Mini’s Trash is Advertising’s Treasure

Great advertising is absolute trash. At least, it is when it comes to Mini and their insufferably cute Mini Cooper.

Click on image to see full size

Good Ol’ CP+B continued a tradition of great non-traditional advertising for the Mini Cooper line with these fantastic trash piles, adorned with a Mini-sized cardboard box. When it comes to marketing automobiles as a logical holiday gift, Lexus could learn a lot from Mini’s lead.

Via Ads of the World

On How NOT to Request Attention on the Internet

One of the first marketing mistakes I ever made happened early. It had to do with this blog, Post Haste. And, it had to do with my naivety in regards to other people’s time.

I had convinced our partners that we should develop a company blog. Very few other marketing agencies in our area had blogs, and it was time to take a dive into the ever-expanding world of Internet marketing and social media.

Searching for an audience – and looking forward to a jaunty dialog with our naturally intelligent readers – I developed a “Look At What We’ve Done!” e-mail. I sent it to every marketing and advertising blogger I could find. I said, essentially, why I thought our blog was great.

I gave them a look at something new. But I failed on one major level.

I never told them why it mattered to them.

Of the 100+ e-mails I sent out, I received only a handful back. Some were congratulatory. Some were dismissive.

One really stood out. The name doesn’t matter – I can’t remember it, anyway – but the tone was distinct.

It chastised me for asking people to care without offering a benefit. It hounded me for blindly grasping for attention - not by participation and discourse, or by giving anything of substance (because, at this time, there was very little on the blog), but by the assumption that I deserved it.

It taught me an important lesson: no one cares until you give a reason to care.

Fast forward to today.

A magazine I’ve never heard of sends me an e-mail. They assume I’m willing to help them pre-promote an upcoming issue. They open with a salutation of “Dear Blogger.” There is no mention of what I’m getting out of the deal, or why I should care.

I see this e-mail, and I see a little of myself that first time around, when I was promoting Post Haste by sidestepping relationships and blindly throwing darts, hoping some would stick.

It’s the same as sending out press releases that make more work for a journalist, or – even worse – assume a store promotion is real news.

It’s the same as blanket spamming a thousand Twitter users with a new e-commerce site.

It’s the same as knocking on my door, asking me to tell all of my friends about your product, and then leaving without even acknowledging my time.

And I know from experience. It’s not impressive. And it doesn’t work.

The OFFICIAL 2009 Gingerbread Man (Or Woman) Decorating Contest

The Great Gingerbread Cookie Decorate-off is over, and with a bevy of bejeweled bakery goods scattered amongst our break room tables, we have made our difficult but oh-so-satisfying decision.

But first, the cookies. Be warned – there are a lot of images after the jump.
Read more

The heart of search: marketing Google

When it came to marketing, Bing went with humor. It went with the assumption that users couldn’t handle the amount of information they were given, that the Internet commoners wanted something more attuned to their thoughts. That their algorithm was better than Google’s, despite the difficulty in proving it.

Google? Well, they simply went for the heart.

We use search every day. It’s as much a part of our lives as the car we drive, the restaurants we frequent, the people we meet. Except for one thing: search leads us to those cars, those restaurants, those people; in a way, it’s so much more.

(Via Make the Logo Bigger)

David Feherty’s Veterans’ Hunt

David Feherty, former PGA Tour golfer and current CBS Sports analyst, loves the United States. And, he loves the troops that help defend it.

While this may come as a surprise – after all, he is Irish – it only takes a look at his feverish progress at becoming a United States citizen (and his adoption of Dallas as his official hometown) to understand a passion as foreign to the ex-pat lifestyle as grasping American football.

He simply loves this country.

It’s this love – and his undying support for the country’s military personnel – that prompts Feherty to reach out to injured and disabled troops year after year with a once-in-a-lifetime pheasant hunting trip in South Dakota.

Our own Kirby Schultz was fortunate enough to tag along and document this year’s trip, and it was nothing short of monumental. Sure, there was emotion. But there was also a feeling of accomplishment.

