AdGrads make Campaign Magazine

I was going to blog about this a little bit earlier (I was, I promise!), but things got away from me a bit these last few days so didn’t get the chance to. Anyway, I’m something of a newcomer to this advertising game, certainly to the idea of getting a career in it. Now it seems like the thing I want to do most in the world, but it hasn’t always been such.

However, I’m aware that there are some people who have been building for this moment for a number of years. Who’ve been doing degrees in marketing, branding, and all of the things that I have suddenly decided are actually really interesting when you come to think of it. I will be competing against some of these people when I apply for jobs. My early attempts haven’t been too successful.

Anyway, throughout this process, the Adgrads blog has proved absolutely invaluable. Anton, Alex, Will and Sam have set themselves up as a source of advice for people looking to break into the advertising industry. Indeed, as they readily point out, Adgrads has become something of a community in itself. These resources are sometimes more readily available for banking and management consultancy than they are for careers in advertising.

Anyway, AdGrads decided last week to take a stand on behalf of their Grads. Seeing that the provisions that BMB were making for their Grads was inadequate

(in their words, “Let’s imagine they devote a tiny little link right next to the hugely popular ‘T&Cs’ link right at the bottom of the page to the future employees of their company. And let’s imagine they use the grand font size of oh say 6 for this link.”)

they decided that enough was enough. They called and asked for further information on the scheme. When little such information was forthcoming, they decided to blog about it. The story of that struggle made it into Campaign.

This post is just to say congratulations, and that I hope Adgrads keep up the good work.

Campaign | “How Obama election campaign was truly a post-digital lesson”

People who know me will know that I am a little sceptical of the whole social media evangelising “thing” – while I believe that social media has its role, I think that it very much depends on deployment. As would probably be expected, the issue of Campaign released on the 14th November has a heavy focus on Obama’s election victory, dedicating a number of articles to its implications for the marketing world.

I was interested by Russell Davies article on “How Obama election was truly a post-digital lesson.” I don’t think that it is printed online, so I’ll republish it in full here. If anyone can send me a link to it, I’ll gladly link it.

“A little while ago, a bunch of prognosticators, me included, excitedly predicted that the next US election would be the first truly “digital” campaign. The way the Howard Dean campaign used the web for fundraising and the outbreaks of candidate embarrassment on YouTube pointed to a big future for digital campaigning on the web.

But Barack Obama has proved us all wrong. His campaign was so digitally savvy, so smart in exploiting new marketing tools, that it became post-digital in a way that few brands have managed. The newness or specialness of the tools lost their meaning and became integrated in the total marketing effort.

They treated digital like a teenager treats MySpace: just something that’s there to be used. So let’s try to learn from four smart things that they did. First, the iPhone app. The Obama campaign got this into the Apple App Store while most brands were still asking what an app was. It took all of the contacts on your phone, and organised them by battleground state = you could call them and suggest they vote for Obama – and you’d be calling people who mattered to the campaign.

Cleverly, they also recorded the number of calls you were making, so you could compare yourself to the average. Give people a score and they’ll always try to maximise it. The best marketing is sometimes about giving people the tools to do what you want, not telling them to do it.

The second great thing they did was act with great nimbleness in exploiting opportunities that came their way. The defining images of the campaign were probably the posters of Obama done by Shephard Fairey, best known for his Andre the Giant street postings. These were initially entirely unofficial, cultish, and underground. But they were co-opted by the campaign and added to the reservoir of imagery to be used, opportunistically enhancing the campaign’s “cool”.

Their third brilliant thing was the use of old-fashioned telly; even a tool as devalued as the infomercial. They recognised that television still can’t be beaten as a way of creating spectacle and delivered a 30-minute roadblock a week before the election. Not to deliver a message, but to convey weight, scale and momentum. All things telly does well.

And the fourth bit of genius was their attention to detail. They knew that design mattered. That the website mattered. That having good versions of the campaign logo for every allied group mattered. And crucially, they were prepared to win, as they rolled out change.gov right after the election. We had the world’s first post-digital election campaign. I wonder what we’ll have next in Britain.”

Turkey Ad: “Redknapp Family Play Nintendo Wii” | Karmarama

Harry Redknapp and members of his family are seen using Nintendo Wii consoles to play fitness games, football, bowling and Mario, illustrating the narrator’s announcement of ‘fun for all the family – only on Wii’

CompanyNintendo
BrandNintendo Wii Games
NameThe Redknapp Family challenging each other to a wide variety of games
Product (Full)Toys & Games – Computer Games
adtypeCommercial
VersionNew
Duration (secs)60
First Recorded Date27/10/2008
TranscriptYEAH GOOD START, DOWN THE MIDDLE. TWO… CASUAL ATHLETE, I LIKE THAT. GET IN THERE. OOOOH, HOW UNLUCKY IS THAT? I JUST LOVED IT. YES! THAT’S A SPIN ATTACK COMING RIGHT YOUR WAY DAD. OH YES, WHAT A MOVE. SMASH ATTACK, GET UP THERE LUIGI. UNLUCKY YOU BEER MUGS, WELL DONE. OI, OI. YES AND I AM IN THERE. I LOVE BEATING YOU. FUN FOR ALL THE FAMILY ONLY ON WII.