advergirl

Internet Famous

Another great find sent along by friend Marti: Parsons Grad school is offering a class called Internet Famous.*

Students are charged with creating content to release on the Web. Content designed to get high traffic, pass along ... and well fabulous Internet famousness. The class is graded by custom Internet software that catalogs sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Technorati, Alexa, Google to evaluate the overall popularity of the content (in a single refined score).

What I love about this is how targeted it is at experiencing the way things really work. At the very essence of how universally accessible the Internet is. That you can just dive in with a little reading and smidge of fiddling around and really DO it, not just have someone tell you about an abstraction.

One of my biggest frustrations in interviewing AEs in the last few years is how theoretical their online knowledge is - as far as actual technology, ethnography, or even simple user experience.

At my last job, I test-drove these great interview questions from David Armano and was disappointed to get a combination of 'No's and blank stares. Even among digital natives, it's surprising how many advertising/marketing people aren't really using/creating on/diving deep in the Internet so much as marketing to it. If you do blog, read blogs, use social networks, tag, or otherwise live online, talk about it in interviews. You have hands-on experience in a medium that a lot of your peers surf on by...

*Cool article from Time

Wendy's: the brand struggle

Griner may think the debate on Wendy's ended when he celebrated the demise of the Red Wig campaign, but, after having my post-writers-strike prime time interrupted by the Wendy's fish sandwich love fest these past few weeks, I've got to say: I miss Red Wig. At least I understood its role in the brand story.

Let me step back.

I'm not a food marketer, never hawked so much as a warm roll, but I've watched the industry on and off over the last few years and am close enough to other customer segmentation strategies to have developed a theory.

From the advertising and product mix out there, it strikes me that there are four main types of fast food customers:

• Families and Kids. Hungry people looking for a meal that's easy, affordable and in a place where ketchup smears and screaming babies are par for the course.


• Convenience Eaters. They're dashing from here to there and would probably like to eat something else, but when life has you on the go ... well, you hit the drive through lane.


• Calorie Nullifiers. Blue collar guys busting ass on the work site all day. Just getting to noon burns more calories than convenience eaters consume in a week. They need a big meal to keep them going.


• All-Day Eaters. Let's be honest, maybe they're a little drunk. Either way, they've got wacky schedules, demand ooey-gooey satisfaction and, frankly, probably have enviable metabolisms.

So, when Wendy's started up with Red Wig and introduced the Baconater, I started to get it. They were transforming from a family brand to something straddling the Calorie Nullifiers and the Any-Time Eaters. They were getting back to the Where's the Beef, taste matters heyday of  - screw the nutrition label, this stuff tastes great (for fast food).

Now enter the 'healthy' fish sandwich spot.

We're back to advertising core product. And, to convenience eaters, no less. Meanwhile, product development is adding jack cheese, jalepenos and bacon to any meat-bread combo they can dream up. And, the stores are still featuring cute little Wendy. Where are we red head?

The good news is, Wendy's has all the right tools. Bold product development and real estate teams. Solid footprint. And enough historical brand equity to ride out this blip, but, it's going to take a hard look at the core brand and the customer to get them back on track post-Dave Thomas.

Advertising resume makeover?

Call for resumes: If you have fewer than three years experience in advertising or marketing and are concerned your resume isn't working as hard for you as it could be, please submit it for an Advergirl.com makeover.

Selected resumes will be re-written (by a fabulous strategist) and re-designed (by an award-winning creative director) free of cost. And, will be featured in a before / after post highlighting changes and giving tips on resume writing to job searchers like you.

How to submit:

• Send your resume or career notes via email to lhouseholder (at) gmail.com
• If you're looking to make a major change in job title / level of responsibility / type of employer, please include those details
• And, if you would prefer that your name not be used, flag that, too

I'd Like To Make Weekend Plans With You (and your husband)

Perhaps in agency life - more than in other work venues - the feeling that most of the social activities going on around you are equal parts exciting and exhausting is at times ... well, stalling. So thanks to The Bullshit Observer for this hysterical morning treat of old people like me socializing couple-style.

What ad agencies can learn from parades

I’ve been clicking back to Adland’s peach-filled find (below) for weeks now. I think I find it so fascinating because its very creation seems so profoundly unlikely. It’s a crazy installation piece combined with the aesthetic of a holiday parade.

Which got me to thinking, what else could ad agencies learn from holiday parades…

• Anything CAN be created: What better callout to your favorite ‘it can’t be done’ naysayer than people create life-like house-sized butterflies out of little more than hundreds of thousands of roses and a glue stick, I think we can pull off a 6-color print.


• Standard materials need not apply: Astroturf, twinkly lights, torn up feather boas, spray paint and paper mache. You call it your attic, I say it’s a 500-square-foot celebration of the Chinese new year OR the boldest in-store Pressidents' Day weekend installation the Home Depot has ever seen.


• Don’t make people too comfortable: There is no better illustration of our willingness to suffer for what we love than the sidewalks lining the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. If your brand / event / story is compelling enough, people will invest themselves in the experience by huddling on cold sidewalks, staking out space, wiping drippy noses and lifting little ones onto view-blocking shoulder chairs.


