Apple's "Get a Mac" ad: "Broken Promises"

I just recently came across an Apple ad on YouTube which I thought was really nice.

Its yet another Mac vs PC ad.

Here it is!

Watch and enjoy it

Brilliant Marketing Strategies - Part 2

If you've ever heard "A Diamond is Forever", then you've heard of De Beers Jewellery. I believe that De Beers is another one of those companies that came up with a brilliant marketing strategy and built up on it to make something incredible. De Beers spent $67 million on advertising in 1999, according to an article I read called "DeBeers Plays Up Details, Diamonds in Ad Push" by Christine Bittar. I've seen their ads hundreds of times and each time I find that they are getting more and more creative with every new release. So I can see why they invest so much money into their ad campaigns. I am talking mostly about their print ads, however most of their money is going to much larger advertising productions. Here I've included just a couple examples of some of my favorite print ads, and I'll discuss a little later more about the other ad methods they use. 




What makes these ads so brilliant to me is the fact that they are so obviously targeted to men in relationships and De Beers plays up on the stereotypes of relationships so well.

The idea that women will do anything and forgive anything for diamond jewellery is a pretty simple marketing strategy. One thing that seems to be ever prevalent in society is the idea that men will never understand women and women will never understand men. It's a generalization, of course, but it is still a pretty common theme among many movies, television shows, music, books, and other media. 
De Beers realized that women love jewellery, but advertising to women was not a profitable marketing strategy because women rarely buy expensive jewelley for themselves. However, jewellery is a great (and pretty common) gift for men to give to their girlfriends or wives. De Beers used the theme of men making women happy and coupled it with a down-to-Earth sense of humour to create advertisements that appealled to men who needed that "last minute gift idea" or a healthy reminder that "diamonds are a girl's best friend". 

While many of these ads are comedic and play off of stereotypes against both men and women, you might think some of the ads could come across as offensive. In reality, no one has really complained about these advertisements from what I've read and seen. In fact, I personally find them hilarious and, being a woman, I take no offense to any of the ads I've seen. This is of course my own personal opinion and how other women may feel is not necessarily even close to how I feel about the ads, but, as I've already said, I haven't heard of any complaints yet. 

Other advertising tactics used by De Beers includes an installation set up in August 2008 an placed in Grand Central Station using 25,000 roses (image left), to make a point that, unlike roses, diamonds last forever.

This was not only an expensive installation, but also a seemingly successful one. There was a lot of hype given to this installation, and there were even a number of case studies done about it. (I did try to read some of these studies but it would appear they are only available to subscribers).

The next advertising tactic that I thought was really impressive was the "Unbreakable Kiss" installation. This was done in a New York City park in 2008. This installation allowed couples to document a kiss in a 360-degree video. Couples could kiss underneath mistletoe (shaped like the diamond logo) for a $5 donation to the Elton John AIDS Foundation for World AIDS Day. 60 cameras photographed them from all angles and the photographs were then combined into moving video images.Not only was De Beers able to raise a considerable amount of money for the foundation ($50,000), but it also allowed men to give a very unique Christmas gift to their girlfriends/wives while De Beers benefitted by building its brand name and overall awareness. It was very successful considering that De Beers website traffic increased by 94% versus the previous year. The videos were enjoyed by over 300 viewers (more than just the couples who participated were checking out the hype) and $4.6 million worth of free publicity was gained for De Beers. You can read up more about this installation here.

While there are many more De Beers advertising examples I could go through, my point here is that these were all very brilliant strategies that have been very successful for the company, and also very enjoyable for the consumers. I highly suggest that if you haven't seen many of these ads that you look them up because some of them are fantastic. But please be wary of the fake (and sometimes very vulgar) ads that have also been put up, and know that they are not from De Beers.

Pagers changing TV ratings game

Hi everyone,

First, I'd like to extend my appreciation on behalf of the class to the two individuals who have posted to the blog so far.  While most of the class is now registered, active participation is what will make this useful for everyone.

On a more substantive note, in class last week we discussed how TV ratings are derived.  I indicated that this used a (more or less) representative panel of viewers, whose behaviors are then extrapolated to draw inferences about the population.  This was traditionally done with diaries, where panelists would write down what they watched and when -- problematic because people would often get it wrong, overestimating how much of some shows they actually watched and forgetting to log other shows.  This changed when Nielsen introduced the PeopleMeter in 1987 (see this article in the New York Times) and panellists were instead asked to log in to an electonic box whenever they watched television.  However, even this system had its problems, with people often forgetting to log off, or failing to log in when another family member was already watching the show they wanted to see.

Currently, a new technology called the "Portable PeopleMeter" is being rolled out.  The technology listens for TV shows within earshot, and recognizes the sounds (much like the Shazam iPhone app) to track what a panellist is watching.  But as this Globe and Mail article notes, this has led to substantial shifts in the ratings being reported for Canadian TV channels.  The big loser?  The Weather Network.  And, of course, a big problem for advertisers and media companies alike remains the fact that younger viewers are downloading shows and sidestepping the ads entirely.

New Media and Marketing Communications

This year I am taking a PR course through the school of Journalism through which we work with real life clients to create a public relations campaign.

The client I am working with is a not-for-profit organisation that works with CIDA to provide funding to women's rights organisations in developing countries. As a not-for-profit with a declining donor base, the organisation is struggling mightily to survive. The staff are overworked and underpaid, so their budget for the campaign is $0. Naturally, their idea was to use our generation's proficiency with the Internet to capitalise on free forms of social media.

I think that this idea is common with a lot of small businesses or organisations who have very little wiggle room with their money. They think they can develop a brilliant communications campaign through facebook, twitter, and a sub-par website - all for free.

What my organisation does not want to admit is that while twitter and facebook may not require a fee, to use them sucessfully still involves lots of costs. For example, this overrun staff is never going to find time to blog, tweet, and update their website. Moreover, no one on their paid staff feels comfortable with new media, and it is hard to count on volunteers to keep updating and monitoring all of these sites.

My PR team is really struggling to convey all of these challenges to the organisation. Our client is clinging to the idea that they can reach all these people for free, which makes them very unwilling to allocate any kind of budget to the campaign. They see that facebook comes without a price tag and don't understand why they will need to allocate resources to be successful.

In this class we recently had a guest lecturer from Delta Media talk about how many groups are abandoning PR strategies and simply signing onto facebook. Do you guys think social media is the new face of public relations, or will these group become disenchanted with all their "free" options and look again at advertising and more traditional communications to reach their publics?