FRANKthoughts

pepsi, originally uploaded by FRANkVizeum.

Pepsi is trying to save the world and get some advertising at the same time. How? Well, they would like YOU to come up with an idea, promote it and win between 5k-250k to make it come true. It’s a great idea that finally has been picked up by a mega brand (although the name: “Refresheverything” is a bit try hard). Think about all the money that goes every year towards re-branding/ad production/Superbowl broadcasting – Pepsi is going to spend the same amount (around $1,300,000 per month) to sponsor people’s dreams. True, they’re not doing it because they’re really concerned, it’s more of a way to get piggybacked into people facebook profiles but hey, beggars cant be choosers. Maybe this can be a new way we do advertising? How about a company helping out in a tsunami? How about a tyre company sponsoring a road? How about an energy company sponsoring people who make energy?

Back in June we first spoke about Guvera . Well  it’s finally launching in a few weeks…15 December we’re told. The Guvera model is based on engagement in favour of the classic advertising-interruption model. From their eDM “Instead of advertising being perceived as disruptive or annoying, Guvera allows the advertiser to align their brand with their customers passions, allowing the brand to become the hero that provides new ways to find and get music, for free.”

If you think about your own experiences in meeting people you’re more likely to end up talking with someone who is approachable and listens rather than someone who just wants to talk about themselves.

 The Guvera approach allows brands to be able to fast-track engagement via an understanding of consumer preferences across a range of crieteria. Registering with Guvera is like speed dating for brands. To register you’ll be asked about your prefences on holidays, sport, music, gadgets & things, web activities, countries, books, films, food and charities. Just the kind of topics any one might ask in getting to know you.

I’m currently reading Mike Walsh’s excellent book, Futuretainment. In this he says “The challenge/opportunity for brands to benefit from an engagement-approach is to shift their brand strategy focus and to start behaving like media companies. Great brands engage consumers through telling stories. By learning more about the stories that surround a brand we can form our own impressions of their products/services and what they mean to our own lives and experiences. As audiences fragment one of the few ways for brands to achieve mass awareness is for their message to be compelling enough for consumers to do the distribution for you.”

It’ll be interesting to see how brands manage this opportunity with Guvera. In this emerging era of brand engagement it is clear that some brands (just like some people) are socially inept and there are likely to be degrees of sensitivity between the one-night stand approach and building longer term relationships.

As Mike says “the future of entertainment is not advertising- the future of advertising is entertainment.”

It’s been about 3 months since Vizeum launched in Australia through FRANk media, in Melbourne, to become FRANkVizeum. Finally we have Vizeum’d up the building with the global yellowness and the tree as seen here on the London site.

We’ve put our own spin on the ‘look’ with an intricate stencil on our walls thanks to signaction who have done an awesome job. Here’s a short movie using our new flip video camera which gives you the general idea. Enjoy.

Hang in there with this one…it’s well worth it.
FACT: Connecting consumers with ads that interrupt content is on the wane. More brands want consumer-engagement, brand-relevance and shared experience to endear themselves to their brand communities.
FACT: Most people want to download virus free/safe freemusic but would prefer it if the artists received some money, from somewhere, otherwise the music industry will be increasingly choked of revenue and its lifeblood will be threatened.
OPPORTUNITY: Create a site where consumers can download music for free (pretty much any music they want similar to itunes) but in this case brands foot the cost…some of which goes to artists. In return brands can take the opportunity to externalise their personality through their content, reversing the interruption model.
EXAMPLE: I want to download Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. I go to GUVERA and search for Kashmir. Up comes say five brands that will ‘allow’ me to download this for free…for example Jack Daniels, Heineken, Greenpeace, Harley Davidson and Nike.
The brands will be listed by preference that best reflect your personality profile & interests (necessary to submit when registering).
Let’s say a young mum decides to download Kings of Leon “via” carsales.com.au as one their driving tracks…all good. It connects with a car-shift opportunity and endears the brand to this influential buyer/seller group.
The challenge for the brands will be to tailor creative relevance to their now easily segmented brand communities. As a brand how you want-to-be can be segmented subject to who’s looking. Interesting i think.
Planned to launch globally in the next few months (Australia in July) this will be a great one to check out. Music is the first engagement ‘medium’ and there are plans to evolve with movies, games and blogs.
Be interested in views and ideas…

Thanks to Tracey from Melbourne’s GPO, we had the pleasure of watching this cool video for Perth’s shopping centre, Forrest chase. I’m sure you’ll agree the concept is beautiful and people seem to really connect with it. It’s an engaging “purple cow“, something you’ll take out your digital camera for. It’s something to tell your friends and blog about. Here’s the free media this little video achieved: (Currently Forrest chase don’t have it on their site)

