Some won't like this commercial because, once again, Levi's, with help from Cutwater, is attempting to position its brand as something much more than it is. Oh wait. No. It's not. It's actually acknowledging the fact it's just a simple jeans brand. The fancy things in life aren't as important as your favorite pair of jeans and all that comes with them.
This commercial, shot backwards, follows a model as she leaves a photoshoot and returns to her normal life, complete with her perfect, properly facial-haired, exotic-ish-looking boyfriend. It will debut during the season premiers of Gossip Girl September 1.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Beluga Bar: Vodka and Caviar Evenings
(Click on image for bigger view)
Brand: Beluga Bar
Ad Agency: IBD Hakuhudo Percept
Art Director: Swapnil Shete
Copywriter: Sunil Shibad
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Nissin Cup-O-Noodle: Prehistoric
A series of Kim Blanchette's classic Nissin Cup-O-Noodle stop motion tv commercials from 1992.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
What a blog can do for your small business
he blogging movement is picking up speed as businesses begin to realize the benefits of blogging. Discover what a business blog can do for you. Blog software is easy to use. Simply write your thoughts, link to resources, and publish to your blog, all at the push of a few buttons. Blog software companies such as: Movable Type, Blogger.com and Typepad all offer easy blogging tools to get started. Blogging is a low-cost alternative to having a web presence. For small business owners without the time to learn web html or the money to hire a designer/developer, blogging offers an inexpensive method to get your company's name out on the Internet. Updating the weblog is a much quicker process than contacting a web designer with changes or doing the coding and uploading yourself. Business blogs provide your small business with a chance to share your expertise and knowledge with a larger audience. A powerful benefit for consultants and knowledge workers.
What is a Blog?
According to Blogger, "A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically—like a what's new page or a journal." The term is actually weblogs coined by Jorn Barger in 1997.
The boom of weblogs happened in 1999 when several companies & developers made easy blogging software and tools. Since 1999, the number of blogs on the Internet has exploded from a few thousand to over 100 million.
Blogs can fall into two general categories.
Personal Blogs: a mixture of a personal diary, opinion posts and research links.
Business Blogs: a corporate tool for communicating with customers or employees to share knowledge and expertise.
Business blogs are sweeping the business community. Blogs are an excellent method to share a company's expertise, build additional web traffic, and connect with potential customers..
What does Blogging Provide to Small Business?
Examples of Business Blogs
Gizmodo is a weblog about everything about gadgets and gizmos for those who want to remain on the cutting edge of consumer electronics. As a web magazine, Gizmodo is quickly building a specialized audience in consumer electronics with an advertising business model.
Research Buzz is an excellent resource tool for Internet research. An information provider, Research Buzz provides advertising and a special paid edition of their newsletter.
Joel on Software is a blog that displays Joel Spolsky's knowledge and views on software development. The blog acts as a method for Joel to highlight his expertise and promote his small business, Fog Creek Software.
Jupiter Research, a top business market research company has a blog for each company analyst. The weblog provides analysts with the means to connect with their audience on a regular basis.
Loosetooth.com Shop Blog, by Brandy Agerbeck, is an online art shop blog that provide customers with a way to get to know the store owner. This blog is an e-commerce site with buy and shop options.
MacroMedia (now Adobe) the software company provides a customer service blog for users and staff to share solutions in an organized fashion.
Blogs do have a downside. Blogging does not provide the functionality of web pages, has limits for e-commerce solutions and can be time-consuming with regular posts. But with minimal costs, it maybe advantageous to start blogging. Is your small business blog ready?
5 basic rules of search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is crucial for anyone who wants people to visit his or her Web site. You can place as many ads as you like, but most people are still going to find your site because of its listings in search engines or directories.
Search engine optimization is the process of making web pages attractive to search engines. In my work, I visit hundreds of web sites every month. Sadly, many of them are throwing traffic away; they look fine to the viewer, but ignore the basics of effective search engine optimization.
