Get a bunch of celebrity artists, get them to sing a song for you, don’t mention your brand anywhere but make sure everyone knows it’s all about you. What you get is a branded song. Next you create a myspace page, a music video and you make a deal with MTV so they play your video clip. The end result is a great example of advertising by association. Or in other words “open happiness” by Coca-Cola.

open happiness video       open happiness myspace

Coca-cola has a long history in musical strategy. It all started with the “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” Jingle that was part of the Coca-Cola classic campaign in 1971.

 You might also remember the “chihuahua” song. And let’s not forget the “holidays are coming” jingle that has practically become world heritage.

of course music strategies aren’t new. It was Aristotle who said that the eyes are the organs of temptation, but the ears are the organs of instruction. The ear sends a sound to the brain, setting in motion creative thought. One of the crucial tasks that the ear performs is to help us remember and recollect. So the basic logic of combining audio and video in advertising has been around since the early days of television.

But with “open happiness” Coke is taking music strategies and advertising by association to the next level. It’s not a commercial, there is no brand name. Everyone just knows it is about Coca-cola. And that has everything to do with the “happiness factory” campaign that has been going on for some time now.

So we all know the simple melody and now thanks to Coca-cola we will be humming it for days and days. But that is not all. the lyrics, the video, the message it is screaming Coca-Cola.

“C’mon and lift me up, it’s a brand new day, open up a lil’ happiness today, so I can be someone new,”

I feel like ripping open a can of Coke right now just writing this stuff.

So all this branding but without ever mentioning the brand in the song, showing one logo or can in the video. Well a round of applause for Coca-Cola. But then again I don’t think another brand could pull this off. You need to be very firmly present in the consumers mindset to think about creating associations without any brand representation. 

At Coca-Cola they seem to be loving this type of marketing and with good reason of course. It is creative, different and … fun. As marketing should always be. Give your consumers something, offer them a service. It is not about putting signs up on every corner. It is about being remembered.  By which I don’t mean that everyone should begin writing songs or we might go back to this:

These days impeccable service is of enormous importance for brands and customers. Brands shouldn't give crappy service to their customers. Why? Because first of all they might decide not to stick with you and change brands. Not a big loss? Well they can also tell their friends about the crappy service you gave them. Or they can even tell more than a million people you deliverd them bad service. 

When United Airlines employees threw arround and broke musician Dave Caroll's guitar they wouldn't give him compensation. So Dave Caroll decided to make three songs about his experiences with United Airlines. Here is the first one:

The song got more than a million viewers and reached the attention of CNN. It became somewhat a nightmare for United Airlines who are finally willing to reward the musician for his loss. They will also be using this case as a learning opportunity to ensure better service in the future.

Lesson to be learnd is that brands should really keep in mind that customers have a voice these days and that service is everything.

A nice tribute to Michael Jackson made by The Mortierbrigade and a great job by Group94. This is ofcourse jumping on a hype but it is a nice viral anyway. The micro site is powered by Studio Brussels but the commercial motives are pretty much absent. Non commercial virals always seem to have a benefit.

The top 20 virals at the moment are all filled with his songs.  Enormous amounts of Twitter and facebook posts pay tribute. Many off us grew up with his music and tried to copy that moonwalk. One can't ignore that a big brand has died. Yet many will still remember this brand that Michael Jackson was for decades. A small tribute to the man, the legend, the brand:

a bit too direct marketing

The great thing about advertising is that it is always evolving closely linked to those values and objectives that play a central role in people’s lives. Today it is all about adding value. Advertising should evolve into a service and has to offer an experience. The main consumers today are of course the new pragmatics. It is especially this generation that provides the fuel for the trend toward marketing as an experience. For them the ultimate goal in live is to have enriching experiences because those define who they are and sculpt their personalities.

A couple of months ago “the best job in the world”-campaign showed that a campaign can be based entirely on the promise of an experience. The campaign was so successful that the free publicity it generated for Queensland had an estimated value of 81 million Euros. Ever since similar campaigns have seen the light of day. The Australian tour operator “Voyages” is looking for a general manager for the Lizard Island resort, New Zealand holds a competition to find someone who is willing to taste wine and promote the region, …

Currently Vodafone launched their “world of difference”-campaign. This year the competition offers 8 people the opportunity to work for a charity of their choice overseas for a full year. Vodafone pays all the expenses plus a great salary.

the result of last years world of difference-campaign.

This campaign seems to combine two very important contemporary trends: The drive towards experience and the need for corporate social responsibility.  

Wow what a great new device. This is the next generation smart phone. I mean common just take a look at the film and I bet you will all be dying to get your hands on the pomegranate NS08.

Ok ok, when the girl started shaving her legs I had my doubts to. But if it exists I would be flabbergasted. So I surfed to Pomegranate website and indeed all the info was there. So you want to know when you can get one of your own of course. Just click on the release date in the right corner. And...

Bummer... but I feel the sudden urge to visit Nova Scotia though!

