Tuesday, July 26, 2011

While you were sleeping

Yes it's Sunday again, early in the morning to be exact. Everyday the same story. You wake up, take the kids to wherever they need to go to, drive to work (on the electric scooter of course) and even before the morning coffee you sit down in front of the computer and basically start your day. You check your emails first, then you log-on to your blog, if you have one, from there you visit Facebook just to see if anything has happened in the world during the night. Of course things rarely do. The same news with different titles, a few old "jokes" from bored people and Oops... some of your friends have new friends. Don't get me wrong, writing this post is basically doing the same but I am at work at 08:20 in the morning so I have an excuse. One thing you do discover is that other people apparently have lives and while you are sleeping they actually do stuff, or they're just acting as if they do. In any case I just spent 20 minutes on you, only around 8 hours to go...

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Social branding

It's been 5 months since people took to the streets in Tahrir Square, Egypt. The famous protest took off after people used Facebook as a platform to spread the news to the word. It's not the first time of course, groups with different agendas use Facebook as a marketing platform. "Pages" for example (something between a brands profile to a landing page) where created on Facebook long before Tahrir Square. But I don't think anyone has ever used Facebook as a marketing platform in the form of a protest. Looking into the Cottage cheese protest for example, one must wonder, has Tnuva really lost here or actually the company sold more Cottage cheese once the wind has settled. Think about it, starting a protest on Facebook is like a bush fire. There is even a page on Facebook that complains against the prices of tents (now with the protest going on in Rothschild). But truth be told I haven't really conducted any research into this but I believe that it's worth trying. What I am positive about is that if any company will decide to try this... you will hear about it for the first time here. Well, maybe after Facebook.

Expect the unexpected

There are a lot of concepts that are based on the element of surprise. VIVIDENT, a chewing gum brand came out with such a commercial, which I think is very cool. Not that being surprised works differently here. It's just that even or because of the cheesy acting and the basic idea behind it, it is still quite funny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WpXD3qJF2uc

Friday, July 8, 2011

A priceless homage

Sometimes, maybe due to the lack of original ideas or really out of "respect", advertising agencies choose to do an homage to a usually well known and famous commercials. We all know channel 2 pathetic attempt to create an "homage" to Sony's Colors like no other T.V. spot but over the years we do see some great homages from different products around the world. As such was mynewamericandream.com's homage to the prize winning commercial for apple from 1984 directed by Ridley Scott.
But when an homage is made with a twist, it's much better. Wikileaks will be facing it's untimely death unless they can come up with enough money to stay in action. so, they came up with a great homage to the famous MasterCard commercial. The outcome, well I think speaks for itself...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMN2c24Y1s&feature=player_embedded

Saturday, July 2, 2011

The + of having friends

Facebook has a new friend. Facebook didn't send this friend a request nor did Facebook invited this new friend to one of it's events. But still, it came uninvited and decided that all of Facebook friends should be his too. So Google+ (Facebook's new "friend") started sending invites to people, but not to everyone of course still, he is not Facebook, not yet that is.
Now, some of Facebook's friends decided that at the least they like the way Google+ looks, and changed their own look to suit his.
When invited somewhere it's a common thing to be asked if you are coming alone or plus one. But how many pluses should one have? In Facebook we already have 500,000,000 friends that show up every now and then without sending even r.s.v.p. And if we already have 500,000,000 potential friends, why do we need more? And what is the plus? Maybe it is just that now you can meet these millions of friends in just another place with new decor and new facilities. Maybe it's just like changing a pub.
The only question here is: will we think its a Plus or we'll just Like it and not more.

Great minds...