing’. Up for grabs is a luxury holiday in Morocco, and for the top ten agents, a cash prize of £20,000.

Advertising Agency: CMW, London, UK
Art Director: Will Miles
Copywriter: George Leaney
Designer: Elliot Wright
Account Director: Matt Smith
Account Manager: Anna Pinckernelle
Planner: Steve Taylor
Technical Director: Matt Klippel
Game Production: Skive
Media Planning/Buying: PHD
Released: May 2009

Have a look: www.cremeeggtwisted.com

CMW unveils its new ‘Goo on the Loose’ campaign for the Creme Egg Twisted bar – the chaotic brother to the Cadbury Creme Egg.

Activity begins with a direct mail ‘security strongbox’ sent to hardcore ‘Goo’ fans – who talk about the brand on social networking sites. The strongbox carries Twisted bars, however the recipient will spot an empty wrapper amongst the bars and a hole in the bottom where one has escaped. The recipient is then challenged to become an agent of the CIA (Cadbury’s Intelligence Agency) and track down the escaped bars. Online advertising of the Twisted bar creating mayhem will also direct potential agents to the site.

Augmented Reality:::EVOLUTION OF MEDIA

Augmented reality is based around holding a 2D image up to a webcam and then seeing a 3D image on screen. This augmented reality technology is now being adopted by advertisers and there have been some interesting uses of augmented reality recently.

Join Starfleet Academy - Star Trek Augmented Reality

Nokia and Verizon have partnered around the new Star Trek film and have created a series of interesting experiences for online users at www.joinstarfleetacademy.com. One of the most engaging is the chance to use augmented reality to get a 'message from Starfleet' - users print off a pdf, hold it up to their webcam and get an exclusive message that they can then share through social sites.

GE Smart Grid Augmented Reality

GE have been using augmented reality to allow users to see 'a digital hologram of Smart Grid technology come to life in your hands.' Under the slogan ecomagination, the augmented reality piece really brings the concept to life.

Create an augmented reality BMW Z4

BMW are offering internet users the chance to recreate the experience of the Z4 paint commercial for themselves. 'If you have a webcam you'll be able to get behind the wheel of your own BMW Z4 and use it to express yourself.'

Create an augmented reality Mini Cabrio

In Germany Mini used augmented reality to launch the Mini Cabrio (NB: have to use Internet Explorer to open.) Prominent full page ads in German motoring magazines acted as a base for the Mini Cabrio augmented reality experience. If readers held the ad up to a web cam, they then got to play with a 3D Mini on screen.

Whilst augmented reality has a novelty factor around it at the moment, it does demonstrate how offline and online media can work together to create an experience. Changing a static 2D image into a virtual 3D image is a really interesting way of re-interpreting print and as functionality evolves it could be a powerful opportunity (particularly for publishers) to really integrate print and digital.

Got a webcam? Here’s four fun websites, each offering a special picture for you to download and print off. When you hold the picture up to your webcam you’ll discover a hidden 3D animation, one that forms in the palms of your hands and that you can interact with and explore. It’s all part of a developing technology called Augmented Reality that is quickly becoming a hot online trend and one that big name companies like General Electric and Volvo are using to grab attention to their marketing messages.

What Is Augmented Reality?

It is a developing technology, one that chases a futuristic dream where all cameras have the power to recognize the world around us and are capable of giving us information about what we see through them. Today’s cameras can tell us both the time and date that a photo was taken, with advanced features detect when a face is in front of the lens or even if someone is smiling. With GPS, they can even pinpoint where a picture was taken on Google Maps, but imagine if a camera could do more. Imagine a camera that is smart enough to recognize the C.N. Tower when you photograph it. That can call up detailed information about the C.N. Tower instantly, not just text or statistics, when the C.N. Tower was built or how tall it is, but full 3D maps and models, animations that show how the tower was built or deliver detailed layouts of its many floors. Imagine your view of the world enhanced by computers.

Augmented Reality Today

We’re not quite there yet, but today’s industry is taking baby steps towards this futuristic vision. Today we have software that can train a simple webcam to recognize basic, black-and-white pictures. Large, bold images, not dissimilar from those used in children’s flash cards, these glyphs or codes can trigger a computer to generate very detailed, three-dimensional animations that appear to exist in our own world and, thanks to the tracking capabilities of today’s webcams, can move, shift, and turn, as if they are real-world objects.

Although basic in form, many companies see the marketing potential of these baby steps. A paper brochure of a magazine ad with one of these glyphs on it could be held up to a webcam to deliver a 3D model of a product, allowing consumers to see if from all angles, or simply exist as a fun trick to convince consumers to visit their website in the first place.

GE EcoImagination

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

To draw attention to their environmental commitments GE’s SmartGrid microsite includes a special glyph, silhouette of a solar panel for you to download and print off. When you hold the printed image up in front of your camera, you can choose to activate a virtual diorama of your choice of either a wind turbine or a solar energy installation. These are very detailed models that demonstrate the basic operations of these two utilities. Turn the paper in your hands around to see the models from all side and in the case of the solar panels, watch as they tilt and turn to always catch the moving sun. With the wind turbine, blow on your webcam’s microphone to add a wind effect and set the propellers spinning.

Living Sasquatch

http://www.livingsasquatch.com/

An ad for Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, this fun site offers a footprint for you to download and print off. Naturally, when you hold the footprint up in front of your webcam, Big Foot himself comes for a visit. Once you have him on-camera, you can use your mouse to hover your cursor over a selection of animation tiles to make him perform different emotions, actions, and attacks, all with appropriate grunts, growls, and roars. If you drag the tiles onto the timeline interface, you can create your own Big Foot movie, complete with your own text bubbles, to share with your friends.

