It’s that time again! In honor of the big game, we’re reposting our top 10 Super Bowl ads of all time. Enjoy!

The Super Bowl is back—meaning it’s time to stock up on Buffalo Chicken dip, kick back in front of the TV and watch some of the best commercials you’ll see all year. Or, catch some football. Whether you’re a sports fanatic or not, the creative ads airing between tackles are always highly anticipated. As well they should be—advertisers shell out close to $3million for a 30-second spot.

While some ads miss the mark, many make such an impact that we still talk about them years later. We’ve compiled a list of our top Super Bowl ads ever for your very own trip down memory lane: Read More »

As detailed in our decision simplicity work from last summer, using trusted brand advisors can help build a brand.  These brand advocates help consumers relate to the brand, and they have much more credibility than other branded communications.  This trusted advice, along with helping consumers learn about your brand and weigh their options, simplifies decisions for consumers; these simpler decisions make them more likely to have brand intent, to follow through on that intent, to repurchase, and to recommend the products to their friends.

But many brands struggle with the risk involved when using consumers to market the brand.  After all, giving consumers the license to share their thoughts on your brand allows them to share the bad along with the good.  In addition, it can be hard to select the right people to represent the brand.

Ford tackled these challenges to launch the U.S. model of the Ford Fiesta by using consumer advisors, or “agents.”  To ensure that both consumers and the brand could trust the agents, Ford implemented a rigorous selection process to ensure good brand fit and social media reach.  Ford selected a very diverse group of agents, so most consumers in the Fiesta’s target demographic can find agents like them.

A larger struggle for most brands, though, is giving up control over what the consumer advisors say.  Ford knew it needed to balance the need for some brand control with the need to generate authenticity by giving agents uncensored speech, so they assigned monthly missions to give some structure to the agents’ experiences. Ford then allowed the agents to use their own blogs, tweets, and YouTube channels to tell their stories in their own words, pictures, and videos.

In addition to providing structure for the agents, Ford further leveraged these missions by selecting some that highlighted the car’s features.  For example, one mission had one agent drive until his car ran out of gas, showcasing the car’s high gas mileage; other missions included turning the car into an ice-cream truck (showing off a large amount of trunk and storage space) and taking a road trip (to demonstrate its comfort over long distances).

Using the agents to tell the brand’s story had really positive results: Ford generated the same name awareness for the Fiesta as the Ford Edge and Flex had after two years of traditional advertising at just 10% the cost of a traditional media campaign.

After seeing such great success in the United States, Ford adopted the campaign for India.  MLC members, click here to read about how Ford used the agents to generate brand interest in an emerging market.

As the year draws to a close, we’re wrapping up our five favorite ads of 2011. This year’s best ads almost all focus on something we called a few years back: that brands, in order to avoid downward price pressure and maintain share of wallet given recessionary habits, were going to have to make a concerted effort to inject shared values into their marketing communications, and become more than sellers of goods, but enablers of a better life.

Three of this year’s best hit those buttons, we think. As for the other two: a little levity never hurt anyone. Here are our thoughts – let us know what you think in comments!

Read More »

This year, as they’ve done the past two years, the popular Consumerist blog asked its readers: “What are the worst American ads of 2011?” A few weeks ago, they released their results: ads from Luv’s, Summers Eve, AT&T, and Geico were ignominiously awarded spots in the list of finalists, while the Luv’s ad, a gleeful celebration of, well, poop, was named the “Worst of the Year”.

But we actually happen to think these ads aren’t too bad. I doubt any will ever win an award, but many get their point across – and shore up brand differentiators – extremely well, despite the little things that pushed the Consumerist’s readerships’ buttons.

Read on for the “worst”, and our thoughts on each. And please check out our Marketing Communications and Creative and Content resources, to learn how the best brands generate messages and creative to reach their consumers better. Read More »

Improved technology, policy intervention, and the recession have led to broad structural changes in a number of industries we write about on Wide Angle, but probably none so much as healthcare. In the past few years, we’ve seen a major health reform effort in the US that will bring millions of new patients into the system, growing consensus around a reformation of the patent system abroad, and technological shifts that may soon allow for a very rapid scaling in diagnosis and other medical services.