Nova Scotia is all about peace and tranquility unlike the concept of a smart phone. But without them ever saying anything directly about the region I feel like I know everything it stands for. I think this is a great way to advertise. You must do this carefully and it won't work for most brands. But this teasing campaign works wonderfully for the Nova Scotia proposition. I am not sure about the reach of this campaign, seeing that it is just another viral. But it will have a strong impact on all those overworked business people dying for a vacation.

Flashmobs are being used a lot lately in marketing. A flashmob is defined as

a large group of people who assemble in a public place , perform an usual action for a brief time and, then quickly disperse.

Improv Everywhere already has been experimenting with this sort actions since 2001. They don't call their actions flash mobbing, they just cause a scene. Their ideas however seem to have influenced T Mobile. They organized an evolution of dance (haven't i seen this evolution before ?) and performed in on mass scale at Liverpool station. They film the flash mobbing, put it online and hope their first flash mob makes a great viral. And life did seem for sharing as it got more than 11 million hits. VTM took the idea and made their flash mob dance in Antwerp Central station to promote their upcoming television show "op zoek naar maria", the flemish redo of BBC's search for maria.

T Mobile now comes up with a new flash mob in which 13.500 people came together to sing songs like hey jude in Trafalgar Square, which will probably become another hit viral.

The Question rises however what extra value flash mobs bring to the marketing table. Surely they bring people together, producing lots of smiley faces. And yes even I watch the virals with a smile on my face. But how often can the flash mob idea be rethought and reproduced? What's new about another flash mob? And don't we forget about the brand but just remind the cool stunt ?

Who you are is of the utter most importance for a company regardless of what business you are in. Whether it is B2C, B2B, FMCG, offering services, NGO's,... . Who you are always starts at the basis. Everything you will ever be doing communication wise and even business wise in general comes down to the marketing fundamentals you have laid down in the past.

You start off by formulating a solid corporate identity. This corporate identity concept is based on distinguished physical (buildings, offices, interiors), psychological (manners, procedures, risuals,...) and social characteristics (shared values, attitudes, convictions) of an organization. Eventually you try to compress all of this to the size of a walnut in order to create a corporate logo. At this stage most of the companies tend to make the mistake of trying to put literally everything the company stands for in a visual. This of course doesn't work. Some of the great logo's we know today are those who kept it simple and connected the meaning of the company to a strong visual. By this I don't mean that a logo can't be exuberant. Today we see a strong trend that turns away from the less is more holy grail. What I am trying to say is that it is often impossible to reduce everything to the size of a logo.

But then occasionally you come across a corporate logo that seems to blend all the aspects of a company together. The Dutch production company ID TV has just such a logo. ID TV is a creative and ever changing company. So it is important that their logo reflects just that. In an extraordinary way the design agency Lava graphic design managed to deliver a little piece of art. They created a logo that can be seen as a living entity and that is as versatile as the company it represents. The logo they created consists out of 4 pixels in different shades of grey. By doing this it becomes possible to make endless combinations with the 4 pixels.

So Lava graphic design didn't create one logo but rather 4096 possible combinations . The pixels are a direct link with ID TV 's core business and represent the 4 main activities of the company. The pixels themselves can be used in hundreds of different ways, together or separate. No matter in what form it is always clear that they represent ID TV. So there are 4096 possible combinations but always one identity.

Ow and if such a cool logo wasn't enough just take a look at their company office.

Facebook is currently reconsidering their terms of use. They are not doing this within a corporate vacuum. Instead they are asking the Facebook users to vote which terms of use they seem fitted best. This looks like the normal thing to do for a company that offers a service to millions of people. Especially when this company is depending on the goodwill of those people to make money. This is of course something you might expect from a company that is based on web 2.0 principles. Even though Facebook had to learn it the hard way. In February Facebook already changed its terms of use. This without consulting with the Facebook users. It is understandable that they didn't ask the users first because the changed terms gave Facebook the right to keep changing the terms of condition without ever having to consult anyone. Needless to say that a lot of protest rose to the surface. Next to this somewhere a month ago the Facebook lay-out changed drastically overnight. This again without consulting their users or at least notifying the change. The grassroots mentality of the past soon kicked in and millions of users started protesting. They did this in all kind of ways: via Youtube, blogs, even online petitions.

The most protest was seen on Facebook itself where millions of people joined groups that complained about the new lay out and demanded the old lay out would come back. The old lay out never came back but now Facebook is at least asking the users for advise before changing the terms of condition. A true victory of the empowered consumer some believers might say.

I am actually not that convinced. The current discourse in online marketing focuses strongly on the empowered consumer and how this consumers is in fact really turning out to be king. Well we might want to reconsider that cliché when we take a look at the Facebook case. A large group of people was mobilized to protest against the new layout. But recently Facebook exceeded the magical number of 200 million users. So despite strong reaction of a large group the Facebook community kept on growing. So is the consumer empowered? Well he might get mad, start kicking around screaming but eventually lays down his head and excepts what is imposed on him. It is all very nicely summarized in this film.

Now you might say that eventually they are listening because they ask the users to vote on the new terms of use. But this is of course not co creation. It is the same as walking in a shoe store and having the choice between black or grey shoes. If you had your mind set on a blue version, well that is too bad.