SensoryMetrics

It seems that Virgin Canada has won the fastest off the mark award for their Metro print ads this week. Poking some fun at former NY governor Eliot Spitzer, the ad reads

At Virgin Mobile, you’re more than just a number. When you call us we’ll treat you like a person, not a client. Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.

Virgin also has another ad featuring Hillary proclaiming that her bill was out of control. Hillary-ous!

Where else but Canada can Wireless be marketed with political humour… or gay beavers… or dogs and bugs… or patently false claims of Unlimited Data?

via Marketing Magazine

[tags]Advertising, Virgin, Client-number-9[/tags]

Popularity: 25%

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Business, Media, Mobility advertising, Client-number-9, Virgin

Prior to becoming a discount PC vendor, HP (formerly known as Hewlett Packard, the two names of the founders, in case you’re under 30) was an innovator of scientific equipment. They were the geek-vendor of choice, before the word geek was ever coined.

This 1969 ad sells the geek-tech on the strength of usability. Sort of…

To quote RetroThing…

“Solving even transcendental equations now becomes as simple as typing your name.” Quite true, if your name is Mr. Inverse Tangent. This crushingly complicated H-P 9100A scientific calculator retailed for a whopping £2,448 in 1969. Those who chose to wait another three years were able to pick up an HP-35 handheld for a much more reasonable £200.

[tags]HP, advertising, retro[/tags]

Popularity: 25%

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Business, Gadgets, Usability advertising, HP, retro

There’s a corner store in the town of Renfrew that closed this summer… It was prophetically named “Across The Tracks”… Apparently, it must have been on the wrong side of the tracks because business wasn’t so good!

In the virtual world, naming is also critically important. URLs – being locations, have many challenges when it comes to advertising. You’ve probably heard of the many goofy multiple-word urls: Speed Of Art (www.speedofart.com); Big Al’s Online (www.bigalsonline.com): Go Tahoe (www.gotahoe.com); Therapist Finder (www.therapistfinder.com): or Who Represents (www.whorepresents.com). These are all real sites, seemingly unaware of their twisted names!

If URLs are your passion, you’ll love GoodURLBadURL – a blog created by Aaron Goldman – a self-prefessed URL-aholic. As a web designer, he offers these useful best practices for displaying your URL…

URL Best Practices
Do’s
1. CapitalizeTheFirstLetterOfEachWord.
2. Use Different Colors Or Bold To Help Each Word Stand Out.
3. Whenever possible, use YourBrandName.com.
4. If .com is not available, use YourBrandName.net.
5. If .com and .net are taken, find a new brand name. Seriously.
6. Use YourSlogan.com when running an integrated media campaign.
7. Use subdomains when driving people deeper than your homepage – e.g. Product.YourBrandName.com.

Don’ts
1. Don’t include www. We know to go to the World Wide Web to find you.
2. Don’t include http://. If your audience isn’t web savvy enough to know where to type the URL, you shouldn’t have a website.
3. don’tusealllowercase (canyoureallytellwhereonewordendsandthenextbegins?)
4. DITTOFORALLUPPERCASE
5. No-hyphens/or slashes.
6. Don’t use acronyms, abbreviations, or numbers unless your brand is widely known as such.
7. Don’t bury your URL at the bottom of a billboard. I’m the only nerd driving around with a 4x zoom lens to find URLs.

Here at SM if we ever decide to advertise on the side of buses, you’ll see:

SensoryMetrics.com

[tags]goodURL,BadURL, advertising,uglyURL[/tags]

Popularity: 28%

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Business, Media, Usability, User Experience, Web 3.0 advertising, BadURL, goodURL, uglyURL

Do you ever get frustrated at really stupid or offensive banner ads? (True.com are you listening??) The folks at BrandJury
are about to launch a private beta of their “collaborative” advertising platform. They allow consumers to give feedback on ads. From a web console, advertisers can assess consumer attitudes to their creatives. We’ve signed up for the beta – if done right this could be a great opportunity for advertisers to reconnect with web users.