Tomorrow sees the first bounce of the 2009 AFL season and one of the hero applications (apps) developed by Look out Mobile is Aussie Rules Live. Developed for the iphone and ipod touch check out the video for a demonstration of the features. These include
- live scores
- Live text commentary for all games
- Live goal kickers
- Live ladder updates
- Shake the phone for live score updates!
- Full fixtures and individual team fixtures
- Latest team news
- Previous round scores and goal kickers
- Compare results, ladder and head to head from past seasons (v.2 update)
If you’d like to download this app then look no further than here

Last week Apple announced a wave of new developments from its new operating platform…called 3.0. One of them will enable e-commerce.
This opens up the field to all sorts of pocket convenience for services such as subscribing to magazines.
We see this as an interesting opportunity for publishers in a climate where hard copy sales are generally heading south. Any savings from not having to print could be passed on, ads could be interactive, new concepts could be trialed, real time opinions could be garnered etc.
Watch for an avalanche of e-commerce enabled apps tumbling into play this June.

Go Saints.

Fashion fades, only style remains the same…’Coco Chanel’

 MGPO fashion collective                             LMFF Runway 5

Melbourne has been swarmed with fashionista’s this week with the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival taking place.

My week kicked off at the Melbourne’s GPO on Tuesday 17th with a day of designers showcasing their autumn/winter fashion amidst the picturesque Elizabeth street colonnade including the likes of Lisa Ho, Hussy, Wayne Cooper, Lella Smith, Leona Edmiston, nicolangela, Gorman and many more.

Central Pier then rocked the LMFF with Runway 4 (sponsored by In Style) and Runway 5 (sponsored by Yen) hitting the stage… personal favourites including Arabella Ramsay & Thurley

Amidst all of the doom and gloom with the economic climate at the moment, it was nice to get lost in a week of high spirits and most importantly… fabulous fashion

 Investing in the naming rights for sporting arenas sends the ”we’re in this for the long haul’ signal. Two of Melbourne’s major sports arenas have had name changes. Firstly Telstra Dome (nee Colonial) will be Etihad Stadium from March and secondly Vodafone Arena became Hisense Arena last July.

 In 2000 Colonial State Bank paid $32.5 million for 10 years of naming rights. later that year, Commonwealth Bank took over Colonial State Bank and sold the naming rights to Telstra for about $50 million. The name was changed to Telstra Dome on 1 October 2002.

I recall the “pain” of Colonial Stadium becoming Telstra Dome and now just when this sits comfortably we’re off to Etihad Stadium. It’s good to see some brands take a longer term stance as such changes can take many months/years to hit the vernacular, hence the 5-6 year contracts.

What does it say about Colonial, Telstra and Vodafone, as they drop off? Does it mean they’ve sufficiently trodden on our conciousness and it’s time to move on or that they couldn’t afford to maintain this figure head positioning or the investment isn’t worth it or the new brands are willing to pay more? Whatever the reason we can expect Etihad in particular to leverage this positioning as we approach the AFL season…the direct mail has already begun to land.

It will be interesting to see if the Etihad Stadium becomes ‘The Stadium’ when referred to by commentators with rival airline sponsors…Collingwood springs to mind with their Emirates sponsorship. 

Apologies for the blog inactivity… it has been a busy week for FRANk with the move, pitch, projects, etc.

So a tiny post today to keep things interesting!

Diesel is celebrating their 30th aniversary with a big XXX party running parallel across 17 countries (not Australia unfortunately!).  It will be featuring stars such as Soulwax, N.E.R.D., Pete Doherty, Ed Bangers, etc.  Check it out Diesel XXX.

To promote the event, check out this viral video inspired by Safe for Work Porno work!  Diesel has taken images from 70s porno films, replacing “private” parts with well-thought out designs:

The Bill & Jerry thing is a bit weird. It is certainly not what we thought it will be – which is a good thing. We are so used to “shove it up your throat” ads that we don’t know what to think when someone, instead of shouting “buy my keyboard”, is giving us free entertainment.

When Seinfeld started most of us didn’t get it. People asked “Why would you watch a show about nothing?” and thought that “this guy Seinfeld isn’t funny”. A few episodes later, when you get used to the humor, the characters and the nothingness, you realised you actually enjoy it.It became funny.

Here is the thing. I enjoyed watching the last episode. oops, is it an episode? I thought this should be an ad. There’s lies the beauty. This is not a regular ad. It isn’t what we used to get. Microsoft is breaking new ground. (I don’t get why Adrants actually want this to sell them stuff? do we actually like ads???) With a 300,000 million budget Microsoft dont need to try and sell me stuff. They just need to warm me up to the brand. What do you think?

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