Papervision’s Three-Eyed Monster

http://www.boffswana.com/news/?p=392

Before creating the sasquatch for Jack Link’s, Boffswana created this proof-of-concept character, a three-eyed monster who appears when you hold up a simple image in front of your webcam. Make sure to turn him around from all angles and see the different things he can do.

Volvo Ocean Race

http://www.vcc.com.my/oceanrace/

For the 2008-2009 season of the Volvo Ocean Race, fans were given the chance to play with their own virtual yacht using Augmented Reality. Once you register for a free account at the race's official website, you'll be sent a promotional e-mail with both a password and a glyph with the word "Ahoy" on it to print off and hold up to your webcam to see a detailed model of one of the yacht's appear within the palm of your hand. Hold the glyph closer to your webcam for a more detailed view of the ship's surface.

Topps 3D Live Baseball Cards

http://www.toppstown.com/UserSite/TotalImmersion/Info.aspx

Trading card manufacturer Topps has adopted the technology for this year's baseball season. In every pack of Topps Series 1 2009 Baseball or Topps Attax cards you'll find one 3D Live card that you can take to their website and hold in front of your webcam. With each 3D Live card, your webcam will react by creating an animated model, complete with stadium sounds, of the player featured on the card. Topps says that should the 3D Live cards and their augmented reality feature prove to be a hit amongst fans, they will invest the money to have software created that will allow webcams to recognize all of their cards, including all past Topps cards already in existence so that fans can go back into their collections and experience them again with new animations.

Marco Tempest's Augmented Reality Card Trick

Here's a trick you can't do at home. Magician Marco Tempest uses a set of display glasses with a mounted webcam in order to access Augmented Reality techniques to perform a card trick. This is an excellent example of some of the principles of Augmented Reality, where our world is enhanced by looking at it through a camera connected to a computer designed to understand what it sees. Enjoy.

Magic Symbol is a new technology that brings to life real world items by turning them into 3D digital images. Consumers take a pre-printed card to a scanning point and see it turn into a pre-selected 'Magic Symbol' image on screen. This extends the engagement of printed material and gives opportunities to develop unique marketing messages.

The Magic Symbol technology has been developed by Inition (www.inition.co.uk) and has been used for a variety of clients and events. The following image gives more insight into how Magic Symbol technology works:

The Magic Symbol website has a video showcasing some of the promotions that they have run at www.magicsymbol.com - seeing Magic Symbol working in real life is the only way to explain it properly!

Magic Symbol technology gives an interesting opportunity to integrate offline / digital whilst spreading word of mouth - I think this sort of joined up approach (with one medium stimulating response in another) can only become more important as time and technology move on.

===================================================

How Will "Augmented Reality" Affect Your Business؟

augmented reality is going to be a big deal for businesses. What is it? It is the idea that locations, devices, even the human body will be "augmented" by linking and overlaying additional information on top of "regular" reality.

For example, this month's Esquire will have visual codes embedded in the text — even on the cover — which you can hold up to your computer's camera. The computer will read the codes, and take you to a video or other information linked to that magazine "location." Is this just a gimmick? After all, the physical magazine is a great way to create a link to more comprehensive content. The magazine cannot afford to put too much information between its covers, but it can put as many pointers as it wants to more content. This basic notion is very, very powerful. (See the great post on this topic by Gary Hayes

Anand and I think augmented reality will change at least the following five things:

1. The nature of advertising. We know that if you're an advertiser, you want to allow people to transact while their attention has been caught by your product or service. The beauty of augmented reality is that it allows any advertiser to bring the possibility to purchase much closer to the advertising stimulus. So, if I'm reading an interesting article in a magazine and there is an add with a visual code on it, I can then scan it with my BlackBerry or my iPhone and order it immediately.

2. The nature of location. The GPS revolution in cars has already created a low fidelity version of augmented reality by enabling maps in any car that wants them. You are already starting to see applications available on advanced phones that allow an individual to hold their phone up to a location so that the information about the location is overlayed on the screen:

Right now these are focused on tourism, but it does not take a lot of imagination to see that any sales or service force would love to be able to walk up to a building and understand the nature of the potential customers inside, or installed products to be serviced.

3. The nature of healthcare. One of the great problems with healthcare is the lack of information at the point of service. It is only a matter of time before you will have the option to link your medical information to you. There is cheap, available bio recognition technology which will allow someone to swipe their finger, or speak into their phone to identify themselves, and then to allow the doctor to have information available to them — just like Esquire allowed for the ads to be tagged to a page.

4. The nature of relationships. The next natural extension of Salesforce.com would be to have a person be able to either scan in a face (face recognition software is standard issue now with many photo products, including Apple's iPhoto) and then provide the salesperson with the best available background search on the individual whose information may be out on Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social networks. Also, if you are like my friend and Diamond Fellow Gordon Bell, who has taken his whole life digital (documented in his book Total Recall, which just came out), you can link any face to all you know about that person.

5. The nature of knowledge. Much of the knowledge we need to do our jobs is not available because we have a hard time getting access to it at the right time. BMW did a concept piece on augmented reality where a mechanic is replacing a fan while wearing special glasses which project the instructions onto the car as he looks at the engine compartment. Our understanding is that this is not operational, but something like it will come.

Why are we so bullish? The military has been augmenting the battlefield for some time, and now with advanced GPS devices, better telecommunications and hand-held devices that have enough display and computing power to make things interesting, we think we are at the beginning of a boom market in augmented reality. So the question becomes, is your firm thinking about how advertising, selling, products and service will change when you can overlay the right information, at the right time and in the right form — everywhere?

What do you think? Are we at the beginning of a revolution — or is augmented reality an idea that will always be in the near future, but never here?