Today is officially the last day of summer. When we wake up tomorrow, the leaves will not have changed color, you will not be able to see your breath, and the apples are not ready to be picked but it will undoubtedly be the case.
In harmony with the theme of ending one thing Sun can start another thing, I want to take a look back at some of the most influential branding / marketing campaigns of summer 2010 and make a prediction of how they will affect fall
2010th
I would not be able to forgive myself if I did not start with the Old Spice campaign created by the geniuses at Wieden Kennedy. Admittedly, the comprehensive Old Spice late you start campaign did last winter, but it did not fully blossom until the warm weather of summer. The ad campaign Consists of TV, print, internet, and more. The original TV ad featuring actor Isaiah Mustafa, won on Emmy award for Outstanding Commercial. The social media campaign "Ask Old Spice Man" generated 7,258,771 72.329 Twitter followers and YouTube channel views in just hours 48th what’s the takeaway? Wieden Kennedy created a buzz that Old Spice exposed to billions of potential customers through word of mouth.
So, with fall coming Wieden Kennedy adopted Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis as the new Old Spice Man This campaign is very similar to the previous one except that it is more highly targeted towards men that watch football. So far the TV advertisements have been a huge hit.
One of the more controversial "campaigns" what Bros Icing by Smirnoff Ice. Campaigns is in quotes because Smirnoff vehemently denies any associate with the drinking game and has worked diligently to extinguish its popularity. Regardless of its origin, the Icing campaign showed the potential of guerrilla / WOM of marketing and advertising. For literally no cost to their product as Smirnoff promoted on TV, radio, internet, bars, clubs and more across the entire country through the viral buzz it created. Everywhere you went someone was icing someone else and everyone around knew what was going on! Unfortunately this drinking game promotes irresponsible behavior and underage drinking, but this technique used for a morally appropriate social activity could generate free exposure in truck loads.
Google gets credit for finishing the summer season off with a bang by recently Implementing Google Instant. Instant Google takes the technology of Google Suggest to the next level. Instant Google takes the suggested queries generated from your search terms and simultaneously displays the corresponding search results. More impressively, these suggestions and results change in real time as you continue typing your query.
Google had been hinting at a big change since the beginning of the summer when the Yahoo / Bing deal was official. Google made some aesthetic changes to their results pages (ex: purple AdWords background) as well as incorporating Google logos insinuated that the latest change. Instant rolled out last week to the entire country and what publicly announced by Google. Google swears this will be a revolution in search speed and effectiveness, but I believe they are just trying to flex their muscles before the Yahoo / Bing merger is complete. Either way it shocked the Internet community and has taken search to the next level.
So, what do advertisers and marketers take away from the summer of 2010? Advertising that is meant to generate WOM or viral buzz is the wave of the future! All three of the above examples used comparatively free or cheap ways to reach billions of potential customers. Utilizing high traffic social venues all three companies gave their target audience something to talk about. Whether they wanted Bro's to buy each other Smirnoff Ices at weddings, guys to joke about the Old Spice guy in locker rooms, or Internet bloggers to speculate on the innuendos of Google's new logo, all of these advertising initiatives resulted in the customers advertising to each other.
Now that the regular consumer has so much information and different options at their finger tips, it will take something more than a compelling ad to get them to purchase. The above campaigns gave people something to talk about their product and effectively transformed into a bland, hilarious joke, or topic of speculation. I expect advertising and branding in the fall of 2010 to involve hilarious, shocking, innovative and unique content to create a buzz that actually transforms the consumers into the advertisers.
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