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 »

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 »

A few months back, I was helping an older relative clean out their attic – a space home, among other things, to nearly every issue of National Geographic released for the last 40 years. There is, of course, no way to stumble upon a cache of old magazines without thumbing through a few. The journalism itself was instantly-recognizable – most things you could transpose to a modern National Geographic without too much incident – but what was astounding were the differences in advertising.

Marketers and advertisers have spent over 100 years trying to communicate with customers in modern, recognizable ways, and during that time the language we use to do that has evolved. Customers now don’t need everything spelled out – they react instantly to small symbolic cues, rich images, and a memorable tagline – but consumers of previous eras didn’t have the rich symbolic vocabulary necessary to do that. The result was advertisements that are much more literal – and maybe more informative, in a strict sense – than the ones we have today.

We’ve collected ten of the coolest vintage magazine and TV ads we could find. Have others? Post them in the comments! And make sure to check out our resource center on getting the most out of agency partnerships, so maybe your company will be on a list like this in 2061. Read More »

(this is a guest post by Mandy Levenberg of Iconoculture, our sister program that tracks and analyzes consumer trends)

A recent study on cause marketing and its effectiveness has been getting some attention and begs for our response.  Recent research from the University of Michigan suggests that consumers who buy products benefiting a cause are less likely to donate directly to that cause. In addition to the sample size, 300 college students, not being wholly reflective of the general population, the conclusions are contrary to a few noteworthy studies (Cone et al) and observations we’ve seen over the last several years regarding consumers and cause. When students are on a limited budget, they may stop at the cause purchase, but generally this is not the case and certainly not with a broader consumer group. Consumers may have turned to cause buying–we refer to this as “pragmactivism”–more than in the past, but we often see this activity lead to a more holistic connection with the cause in the form of future donations, hands-on volunteering, cause ambassadorship, and much more.  From our vantage point, cause marketing—the dollars non-profits receive, the potential “halo” effect on brands, and the connections consumers make with causes—is very much alive and well. Read More »

(The following is a guest post from David Sroka, President and CEO of Point of Reference, a customer referral program provider.)

The marketing department in B2B firms is typically responsible for producing “evidence” of satisfied customers in the form of case studies, quotes, press releases and videos. This customer content has plenty of uses and users, but arguably, the heaviest consumer is the sales force. Like other marketing “investments,” there’s an imperative to make decisions that garner the biggest bang for the buck. So how should the marketing department decide how to spend its finite budget when it comes to sales-accelerating assets like customer content? Start by considering the current range of available content relative to where it’s needed in the sales cycle. For instance, press releases and one-page success stories are perfectly appropriate early on in the sales cycle, but less meaningful and effective in the middle to later stages.  Full ROI case studies, often 5-10 pages in length, are overkill for the early stages when buyers are merely tire kicking.

To provide a framework for this approach we created a tool to help you link various content types to various sales stages: Read More »

This week, we’re continuing our Global Sports Ad Tournament with the second half of the round 1 bracket – four matchups.

As a reminder, we’ve selected 16 recent sports ad campaigns from around the world – every sport from Australian rules football to NASCAR – and randomly seeded them into brackets. Each week, campaigns will go head to head and our readers (that’s you!) will have the opportunity to vote for which one you think is best. Voting for this round ends Tuesday, March 29 at noon. May the best ad win! Read More »

By Whitney Satin

Marketers don’t always have it easy when it comes to recognition within B2B organizations.  Often the spotlight lands on the engineer who designs the sleekest new model or the sales rep who lands the biggest contract of the decade.  Horror tales abound of small marketing teams huddled in the dusty and cobweb-ridden bowels of corporate facilities, struggling to convince the organization of the benefits of segmentation and value props.

Okay, maybe that last part is a bit of a stretch, but the reality is that many of us work in sales- or technology-driven companies where marketing is the afterthought, not a leading player.  Well, now’s your chance to show that Marketing is a force to be reckoned with, to gain bragging rights among your peers, to prove once and for all that marketers are the rock stars of the company.  It’s time … for the 3^rd annual B2B MarComm Awards! Read More »

In the spirit of the NCAA college basketball tournament (which starts Thursday – go Spiders!), this month MLC is running a March Madness tournament of our own – to name the best sports ad campaign of the last few years.

Here’s the deal: we’ve selected 16 recent sports ad campaigns from around the world – every sport from Australian rules football to NASCAR – and randomly seeded them into brackets. Each week, campaigns will go head to head and our readers (that’s you!) will have the opportunity to vote for which one you think is best. Voting ends Tuesday, March 22 at noon.

This week, we’ll present half of the Round 1 bracket – four matchups. Read More »

With smartphone usage growing fast amongst both consumers and physicians, pharma is going mobile. Some 40% of pharmaceutical companies already use mobile to communicate with physicians, consumers, or employees, while a further 30% will launch their first mobile experiment this year (according to a recent survey).

Marketing to Healthcare Professionals

A full 100% of surveyed companies plan to target (or already target) healthcare professions with their mobile initiatives. This is the right starting point for investment in mobile, given both the regulatory complications of marketing to consumers and the high level of smartphone adoption amongst physicians. 72% of physicians are now using smartphones – mostly iPhones and Blackberries. Moreover, 80% are more likely to base a clinical decision on information accessed via Smartphone than on information from a journal.  That ability to access information in the moment makes all the difference. For pharma companies, ensuring that educational websites are mobile-friendly is a critical first step here. But leading companies are going further to make sure their sites are useful enough to merit regular visits.  These companies provide third-party data, latest news, and tools (e.g., medical calculators) that save physicians time. Read More »

Look at this picture of jeans and tell me how much you think it’s worth. And here’s some basic info to help you along: “Low rise straight leg jean provides a simple, clean and slim silhouette, crafted in stretch denim designed to flatter your curves. Imported.”

The brand is on par with Levi’s. Read More »