QCM V Narragansett, TopShop v Bikes, Monocle v Agencies, Obama Deli

Quaker city Mercantile and Narragansett Beer

I am a BIG fan of QCM (even if I preferred the name Gyro). The company has published a series of books. It’s produced films. It has a brand of rum and T-Shirts, Sailor Jerry. And now the agency has taken a major stake in New England’s Narragansett Brewery. The agency is making beer now!

Obama Deli
The Obama Deli and Grocery will open for business shortly in Brooklyn, NY. From a branding perspective this is getting a lot of pedestrian attention. But maybe not the best. While shooting this photo, a gentleman passing by on the sidewalk said some in the neighborhood are already talking about a protest. The Obama brand was extended in a lot of clever ways (Shepard Fairey’s poster for instance) but there may actually be a limit.

TopShop Goes Bike Crazy

Over the weekend, Anglophiles everywhere took notice when Topshop rolled out their new bicycle club concept, parking a small fleet of blue beach cruisers (decked out with baskets and cupcake stickers) outside their flagship store and making them available for free daily rental to the public. In exchange for leaving a credit card and signing a liability waiver, would-be cyclists were granted access to a curated experience that included a bike, customized helmet, U-lock and map of Topshop-endorsed destinations throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

Monocle x’s Brands (v Agencies?)

The latest issue of Monocle has at least 10 examples of sponsored content where the magazine editorial and publishing teams have worked with government boards, a property developer and

IKEA Jacking, Obama Titanium, Billy Mays

Ikea Japan “Jacking”

IKEA Japan generated (a few months ago) some powerful buzz through a hell of a “train jacking”* ad campaign. Instead of putting their ads to posters & other traditional media, they decide to remodel some train’s interior. Advertising through a genuine brand experience. * In Japanese advertising parlance, a “jacking” occurs when an advertiser purchases a substantial portion of all of the ad space available in a particular medium or within a geographic area (the term “jacking” is derived from the English word “hijack”). Most commonly it’s seen on trains, when advertisers buy out the entirety of ad slots inside the cars, and often have tailor-made graphics or billboard-like posters placed on the exteriors too.

Barack Obama campaign takes Integrated and Titanium Grands Prix

In a Cannes first, the Obama for America presidential campaign, created by the Obama for America team, scooped the Grand Prix in both the Integrated and Titanium categories. The Titanium category, which seeks to celebrate ideas that create a movement, also saw Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Bartle Bogle Hegarty New York and Droga5 scoop Titanium Lions for their Burger King, Oasis “dig out your soul” and “great schlep” campaigns respectively.

Cannes Swept by PR, Integrated, Internet Winners
In a clear admission that the age of interruption is over, the most coveted prize at the Cannes ad festival went to an ad that wasn’t made for TV, while a PR campaign broke the record for winning the most Grand Prix in a single festival.

Billy Mays, Famed Ad Pitchman, Dies at 50

Legendary pitchman Billy Mays, who turned high-volume TV ads for products such as OxiClean and Mighty Putty into pop celebrity and fortune, was found dead early this morning in his home at 50. The cause of death remains unclear. Mr. Mays, who was also a star of the Discovery Network TV show “Pitchmen,” was found unresponsive by his wife on Sunday morning at his Tampa, Fla., home, and a fire rescue crew pronounced him dead at 7:45 a.m.

Dissin’ Starbucks … this time it’s Nescafe

I passed one of Nescafe‘s new billboards the other day in Chicago … and caddy-corner from a Starbucks as it goes. Errrm … genius! I omitted to take an iPhone snap, but here’s an image from the web.

I haven’t tried Starbucks instant, but I think anyone who has tries Nescafe (the Mexican Diplomat flavor variety aside) will find it wanting. This also reminded me of one of McDonald’s earlier anti-Starbucks efforts…

I guess at least this one says what we’re all thinking! McDonalds has itself been the subject of negative advertising (or is it culture jamming?) with this example from the Energy Kitchen in New York (thanks PSFK)

In this hardscrabble economy, comparison advertising is on the rise without doubt.  The other week, Sara Lee sued Oscar Mayer over a hotdog ad that implied a certain type of Oscar Mayer frank beat the entire Ball Park Frank product line in a national taste test. Nojoke. If you are considering embarking upon a comparison campaign, it’s worth reading this article from Advertising Age that includes 5 tips for how to avoid getting sued or alienating consumers when engaging in comparative advertising. It’s called “The Gloves Are Off: More Marketers Opt for Attack Ads,” by Emily Bryson York.  You can read it by clicking here.

