Paw Justice

OK. Thought One when I saw this ad on C4 tonight: Another charity ad, with a bunch of celebrities asking us to do something. Awesome.

I went to the site though (because I do like to give things a chance) and I saw this: and thought, personally, those are incredibly sad stories, but to the sick and twisted who do this sort of thing, I wouldn't be giving them additional ideas.

However, I am behind what they are trying to do, saving animals from harm is a good thing. I love animals and the thought that anyone would dare hurt something as innocent as an animal which cannot defend itself, sickens me. Uncool.

Right, so here I go, I'm going to sign the petition (which on the commercial they tell me I can do) and because I can see this nice little tile on the website:
What I did not notice was the small type:
That's right, it is not an online petition. You can't sign up online, instead it tells you to go an SPCA, Vet or take it upon yourself to start a petition (download the form) and send it in yourself.

Now, I understand why this is. A petition has to be handwritten signatures or some such shit for it to be valid. (I think this came up with the online petition for saving Manners Mall.) What I think is missing here is that they don't say why you can't sign a petition online. They don't explain the bureaucratic crap that for a petition to be acknowledged it has to be handwritten.

Now, to Joe Blow Public, this will look like a FAIL and I don't know that Mr/Mrs Blow will go out of his/her way to make sure they sign up. Yes, NZ 'celebrities' are a strong incentive, but it suddenly got very hard.

If this was my campaign, there are 2 things I would do to try to make this work as hard has possible.
1. EXPLAIN that an online petition cannot go before the bureaucrats and that real signatures are required.
2. Join up with Progressive or Foodstuffs (or both if you could) as well as like a service station/bank and put petitions in all stores around NZ.

I don't think you can expect people to come to you for this, (in vets is fine, but there is a nation of non-pet owners who would happily get behind this and how often do pet owners go to the vet anyway?) you have to make it as easy as possible for people to get in behind it. It is a great thing that they are trying to accomplish, but you have to keep it simple. Put the petition in places that they will trip over it!

Bitchy aside: Did they get a bulk discount on Shortland Street and Outrageous Fortune 'celebs'?

The lost art of selling, part two

Overall, refer to part one of this, here.

However, I would like to point out that I don't know exactly what is going through some reps heads these days. I would NEVER (and when I say never, I mean I would never even put myself in a situation where I would be so drunk to even think that it was ok to) talk to a client the way reps have spoken to me in the past year.

I can understand having a drink and being friendly with a client, but at some point you have to understand that this is a person that you are selling to. Insulting me, to any degree, is not going to win you any favours.

I would never intentionally leave a medium off because I don't like someone/don't agree with something that they have said, but to be fair, if I acted the way some reps do, our company would lose clients outright over that sort of behaviour.

Just because we drink together every once in a while does not give you free passage.

I don't want to sound like a bitch, but come on. Your job, is customer service, just like mine is. If there is no way that I could get away with such behaviour, I don't see why you should.

Yellow Chocolate - Sour Taste

Ok, am I the only one who has a sour taste left in my mouth having witnessed all the AMAZING things that Yellow are doing with their most recent advertising campaign?

So the TreeHouse thing didn't go down that well with me either, the whole thing was very Auckland and I felt like there was minimal advertising of the whole thing and was more of an award entry than a campaign.

So now we have Josh and his yellow chocolate. Awesome.

So I have seen a couple of television ads on this one and I get the impression that this one might be a slightly more integrated campaign than the last. So, when I read that they had created a billboard that was going to display this guys tweets, I though, CHOICE! What a completely rad idea. That's amazing!

This twitpic of the billboard was via @kenfreer and was originally put up by @hamishhaldane:

Then Stoppress wrote an article which had this image:

Then I started following Josh's tweets, and my excitement very quickly disappeared. Quite happy to be corrected on this one, but his tweets reeks of something that has been planned, semi-scripted and is being 'tweeted' by some intern or account exec. Happy to be told otherwise, but unfortunately, that is how it reads, to me anyway. The beauty of Twitter is that it is real time, immediate information/commenting/responding, and I have not yet seen this. All I have seen is a campaign start to unfold.

I got a little excited again when I saw that their banner on the Herald, thinking that they were going to have a real time Twitter updated banner - again, I think that the tweets that are being sent are average, it was more the technology that I was excited about, but alas...

They do not seem to be real time to me, these screen shots are part of a 3 roll banner, unless perhaps they are picking up the last 3 tweets then maybe that is cool, but I don't think this is what is happening AND this also kinda starts to back up my theory on the fact the tweets are scripted... Maybe? Maybe I am cynical, but its my opinion, so there.

What really irked me about about the banner ads, and the reason this gets to me is that it is not hard to do, is that I clicked on the part of the banner which says 'Follow Josh on Twitter or ..." I clicked directly on the 'Twitter' logo and what do you know, I go through to this:

That's a FAIL. I didn't want to go to your website, I wanted to go to your Twitter feed. Come on. Its a flash file, you can link things to different URLs. This is not that difficult.

