Musings Of A Marketer

Just come across an interesting move from an advertising agency here in Russia, in Saint-Petersburg.

Loki & Bartleby agency sent some sort of a ransome note to the companies they saw a potential to cooperate with. The note was written in a style you see in crime movies – letters cut out of some printed media. A courier would deliver a black envelope to the potential clients. The ransom note was inside, with the text saying: We know where the ad idea you are looking for is. If you want the idea in life call this number. Do not try to call other agencies or else your idea will only suffer more.

The difference is just that the note is not anonymous

The black envelope would add to the mystery of the situation.

Very nice idea, not really sure how efficient in the end but a very amusing and eye-catching one…

The agency reports, 30% to 40% of the receivers called without any further action from the agency. Here below is the ransom note.

Loki & Bartleby ransom note

It’s always been a matter of interest and excitement for me to follow the offline businesses applying online techniques to promotion.

Here is one pretty example: the well-known Italian brand (dealing with pasta, of course) Barilla introduced a website - called DiscoverBarilla where a visitor can fill up his/her friend’s name and have a postcard with Italian landscapes sent to a postal address.

Different destinations of Italy are represented in the cards and each destination has a specific pasta recipe on it.

This idea brings you away from viewing the communication as delivering pure commercial message. This is interactive communication from a friend who, in the first place, cares to say hi to you, and the shares a story of Italy… And all that is done through a brand. Guess that might work better than an ordinary monologue you hear every day through TV, radio, print, billboards and even online.

Could it be pure online? It could – we know numerous free and paid services for e-cards delivery. I am certain, however, that a chance to feel the real card, touch and smell the piece of Italy your friend shares with you, has to add to the response that the brand aims at.

One could even think of using certain scents on the postcards that would add to warmth and romance of the Italian atmosphere.

Well done, Barilla! Still some way to go, though:

• The site is made in flash, and way too heavy. Even with broadband connection you need some time for download, there’s no way to change between flash and html
• The service is only active in the US, but I am guessing it wouldn’t be so bad to bring it over to other parts. At least, I would appreciate…

I was writing not so long ago, about Jon Lunetta trying to approach the Russian mobile marketers here in Russia, and how slow (actually zero response) the latter were… This is the tendency with mobile marketing here in Russia: companies open for a certain client - be it a old buddy or good partner from previous business, and that client remains a very major one - if not the only one. Basically, the methods of mobile advertising would focus on text-to-win campaigns.

Just today I noticed a poster advertising a mobile marketing campaign for a beer brand Velkopopovitskiy Kozel. And this is the first campaign that I have in memory, which focuses on something more than simple text-to-win. This campaign attempts to create a certain community around the brand. The technique is as follows: you need to sms 2 codes to a short number (priced at the level of ordinary sms) to be able to create a virtual tavern. Here is where you invite your friends, who need to have a couple of beers at your tavern (i.e. sms a couple of codes to the shortcode). In the end the winner (announced every day, according to the number of friends who visit your tavern) receives a prize. What is not so good about the campaign is that it only lasts 2 months - not so smart if you wish to build a community around your brand. I guess this was not the idea… Another problem is the campaign’s website. It’s nice, cute and has got a bit of humour. But it’s soooo slow - must be lighter, definitely.

Anyway, good to see that the innovative methods are acquired around here. Wether this is a single exception or a tendency - we should see, but anyway. Unfortunately, this cool idea comes again from a beer brand, which means that the major threat for businesses come not from competition but from legislative restrictions. The bonds imposed on alcoholic brands make the players keep searching for new ways of advertising, while the industries where legislation is more liberal are still seeing sweet dreams of prosperity, without having to compete with their peers, the clients or government… None needs to do anything as long as everyone is happy…

This is a very interesting phenomenon: some brands that have a specific emotional background tend to age together with their consumers. Many examples would come from cosmetics brands: these very often target various ages with various products. Soon as the audience is firmly up on your product you have to treat them with special care: people are the same but they are not the same people any longer. Communication must change respectively, and so must the product accompanied by that communication. Chanel #5 did a good job to come back, who else?

Something similar goes to brands in transition economies. These brands, however, grow old overnight. They do not just age with ageing audience but rather become outdated with new mentality coming in. Economies are set free, borders open and new strong brands with strong managerial expertise come to play. The “old” brands are just not able to compete, and the only connotative aspect that is left is the nostalgic emotions that people feel when hearing the brand name familiar from those “good old days when we were young”… This is the feeling that managers often appeal to when trying to revive their brands. But in most cases it’s a dead end - the audience is not as promising as the new wave…

Here below is a very interesting idea how to ornate a public toilet in a mall. This was implemented in Portugal. Allegedly, this is for a more lusty experience in a lavatory. Could be just a joke for fun. But here is an idea for an advertiser: dress those ladies in branded underwear, and a cool, fun advertising media is there for you

I have just come across a video that we’ve made when working at TeriMobile. This was about our Bluetooth marketing platform - TeriZone. If interested, have a look, the videos aren’t so bad to describe the service at work.