Just Clicked to Say I Like You

Posted on October 27th, 2010 in Design | 3 Comments »


Your Intranet Needs You

Stay relevant

Design is a curious profession with naturally curious practitioners. I think it has something to do with the elusive leprechuan called “inspiration,” or maybe just the pressing need to be relevant, or maybe a simple desire to posses a large experiential palette from which to draw creativity but..

Advertising is an area every designer should study. Especially clever advertising which rolls all three of the above purposes of curiosity into a single swallow.

Plenty of Beers Want Your Love and Undivided Attention

Corona just wants a little “like.”

This should appeal to even the slightest kernel of vanity: towering over New York’s iconic Time Square, your face. Usually an expensive/difficult/need to be a model kind of endeavor, the reward of visual domination has been made a little more accessible by the U.S.’s numero uno import beer brand: Corona.

They'd appreciate some love, but..

Corona really just wants you to like 'em

The popular Mexican beer jumped on the social media band wagon being hauled by Facebook by creating an app for the blue behemoth to make Corona Light The Most Liked Beer in America.

Bottom Up

The campaign is simple:

“Like” the Corona Light Facebook page, gain access to the Time Square app.

Upload your photo and you’re in the lotto to be run on the company’s billboard from November 8 to December 6.

The Unmistakable Color

Corona’s billboard will become one of the most visually accessible advertisements in the world. Ideally, that aforementioned vanity will cause each featured Facebook user to spread their brief advert debut  to all their friends, along with the associated Corona ad.

And I have a feeling the people who end up on this rotating billboard will be much akin to your buddy who went to Europe once, for a week and won’t shut up about what an “experience” it was. Every time they get drunk, they’ll tell the same story for a year or two. Or five.

That’s a raving fan.

Most importantly though, every “like” will grant Corona access to a Facebook user’s news feed making for beaucoup free advertising.

That’s a raving robot.

Vacation in a Bottle

Considering Corona’s intelligent shift to a younger audience, the brand is playing a smart card here and will probably edge out an incredibly strong market share among light beers.

Besides keeping up to date on ad trends, a designer should take the strongest lesson advertising can give away: differentiation. You’ve got to be more than just clever and clear in communicating a message. Your message has to be different; a tailored signal to your audience amongst an ocean of media noise.

Carve out a slyce and plug it in there. It really does complement the flavor. Almost mandatory if you ask me.

P.S. I have to give most of the credit on this post to our own social media gal, Victoria. As always, much thanks.

Local Demographics – You Are Where You Live

Posted on August 9th, 2010 in Small Business | No Comments »

Part of being a successful business owner is knowing who your customers even are. Before deciding that you need a logo designed or copy to be written, take some time to figure out who you plan on providing your product or service to. Today, Lifehacker featured MyBestSegments, and showed how you can use this tool from Nielson to see how you are marketed to. This is mildly interesting if you’re a consumer, but a powerful tool as a business.

You Are Where You Live
By entering the zip codes in the area you are hoping to target, You Are Where You Live will show you the major demographics according to Nielsen’s lifestyle segmentation systems. Let’s take beautiful Tempe, Arizona for example.

Tempe ranks high segments like Bohemian Mix and Young Influentials. By clicking on the descriptions of the segments, you get explainations detailing traits like income and age ranges, ethnic diversity and education levels as well as housing arrangements. The site explains “Bohemian Mixers are the early adopters who are quick to check out the latest movie, nightclub, laptop, and microbrew.”

Targeted Design
Knowing the kinds of people living in your area should now help you in your design process. Living in an area with finicky consumers with tastes for new and fresh ideas would warrant having a modern logo design and a marketing campaign showing your new products. Having customers with more conservative wants would guide you to choosing a more classic look with familiar tones and conventional advertising.

Just because you are different than everyone else doesn’t guarantee you business success. Finding where you fall in the location you plan on doing business in will make you more successful than just trying to stand out. Guide your design and marketing programs accordingly and you’ll become a part of the community.

Changing Industries: Advertising and PR

Posted on July 22nd, 2010 in Small Business | 5 Comments »

Changing Industries:  Advertising and PR

Most people would agree that social media is a good thing, right?  I mean, come on, we all get excited when we see that someone has commented on one of our facebook photos or when someone has started following us on twitter;  it’s easy to get sucked in.  What I’m wondering though, is if this new idea of advertising online is changing the old ideas about advertising and PR.

This year, McDonalds hired one of the first ever Chief of Social Media.  How crazy is that?  I thought I was just wasting my time creating silly facebook pages and updating my tweets but now I see that I can make an entire career out of it!  Every company has a twitter and facebook page now, and let’s face it, if they don’t, they aren’t being competitive.   What I’m curious about however, is this:  does this new social media obsession put traditional careers in PR and marketing in jeopardy?  According to David Meerman Scott, who wrote “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” (a great read by the way; I highly suggest it) thinks that social media and the world of the internet will in fact challenge the old job functions of marketing and PR professionals.

Scott says “Prior to the web, organizations had only two significant choices to attract attention:  Buy expensive advertising or get third-party ink from the media.”  He continues to write “Organizations that understand the New Rules of Marketing and PR develop relationships directly with consumers…”

So, I ask this again:  If the traditional role of advertising (buying expensive ad space) and PR (getting mentions from the media) are seemingly obsolete due to the new concept of reaching customers directly through social media efforts, then couldn’t several traditional advertising and public relations agencies go out of business?

I’ve noticed that many traditional advertising agencies and pr firms have started to embrace this trend by including social media services in their list of specialties.   However, one thing I have seen that interests me is how they phrase these services.  They seem to Lightly threaten potential clients by saying things like “sure social media could help your business but only if done properly.”  It’s almost like they want to stop clients from managing their social media accounts on their own.  It makes me wonder if there is a fear that organizations will lean towards doing their social media themselves rather than go to an agency and therefore the agency feels more inclined to suggest that only advertising professionals know how to social network properly.

My opinion?  I think agencies are a bit fearful, and they are definitely not wrong to be.  The concept of social media advertising is still pretty new and it is only going to get bigger.  My advice?  Get a twitter!  I know, I know, a bunch of you either groaned or dry heaved but seriously, do it!  In fact, get everything!  Start a blog, get a linkedin, take at least one picture a day and post it to flickr.  This is the new frontier!  Do you really want to be left behind?  Embrace social media;  it’s here to stay.

Comments?  I’d love to hear them ;-)