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20
Nov
09

Gap commercial… What is the problem here?

By Jay Weise 14 Comments
Categories: Ads, Advertising, Branding, Business growth, Business Strategies, Cheerleading, Christmas, commercials, Creative, Holiday, location data, Marketing, Publicity, Publicity Stunts, Recession, Stunts and Uncategorized

In the last few days, the blog world has exploded in controversy with this new Gap holiday commercial. I saw it on TV last night and I thought there was cool dancing, there must be cheer leaders to pull that off, especially the girl who gets tossed 20 feet in the air at one point, nice sound stage to shoot on, good choreography. I also think the lyrics were fine…except that the Gap is showing its PC side. We have seen mostly PC holiday messages for years now.

But now there are groups (well, one actually: American Family Association – AFA) that are all bent out of shape because in the commercial’s lyrics say “You 86 the rules, you do what feels just right.”

I just dont understand the problem with the commercial. What do you think?

I have to run. I am attending a “Celebrate the coming of Winter with this Winter Welcome gathering” at Stapleton’s town center. Now that’s just another PC name for the lighting of the Christmas lights at my town center.  I hope people aren’t upset when they get there to find out Christmas won’t be mentioned anywhere. What a world we live in.

Here are the lyrics for the GAP commercial:
Two, Four, Six, Eight, now’s the time to liberate
Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, Go Kwanza, Go Solstice.
Go classic tree, go plastic tree, go plant a tree, go add a tree,
You 86 the rules, you do what feels just right.
Happy do whatever you wanukkah, and to all a cheery night.

Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, go whatever holiday you wanukkah.

13
Nov
09

Steve Hayden: Product Focus groups are Silly

By Jay Weise Leave a Comment
Categories: Ad Agency, Ads, Advertising, Brand Loyalty, Branding, Business growth, Business Strategies, business to consumer, Copy writing, Creative, Facebook, focus groups, NFL, Social Media, Uncategorized, Video Ads and YouTube

Last night here in Denver, while listening to Steve Hayden’s talk From Big Ideas to Big IdeaLs… (that’s an entirely another blog on another day)…Steve talked about a campaign for Shreddies, the Canadian version of Shreaded Wheat here in the U.S., that used a focus group to learn more about the new Shreadies product, DIAMOND SHREADIES. As you’ll see, people in focus groups are very polite people and will provide the desired response even if obviously wrong. This “focus group” video was then posted on YouTube and was viewed by almost a million people, that’s a lot in Canada, and sales ‘went way up beyond expectations’ after this and the new “Diamond Shreadies” campaign broke. I agree with Steve. It is silly to use focus groups to gain insight into the effectiveness of an ad or when your questions in the focus group lead the people to the answers you want to hear.

See for yourself.

Focus Group Video

Shreddies Commercial

Also, 81 Facebook pages and over 280 discussion groups have been started on this topic of Diamond vs. Square.

Steve Hayden is one of the most revered advertising copy writers since the mid 1970′s. He’s most respected for his “1984″ commercial for the introduction of Apple’s Macintosh computers… an ad that only ran once during the 1984 Super Bowl, and most recently the “Real Beauty” campaign for Dove.

29
Sep
09

Watch out, life comes at you fast. Canon will help slow it down.

By Jay Weise Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

I’m a Creative Director and I’m also photographer, so when I ran across this commercial for Canon cameras, I was completely amazed.

Canon has a new line of cameras being released and this commercial for the Rebel T1i is great. It’s not only great for its technical achievement, 60,000 still photos to choose from to make the commercial, but for the way the commercial is created.

This commercial consists of 4-5 different scenes of people playing football. A father and son in the back yard, girls flag football in a dusty sand lot, guys throwing the ball around in the surf, a pick-up game in the street, a high school game at night and finally a pro game in a giant stadium. All of the different scenes flow from one to the other, almost seamlessly. While each scene is being photographed by 10-plus photographers, the differing movements and angles of each photographer’s photos create a wild, yet beautiful panorama of images.

CanonComm1

Click the photo to view this commercial

With the advent of the digital camera, the world has exploded exponentially with new and great photography, especially also since the barrier to entry and the learning curve to develop great photos has been lowered exponentially. I love to see great photos. I love to see others revel in their joy of making photos they enjoy.

Maybe this commercial and it’s insight into photographing life will inspire to you get out and make some great photos.

11
Sep
09

A Great Sign for Denver

By Jay Weise Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Jay

It’s not every day that you see street signs using a nicely designed logo.