• Nostalgia is fun: Not the Cracker Barrel are-they-racest-are-they-not(?) kind. The make it into our photo album kind. The it’s part of the holiday kind. The Marshall Fields windows, mall Santa Claus, ElfYourself kind.


• It takes more than one person to handle the big ass balloons: If it takes 10 perfectly-coordinated people to guide Snoopy through Manhattan, I think it’s fair to say that a little collaboration might be in order on the strategic rollout of your big client’s new widget.


• Interesting things do happen outside of prime time: Sometimes 6AM in the morning is the best time to get in queue to catch some flying tootsie rolls and gape at parade princesses. Oh, wait, Starbucks maybe already owns that time slot.


• Volunteers can create change: Don’t let the frustrated members of the Board of your favorite pro bono client get you down. Volunteers can produce unbelievable results. Say, getting 11 bands, 24 floats, 700 clowns, 11 giant balloons, and 1900 performers to walk 43 blocks together powered by little more than 400,000 cubic feet of helium.


• Trucks pull the most delightful things: Dear Detroit, how about the next Dodge Ram commercial shows off towing power by hauling a train of ALL the Parade of Roses floats. WITH fire engines on either end. Come on – that’s power.

From Adland:

 

Lipstick Jungle and Maybelline: When ad partnerships undermine editorial

This year’s choice for hot mid-season television formula is Sex in the City gets married and goes to the office. Combine several high-powered, hottie women execs with contentious, creative work environments and stressed out home lives and voila(!), advertisers line up like in the ultra-competitive days of the 1994 renaissance of sexy, smart doctor dramas. 

Tomorrow night will mark the third episode of one of the front runners of the mini powerful-woman genre: Lipstick Jungle.  And, at this point, I’m wondering if the ad partnership won’t be the downfall of the series.

I should preface with this: All television shows based on professions boldly simplify, cast unusually sexy characters (think of the “CSI”s with fully made up faces and low cut shirts scouring trash truck crime scenes or George Clooney still delightfully coiffed after a gory 48 shift) and are generally unrecognizable to people in the actual field.

BUT, still…

Lipstick Jungle’s marriage to Makeup Artist Chuck Hezekiah of Maybelline is a little reductive even for Prime Time. At each commercial break, he pops up with advice on how to get ‘the look’ of the exec featured in the last segment.

I’m not suggesting that the Ad Council should break in with a series on how to raise our young women, but,  when we take a relatively accepted convention (TV sexing up real-life humans) and make it driver of the story, well, it gets a little ugly. Afterall, they weren't exactly paying for ER with hair gel sponsors or CSI with tube top designers.

With such a prominent and potentially-controversial sponsorship, it will be interesting to see what part Maybelline plays in the success or failure of Lipstick Jungle.

Four new Web sites to play with

I'll share. You decide.

Dominos Big Fantastic Pizza Builder
Starz' Headcase original series site
Ikea's calm bedrooms experience site
Microsoft's Simplify Your Work campaign site

Is local artist Ben Harben inspiring Australian advertising?

Saw these delightfully icky ads over at I Believe and had to wonder ... is friend Ben the inspiration for far-flung CDs at DDB?

Ben creates portraits of reality television stars in the medium of "chewed up and spit out" bubblegum on canvas. Check out he and cutie wife Katie 'painting' Biff on David Letterman:

These Hubba Bubba installations are interactive “paint by numbers”-style posters that use different flavors of chewing gum as the color palette. Stick your used gum here not on the sidewalk.

What do you think?

(RSS readers, click to take the poll)

Miller brand wins with 'second tier' media

After rejecting Miller Lite's Bud-mocking spots in 2005 over fear of offending the bigger beer sponsor, the Super Bowl ad sales division got smart and locked in exclusivity with the King. Now only Anheuser Busch can show its sweaty bottles during the game. But, that hasn't stopped Miller's pesky harassment of big brother's ponies and puppies on the big day.

This year, Miller showed its contrarian side - buying out all the non-Super Bowl inventory to catch viewers who might be channel surfing during cut #7659 to Payton Manning shaking his head at Eli. Then, layered it on the next day with full-page print ads in major newspapers offering to by Bud a beer for their Super Bowl commercial 'win' (a better beer that is) and with some great online snark, like this YouTube video featuring the Miller High LIfe delivery man commenting on the big game ads:

As Bud's product development, packaging design and advertising continue  up-market, appealing to a somewhat more discriminating drinker (uh, beer consumer), Miller Lite heads down-market toward the blue collar beer of choice. And, fiesty really fits for these second place suds. Up with the Miller.

Dogears: Good stuff I pre-read for my favorite readers

Open Collaboration and the Future of Public Relations - free white paper

An Introductory Guide to Global Citizen Media - free download

16 Ways of Looking at a Female Voter

Stuff White People Like #46 The Sunday New York Times

Who Is Grady Harp? Amazon's Top Reviewers and the fate of the literary amateur.