So, how should marketers expect their jobs to change? We came up with a few ways; let us know more in comments! Read More »

Marketers have always found ways to grab consumers’ attention to get their message across.  But attention is scarcer than ever – given marketing message overload (ad fatigue), DVR uptake (ad skipping) and the rise of multi-tasking (lower attention/focus in general).

The latest tactics for breaking through increasingly high barriers to attention all have some serious limitations: Read More »

Editor’s note: We put this up (and in our member newsletter) prior to last night’s news that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had passed away. We’ll have thoughts on his legacy later this week.

The following is a guest post from Robert van Alstyne, a media and technology analyst with our sister program, Iconoculture.

It’s a testament to technology’s ascendant role in pop culture that today’s Apple press conference had more consumer buzz than any new TV show this fall season. With media-saturated consumers’ tastes increasingly splintered, gadget lust is now one of the last common denominators uniting the masses.

Heading into today’s press conference, professional pundits and John Q. Public speculated wildly, debating what new treats Apple would unveil. Would we get an iPhone 5 or just a new iPhone 4? Prior to the event, rumors of a slimmer, 3X-faster iPhone 5 reached a crescendo. By the time new Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the stage this morning, online chatter had reached such a pitch that one colleague speculated on Twitter, “I wonder, did America stop what it was doing in, say, 1953, when the next model *car* was announced?”

In a move that disappointed some true believers, there was no iPhone 5 announcement, “just” the iPhone 4S, which will hit stores October 14. The new phone still boasts impressive hardware advancements. Among the iPhone 4S’ selling points are the ability to switch intelligently between two antennas to transmit and receive (thereby doubling data download speed), along with a serious camera upgrade. Initial online reaction was “meh,” but we’d be shocked if the 4S doesn’t sell extraordinarily well, just like its predecessor.

Right now, Apple’s main selling point is its image as a cutting-edge company, so the product details matter relatively little to the average consumer. By tirelessly turning their brand into an essential emblem of digital savvy, Apple has carved out both a cult-like following and an ever-broadening base of users. Apple’s old-guard faithful might be disappointed, and they might not “need” the latest iteration of the iPhone. But whatever the specs, in a growing number of consumers’ eyes, Apple’s latest remains a cherished status symbol, broadcasting to all that they’re in step with our fast-moving information-driven world.

MLC members, for more great Iconoculture insights, check out the selected pieces we publish each week on the latest consumer trends.

Crowdsourcing in marketing is not new. The most prominent example—the immensely popular fan-created commercials for Doritos as part of its Crash the Super Bowl campaign. Probably taking a leaf out of Doritos’ book, Chevrolet has also announced plans to follow a similar strategy.

However, such stories should not mislead marketers to believe that crowdsourcing is a quick way to achieve amazing results.  In contrast, reaching out to a large average crowd can actually overwhelm marketers with the sheer number of ideas they receive, and the time and effort in sifting through those ideas can be much larger than engaging an agency to do the job. Moreover, the ideas can also turn out to be completely off-track and unusable.

That said, the good news is—some new agency models have evolved over the last 3-4 years that help to conduct, what can be called, “targeted crowdsourcing” or “expertsourcing.” Here, instead of broadcasting a project brief to masses, only select few specialists are chosen to do the assignment.

Here are some examples of such models: Read More »

We recently heard from a couple of our members in the B2B manufacturing space about their saturation with product marketing, and increasing noise from competition in their industry domain. Many of them were chasing the ever-eluding differentiator against their competitors.

Our advice to them has been to read our work on influencing the empowered customer that predicts a larger role for B2B marketing in the sales process. B2B marketing must tag-team with sales to diagnose and respond to customer needs drive urgency toward the purchase. At the same time as they need to play a larger role in sales, B2B marketers are used to segmenting based on who customers are and what they are buying. They must now move a step further and address why customers are buying and how they can differentiate and adapt to the evolving buying process.