And, there was a hidden agenda – one that strikes at the heart of what a disabled veteran goes through: offering a slice of normalcy to someone who now lives life differently, all in the name of defending freedom.

The goal wasn’t to treat veterans with kid gloves. On the contrary – Feherty wants to treat these veterans like real people, offering the roughness of hunting without holding back, challenging the vets to work hard, just as they did before, just as they’ve always done, giving them a reason to feel strong again.

The trip is designed for fun. It was created to give back to vets who laid their lives on the line – and left a little behind in the process. But it’s also a way to dispel any feelings of hopelessness. To put control back in a disabled veteran’s court.

To feel human. To feel free. Which, at the center of it all, is one of the things our country strives to offer every day.

No wonder Feherty has adopted this place as home.

Another batch of Wolff Olins snake oil

AOL (or, I guess, Aol.) revealed a new logo treatment today.

You can look elsewhere to see what the overall consensus is. (My take: What. A. Joke.)

That being said, there’s a bit of inconsistency that proves Wolff Olins’ ability to b.s. their way through a logo design.

From AOL’s press release:

“Historically brand identity has been monolithic and CONTROLLING, little more than stamping a company name on a product. AOL is a 21st century media company, with an ambitious vision for the future and new focus on creativity and expression, this required the new brand identity to be open and generous, to invite conversation and collaboration, and to feel credible, but also aspirational.” said Karl Heiselman, CEO of Wolff Olins.

Their solution, naturally: stamp the company name onto a handful of stock images.

Come on, guys. After the London 2012 debacle, don’t you think we should be trying a little harder? I mean, THE LEAST YOU COULD DO is make sure the fluffy, inspirational quote defending your work isn’t at odds with the nature of the work itself.

What Montana taught us about design

It happens what seems like a million times in what seems like a million meetings around the world. Over-designing. Too many gradients and too much color and seven different fonts and a billion little bullet points and a few logos – one for each sponsor, as well as one for the company itself – and suddenly…

Ugh.

You and I know better. But that doesn’t mean we can stick it to some group of design non-believers with a list of the Seven Deadly Design Rules and force them to submit. We have to understand that, sometimes, circumstances require us to be creative in our application, that, sometimes, those bullets are necessary and that extra typeface is needed and those logos are untouchable.

Then again, sometimes, we need to stop, step back, strip it all down and reconvene with the bare basics.

Believe it or not, sometimes, it works.

Today’s example: the State of Montana.

After years of diverging license plate designs, ugly pastels, a roster of causes (105 in all, not counting University-specific plates) and, yes, what seems like a million typefaces, Montana took its recent history of over-design and wiped it clean.

A lack of consistency? Gone. A full palette of colors? Gone. A feeling of retro freshness that will hopefully inspire others (including Nebraska, of whom we will only say, “Please. Hire. Designers. Next. Time.”)?

Absolutely.

(Photo via greatfallstribune.com, ©AP Photo/Matt Gouras)

Great design doesn’t mean doing the most with what you have. It means doing the best with what you need.

Thanks be to Montana for reminding us.

(via: Design Observer, which was via: W Magazine)

The Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting - A Recap.

What does it take to put on the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting?

It starts during the summer. Themes are discussed, a stage is mocked up, and a speaker is booked. This year, the Chamber’s theme revolved around the consistent exposure Sioux Falls receives as both a business-friendly city and a place with high quality of life. The forerunner in this praise: Forbes Magazine.

So the natural choice for a speaker? Steve Forbes.

Throughout the summer and into September, the staging is finalized, the design is set and the invites start going out. Schedules are coordinated, extra help is brought in. We build monster set pieces. It’s like being in Play Production, except the stage is massive and the talent does more than botch lines from As You Like It.

As we get closer to the date, work swirls in a fever pitch. Our building is filled with staging pipes and banners – printed in house by Jason – and speeches pass over an entire series of desks. Video reaches the final stages of production, and a handful of lucky HSers work late into the night.

And then, it’s the week of the show.

Though the program is Tuesday night, we begin setting up Sunday morning. The stage takes a day and a half to erect, video is double- and triple-checked, and the HS Dancers go through their final run-throughs. A skeleton crew stays back at the office while the real action occurs at the Sioux Falls Convention Center in a flurry of construction, rehearsal and anticipation.