Murakami v Vuitton, Gays v Media, Publicis v Microsoft, Tesco v Plastic Bags, GroupM v Recovery

Murakami-Themed Vuitton Shop Opens in Tokyo

Tokyo’s Louis Vuitton Flagship store in Omotesando has undergone a complete makeover in the style of famed pop designer Takashi Murakami in the latest from their 6-year relationship. The influence has seeped into every aspect of Vuitton, from the product design, to shop interior, to the mobile / web digital presence. Scattered throughout the shop are large-scale and miniature versions of Murakami’s plush figures and artwork. They range from large centerpieces to tiny figures playing among the items for sale in the store.

Gay Consumers’ Media Habits Mirror Mainstream

The gay and lesbian community may be hard to measure in size, counting for some 4% to 10% of the U.S. population, based on census data that counts only same-sex couples who live together. But measuring their media consumption just got easier for Group M’s Mindshare, which released its first study on the gay and lesbian market, “Reaching Out,” to clients this week.

Publicis and Microsoft form strategic alliance

Publicis Groupe and Microsoft have formed a strategic alliance in order to provide digital advertisers with better value for money and greater impact across three areas — content, performance and audience. The advertising group and technology giant have formed three dedicated teams. The content team will be responsible for the creation, production and distribution of digital programming capabilities, tools and services.

Supermarkets shamed by plastic bag overuse in home deliveries

Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been slammed by Which? over the amount of shopping bags the stores use to deliver online groceries. Consumer champion Which? ordered 29 set items from Asda, Tesco, Ocado, Waitrosedeliver and Sainsbury’s. It found both Tesco and Sainsbury’s used 14 bags to deliver the products.

GroupM forecasts modest global ad recovery next year
WPP’s GroupM has forecast a modest global advertising recovery, beginning in 2010 and led by the emerging BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. In its This Year Next Year report, published today, the umbrella group for agency networks MediaCom, Mindshare, Mediaedge:cia and Maxus makes its first attempt to forecast world advertising growth in 2010, based on data from 70 countries.

Crispin goes Beta.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky “Beta Site”

I just came across Crispin’s aggregator site via a visit logged on my own modest blog. The perplexingly-bewigged Bogusky refers to the new site as a “giant fishing net”.  Interestingly one of the blogs aggregated was entitled “Why I Fucking Hate Crispin So Much”. (He didn’t really, as it turned out)

Mos Def, King of Shaves, Blackberry Switchers

Mos Def launches New Album on a T-shirt
Mos Def is releasing his latest album, The Ecstatic, as a T-shirt. How does that work? The T-shirt has The Ecstatic Killer of Sheep-interpolating cover art printed on the front, song titles on the back, and a download code for the album on the hang tag.

King of Shaves takes on banks with £5m ‘shaving bond’

Will King is attempting to use his brand’s appeal to convince 5,000 consumers to each lend the company £1,000 to boost its marketing budget. The shaving brand is pushing the offer through in-house created ads, which feature founder Will King, in the press and on the home page of its website. The press ads will break in national Sunday newspapers and there will be online activity, but no TV or radio.

Blackberry Battles iPhone Loyalty ‘Stampede’
Four out of 10 Blackberry and other smartphone users say they would switch to Apple’s iPhone as their next smartphone purchase, while only 14% of non-Blackberry smartphone users would switch to a Blackberry, according to a study from Crowd Science.

New Rules for Brands, Experiential Marketing

The New Rules of Brand Competition
Functional: go from “product feature” to “solution-based” thinking
Social: make your brand a celebrity that is fanned, friended, and followed. Or, create a thematic environment around a value shared by your brand and its customers (e.g. Dove and “the real meaning of beauty”)
Self-expressive: the brand must stand for something so clearly understood, it is cultural currency
Content: become the logical and top of mind source for content centered on what your brand is about.

