splash
Welcome
I'm Annelie, a Swedish business student who posts weekly articles about the latest developments in social media.

10 Reasons To Why Students Should Blog

Posted By Annelie Näs on February 1st, 2010

Yesterday, I got the question “why do you blog?” of course I had around a million answers to respond with. Then I realized that the reason the person asked was not to find out why I blogged but to see if there was any reason to why he should blog.
This got me thinking about what [...]

 

Posts Tagged ‘creative marketing’

A creative and well-rounded viral marketing campaign: The Fun Theory

Posted By Annelie Näs on November 23rd, 2009

From time to time, there are a few marketing campaigns that is just so creative that you have trouble getting them out of your mind. One of the latest brilliant ideas is “The fun theory” an initiative by Volkswagen. Though it is not obviously connected to the cars they sell, or marketed in the old fashion way, this is a campaign that will be stuck in my mind for a long time.

It’s fun, it proves a point both while being produced and when later shown, and you get a few fun statistics to share with your friends after watching them.

The videos that went viral

It all got started when Volkswagen published three videos, the piano staircase, the bottle bank arcade and the world’s deepest bin.

Here are links to the other two:
The bottle arcade & the world’s deepest bin.

About the project

“The fun theory award recognizes those thoughts, ideas and inventions that help prove the fun theory. That fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better…” (From the fun theory website)

The whole project is based on a competition that gives people a chance to send in their fun theories and compete for a price of 2500 EUR. You can still send in your contribution as a written presentation with a visual picture of the idea. The later could be a sketch, a photo, or a film of a prototype. The competition is open until December 15, and then they will select 10 finalists that will be presented in front of a jury. Here you can see a few of the entries.

Multiple level marketing both viral and creative

This well rounded marketing campaign plays on so many levels:

  1. When they did the videos, it most likely created a buzz from the people who tried the different theories.
  2. First off all it is fun and visual, and easy to share.
  3. The fact that it is a competition where money is at stake, means that many people take it with them after they leave their computer to discuss possible contributions to the competition.
  4. As they keep posting new entries to the competition, people keep coming back to the website to check out other fun theories.
  5. You can find the campaign in many places; their website, a Facebook group, twitter buzz and a youtube channel.

Volkswagens role

When you watch the movies, the Volkswagen logo only comes up on the last picture in the movie. Thus, they have chosen to not over use their logo in the campaign, which I think it an interesting move. As most brand do not seem to be able to create anything without their logo being on display.

While watching the movies, most people will wonder who made them, because they are done professionally.  I think that people will unconsciously appreciate that there is not brand name embedded in the movie.

Volkswagen is not flaunting their brand and let the brand “the fun theory” with logo be in the spotlight, and I think that this could increase the amount of people who will actually remember that Volkswagen was the initiators.

Posted in Annelie's Musings, Social Media
Comments

Learn current creative marketing with two tips from Swedish ICA

Posted By Annelie Näs on September 30th, 2009

Today people have other habits then they used to have, especially the small daily stuff is changing. With new tools and technology we do things differently, have you adapted your marketing campaign to that? The Swedish food store ICA surely has and here is a great example from this summer:

ica-reklam

Take a photo of the ad with your phone camera or any other device you may carry!

This probably does not make too much sense for you since it’s in Swedish, so let me explain. The headline says “For a successful crayfish party, take a picture of the recipe below.” Not only does it have great timing with the season for crayfish, but they have played on the fact that most people in Sweden have a cell phone with a camera with them all the time, and thus they can easily take a photo of the ad and leave their recipe worries behind.

I love this idea because it is simple yet productive and it makes you think, what a great idea, who came up with that? And once again ICA is in your thoughts.

Another ICA idea that has been running for quite some time now is the ICA TV-Series look-a-like commercial. Every week they show a 30 sec episode reputedly during the tv-commercials where they promote the week’s special offers.

Here is an example but unfortunately I could only find them in Swedish:

It might be difficult to understand the charm of the series if you cannot understand the language. However, think of it as another TV-show with characters a plot maybe without the cliffhanger but you still want some more. The shows probably made people pay more attention to the ICA commercial because of the creative and non-boring way to market. Perhaps a few people even sat through the commercials, which they usually zap.

People have even started a facebook group to show their support:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54895982228&ref=search&sid=719435876.2371695270..1

And on ICA’s website you can see the episodes you missed:
http://www.ica.se/FrontServlet?s=butiker&state=reklamfilmer_ny&showMenu=butiker_3

There are still a lot of things that could be improved with ICA’s marketing that still feels old and not as current as these two examples. However these two examples show that they are one of the most creative firms on marketing in Sweden and I would for sure like to work for them!

Posted in Annelie's Musings
Comments
data recovery software