The fast food chain Wendys has consistently shown unique ways that they approach their audience. One can go through their official Twitter and see that Wendys does not approach their customers in the typical way that most businesses conduct themselves on social media. Wendys has been able to reach an audience on twitter by interacting with their audience in personal ways by responding to users in a humorous and whimsical tone that often slights their competition. And their new method of advertising takes this approach to the next level.
On Friday, March 23rd, Wendy's official Twitter released a link to a Spotify page entitled "We Beefin?" which has four songs by "At Wendys." They captioned the tweet with "The mixtape drops now. Not pulling punches. We Beefin'."
In each of the songs, Wendys calls out Mcdonalds on multiple occasions about topics such as their lack of fresh ingredients, by claiming that Mcdonalds serves meals that are fake. Wendys also comments on Mcdonald's ice cream by saying "You number one man thats a joke/ Why your ice cream machine always broke."
Since the mixtape has been released, social media has been going crazy over Wendys marketing stunt. Although there are mixed opinions about the quality of the songs, Wendys achieved their goal of getting people talking about their company and their new rap album. By taking a unique approach with their audience, Wendys is gaining more business because of the personal connection they are making with people. By showing their audience that Wendys is not afraid to have fun on social media and by innovating a new method to reach customers, Wendys allows for their company to develop a strong connection with people in a way that their competitors such as Mcdonalds have not been able to do.
Barbie has always been one of those companies that seemed to be setting women back. They are known for creating a unattainable beauty standard for women. People have been saying for years that allowing children to play with these dolls is altering their perception of beauty. The chart below demonstrates the difference between Barbie's measurements and the U.S. Average.
The marketing team at Mattel, Inc. (the creators of Barbie) took this problem and countered it completely. Their new campaign titled "Imagine the Possibilities" follows the theme of following your dreams rather than being a beauty based model for young girls. The commercial below shows a young aspiring professor. The girl is shown dreaming of teaching a real classroom through her play with the dolls. "When a girl plays with barbie, she imagines everything she can become."
It is important for companies to keep up with social standards, and the one that Barbie portrayed in the past is obsolete, old-fashioned, and outdated. Mattel did a great job with this campaign. They really hit the nail on the head with the feministic standards that apply to society today. I think it is safe to say that consumers will again begin to view Barbie as a positive influence in our daughters lives.
Visit You Can Be Anything | Barbie to view a variety of commercials in their campaign line that feature similar concepts with different story lines.
Through the use of Digital Content, Barstool Sports, originally an Internet based blog site, was able to evolve into a content driven media powerhouse.
History of Barstool Sports
Barstool Sports is a sports and men's lifestyle blog founded by Dave Portnoy in 2003. The company first started as a print publication, providing information through newspaper on gambling projections and fantasy sports predictions. However, with the internet boom, Portnoy moved all of Barstool's operations to the internet. From here, Dave Portnoy and other bloggers began covering all aspect of sports through blogging and content creation.
Barstool was able to gain a mass following, due to their outlandish antics, crude humor, and authenticity of the brand. Continuously being in the headlines for their controversial topics, Barstool Sports made it a point to stay true to their brand identity through the digital content they were putting out.
Barstool Sports Use of Digital Content
Digital Content is the secret weapon for Barstool to distribute their message to the world. First starting as an online blog, Barstool then explored creating digital content through YouTube Videos. One example of this, is their widely popular Barstool Pizza Reviews, in which Dave Portnoy will rate pizza places, sometimes with celebrity guests.. This was a pivotal time for Bartstool, because they began to take notice of the results from the content they were putting out.
Barstool Sports Expansion Through Digital Content
Through Barstool's use of digital content, they were able to shift their brand and capitalize on new markets. After moving their headquarters to New York City, Barstool Sports now is on Sirius XM radio, hosting a variety of podcast shows. Barstool received its highest brand awareness through their "Saturday's Are For the Boys" campaign, which became viral across the nation.
They also provide digital content on things such as the Daily Run Down, Rough N Rowdy Boxing Events, Sport Interviews, and just simple comedic videos. I personally believe Bartstool encapsulates the meaning of brand authenticity. They started out distributing content for topics they were passionate about. Through the use of various digital content platforms, they were able to distribute their message in more ways than they originally anticipated.
It is no shock that beer brands have been utilizing "bro humor" for quite some time. However, few have been able to top Budweiser's single word catchphrase that stuck with many, and proved this form of silliness can be successful.
This particular ad campaign began in late 1999, but caught fire after being released during the Super Bowl of 2000. The ad featured a group of male friends greeting one another with "Whassup" as they are "watching the game, having a Bud."
The ad drew some rocky reactions from some older Anheuser-Busch distributors who worried the context would create too urban of a message, and stray from their traditional brand image. The criticism faded quickly as the ad began to become a hit. The Budweiser Whassup ad has been considered one of the most iconic, pop culture ads of the twenty-first century. It obtained several awards, and even gained recognition from impressive Media personalities such as Katie Couric and Howard Stern.
"The campaign went viral before we knew what viral even meant, as people around the world began joyfully greeting each other with their newfound urban phrase," said Keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide and an Ad Age judge.
In addition, digitally the ad was ahead of its time. The brand invited viewers to visit their website where they could learn how to say "Whassup" in more than 30 languages.
This particular ad campaign may have been released at the turn of the century. However, its iconic catchphrase is still well-known to this day. Check out the ad below and see if you remember this classic ad campaign that helped revamp Budweiser's brand image and tone.