[tags]BrandJury, advertising[/tags]

Popularity: 25%

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Business, User Experience, Web 3.0 advertising, BrandJury

Poor ol’ Starbucks! The failing US economy is starting to hurt the bottom line. The brilliant marketing Buck-heads have decided to enter the exciting age of broadcast advertising… just when everyone is leaving. In fact these numbers reported in the Wall Street Journal yesterday show that Starbucks haven’t really needed any marketing – until now. Not taking any chances, SB hired the firm that created Nike’s ubiquitously annoying “Just Do It” campaign. Apparently the first TV ad features an animatric reindeer cracked high on caffeine! “Get out of my F’n way Rudolf!!”

UPDATE: here’s a link to the first ad

…and a pretty picture…

[tags]advertising, Starbucks[/tags]

Popularity: 26%

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Business advertising, Starbucks

The latest Simpsons / Burger King commercial has Homer eating a delicious Whopper… What gets me is that my REAL whopper has NEVER looked like the CARTOON whopper. We suspect that all of television fast food doesn’t come close to looking like the real thing. I was going to head to town to “test” this hypothesis… until I found the This and That site. This dude named Wayne compares McDonalds, Wendy’s, Carl Jr, Subway, Quiznos, Jack in the Box, and Arbys. His verdict? Subway actually wins the truth in food advertising award.

It’s funny that Homer’s whopper looks exactly like the “real” advertised whopper. Sadly the whopper on the right looks like Mitch’s whopper.

[tags]advertising, this-and-that, homer-simpson, truth-in-advertising, whopper, burger-king[/tags]

Popularity: 56%

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Business, Pirates, User Experience advertising, burger-king, homer-simpson, this-and-that, truth-in-advertising, whopper

You might have heard of Vancouver-based MemeLabs. They launched last year and they’re redefining interactive advertising. Advertisers essentially sponsor contests. To enter the contest, users create home-made videos – and these get rated by other users. Think of it as a mashup between YouTube, Digg, and AdAge. My favourite right now is the Worst Vacations videos. The winner gets a great vacation at the Mont-Tremblant resort in Quebec.

[tags]MemeLabs, advertising, video[/tags]

Popularity: 32%

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Business, Events, Innovation, Long Tail, User Experience advertising, MemeLabs, video

Ad Campaign post yesterday – it seems like it’s making the viral rounds at the company. What prompted the post – other than that wonderful “unfortunate ad placement”, was the fact that the marketing machine at Nortel often missed the mark. Campaigns like “Business without Boundaries” undermines the value of the products, and focusses attention on the negative aspects of the business. I just caught up with Nortel CTO John Roese’s blog, it seems that the company’s Chief Marketing Officer feels the same way. In a guest post, Lauren Flaherty writes

Do we have it all right yet? Not by a long shot, but we’ve made great progress quickly and we’re fine-tuning constantly, as we should. Perhaps what I find most encouraging is that there are a lot of people out there who would like to see Nortel back at its fighting weight.

Go for it Lauren!

[tags]nortel, john-roese, marketing, advertising[/tags]

Popularity: 37%

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Business advertising, John-Roese, marketing, Nortel

I’ve long been critical of Nortel’s misguided ad slogans… Remember “What do you want the internet to be?” (Tell us, cuz we sure don’t know!) “This is the way>> This is Nortel” (sounds too much like There’s the right way, then there’s Nortel..) How about the prophetic, “Business Without Boundaries” (SEC rules?? What SEC rules??). Who can forget the Beatles inspired “.com together” campaign? (just before the “bubble .com apart” campaign).

Well they’re at it again! Copyranter brings us this banner ad at Chicago’s O’Hare airport… duh.

[tags]Nortel, Hyperconnectivity, the-big-ka-boom, advertising[/tags]

Popularity: 43%

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Business advertising, Hyperconnectivity, Nortel, the-big-ka-boom

I actually enjoy video ads. What I hate is repetition and lack of relevance. Try as hard as you can Pampers but I won’t be buying diapers for my 5 year-old daughter.

I came across a new site launched a few weeks ago called AdPerk . You choose the ads you want to watch and earn credits. A 30 second video earns you 1 credit. 10 credits earns you a magazine subscription. Super simple. There are very few ads to choose from at the moment, but the potential is huge. It would be interesting to link a short surbey after viewing the ad to earn even more credits. To advertisers the benefit is offering multi-levels of conversion – maybe going as far as signing up the viewer for special offers. Check it out (unfortunately, perks are only available for US addresses.)

[tags]AdPerk, advertising[/tags]

Popularity: 25%

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Business, Innovation, Long Tail, User Experience AdPerk, advertising