The Power Of Brand Ambassadors

Arsenal Football Club has just wrapped up a fund-raising initiative, coinciding with the end of the English Premier League season.Citroën UK collaborated with the football club and donated a brand new C4. The car, dubbed the ‘Ultimate Arsenal Fans’ Car’ was designed by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, whose diverse range of work includes designing and directing the animation for Pink Floyd's ‘The Wall’ as well as gracing theatre sets and magazines across the globe. First team Arsenal players Gael Clichy, Robin van Persie and Manuel Almunia met with the cartoonist back prior to the campaign launch in order to add their ideas on the look and feel of the car.Raffle tickets for the grand prize cost £2 each and around 6000 tickets sold, over £11,500 has been raised for Teenage Cancer Trust which has helped push the amount raised in Arsenal’s season long ‘Be a Gooner. Be a Giver.’ campaign to over £510,000 so far.

A prize that the winning fan would no doubt be proud to own and treasure aside, the support for a worthy cause also gives everyone else who entered the competition a feeling of goodwill for their relatively low entry cost, all resulting in Arsenal and Citroën looking like heroes at the end of the campaign. Just shows that simple ideas are sometimes so much more effective than complicated ones - if pitched at the right market.

Via - Arsenal FC

After – Heels Vending Machines

What we take for granted as the species from Mars is totally different in the world of our female counterparts from Venus. Choosing what shoes to wear could easily result in a 30 minute delay on a good night. If you have seen a woman’s intriguing ‘going out ritual’, you would have heard of ‘emergency flats.’ Women who love their high heels often carry flat shoes that roll up and fit into their handbags. These emergency shoes often rescue them from the pain caused by a long night of dancing.

Two London based companies have developed a vending machine that sells portable flats outside night clubs. These ‘after- heels’ are similar to roll up ballet flats. The company has even predicted the inevitable problem of colour schemes. The shoes come in a range of colours: Hi Ho Silver, Gold Digger, Back to Black, white and pink. But wait there’s more; you’ll also receive a matching handbag to slip your high heels into. It’s very hard to imagine a place in the world where this innovation wouldn’t receive massive support from female club goers.

via:afterheels.com

Samsung Netbook Viral

Samsung's latest netbook offering, the N310 contains a unique rubberised exterior which allows the new product to visually differentiate itself from competitors. According to independent research, the new-look casing has been a hit with consumers.

However, it's their latest viral effort that caught my attention, and definitely worth a watch.

Via - Scary Ideas

Screw You Recession

It would seem that brands and consumers are finally starting to make light of the doom and gloom around the global recession .

Originating from Virgin Mobile Canada is an interesting online initiative called Screw You Recession. The portal allows users to provide their own tips on money saving, as well as news and other finance-savvy ideas.

A practical and interactive tool on the website is the "Screw-u-lator", offering users the chance to pledge what and how they aim to save, as well as providing a combined Canadian saving to date.


There's also a nice graphic representation of the overall mood and atmosphere surrounding the recession in the Recession Mood-Meter, which invites users to participate and cast their vote on how the recession is currently affecting them.


Virgin Mobile is also making this portal to recruit talent. Through the 'screw you recession summer intern' program, successful candidates stand a chance of spending their summer holidays blogging, writing stories and conducting interviews with financial experts for the ScrewYou website.

Via - Contagious Magazine, Screw You Recession

Mac vs PC Round 2

It would seem that the shift back towards value-focused perception of brands among consumers has benefited Microsoft - albeit temporarily. Oh yes, and advertising helped.

According to research, the perceptions of value Microsoft and Apple offerings has shifted dramatically in the eyes of 18- to 34-years-olds since Microsoft began running its "Laptop Hunters" campaign in March. Apple's "value perception" has fallen considerably, while Microsoft's has risen among this group of consumers.

According to AdAge:

"Based on daily interviews of 5,000 people, BrandIndex found the age group gave Apple its highest rating in late winter, when it notched a value score of 70 on a scale of -100 to 100 (a score of zero means that people are giving equal amounts of positive and negative feedback about a brand). But its score began to fall shortly after and, despite brief rallies, hovers around 12.4 today.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has risen from near zero in early February to a value-perception score of 46.2."

Of those in the older age groups, the 35- to 49-year-olds saw a marked increase in preference for Microsoft around the second or third week of the campaign and momentarily overtook Apple; at the same time, Apple's "value perception" took a dip among this age group. Apple has since clawed it's way back as the top-choice for 35 to 49 year-olds. Among 50-plus consumers, the two brands are virtually neck and neck.