It's a fact that most people who use search engines only look at the first one or two page of search listings. The goal of effective search engine optimization is to get your pages listed on those critical first pages for particular key terms.
How do you do this?
1) Remember that each page of your site is a separate entity. You need to apply the basics of effective search engine optimization to each individual page. Therefore;
2) Choose appropriate key words or phrases for each page. Phrasing matters. Many more people search for the term "effective search engine optimization" than for "effectively optimizing for search engines". To find out which key words or phrases are more popular than others, you can use a tool such as Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool; enter your chosen phrases and you'll see how many people searched for that term recently.
3) Give each page an appropriate title that includes the key word or phrase at least once. I so often see sites that use the name of their business as the title of all their pages. Is every page of their site about their business? Probably. But chances are really low that people will be searching for their business' name!
4) Put the key words or phrase that you've chosen in the page's title tag, meta keywords, and meta description. Make sure that the meta description is as appealing as possible, because some search engines actually use this description in the search engine results pages that people will be reading.
5) Be sure your chosen key words or phrase is repeated judiciously throughout the content of the page. You don't want to overdo it, or your page may be rejected as spam, but you need to repeat it enough times that the search engine's software will consider the phrase relevant.
As anyone in the business will tell you, these are the barebones basics of effective search engine optimization. But applying just these five basic rules of search engine optimization will give your web pages a much better chance of showing up on those critical first few pages of returned results.
On copywriting
"I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising
than it is to write a good ad."
- Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's,
"If you are writing about baloney, don't try to make it Cornish hen, because
that is the worst kind of baloney there is. Just make it darned good baloney."
- Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's,
"I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real
genius to keep his hands off a good one."
- Leo Burnett, quoted in 100 LEO's,
"I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most
profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes . . . ."
- Philip Dusenberry, quoted in Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World
of Advertising, 1988,
"I think central to good writing of advertising, or anything else, is a person
who has developed an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy toward them. I think that that develops more sharply when the writer has not had an easy adjustment to living. So that they have themselves felt the need for understanding, the need for sympathy, and can therefore see that need in other people."
- George Gribbin, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:
Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990),
Business Books, p. 51.
"A writer should be joyous, an optimist . . . Anything that implies rejection
of life is wrong for a writer."
- George Gribbin, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:
Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990),
Business Books, p. 48.
"I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all,
the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I
mean the advertisement . . . . It is far easier to write ten passably
effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than
one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical
buying public."
- Aldous Huxley (1923), British author, quoted in Robert Andrews, The
Press, p. 18.
"The trouble with us in
prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."
- Louis Kronenberger (1954), quoted in Rhodas Thomas Tripp, The
International Thesaurus of Quotations, 1970,
Company, p. 18.
"Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of
iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets
dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline -
exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?"
- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1971,
Ballantine Books, p. 78.
"I don't know the rules of grammar. . . . If you're trying to persuade people
to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their
language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think.
We try to write in the vernacular."
- David Ogilvy, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:
Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990),
Business Books, p. 93.
"Many people - and I think I am one of them - are more productive when they've
had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I'm far better
able to write."
- David Ogilvy, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:
Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990),
Business Books, p. 70.
"You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And
that's what too many of the copywriters in the
understand."
- Rosser Reeves, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:
Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990),
Business Books, p. 125.
"No, I don't think a 68-year-old copywriter . . . can write with the kids.
That he's as creative. That he's as fresh. But he may be a better surgeon. His
ad may not be quite as fresh and glowing as the
like to see it be, and yet he might write an ad that will produce five times
the sales. And that's the name of the game, isn't it?"
- Rosser Reeves, quoted in Denis Higgins, The Art of Writing Advertising:
Conversations with Masters of the Craft (1990),
Business Books, p. 111.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Last batch of British soldiers leaving India, 1947
Last batch of British soldiers leaving India, 1947.
Rare video of 15th August, 1947.
Where the mind is without fear.
~Sunil Shibad, 15th August, 2008.
Rare video of 15th August, 1947.
