The Islands

Every night for the past few weeks, when I've gotten home, I've noticed our neighbor's colorful Christmas lights. They're both from different Caribbean islands, so the bright colors always make me think of the marketing campaign from the Bahamas.

What I love about the marketing campaign is that it takes the map of the Islands of the Bahamas and morphs them into a colorful graphic. I have always been fond of flags and maps representing countries and people. They are both very powerful things for people to identify with.

It's represented in the last 10 seconds of the following video:

I can't think of any other marketing campaigns where the maps of the destinations are represented so well in the marketing campaigns. I will keep an eye out for them in the future. 

Dallas Digital Summit

My colleague and I spent Tuesday and Wednesday of this week at the Dallas Digital Summit. It is one of several digital conferences around the nation put on by TechMedia.

The conference included speakers from many areas of the digital world. I heard presentations about how influential Twitter is, how tablets and social media were utilized by voters in the run-up to the 2012 elections, and many other topics.

One of my favorite parts was listening to Ben Huh, CEO and Founder of Cheezburger. If you've ever gone to FailBlog, then I hope (dare I say expect) that you've had a really good belly laugh. This man made all of the adorable attitude-ified kitties and intense failures possible. And for that, I thank him heartily.

The Dallas Digital Summit was an incredible way to meet with other marketing and digital professionals and to learn from their experiences. 

512 Brewing (from Austin, of course)

A couple of months ago, we went to the Ginger Man Pub to meet up with some friends. It had been a few years since my last Ginger Man visit, and we went during the off-hours, so it wasn't too busy.

The Ginger Man Pubs always have a wide selection of beer on tap. I noticed one of the taps, and instantly knew (or thought I knew) where the brewery was from. This is what the taps looked like:

Image courtesy of thethreadaustin.com

The genius of naming their brewery "(512) Brewing" is that people instantly recognize "512" as an Austin-area area code. My favorite part of their branding process is the parentheses around the area code, to show that it's an area code.

Excellent Video about Melanoma

I recently spoke to someone whose mom is suffering from melanoma, a type of skin cancer. This made me think of one of my good friends, who lost her best friend to this disease over a year ago. I don't think that Laura even made it to her 30th birthday.

This video was created by the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund in Canada and it's quite powerful. Please take a few moments to watch this video called "Dear 16-year-old Me." It reminds me of another powerful video about Sex Trafficking.

Oreos for the Chinese Market

I found an article via NPR (National Public Radio) about the Oreo cookie and how they marketed it in China. If companies and businesses plan to bring their products to different markets or countries, they must do research.

People all over the world are driven by different goals and motivators. It's amazing when companies just assume that the American way will be the "right" way, no matter where they sell their products.

This article is a great example of how Oreo's marketing team listened to the Chinese public regarding their tastes and preferences:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/27/145918343/rethinking-the-oreo-for-chinese-consumers

Casttoo - The Best Way to Make Kids with Broken Bones Smile!

I found this on Pinterest and thought it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I remember when I broke my wrist way back when. My cast was ugly. And white. It was summer. In Texas. And very hot.

But, how cool would it have been if I'd had something like this bad boy to show off my broken wrist?

Photo courtesy of Casttoo.com.

There's a site called Casttoo.com. All you have to do is email them a digital copy of your x-ray. They'll create an image of your break and send it to you. It looks like their cast tattoos are applied to the cast with a hairdryer. 

I wish I had come up with this idea, because it's amazing!

Casttoo.com Blog Post featuring their Broken Bone "Casttoo"

Union Jack Poo Bags

Today I went on a walk with the doggie. Strangely, I was excited about the walk because of the new poo bags that I bought for him.

Originally, I wanted to take a picture with the poo bag (doing its poo bag duty) for this blog, but, ew. My "fur"-son gets lots of fiber.

I couldn't believe that I found poo bags with the Union Jack flag. I would have expected poo bags with the French flag, because we all know that people dislike the French.

But, the British flag? When I saw them at Marshall's, first it made me laugh. Then, it made me wonder why the British flag was the flag of choice for the poo bag marketers.

I think that flags are very powerful. I love when they're used in marketing, because people identify with flags. A recent blog post showed the creative way that the Canadian flag was used in the Wendy's logo in Canada.

Black Angus Steakhouse Sign Fail

I'm sure that many people have seen this picture before, because it's hilariously amazing. There were some very special forces that aligned in the skies to make this image possible. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them.

Image courtesy of AndrewKeir.com

You know, I bet marketers never sit around thinking of these possibilities, when devising catchy names for steakhouses.

Have you ever seen anything that compares to this marketing failure?

What Caused the Shift in Consumer Preference from Bar Soap to Shower Gels?

This is something that I have often wondered about. How is it that the plain old bar soap fell out of favor with consumers? Bar soap is easier to use than shower gels, as no sponge is required.