The website is pretty cool though, it is nicely put together, I like the background video, very clever.

Before I go on - Ideas = amazing. Execution = not sold. I don't buy that the tweets are not scripted and the banner ads are a fail all round.

So now I am going to go on.

I am sorry Yellow, but perhaps, instead of spending a BUCKET load of money on an advertising campaign (you kinda have things covered when it comes to big fat books that have lots of phone numbers in it - market share, tick) hows about you spend some freaking money on making your website work properly? Yellow.co.nz cannot think for itself and surely you realise that the general population is not that smart, they need your site to think for them.

For example, I want to check out Savemart in Masterton as I have been told it is something of an untapped area when it comes to op-shops. So I search 'Save Mart' as in my mind, this is how I see the sign. Results displayed:

Yeah, needless to say, I was not looking for butchers. So I put the words together and ta da!

Now, this is a pretty average example, however so frequently I can't spell the name of the place I am looking for, but I know what city it is in so I try Yellow or White pages. All too often, my there will be no results for whatever I have searched for, so naturally I turn to Google and ask them, because Google loves me, even though I can't spell, and suggests that maybe I was looking for something else? "Here you go, this is what I think you want." "Thanks Google, you're the best."

What was my point? Fix your end product. I'm not trying to say that I think it would be an easy thing to do, not by any stretch of the imagination, however I do think that your advertising budget would be better spent in R&D so that when you do advertise, users don't get pissy with you.

You can do that?

Hot damn, check out the whole new kettle of fish that Stuff have done today. Click on the showcase and the entire stuff website shifts to the left and you go on a little journey as per below:

How cool is that? Has anyone done this before? I like it, I think it opens up a whole new round of creative opportunities.

re. previous post

So, following on from the last post, I was initially pretty embarrassed that I bought into it, and considered taking it down; But I have said before, I won't remove a post or comment, and I won't.

As the weekend has worn on I've realised that actually, I'm not that embarrassed. Contrary to popular belief (maybe not popular, but it seems to have been said) I actually am a nice person and when I saw those two beautiful dogs, I just wanted to help.

Apparently they have found a home (back in January) which is great, but it is a pity that the email is still circulating. Nothing like playing on people's emotions huh?

Once again, not looking before I leap. Typical. That's it. No more forwards for me.

Woof Woof - Dog Blog

Have you heard about Cookie and Coco yet?

Now, I don't know the person who is trying to find a home for these 2 beautiful dogs, so cannot claim that I know that they are well tempered etc, but who could not want these 2 faces? If I had the space, I'd take them home and love them to pieces, so thought I would try the network of lovely folk who read this blog instead.

Look at them:

This is the message from their owner:

We are moving overseas in just 2 weeks. Unfortunately, I have still not been able to find a good home for Cookie and Coco. We're not able to take our beloved doggies with us and I've been desperately trying to find a home for both of them 'together'. They were raised together and pine without each other. The Lab rescue have already said that they would probably separate them, so this is my last resort. Recently I tried to take Coco out in my car alone and she TOTALLY refused to even get into the car without Cookie.......!!!! She absolutely pulled back on her haunches until Cookie was by her side..

Both doggies are in great health, have been spayed and have ID chips implanted under the skin.

Cookie turned 3 December 10 th and Coco turned 3 April 1st. Cookie is my mellow-yellow, and just loves her tummy rubbed. Coco is adorably funny and lives for her "ball." She also loves the water...... Cookie loves lots of attention. Both doggies are loyal and love to walk. They have been raised with my 3 kids running around all over the place, and have survived Sammy's constant hugging and love of ' dress-up ', so they are fantastic family dogs. This is by far one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make, but under the circumstances I have no choice.

Please, please forward these pics to all you r friends. I want to find a great home for these fabulous doggies. They are just adorable and it ' s heartbreaking to let them go. In a perfect world, I hope that we could find someone local so that we can still keep in touch and visit them. I pray that someone, somewhere can help us keep Cookie and Coco together, and love them just as much as we do.Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. kjmorris74 @ yahoo . com

Having had 2 dogs growing up, and knowing that we could barely separate them for a day, I know what this woman is talking about, it will be so nice if they could stay together.

Go on! Someone! I really would if I could.

UPDATED: Love the power of Twitter, and people thinking they are doing something for a good cause. Right. Suckered. Dog's aren't even in NZ. Thanks for the quick response all! (I still kinda want them though, totes cute!) Teach me to jump in and not do any research!

Skin it baby

OK, so I might be behind the 8 ball on this one, but I love it.

So we've all known for a while that you can skin the MediaOne players to look all cool and someone made it a PSP and they have done funky things, blah blah, but this is the first time I have seen this on TV3:

The media player is a television! How awesome is that. CLEVER.

Again, may have been like this for months, but I only saw it this week and I think it is choice. Well done LG, or whoever came up with it.

As an aside, pretty busy at the moment. If things quieten down, then there might be some more substantial posts, got some thoughts floating around my head, just need to put fingers to keyboard.