As I was riding my bike to work the other day, I noticed a new street sign along my usual route. It stated that Denver is a “Solar America City.” I know solar panels are being installed on buildings all over the greater Denver area and that the solar industry is growing around the state, but I wasn’t aware that Denver is now officially, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, a “Solar America City.”

So, back to my point. The logo treatment for the “Solar America City” sign is nicely done. It doesn’t look like a typical municipality-designed image. Kudos to whoever was responsible for designing this logo. Job well done!

21
Aug
09

Is your resume this well done?

By Jay Weise Leave a Comment
Categories: Ad Agency, Advertising, Creative, Jobs and Marketing

I love simple ideas. Especially when the idea takes an already simple idea and improves it.

Michael Anderson, of Romney, West Virginia, is a graphic designer. He designed his resume to be the best resume I, and many others in the blogosphere, have ever seen. He graphically, and efficiently, charts his entire career. He includes in a graphic timeline all of his education and jobs, with overlays of job titles, skills acquired/used, software programs learned/used.  A simple chart, Daily Intake & Output, tells a lot about his personality as it charts the relationship of coffee intake and focus, communication, productivity and humor.

Not only is the design sharp and very well done, but the color choices are very appealing and I’m sure would stand out on any pile of resumes.

Now if I only had a job for this guy!

Michael Anderson's resume

Michael Anderson's resume

http://theportfolio.ofmichaelanderson.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/resume-infographic.jpg

17
Jul
09

Did you get the Virus?

By Jay Weise Leave a Comment
Categories: Ad Agency, Ads, Advertising, Creative, PR, Product Placement, Public Relations, Uncategorized, Viral, Web sites and YouTube

So this a great little video..that you’ve probably already seen as it seems that most of the world has.

This video was emailed to me on Wednesday and by the time I emailed it around myself, 2-3 hours later, almost everyone I sent it to had already seen it.

This is a great example of how a little idea and a great little feel good story…and babies always sell…can go around the world in an instant.

So let’s get to the numbers:
12.5million views on YouTube :: as of today
The making of the video even had 1,533,659 views!

Did you notice the classic roller skating scenes from some movies in the ’70s and 80′s? ie. the jumping on the fence scene.

Not a bad site to cross-promote it and you know you’ve gotta have a Facebook page too.

Enjoy!



12
Jun
09

260,000 followers on facebook for National Man Day

By Jay Weise 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Picture 30

I read this story story from the AP on my local news station’s website. Its about the creation of “National Man Day”. I love this idea. It was highly promoted on Facebook with 260,000 followers. But it did not go so well.
http://www.9news.com/news/watercooler/article.aspx?storyid=117534&catid=337

Now, I think it’s great that men have finally “manned up”  and got themselves organized for a “National Man Day”. And using Facebook to find followers and spread the word only shows there is was a real interest in this kind of kind of day…. maybe one that Hallmark could have gotten in the game with. And even better, Facebook became the great marketing tool it should be for spreading the word.

Now, on the other hand, that fact that these guys didn’t at least do some simple research on Google, the web’s ultimate resource for everything under the sun, to see if there are any other remotely related events on the same day as NMD, really deflates their efforts. And does not speak well of our great gender. A day dedicated to all things manly does not go well with “Sneak a Kiss Day”, its just way too romantic. But come June 15, I will be found in my back yard grilling some ribs and drinking some beers. Maybe even smoking a cigar. And probably talking about it on Facebook and Twitter.


15
May
09

Kentucky Fried Chicken Executives Caught Making Prank Calls….Sweet!

By Jay Weise Leave a Comment
Categories: Ad Agency, Ads, commercials, Communications, Crisis Communications, Digital Media, Franchise, Franchising, Marketing and Uncategorized

El Pollo Loco (EPL) recently launched a simple, but not necessarily noteworthy, marketing campaign – a consumer taste challenge – against Kentucky Friend Chicken (KFC). But things got interesting when it was alleged that employees from KFC called the EPL consumer-hotline and pretended to be ordinary people impressed by KFC’s new grilled chicken – they seemed to forget that there may be a real person checking the messages.

Staff from EPL not only listened to the messages on their incoming hotline, but they also noticed the caller I.D. Low and behold, a 502 area code showed up. And while the person specifically said they were from California, area code 502 is for Kentucky, the same location of the world headquarters of KFC (YUM Brands). EPL staff was a little curious. “How could this be?” And we are curious, too. A little coincidental, don’t you think? Listen for yourself.

What do you think about this? If KFC was involved, a not-so-noteworthy marketing campaign for EPL could turn into bad PR for KFC.

For the record. I’m a life long fan of KFCOR.

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