A snappy and memorable product name is critical to commercial success. It’s not just the brand name, the recent Coca-Cola “share-a-Coke” campaign created a Pavlovian response in people, writes Moensie Rossier.
Advertising
Best ads from the Super Bowl
Millions are spent not just on the airtime but on the production of epic advertisements that screened today during half time of the US Super Bowl. Mumbrella wraps up the best of them.
Best Aussie ads of 2011
mUmBRELLA picks the best television and cinema advertising in Australia for 2011. Sydney’s Opera House gets the top spot for its clip of music stars including Paul Kelly, Martha Wainwright and Neil Finn.
Blogger bribes: new dodgy advertising methods
An US marketing company pays bloggers on major US websites to insert links to company’s websites in the middle of an article — and its clients include Dell and T-Mobile, says Hamilton Noltan.
The latest marketing buzzword? ‘Artisan’
Once upon a time the word “artisan” meant something had been carefully hand made. Now you can buy Domino’s Artisan pizza and artisan sandwiches from Starbucks. Bruce Horovitz opines on the newest marking cliché.
Sorry too hard a word for LinkedIn over privacy faux pas
Supposedly-professional social network LinkedIn has responded to criticism over its privacy faux pas with a blog post. The word “sorry” is nowhere to be seen, and neither is any evidence of real change.
Wankley Awards: Manly men and their testosterone burgers
Health experts have lined up to pillory the KFC Double Down for encouraging irresponsible eating. But it also marks the latest in a string of ads that try to appeal to masculinity.
How toy ads reinforce gender stereotypes
A look at the language used in advertisements for children’s toys finds them deeply gendered. Boys toys refer to “battle”, “power”, “hero” and “action”, while girl ads speak of “love”, “fun”, “magic” and “babies”.
The feminism brand is designed to do itself out of business
Feminism is a brand that’s been thoroughly trashed. If it was a commercial product it’d be a good time to buy in, because when stocks are low they only have one way to go, writes Karen Pickering.
The best ads from the Super Bowl
With air play costing up to $3 million per 30-second message during the Super Bowl screening in the United States, the unleashing of brand new advertising is a yearly tradition. Check out the 20 best from yesterday’s game.
The most powerful ads in history
Advertising is a powerful concept, and not just for making us open our wallets. BBC lists the six ads that made us view the world differently — from DeBeers convinving us that engagement rings had to have diamonds to Lyndon B Johnson paving the way for political attack ads.
Tracking the PR embarrassment
Here’s a note of PR advice from Tim Burrowes: don’t send out your company press releases with the “track changes” function still enabled on the Microsoft Word document. Otherwise the whole internet gets to witness your embarrassing marketing lingo.
When advertising overrides editorial
An absolute shocker by The Age this morning. Hopefully part of the latest ‘transformation plan’ at Fairfax includes remembering that news should always over-ride advertising, writes Dave Gaukroger.
Wanna buy a blog?
A whole new world of internet advertising is developing in the Forbes blogs stable, far more involved than the old sponsored post. Instead advertisers can pay to run an entire blog alongside the normal blogs run by Forbes journos.
If Don Draper was selling Twitter
A clever mock-up of vintage style advertisements spruiking new media. How would have Facebook been sold in the 1960s? “For leisure or labour…” says the tagline.
The Age probed over real estate agent junkets
The Victorian Government will probe Fairfax Media over its real-estate junkets program, after the company decided to extend the controversial free-trips scheme into 2011.
Behind the one sided mirror of focus groups
As a long term practitioner and teacher of research methods, Eva Cox wants to set the record straight by pointing out the apparent gross misuse of a very useful tool — focus groups.
‘SheMarketing’ — the science of selling Tony Abbott to women
The major political parties need to better understand what women want, according to the women’s advertising agency reportedly behind a Liberal Party campaign to improve Tony Abbott’s image.
Your children, are they safe from fat, old sunburnt people?
No, they will be drowned in the bath by The Unions!
Does Mothers Day have to be SO pink?
Today’s the day for Rudd’s Mens’ Shed and an updated women’s health policy will be out later this year, both likely to address gender stereotyping. Yet, advertising is full of housewives and dopey dads. Why the divide? asks Margo Saunders.
Tabloid media reaches a new (even lower) low
Clearly many stories on A Current Affair et al are driven by PR, but one PR professional has bluntly described just how easily she got her company on air. So why aren’t we shocked by this anymore? asks Christopher Scanlon.
Hotel ads vs. what they actually look like
A very clever new site compares the lovely pictures in the hotel advertising with actual guest photos. Surprise surprise, the pool isn’t really that big and empty. If only there was an Aussie version.
Flogging off our fair land: there’s nothing like it!
After the “Where the bloody hell are you?” fiasco, a new Tourism Australia advertising campaign is being launched with the catchy tagline “There’s nothing like Australia”. What makes an effective Oz campaign? asks Tim Burrowes.
The campaign to rid anonymous comments from the internet
Crikey / Monday, 14 November 2011
The Communications Council, which represents the advertising industry, would like the trade press to ban all anonymous comments. Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes goes inside the debate.