Clash Codes

So, in the wonderful world of Television advertising, there is a term called 'Clash Codes'. Clash codes are super dooper important to lots of advertisers. Why? Well, let me tell you.

Say you are a bank, advertising banking type stuff and in the same break that you paid maybe $10k+ for, and all of a sudden, another bank is advertising their banking type stuff in the same ad break! That can't honestly be a good thing, can it? 2 banking messages in the same break, muddies the water a little. This is why we have clash codes, so that both of the banking ads have a code against them (I'm taking a guess and going to say 'finance') so that if more than one ad in a break has the same code, the lovely traffickers get a bit of a warning message going off. "Danger Will Robinson, Danger, Danger - Clash Code Alert" and then they can break shift one of the ads to fix this.

Now, this sort of thing actually benefits the viewer also. There are clash codes against all sorts of things, including health. This means that a viewer is not bombarded with multiple health messages in one ad break (perhaps in the programme, but at least not all in one break).

Given that the TV stations can work this out, and online is (apparently) so much better than TV in every way possible (where is that sarcastic font when you need it??) how come they can't sort out clashing ads?

Saw this on NBR this morning. Mercedes (top - expanded) vs. Volkswagen (right hand Rec)

If I were either advertiser I would not be happy. NBR has one of the higher CPM rates and all of a sudden your competition is on the same page as you?

Clash codes would also be good when it comes to content and advertising. We've all seen screen shots of articles about plane crashes with travel banners next to them. I am sure that some publishers have this under control these days, but come on. Time to pick up your game online. If you're going to claim to be this great, have something to back it up with.

As an aside - I love online, I really do. But I think that because so many people specialise in online and do not understand other mediums (nor want to) they become a little blinded. They sing the online story from the rooftops without having the knowledge or understanding to back them up when they knock down other mediums. All mediums have their own advantages and disadvantages (I can certainly think of some for online) but at the end of the day, they all serve a purpose, and a well integrated campaign will touch an audience in a variety of ways.

- sorry, Friday rant over. Happy weekend all.

Oh, TVNZ

Really though, what are you thinking??

Back in June they had to get rid of their awful txt-like abbreviations for their network promos on air. For a quick refresher, look at this.

So, they took that down and went on their merry little way.
Well, blow me down with some more gross creative executions. Granted, the whole TVNZ commission thing and them deciding to change agencies revenue models has gotten my back up, and think what they're doing is pretty rats, however, there is no excuse for non-cohesive creative.

Was playing on MSN today and looky what I find. An expandable banner:What on earth is that mess? What's with the paint blotches? I have never seen these before. Is this mess something that we get to look forward to?

Hmm. TVNZ you're in my bad books. This is making it worse.

On another note, @craigadolph pointed this out this morning:

Yes you're going to have to click on it to see it properly, but basically, this is the T&C's for a Farmers promotion, and on it, someone has put in questions (whether it was agency/client/tvnz whoever) about how the T&C's work. For example (in case you can't be bothered clicking on the image):

...will be drawn by the Promoter (do you intend providing the entries to Farmers so we can draw the prize? Or should the txt company draw the prize?)from all valid entries (does that mean correct entries?) received by the Promoter during the Term.

verification of the prize winner's age (why do we care about their age?)

I can answer the second question - you care because you have previously stipulated that you must be over the age of 12 years.

Who on earth pressed go on this going live? I know no one reads the T&C's but come on - obviously someone has in order to point this out.

Work it out.

Why Twitter is dangerous for brands...

When you brand is claimed by someone other than you.

Well, that is what I imagine has happened, because if Kraft is running the iSnack2.0 Twitter account, I think they need to take another look at the messages they are putting out there. (You might need to click on the pics to look at them properly and see what they are saying.)

So why do I think that this is not Kraft running this account? If you can't be bothered reading through these, there are posts which contain delicious quotes such as:

• Just added myself to the http://wefollow.com directory under:#delicious #sticky #brown #snack #spread #vajayjay (Vajayjay? WTF?)
• Show your support for #iranelection #duststorm #superaids by purchasing a limited edition jar of delicious iSnack 2.0 (using the Iran election? Really?)
• I am an effective oral contraceptive.
• Burning sensations? Look for me at your local pharmacy.
• I prevent yeast infection* (Applicator sold separately)

I have posted before about how people/company's use Twitter and how aware they should be re. who is following and therefore what they are saying. I can't imagine that any smart corporate company would be happy about how they are being represented in this Twitter feed. If this really is Kraft approved, I would be amazed, and I think they need to think again about who their target market is. You're aiming too young with your sense of humour. Mother's are not going to find the "Dab a little of me under your kids arms each morning to ward off pedophiles." tweet terribly amusing.

I'll give whoever is running this some credit, they have done a smart thing. Picking up a brand which is getting a fair amount of media attention at the moment, I would think that they could sell this to Kraft for a pretty penny if they wanted to. All 800+ followers included.

For anyone else, consider yourself warned, even if you are not going to use it right now, claiming your brand's Twitter user name is as important as securing a URL these days!