Where the mind is without fear.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
~Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.
Happy Independence Day!
~Sunil Shibad, 15th August, 2008.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Guinness: Light Show
I'd hate to see the electric bill for this building after they shot this Guinness ad, in which a band of pranksters flick the lights on and off by floor to emulate the “soft pour into a pint” technique made famous by the legendary dry stout. This impressive visual effort was intended to “entertain, engage emotionally and capture people’s imagination,” says a rep from Irish International BBDO in Dublin, which made the ad. Not sure if that’s how it was received, but that’s exactly what Guinness does to people who drink too much of it.
What is account planning?
From its beginnings in the late 1960's, account planning has developed into a job function which exists in the majority of significant
The purpose of this booklet is to describe briefly the role of account planning as practised in advertising agencies in the
1. Introducing the Account Planner
When asked at a party what he/she does in an advertising agency, the account planner would probably say, "I'm the consumer's representative". In a nutshell the planner ensures that an understanding of consumer attitudes and reactions is brought to bear at every stage of advertising development. This means that the planner is a fully integrated member of the account team working on a continuously involved basis; bringing a consumer perspective to strategy development, creative development, pre-testing of ads. and tracking of the brand's progress.
Why do ad agencies have planners?
First, the people who market products and create ads. are not necessarily representative of the people at whom those products and ads. are aimed. Moreover, the consumer doesn't always take out what the advertiser is trying to put across. Planners are there to keep in touch with consumers.
Then, every agency needs a disciplined system for devising advertising strategy and producing creative work that will be effective in the market place. The planner uses market and research data to guide this process.
Finally, from a creative point of view, there is a suspicion that research which plays back the consumer's innate conservatism will stifle anything unconventional. The planner's role in this situation is to bring skilful and sensitive interpretation of research and to spot openings for development.
2. Account Planning in the
Today most agencies have account planners. It would be fair to say that the way planning works varies from agency to agency, and even within an agency, from planner to planner. So much depends on the particular environment and the skills of the individuals concerned.
The initial concept was invented in 1965 by the late Stanley Pollitt. He felt that, as more data was becoming available to agencies, it was being used incompetently or expediently by account managers. This came about largely because the traditional researcher was a backroom guru who wasn't involved in major decisions. So he suggested that a specially trained researcher should work with the account manager as an equal partner. In 1968 the J. Walter Thompson agency established a new department called 'Account Planning'. Also in 1968, when the Boasse Massimi Pollitt agency was formed, Stanley Pollitt introduced his concept there, slightly revised.
JWT and BMP were therefore founders of account planning and, although their basic principles were similar, their methods of working differed. Today most planners will have been trained in one or the other schools of planning, but the differences in working have become increasingly blurred as established, traditionally-structured agencies have found ways of taking planners on board.
It is interesting to trace the changes that have taken place in the marketing and advertising environment which have boosted the considerable growth of planning in agencies.
(i) Client's expectations from their agency changed
In the 1950's, advertising agencies were the main pioneers for market research programmes. The '60's brought dramatic changes. More and more clients were restructured along marketing lines, and part of this was to have their own market research departments. They looked to agencies for specialist research advice on advertising matters.
Agencies therefore had to concentrate more specifically on the professional development of ads.. So the effect of increased client sophistication was:
decreased need for agency as market consultant
increased demand for distinctive agency discipline
In a sense therefore, planning became to advertising in agencies what marketing became to sales in the client companies. The planner was charged with ensuring that all the data relevant to key advertising decisions should be properly analysed, complemented with new research,and brought to bear on judgements of the creative strategy and appraisal of the ads.. Her role as an active part of the team, involved with the central issues of strategy and creative development, became a crucial one in the agency's learning process.
(ii) Consumer attitudes were constantly changing
Technology, work ethics, role of women in society, leisure, lifestyle, social values, catering patterns, racial issues, attitudes to fitness and health and general mood of the times were all constantly changing.