DigitasLBi, headquartered in Boston Massachusetts, has aided clients from Buick to MAYTAG with clever, innovative, and technologically based promotional efforts. They define themselves as a Connected Marketing Agency and pride themselves as being fluent in the cross-capability of content on audience platforms.
Their most recent project was with PlayStation for the launch of their new game Horizon Zero Dawn.
The mix of life size replicas, live video feed, perfect place of execution, and a manager on the social media end aided in the success of the overall guerilla promotional effort. Their promotional efforts increased social media mentions by 1000% through this 11-month campaign.
They were able to reach prime prospects at various video game conventions and connect with them both physically and through social media. They appeared at E3-2016, and it is described as the, "premier event for computer and video games and related products". They became extremely impressionable by appearing on the stage, larger than life "Watchers", in attempts to awe and build buzz for the 2017 release of Horizon Zero Dawn.
As a gamer and costume/replica enthusiast myself, this kind of display did exactly what DigitasLBi wanted. I was surprised that it took an alternative route. Rather than using ingame footage and building a suspenseful, movie inspired trailer for a video game experience (as mentioned in their case study video), DigitasLBi brought the game experience to life at E3. Photos for static assets added to the campaign and allowed this character build to live over multiple platforms, as DigitasLBi promised. Most of the user-generated content was interaction with the actor inside the costume or comments about being able to play along with it on social media platforms. This positive experience would be remembered and expanded upon when the user then played the game and started interacting with the Watchers in game; creating a relatable and lasting relationship.
I immediately searched for more content about the build process of the Watcher, cosplays, and game release information. I was so jealous I couldn't be at E3 when the Watchers made their debut!
What would you like to see recreated from a game or TV...or maybe created yourself?
Apple recently released the Homepod, a product similar to Amazon's Echo and the Google Home. In this 4 minute advertisement for the Homepod (which also has shorter versions that have been shown on television) that stars FKA Twigs, she is seen coming home from work on what is pictured to have been a long, tiring, and overall bad day. As she walks into her apartment, she collapses on the couch seemingly exhausted. She then tells SIRI to play something that she likes.
She begins to start feeling the vibe and flow of the song that starts playing, and then the commercial transitions into a dance routine, with editing and graphics added to make the apartment bigger, and then it goes into sort of a trance like dance performed by FKA Twigs. At the end, she is seen laying back down on her couch after the whole dance routine looking much happier and hopeful than she did at the beginning of the commercial.
The whole message and vibe of this commercial is that, no matter how bad of a day you had, the music you love can always turn that around and completely change the mood that you are in. The fact that she says "SIRI, play me something I like" shows that the Homepod can easily play your favorite music for you without you having to do more than tell it to play.
It's a really creative advertisement that plays back to the roots of Apple when they first started advertising iPods and there were always animations of people dancing while listening to their iPods in their commercials.
MasterClass.com is a San Francisco-based company that sells online classes taught by "masters" in that field. Classes range from "Annie Leibovitz Teaches Photography" to "Gordon Ramsey Teaches Cooking" to "Judy Blume Teaches Writing". The basic premise of each class is that well-known and highly skilled individuals in their respected field design an online program. They are usually subtitled with, "In his/her first ever online class". Right off the bat, this could be considered a whole program built off of celebrity endorsements -- with a twist.
When I first heard about MasterClass, it was from the "Werner Herzog Teaches Filmmaking" trailer. The two-minute YouTube ad (which was skippable, but caught my attention after the first line of dialogue) started like this:
Werner: "It's like death, staring at you when you look at a camera." And then a single line of text that read, "Meet your new Instructor".
Werner then goes on to say, "I'm speaking to filmmakers. Or -- future filmmakers. You have to know, I have gone through all of this. I have learned it all on my own."
That was in the first twenty seconds. Wait -- this is an online class? An online class that can teach me about filmmaking? (With great production value to boot.) While I knew that other online classes must exist out there with this same topic, no other online classes had been packaged and presented to me like this. After watching the whole ad, I was almost ready to (at the very least) start saving money. Alas, $90 for an online class didn't interest me that much.
From seeing that ad in 2016 until now, many more MasterClass online programs have become available. Unsurprisingly, not all the classes have received the best reviews. For example, this article details a MasterClass user that was less-than-satisfied with Gordon Ramsey's class. He mentions that despite the "insiders only" packaging MasterClass has presented, most of the tips Ramsey gives in the program are already readily available on YouTube (and free).
How likely is it that every instructor featured on MasterClass is so extremely passionate about their craft they would want to join MasterClass? How likely is it that every instructor featured on MasterClass is just at skilled in teaching their craft that they are in practicing their craft? Annie Leibovitz, for example, is a self-admittedly not a "technical photographer" and thus would not be able to provide beginners with basic technical terms every photographer needs to know. In an article from someone who took Leibovitz's MasterClass, the program should have boasted a "'How Annie Leibovitz Thinks and Feels' discussion" rather than a "How Annie Leibovitz Shoots' class" (as MasterClass implied from Leibovitz's trailer).
Although I've never taken a MasterClass, the thought of wasting $90 on information that is probably already readily available elsewhere (perhaps from someone lesser-known but with an equal skill level) or not as useful as MasterClass advertises is discouraging. However, it would still be interesting to see where MasterClass decides to go if they ever run out of individuals considered "the best". Already, I see multiple MasterClass programs with different filmmakers, editors, and directors. Clearly there are many skilled filmmakers out there, but at what point does the MasterClass program become no more than celebrity endorsements for more MasterClass programs?