Via - AdAge

Intern Auction

It's hard work for any organisation to turn a good intern into a valued employee. The time, dedication and monetary outlay during the initial stages can sometimes be considered too exorbitant and unjustified for many corporates, especially in today's world full of economic troubles.

Crispin, Porter + Bogusky has yet again broken new ground with their latest initiative, this time by literally auctioning off their 2009 interns. Instead of increasing their own profit margins, however, the renowned agency is allowing the interns to supplement their income with this talent auction.

"The interns only make minimum wage, so we thought this would be a great way to augment that," Mr. Bogusky said in an e-mail. "They're excited about that."

What the winning bidder can expect to receive is a creative presentation developed by the interns during a three-month period, consisting of strategies, recommended brand positioning and concepts. The conceptual phase will not be implemented and produced by the agency, however.

Currently, the bidding stands at $4250 - a bargain for concepts out of a respected agency!

Via - AdAge

2010 Campaign Gets The World ‘Diski’ Dancing

The word ‘diski’ is Township lingo that means, when loosely translated, ‘playing soccer.’ This word has inspired the beat and the rhythm of the new 2010 television advertisement campaign.

The dance launched at the Tourism Indaba on the 11^th of May, will be the official 2010 dance. The Diski Dance will be spread across the world with a 60 second commercial which will be screened on major local and global television networks including BBC World, SABC Africa, CNN International, Sky, EuroSport, and Fox. The advert will reach more than 600 million people between now and kick-off in 2010. The dance effectively captures the festive mood of South African football lovers.

“This will take the dance and welcoming spirit of 2010 to millions of South Africans to a worldwide audience. It will also give the campaign the domestic traction that it needs if South Africans are to truly welcome the world to this great celebration,” says Sugen Pillay, South African Tourism’s Head of Marketing for 2010. The campaign is collaboration between the International Marketing Council, South African Tourism and the 2010 Organising Committee. “The campaign is uniquely South African. It exudes warmth, is inspirational, involving and makes you feel proud. It is about celebration, solidarity and encapsulates the African and South African spirit of Ubuntu,” says Paul Bannister, IMC acting Chief Executive Officer. The campaign has set the tone for the 2010 celebration by truly capturing Africa’s rhythm.

Via:SA Tourism

Nokia's Co-Branded Phones

Nokia has been piloting an interesting initiative in Brazil over the past months, and it seems that the cellphone giant might almost be ready to introduce the program to the all-important US market.For an undisclosed fee, the world's biggest cellphone maker has been offering advertisers the right to place their own logo's on Nokia handsets. Advertisers are able to choose a particular Nokia phone that complements their demographic target, splash the handsets and the accessories with their visual identities, pre-load some mobile content into the handset and complete the look with their own branded and design casings - all in the hopes that cellphones wrapped in corporate logos will appeal to modern consumers.

In the Brazilian market, one of the program's best-selling phones belongs somewhat surprisingly to Unilever's Seda personal-care brand. Seda used a limited-edition pink Nokia phone to refresh its brand and launch a teen shampoo line. The $100 device, which came bundled with games, trial-size shampoos and exclusive music by a popular Brazilian band, sold out within two months; it eventually sold 200,000 units between April and December 2008, according to Nokia.

A successful launch in the US market would certainly attract more advertisers, who are always looking for fresh ways of engaging brand advocates. Would this mean that an Apple-branded Nokia phone might be on the horizon for those who can't afford iPhones?

Via - AdAge

Survival Of The Cheapest

In a struggling automotive industry, Tata Motors India has managed to sell more than 203, 000 of its ultra-cheap Nano cars, yielding sales of 25 billion rupees (R4.6 billion), in just one week.

The sales are significant in a country where 1.5 million passenger cars were sold in 2008. At a price of 100, 000 rupees (R17 000) plus tax and transport costs, consumers have given the world’s cheapest car brand the green light. Tata Motors stated that the Nano website received an unprecedented 30 million hits between March 23 and April 25 and about 1.4 million people went to see the car at Tata stores.

Tata has proven that there is a vast increase in consumers who are, in the current economic climate, looking for the most affordable vehicles. Newsweek identified the Nano as part of a, ‘new breed of 21^st century cars that embody a contrarian philosophy of smaller, lighter and cheaper’ and ‘portend a new era in inexpensive personal transportation’. The Nano is currently only being sold in India and many car companies can learn from Tata if they want to survive.

via: Newsweek