Creative people needed to keep in touch. Monitoring cultural and social trends became a specialist task, and the findings needed to be fed in at an early stage of developing new brands as well as new advertisements.
(iii) Brand images became more important
Social anthropologists say that brands are like people: there is a practical side and an emotional side bringing out personality, images and feelings.
All consumer behaviour is an expressive gesture of some sort, and brand symbolism is a special form of language. Whether advertising creates or reflects the images doesn't matter; what is important is that the meaning, sometimes the myth and mystique, behind the brand is understood. To do this, planners have resorted to inventive ways of eliciting consumer attitudes in order to understand the richness of a brand, and how consumers relate to it.
Also, as markets became more competitive, brands had to become more sophisticated. Threats like new technology, product parity and own-label brands put more pressure on premium brands to differentiate themselves.
The growth of the lager market in the
(iv) The advertising environment has changed
Advertising is a means of contributing meaning and values that are necessary and useful to people in structuring their lives, their social relationships and their rituals. There is no doubt that consumers are now more knowledgeable about advertising and more interested in it than ever before.
It is interesting to contrast public attitude to advertising in the
In relation to advertising, consumers are not learning machines - despite what some (usually American) hard-sell advertisers might think. People have come a long way since Vance Packard's "Hidden Persuaders" and Rosser Reeves' "USP". It is now more a question of what people do with advertising, interacting with it and producing an outcome that is often greater than the sum of the elements put in. It needs an expert to understand the consumer relationship to advertising.
It follows therefore that the devices used for measuring advertising effects have to be sensitive to these changes. General attitudinal models and mechanistic research measures have no role to play in modern advertising culture because they're too blunt an instrument. A famous
So much for evolution, but what has planning achieved?
In assessing what account planning has achieved in the
Having a planner on an account has led to more integration within the agency and better teamwork in trying to combine the needs of the client, the demands of the market, and the expectations of the consumer.
The planner has brought an added dimension of understanding to the process of developing ads. by stimulating discussion about: purchasing decisions, the brand-consumer relationship and how the advertising is working in specific circumstances.
Helping to win new business: by instilling confidence in the prospective client as a result of a comprehensive and disciplined approach.
Defining more tightly-focussed strategies: the result of an enhanced understanding of the consumer.
Stimulating creative development: the result of more productive contact between the creative department and the consumer.
Helping to sell the ads: by explaining the way they work.
The quality and creativity of advertising in the U.K. has grown in line with account planning, thus proving that the function has helped, rather than hindered this trend.
3. The role of Account Planning
When one tries to define what an Account Planner does, it usually results in responses like: "I thought Researchers did that" or "I thought Account Managers did that". It is much easier to define the role of planning in an agency, and to say that the planner ensures that it takes place.
Relationships within the agency
Producing ads is essentially a team effort, and the way the planner relates to the account director on the one hand and the creative team on the other hand, is worth explaining.
The planner works alongside the account director/manager. While each person has his own area of expertise and experience, there is a substantial area of overlap where the two, working together, can create something where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Leadership and co-ordination are the primary skills for account management They still orchestrate the whole advertising development process, and have ultimate responsibility for the strategy and creative brief. But now they have skilled help from the planner, who brings greater understanding of the consumer relationship and more analytical depth to the proceedings. The relationship between planner and account director is one of equal status, with merit determined by the ability to make a useful contribution.
What about the planner's relationship with the creative team?
Creative people want a simple, single-minded directional brief, not a bland statement. The best planners are pithy.
Most good creative teams want to know the consumer beyond a mere demographic definition. They want to know about the kind of attitudes held - to the product category, to the brand, to advertising in this market. They want to know what the consumer wants, rather than what the client wants. The good planner brings this sharply into focus - like an expressive photograph.
The planner can provide a better service in this context than the account director, who is less skilled at originating and interpreting research; or the independent research supplier who lacks an intimate knowledge of the account and the kind of advertising the agency stands for. Too much objectivity in advertising research is not conductive to the early stage of creative development which requires sympathetic handling. A mechanistic approach to research can lead to ads which have impeccable relevance but no originality or impact.