I found a couple of articles discussing the shift from bar soaps to shower gels. I'm not really sure if an article in the UK DailyMail counts as a credible news source, but it does mention some valid points about the difference between bar soaps and shower gels.

"The great shower gel con: It's expensive...."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048496/Shower-gel-better-soap-It-just-wont-wash.html

and

"Liquids Move Up in the Soap Market"
http://www.happi.com/articles/2000/12/liquids-move-up-in-the-soap-market

It makes me wonder if it was simply a marketing initiative or if consumers actually prefer the liquid versions of soaps. 

Taylor Swift Created the Angry Woman Anthem

I'd like to give a shout out to Taylor Swift for creating the anthem for every girl out there who's ever been burned by a man.

This constitutes genius marketing, as her song will be sung by angry women and girls everywhere for years to come!

Mooscles

I recently found this ad via AdWeek and loved it! It's so incredible that I had to share it.

Sadly, our food supply is not what it once was. I, for one, get a bit creeped out when hearing about the antibiotics, hormones and other things that are added to our meats. Applegate Farms promotes their all-natural meats with a smart ad campaign.

Here's the link to the article from AdWeek: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-applegate-farms-141449

Wendy's Fast Food Restaurants

On a recent trip to Canada, I noticed that Wendy's fast food restaurants has altered their logo for the Canadian market.

The American logo for Wendy's looks like this:

There is a picture of red-haired Wendy with pigtails, above the written "Wendy's" logo.

In Canada, the logo had been slightly altered:

 

The logo is almost the same, except for the maple leaf serving as the apostrophe in the word "Wendy's". The maple leaf indicates the Canadian flag, and thus, Canada. 

I couldn't believe that I had never noticed this slight change before. My family has made numerous trips to Canada over the years, and this was the first time that I had noticed the difference in the logos.

Airport Security Trays

After googling this phenomenon, I feel like I'm a bit late to the party. However, I wanted to show a picture that I recently took at Chicago O'Hare airport.

Zappos has taken advantage of an opportunity to advertize in airports. Before travelers go through security, they must deposit their shoes, phones and other assorted items in these trays. Until yesterday, I had only noticed the dull gray security trays at airports. 

What is incredible about this idea is that the folks at Zappos were definitely thinking outside the box with these campaigns.

Taking advantage of a marketing opportunity like this is a great idea. Making use of something that every single person must look at while going through airport security is absolute genius.

Defying Expectations

I have found a few marketing campaigns and YouTube videos that have defied expectations lately. Whenever a commercial or an ad campaign defies expectations, it seems to be quite powerful and stick in my mind.

Over the weekend, I was talking with some friends about how incredible Amsterdam is. It's a gorgeous city, with beautiful canals and lovely people. Unfortunately, Amsterdam is also famous for some seedier things. No, I'm not worried about tourists smoking weed at the coffee shops. Amsterdam's Red Light District is famous for its prostitutes.

Here is a video that I would like to share. It's based in Amsterdam's Red Light District. This video was very powerful and left quite an impression on me.

Santé

There is something that has been bothering me for a few months. I have noticed a commercial for a rehab center that is located in Texas. Unfortunately, they named it "Santé Center for Healing."

Now, in theory, naming a rehab center after the French word for "health" would have been a good idea. However, if someone had spent about 10 minutes searching online, they might have realized that this word is also used as a toast before drinking alcohol.

When people go to drink alcoholic beverages in France, they say "à votre santé," which means "to your health." They also use "santé" or just "health."

I'm inclined to think that a recovering alcoholic does not need a reminder of a foreign term for toasting as they are trying to stay away from alcohol.

Has anyone else ever noticed a major marketing failure like this in the past?

Österreich

I have been absent for a few weeks, but I haven't stopped thinking about new examples of Marketing Magik and search improvements.

I found a major failure on my part, with regards to German-speaking countries. Somehow I forgot to include Austria, Vienna and its adjectives in both English and in German.

When I searched for "Oesterreich", the German word for Austria, I only got one result. I searched for "Österreich" and got 3 results.




I searched for "oesterreicher", the German word for Austrian and got 21 results:




I searched for "Austria" and for "Austrian" and got 33 results and 15 results, respectively:



Then, when I searched for "Wien", the German word for Vienna, I only got 2 results:



The search for "Vienna" only yielded 8 results. I searched for "Viennese" and only got 8 results.



I decided to combine both the words for Austria, Austrian, Vienna and Viennese in German and in English:



After combining everything, I ended up with 58 results for all of these synonyms:



I then went on to make sure that Swiss, Switzerland, Schweiz, Schweizer and all of the other synonyms gave results on our site. This makes me wonder whether I have covered all of the areas where our products are produced or marketed.