An hour before the show begins, you’d have no idea that this has been a process of months. When the lights go down, you’re seeing the end of the work, and the beginning of a grand celebration of the area we call home.

By the end of the next day, it’s all gone. The room is ready for the next event. Hopefully, you attended. And hopefully, you gained a new appreciation for everything the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce does for us – not just businesses, but everyone.

If you could believe it, that’s not even the end. Because chances are, we’re already looking toward next year’s show.

In These Tough Economic Times, PLEASE say something different.

Yeah, we’re all probably in the same boat. Absolutely sick and tired of being reminded of our financial crises, constantly inundated with “In These Tough Economic Times…” and “We Could All Use A Little Good News…” Frustrated beyond relief when the familiar pangs of mood music and serious voice over remind us how a company is going to buck the system by staying close to its roots, as if GM could really change this whole thing by releasing a hybrid vehicle.

So it’s always cool to see someone take the tired “save money during a recession” message and do something cool with it.

Like this Volkswagen guerrilla campaign for the new BlueMotion line of vehicles.

The gist: The European map on a batch of Euro banknotes is stamped with a representation of how far you’d get based on the banknote’s denomination. How far would you get with 50 Euros? It’s right there on the banknote.

Then, they released the bills throughout German VW dealers, service shops, etc.

And they did it all without falling back on tired clichés. Which, even without the awesomeness of the idea, gets a whole fist full of thumbs up from me.

(Via: Direct Daily)

Changing the conventional. Or, how to make a bus stand out.

A quick word from the corporate sponsor.

Constantly raising awareness. Moving toward a cure.

What’s that? Oh, yeah. We’re pretty excited about a pink bus.

Not just pink, though. PINK. As in, Avera McKennan’s new bus wrap – promoting the Avera Breast Center and featuring some of the region’s very own breast cancer survivors – is unmistakable and impossible to ignore.

After all – it’s bright pink.

Here’s the thing. Marketing and advertising have become so much a part of our every move that we begin to tune it out. We are inundated with visual and aural marketing at every turn. So it’s not just a fight to be noticed - it’s a fight to be relevant, with a message that people actually want to hear, promoting solutions, not features. Or, at least, to offer a change from the typical.

As marketers, we understand that our target doesn’t want to hear us. And it’s up to us to change that convention.

Which is why something like the Big Pink Avera McKennan Bus works. Not only does it promote a worthy cause - get mammograms! - but it’s also a bit jaunty. Jovial. A beacon of fun in an altogether too cluttered advertising and marketing landscape.

Buses are often seen as beat down. They’re driven hard and laid out to rest in some giant garage. We’re fighting to change that convention too, by turning them into a visual medium. They aren’t art yet, but how far are we from that? How far are we from accepting public transit as a focus of attention?

Because when you see a pink bus, is there anything you can do other than say, “Holy cow. That’s totally a pink bus?”

— Next Page »

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About HenkinSchultz

HenkinSchultz is an agency. An advertising and marketing and branding and design and production agency. All of those things, and then some.

But, underneath all that, we're really a bunch of thinkers. As in, we think about stuff, both pertinent and not, with and without boundaries, as if our lives depended on it. And this right here, Post Haste, is where we write about it.

Visit us at http://www.henkinschultz.com.

Twitter

Live from the Business Journal: @MindFlame, @vvi and our very own Joe Henkin. http://bit.ly/d9gJcP

Recent Posts

• Where Is the Line? (On Advertorials and Front Page Ads)
• Being a Realtor on the Web
• On Deadlines
• That plane is really an infographic
• Twitter as a commitment
• A Quick Grammar Break: Brought to you by The Oatmeal.
• A Creative Legend In Our Midst
• Mini’s Trash is Advertising’s Treasure
• On How NOT to Request Attention on the Internet
• The OFFICIAL 2009 Gingerbread Man (Or Woman) Decorating Contest

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• Sharron: Great article about Cami. And-Congratulations to Mark; a well deserved recognition.
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