However the positive and constructive use of diagnostic research in establishing a dialogue between the creative team and the consumer is one of the most valuable contributions a planner can make to the process of producing ads. Their sympathy with the creative process can stimulate and discipline creative thinking; their research skill can interpret consumer response with sensitivity and foresight.
4. Defining the Account Planner's Job
A typical planning cycle will consist of:
*studying the brief from the client and analysing existing data, which might consist of: published market reports, distribution data like Nielsen, usage and attitude surveys, awareness tracking studies, advertising research etc.
* commissioning more research if necessary in order to define the strategy. There might be several strategic options open for development which concept research can help to finalise.
*briefing the creative team for the task, having had the client's input and agreed the strategic course for the brand.
*commissioning/doing diagnostic research on initial creative ideas, to determine what effect the advertising is having on attitudes to the brand, and how individual elements are working.
*discussing implications with the creative team in terms of how any weak aspects in communication or desired effect can be dealt with.
*helping to rationalise the thinking behind the advertising so that the client will approve the work.
*supervising any pre-testing of the ads. to ensure that branding and message recall are at satisfactory levels.
*tracking the results of the advertising in terms of sales, awareness and image so that modifications can be made to subsequent campaigns.
In all these stages the planner will work with other members of the agency team, the client's research department and research suppliers.
The best way to define the job is as follows:
(1) In an overall sense:
The planner will be concerned with the relevance of the advertising to the target audience, and its effectiveness in the market.
This is done by bringing a consumer perspective to the advertising in order that the brand and the consumer are drawn together.
Client says : "My Product".
Account Director says : "My Client".
Creative Director says : "My Ad".
Planner says : "My Consumer".
The planner implements a disciplined and systematic approach to the creation of ads.
(2) In the Strategy Development Stage:
The planner will collect and synthesise data to guide strategic development. This is done by understanding attitudes and behaviour of people; and gaining insight into the consumer relationship with the brand and the advertising. Then the planner will define the positioning and relevant proposition that encapsulates the rational and emotional appeals of the brand.
(3) In the Creative Development Stage:
The planner will commission diagnostic research on rough ads to check whether the advertising is achieving the desired responses. Feedback will be gained on how the ad is working and what effect it is having. Ad responses will be interpreted with sensitivity in order to stimulate the creative process further.
(4) In the Approval Stage:
Bold or original work, that goes against conventions, sometimes has a rough ride. Objective justification can help to win the case. The planner will help to provide reassurance on how and why the particular piece of advertising will work for the brand.
(5) In the Post-Campaign Stage:
The planner will commission and use research to track the progress of the brand. Questions that need to be answered are:
*Is the strategy working?
*Are the objectives being met?
*Do the ads need developing?
*How should they be developed?
5. What Makes A Good Planner?
*Having a passion for advertising and a sensitivity to the creative process.
*Having an intuitive curiosity about consumers, and an understanding of human relationships.
*Being an able and inspiring communicator.
*Being skilled at using marketing and research data.
*Being numerate and imaginative in order to translate research results into advertising action.
*Having credibility and authority in the context of research and advertising judgements.
*Having a strategic and visionary mind to create openings after brilliant detective work.
*Having a desire to be continuously involved as an integrated member of the account team.
*Maintaining a balance between theory and pragmatism concerning how ads work.
6. In Conclusion
Account Planning is not an end in itself. Outstanding ads were and are done without it! Hopefully account planning adds context, perspective, guidance and opinion to advertising development. Consequently the chances of getting the advertising right first time are increased. However in the advertising world no one has monopoly over wisdom or ideas; an agency consists of a group of people with different skills, abilities, experience and personalities trying very hard to get the best possible advertising for their clients. Account Planning is central to long-term brand building and business success. If the goal is to produce better, more effective advertising, then the combination of imaginative planning and creative excellence is the means of achieving this. The planner ensures that the advertising works in a relevant and distinctive way.
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