Peter Kafka of All Things D, The Wall Street Journal’s techy blog, writes about this interesting video from McDonald’s Canada. The popular video goes behind the scenes at a burger photoshoot to answer a customer question: how come burgers in ads and burgers in real life are, well, a bit different.
I came across this video the way I like to source videos for these posts—by just seeing it in my normal day. I saw this one linked to on Jezebel’s Facebook feed. It’s funny. And clearly a lot of people think so—by the view counts. Yet it’s not all fun and games. Like a lot of great communications pieces, there’s a lot of smarts going on behind the humor.
Now… I’m personally not really a fan of this video… it kinda grosses me out .. (and not much grosses me out). But people seem to like it.
However… I do love it when any brand (especially a big one like Kmart) takes risks. And this is pretty risky for such a mainstream brand.
Strategically I’m not a huge fan either because I really don’t get why you would want to ship pants from a store when you can just take them home with you … it starts to make sense when they get to the shipping furniture bit midway … and they do explain the real benefit at the end.
Last time I wrote about an amazing campaign (more like a part of a rolling, ongoing campaign) from Dove Real Beauty … and now they’re at it again. This is momentum marketing at it’s best. They’re knocking out fantastic, thoughtful, thought-provoking content (with a consistent underlying message) so that the new one enters our consciousness just as the old one is fading. This isn’t branding… this is brand BUILDING!
The Asia Pacific Advertising Festival was held March 17-19 in Pattaya, Thailand and here are my personal favorites of the winning entries. I only drew from entries that are appropriate for YouTube Tuesday Plus — they had to be for a product or service and they couldn’t be a print ad or simply a short TV spot. Here goes:
Like many older, established orgs, the Anti-Defamation League has a communication and brand perception problem. The world and attitudes change around them. And they must adapt to remain relevant. This video, released to celebrate their 100th anniversary, does a good job. It’s also incredibly inspiring.
I actually got the shivers from this video that captures a new aspect of the famous Dove Real Beauty campaign. I don’t know if you will have the same reaction. But it was very moving to me. You know the campaign, right? Where Dove hires models that look like actual people (not stick-figures) to advertise their skincare products?
I’m not exactly sure how I came across a Starbucks YouTube video—but I did. And then I began digging deeper into their 250-video-strong YouTube channel. And I was bored. Their channel gets a lot right, but it gets the most important thing wrong. It’s not interesting. And it could be soooooo interesting.
Yes, Dunder Mifflin, the once fictional company in Scranton, Pennsylvania where the US version of The Office television show takes place. Once fictional because NBC (US home of The Office) and Staples actually got together to create a real line of real Dunder Mifflin branded paper. It’s apparently selling well and they’re expanding to other paper products. That’s just cool.