Marketers finally “get” experiential stunts
Trevelers at Liverpool Street Station in London were surprised one morning last January when several hundred commuters, rather than scurrying onto their trains, started dancing. A day and a half later, the routine, captured by hidden cameras, showed up during a break in the reality television show “Celebrity Big Brother.” The seemingly spontaneous performance turned out to have been an advertising stunt for T-Mobile, a wireless telephone network that used it for a campaign built around the slogan “Life’s for Sharing.”

Will the end to the Recession be Local?

Will the end to the Recession be Local?
The Sacramento Bee has a Google Map that helps you see which parts of America should come out of recession first – and which last. The map was made with projections from IHS Global Insight that forecasted when each metro area will return to employment levels seen before the recession. You can drill down to quite a detailed level.

Unnatural Habitats, CMOs, In Store, Saatchi’s v Advertising, Hackers v Iran

“Unnatural Habitats: Rethinking the Modern Zoo”
Should institutions dedicated to natural sciences depict a world untouched by civilization as a matter of history? The Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna has chosen the opposite approach: this spring its animals share their pens with an installation created by artists Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf that reflects the degradation of animal habitats.

Why CMO Role Is Not as Important as You Think

As if average 28-month tenures weren’t enough of a disincentive for marketers to seek the chief marketing officer hot-seat, a recent assessment of SEC filings of Fortune 1,000 companies suggests that the post remains low on the priority list at many organizations, and CMOs’ authority remains limited.

Shoppers Respond Differently to Store Media

While the recession has two-thirds of consumers making shopping lists before they go to the store, Miller Zell found shoppers are making brand decisions 60 percent of the time after entering the store. More shoppers (70 percent) say they are engaged by end-of-aisle signage than by merchandising displays (62 percent), department signage (58 percent), shelf strips (55 percent) or shelf blades (50 percent).

Future not in advertising: Saatchis China boss

“In the next three to five years the core of our offering will be advertising, but advertising in forms that are rebalanced toward digital, experiential and shopper marketing,” he concluded. “I don’t want clients to come to me six months before they launch something; I want them to come to me three years before they need something.

Internet Vigilantes Lend a Hand to Iranian Protestors

Anonymous, an amorphous band of hackers best known for rallying against the Church of Scientology, has jumped into Iranian election dispute. Working with The Pirate Bay–a massively trafficked site which helps point would-be music downloaders to what they’re looking for–Anonymous Iran has created a new site, offering how-tos on surfing online while remaining untrackable, skirting Iranian firewalls, finding other Twitter-based activists and (of course, given that this is Anonymous) attacking government Web sites.

Magic Billboards, Fallon gets Unilever, Liveable Cities, VW Facebook

Soon, billboards that know male from female

New software has been created by Singapore‘s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research that would allow billboards to identify a person’s gender based on his or her face. The technology from A*Star is only able to differentiate between the sexes if a person is looking at the camera.

Fallon lands place on Unilever roster

Fallon has secured a position on the Unilever roster after being appointed to handle the company’s corporate digital brand strategy. The agency secured the business after a three-way shoot-out against Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Razorfish. Fallon will produce an overarching strategy to reinvigorate the way Unilever behaves in the digital space. Its first task will be to reassess Unilever’s main online presence, unilever.com.

Top 25 Most Liveable Cities 2009

Monocle Magazine have announced their annual index of most liveable cities. Zurich comes in top place mainly for its vast investment in transport; Copenhagen is second for its mix of metropolitan life, great healthcare, low crime rates and a relaxed vibe; at 3, Monocle describes Tokyo as the world’s most livable megapolis and praises the city’s commitment to plant 1 million trees; 4th is Munich which blends history and innovation with ease and is generally a good place to do business; and Helsinki comes 5th partly because it has no Starbucks.

Meet The Volkswagens on Facebook

Actually quite a good Facebook page from VW. I am apparently “Sporty”…Spezify
Are you ‘spezifying?’ A simple search yields a bounty of randomly placed images, video, blog posts and tweets.