This sponsored link was at the top of my Gmail account this morning:
It leads to this Michelle-inspired J. Crew landing page. Cool, huh? Public relations meets direct advertising. I bet a brand could do several unofficial, targeted "endorsements" like this a day and get great results if it picked the right examples and acted quickly.
One thing about history is that it's great for news-stand sales. I stopped at six outlets in my town of Ann Arbor, MI and everyone was cleaned out of every local and national newspaper by 8:30.
Could be that with such change afoot amidst a national financial crisis, readership of the dead-trees product will swing up again?
The New York Timees printed an additional 75,000 copies to meet demand. Today, already, copies of the newspaper are being offered on www.ebay.com for more than $100.00.
Dennis Leary is the new voice of the Ford F-Series pickup truck.
The new effort, from WPP’s Team Detroit, attempts to leave behind the ubiquitous feats of strength one-upmanship that seems to have dominated pickup advertising in the past few years. Like this Toyota ad:
Leary was cast for his grittiness that is combined with a “this is the way I see the world” irony that is in the actor’s voice in so many of his roles. he is literally known for his rants.
The 60 and 30-second ads are a flurry of fast-moving graphics and pictures of the truck with Leary’s hop-scotch narration of product benefits like fuel economy (best in class) trailer towing, payload, etc.
Team Detroit creative chief Toby Barlow says “the thermo-nuclear war is over in truck advertising” as far as demonstration ads go.
According to Matt VanDyke, Ford director, U.S. Communications, Marketing, dealers were concerned that Ford’s truck advertising was leaning too much toward the extreme truck buyer who buys the Super Duty version of the truck. When they saw Leary’s rants about how good the truck is, “the support was huge,” he said.
Continue reading "Ranty Dennis Leary Is New Voice of Ford Trucks"
I think The New York Times' David Brooks is about the most readable conservative writer of our times. But his column today stopped me after the second paragraph.
“Nov. 4, 2008, is a historic day because it marks the end of an economic era, a political era and a generational era all at once.
Economically, it marks the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983. Politically, it probably marks the end of conservative dominance, which began in 1980. Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968. For the past 16 years, baby boomers, who were formed by the tumult of the 1960s, occupied the White House. By Tuesday night, if the polls are to be believed, a member of a new generation will become president-elect.”
Memo to Mr. Brooks: Barack Obama is a baby boomer. The baby boom began in 1946 with the return of WW2 service-men, and concluded, most demographers and researchers agree, in 1964. Obama was born in 1961. He is 47. And are we forgetting that Bill Clinton was younger than Obama when he was elected?
It reads a bit odd.
Here is another misfire by Brooks: “They [Baby Boomers] produced two presidents, neither of whom lived up to his potential. They remained consumed by the culture war that divided their generation. They pass their political supremacy today having squandered the fat years and the golden opportunities.”
The culture war is not grounded in the baby boomers as a generation. It is a function largely of education level and income, mashed up with regionality. I don’t believe Sean Hannity and Rish Limbaugh appeal to baby boomers. Their audiences are extremely heavy with non-college educated citizens.
Generation X and Y, with which Obama ironically may come to be most identified (he isn’t one), are the first generations where regionality, education and income don’t divide people on culture issues. Ask most non-college educated 20 year olds in rural Michigan, and college educated 20 year olds in California, and you will find hug majorities of both groups who have no problem voting for a black president, have no issue with gay marriage, and are pro-choice.
“Republicans nominated an old warrior with a record of making hard decisions and absorbing the blows that ensue. Many of us regard him — and always will — as one of the heroes of our time.”
Brooks is on record as saying he “loves” John McCain. A hero of our time? No question that McCain’s endurance of torture in the Hanoi Hilton was extraordinary. But I would argue the reason McCain probably won’t enter the Oval office unless he buys a ticket on the $10 tour is because he is very much a hero “of another time.”
McCain’s biography since returning from Vietnam is actually quite ordinary. He left his first family, admitted to infidelity, carpet-bagged his way into the Arizona Congressional district of his attractive, socially well-connected heiress second wife sosme 20 years his junior, and ran into as many political and ethical scrapes as any other sitting Senator. And when his campaign reminded us over and over of his endurance in Vietnam forty years ago, it did little more than remind us of his age. The videos and reminders seemed weirdly disconnected from the economic crisis, as well as the issue in Iraq and Iran.
Exactly how was McCain’s captivity in 1968 good training for dealing with complex diplomatic and economic issues in 2008? We were shown the videos, and expected to connect the dots. But the picture never came into focus, especially after McCain and Palin began ranting and raving on the stump about Obama and terrorists and accusing him of unbelievable and insupportable accusations of socialism and finally of wanting to bankrupt the coal industry.
Brooks: “His upscale, post-boomer cohort has rallied behind him with unalloyed fervor. Major college newspapers have endorsed him at a rate of 63 to 1. The upscale educated class — from the universities, the media, the law and the financial centers — has financed his $600 million campaign (which relied on big-dollar donations even more heavily than George W. Bush’s 2004 effort). This cohort will soon become the ruling class.”
It seems pretty clear that the money raised by Obama was both a reaction to eight years of G.W. Bush, as well as the realization by Obama followers that it was going to take a tsunami of money to push an African-American candidate whose middle name is Hussein into the White house. I strongly suspect that if Obama was white, and named Barry Olbermann, he wouldn't have raised so much money, because he wouldn't have needed to.
But it's also worth noting that Americans, especially young ones, are more “invested” in Obama as a problem solver than they have been in a very long time. Conservatives have long wanted young citizens to have more say and control over their Social Security funds as investors.
This seems to be an investment of a different kind they have made with their own money.
Now that I have seen a TV ad from Starbucks, I wonder why it took the chain so long to embrace regular TV advertising.
The coffee chain broke its first TV ad from new ad agency BBDO on Saturday Night Live last Saturday night, a much anticipated and high-rated episode because of John McCain’s appearance with Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin.
The ad, and idea, is said to be the work of BBDO chief creative officer David Lubars. The ad is all text and music, encourages everyone to vote and promises a free cup of coffee for everyone who votes. Here is the ad.
I don’t often like texty ads like this, but I think the music helps carry it off. I also like the kicker line, “It’s Bigger Than Coffee.”
Starbucks is amidst a retrenching, trying to find some mojo o put back into its store traffic and share price. According to Ad Age, citing Technomic, Starbucks would be doing well to attract 1% of the expected voter turnout, or about 1.5 million people looking for free java. Hopefully they will also buy a cookie, lemon bar or slice of coffee cake.
Most of all, hopefully they will take away more than a cuppa Joe, but a memory of sharing a historic election with Starbucks.
BBDO picked up the account shortly after Wieden & Kennedy and Starbucks parted ways. Wieden had produced some interesting animated work. But, frankly, I think the idea of associating Starbucks with causes like voting, energy efficiency and other themes that may unite citizens and coffee drinkers going forward may be the right track for the coffee chain.
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News, opinions, inflammatory meanderings and occasional ravings about the world of advertising, marketing and media. By Marketing Editor Burt Helm and Senior Correspondent David Kiley.
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