Presented here are our learnings from our B2B MarComm Awards Showcase, on what B2B manufacturing companies can do to make their marketing campaigns differentiated, and successful:

• Own a higher-order need: Conventional B2B manufacturers maybe tempted to talk more about the unparalleled efficacy of their product, but the product differences can be less obvious to the buyers. Companies can benefit from a positioning differentiation, by positioning themselves as fulfillers of the overarching needs their product caters to. For example, AEL Mining introduced electronic explosives with a focus on safety and well-being of miners, rather than product attributes. The campaign got an average of 10,000 visitors a month.
• If you’re a leader, flaunt it: This might sound clichéd, but companies must emphatically claim leadership in categories in which they enjoy a sustained competitive advantage. When Siemens ran its impact campaign, it positioned itself as the only true partner for American lawmakers to answer the Nation’s toughest questions. This reduced the risk perception of the company and led to impressive gains in brand loyalty, consideration and purchase.
• Break communication conventions: Let’s admit it, manufacturing companies are often guilty of creating marketing collateral with uninspiring copy and dull imagery. Cummins realized that in their industry, the ads are usually conventional with trucking equipment and parts photos shown. The company stepped over the acceptable bounds and norms with their big and bold, Cummins red identity in their “Hard to Miss” campaign. They made message the king – 1-800-DIESELS got a lot of recollection and recognition.
• Market internally first: Since the B2B sales and marketing processes rely heavily on each other, any marketing campaign must be sold internally first. Sales reps must be made aware of the strategic objectives of the campaign, and given tactical guidance on achieving the objective. Like Emerson, prepare internally facing marketing collateral before you market externally.

MLC members can register for our upcoming Webinar on the Best of B2B MarComm Awards 2011, which will feature the winning entries of this year’s B2B MarComm Awards to be held at The Sales and Marketing Summit in Las Vegas.

Even though the weather and leaves are just beginning to turn, and we still have to get through Columbus Day, Halloween and Thanksgiving before turning our thoughts to visions of sugarplums and eight crazy nights, marketers are hard at work figuring out ways to close the year off strong with a good holiday season.

But how should they do it, while stengthening their brand positions for the year to come? We’ve got a few tips below:

Find ways to lighten the load. For kids, the holiday season is a magical, wonderful time of presents, candy, and sometimes magical elves. For adults, though, it’s probably among the most stressful times of the year – even if the stress is likely to pay off in the form of fun with family and friends.

Great brands recognize that not only is the season particularly hectic, the very act of brand interaction might be, too. Finding ways to save consumers time and money, as well as raising the chances they’ll make the right choice when it comes to gifts, can pay dividends throughout the rest of the year.

So how does this play out practically? Offer your consumers some measures of assurance that they’re making the right choices. Some brands we’ve studied have done this through transparent buying guides – presenting consumers with a range of criteria and offering relevant gift ideas for each – while others have gone the technology route, using social networks to make gift recommendations.

Clarify the brand promise – and deliver it, 100%. There’s no better time to make sure brand promises are airtight – and delivery consistent – than the holidays. The uptick in shopping offers brands an opportunity to make a positive imprint on the consumer, but if crowd-weary shoppers aren’t satisfied with what they get, you may suffer the consequences the rest of the year.

MLC has a wealth of material designed to help companies consistently deliver their brand promises: for instance, here’s how Exxon Mobile motivated employees to consistent brand delivery, how Starbucks ensured consistent brand delivery across all touchpoints – human and not human, and how we recommend brands ensure consistent brand delivery across geographies and segments.

Find avenues of emotional differentiation. Here’s the place where brands – particularly consumer and retail brands – have a golden opportunity to set themselves apart from the competition: finding areas of shared values and ways to emotionally differentiate themselves from competitors. We’ve found, for instance, that brands that align with consumers around emotional values perform at a much higher level than brands that emphasize functional differentiators.

Luckily, emotions are running high during the holiday season, and there are a number of brands that have particularly strong associations with the holidays. Macy’s, for instance, is associated in my mind with the holidays: their sponsorship of the Thanksgiving Day parade and the movie “Miracle on 34th St.” form that association in my mind, and I’m much more likely to shop there during the holidays than at any other time.

Understand and fit into seasonal routines. Routines shift a bit during the holidays for a lot of people and families. I’d say that, on average, one is more likely to bake cookies on a random Tuesday night during December than in other months; one is more likely to visit a mall in December than in other times, one is more likely to drive around looking at tacky Christmas lights – all sorts of things.

Brands that unearth subtle shifts in consumer routines during the holidays can capitalize big on them. For instance: there’s the classic case of General Mills’ Betty Crocker brand figuring out that parents often spent the first week of the holidays doing nothing special, then felt guilty about doing so. So the brand targeted cookie-baking in the second week of the holidays, figuring this was an easy way to assuage parental guilt about not being festive enough.

MLC members, how are you shifting your brand communications mix for the holidays? Let us know in comments below.