Category Archives: Advertising

Free McFlurries Beat the Heat

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Earlier this year companies took advertising to another level advertisements that dispensed beverages to promote their brand. Using “Dispensing Billboards” Like Coca-Cola and Carlsberg, McDonald’s in the Netherlands took a similar approach and found a way to beat the heat. They created a heat-sensitive billboard that dished out 100 free McFlurry cups to pedestrians walking the city streets.

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When temperatures reached extreme levels, the billboard would open up and allow pedestrians to take an empty cup, which they could take to the nearest McDonald’s and get their free McFlurry. Who wouldn’t love to cool down with a treat like this on these hot summer days?

Unfortunately, in order for the panels to open, the thermometer connected must reach a set temperature of 101.48°F, so you might not want to wait around for it.

What Sparks Our Fire: Companies using interactive advertising to cater to their customers and the environment

 

The World’s First “Smart” Ad

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M&C Saatchi is experimenting with a new artificially intelligent advertisement for coffee brand Bahio, which uses a “Darwinian” algorithm to test different aspects of the ad like copy, layout, format, and image. The ad, monitored by a camera embedded in the poster, adjusts to the viewer’s reaction. Layouts that fail to engage are rearranged, and ads that viewers respond well to are reused and modified.

Chief Innovation Officer of M&C Saatchi David Cox says that although this software is experimental, “automated creativity” is quickly becoming the norm. The point of the exercise is to test the computer’s strength in determining the strongest creative execution, and to create layouts that may not have been conceptualized by the team.

If interactive ads become fully integrated in digital advertising, they could have huge implications in helping optimize viewer content and interaction.

What Sparks Our Fire: Brands coming up with innovative and tech-savvy ways to advertise to and engage with consumers.

Love Has No Labels

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As Pride Month comes to a close and the remnants of confetti are swept off the streets following the landmark Supreme Court marriage equality decision, brands have started showing their support for LGBTQ through mass marketing campaigns. However, the advertising industry is embracing a new kind of LGBTQ acceptance in its productions: “gay-inclusive.” Instead of drawing attention to the subject’s sexual orientation, these brands succeed in telling a story while normalizing LGBTQ relationships. From dancing skeletons to dancing wedding parties, here are five of our favorite ads that show how LGBTQ acceptance has shaped the definition of inclusivity in the media.
Taking home an unprecedented number of awards at the Cannes Lion Festival, the viral “Love Has No Labels” campaign was designed by the Ad Council to raise awareness of implicit racial, sexual, and religious bias, premiering on Valentine’s Day in Santa Monica earlier this year. The inspiring “Love Has No Labels” tagline also was prominently featured in the New York City Pride Parade, which took place a day after the campaign’s Cannes victory.
Although its debut was back in 2013, the Kindle Paperwhite commercial is still praised by critics as one of the most innovative gay-inclusive ads, using a humorous approach portray acceptance of LGBTQ couples as a social norm rather than highlighting the differences for the purpose of awareness, and avoiding all-too-common “gay male” stereotypes.
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The commercial for the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite was commended for its normalization of gay couples and absence of gay male stereotypes.

This heartwarming spot depicts two women preparing to adopt a deaf child, and its positive portrayal of LGBTQ relationships, adoption, and strong family values, minus the overt “pride” motif, sets the standard for diversity in advertising.
Hallmark’s “Put Your Heart to Paper” campaign is a poignant expression of love of all kinds, and emphasizes the lasting impact of the spoken word. By featuring the couple in the same fashion as it would a same-sex couple, Hallmark succeeds in demonstrating a shift away from gay-focused and toward “gay-inclusive” ads.
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If you blink, you may miss this one—the video shows several wedding parties joyously celebrating their marriages, one of them between two brides. It also features guest performers Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, who gained recognition for their support of the gay community with their song “Same Love” back in 2012.
What Sparks Our Fire: Brands that celebrate diversity through exceptionally creative and high-impact storytelling

Chevy <3’s Millennials

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Visual mediums have taken a larger role in consumers’ lives and has started to trickle into brand storytelling and communication. We’ve written about the latest trend of brands creating their own emoji keyboards, and now Chevrolet has gone one step further and released a press release for the 2016 Cruze, written entirely in emoji. Released this morning, Chevy will give consumers a chance to decipher the statement written in modern glyphs before releasing the translated version this afternoon.

Chevy, not traditionally known for their ground breaking marketing initiatives, is taking a big step in the right direction. No other company has released a formal press release written almost entirely in emoji, though Domino’s did write hundreds of Tweets using just a pizza emoji a few weeks back. By embracing the “emoji” trend and adding an element of social media driven gamification to the sometimes stale press release ritual, Chevy is taking great strides in effectively engaging with the target millennial audience.

Take a look at the full press release, and see if you can piece together the full story.

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What Sparks Our Fire: A unique integrated campaign targeted at millennials.

Festivus Comes Early This Year

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This week, as an early Festivus present, thousands of people will cross one more thing off of their Dream-things-to-do-in-New-York bucket list, by stopping by their old pal Jerry Seinfeld’s place. His fictional apartment, that is. A re-creation of the famous Upper West Side apartment will pop-up thanks to Hulu on 14th street near Chelsea Market on Wednesday, and will be open through Sunday. This fan-driven activation will celebrate the introduction of ‘Seinfeld’ to the Hulu catalog.

Similar activations have been created to celebrate ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘Friends’. The ‘Central Perk’ pop-up cafe was co-sponsored by Eight O’Clock Coffee and Warner Brothers, and gave both brands a valuable way to connect fans with one of the most popular shows in television history. Both of these activations were incredibly popular and generated long lines just to get close to the action.

Activations like these allow fans to engage with their favorite shows in an exciting way– they can actually place themselves into the show they normally see through a television or laptop screen. The promise of a great selfie on Jerry’s couch might just be enough to make the long line worth it.

If you’d like to see if Jerry has a copy of Kramer’s coffee table book about coffee tables on his coffee table, the apartment will be open June 24th through June 28th from 10 AM to 7 PM at 451 West 14th Street.

What Sparks Our Fire: Seinfeld… enough said.