Friends Help Friends Make Tweets, Right?

International Friendship Day was started in the United States by none other than Hallmark when their intelligence team got together and realized that their biggest holiday lull came exactly on August 2nd. How could they possibly sell greeting cards when the next biggest holiday was Halloween, which was more than 2 months away? Alas, they came up with Friendship Day: a day where people could celebrate the friends in their lives. Awww! This holiday would be surely loved and universal. Don't we all have friends? Wouldn't we love it if Hallmark helped us write them friendship poems and delighted us with friendship quotes? The answer was a resounding yes. Except not how'd you expect. The holiday has failed to capture Americans but has become huge and vastly celebrated in South America and Asia. Some countries celebrate the holiday with the same enthusiasm we reserve for Valentines Day and Mother's Day. It has  inspired advertisers in these countries to come up with unique ideas to sell more product. +Castro, an advertising agency in Argentina, decided to capitalize on the holiday for their client Todomoda. Using twitter, they drove troves of teenage girls to their stores by proclaiming that "real friends share everything." And they meant everything. The company designed a new kind of tweet where one user composed the first half and then invited one of their friends to write the second half. When the tweet was completed, it was simultaneously broadcast onto both user's feeds. Girls received instant discounts and prizes when they shared a tweet with a friend. They also used the platform to play games and answer trivia questions. The idea worked magic for the store. Shared tweets were seen by more than 500,000 users!  Even celebrities became involved when Todomoda encouraged girls to ask the likes of Nicki Minaj and other huge names to share a tweet with them. International Friendship Day has definitely helped international stores improve their numbers for the slow month of August. So why hasn't the holiday made it big in the U.S.? Do South Americans love their friends more than we do? Are Americans just turned off by obvious marketing ploys?  Even if the holiday hasn't officially taken off, Americans have been increasingly searching Google for "Friendship Day" every year, with 2012 seeing a very notable increase. Maybe we will come to love and celebrate this holiday eventually and Hallmark can finally breathe easy when August rolls around.

I leave you with a friendship quote:

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."

-Anais Nin

Is There a Method to the Madness?

Every time I see a Manhattan Mini Storage ad, I cringe. Not only are their ads controversial, but they also don't really say much about their service. Their ads are usually very simple and feature yellow letters against a blue background proclaiming things such as "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get married" or "Mitt Romney? That guy couldn't even beat Obama." Is the company wasting their ad space in order to inculcate their beliefs into our heads? While I love seeing examples of gay pride plastered across the city, isn't conveying a clear message about the benefits of your product one of the fundamental rules of advertising? An advertisement that features a sexy model in a barely-there bikini might get people's attention, but will people merely look at the model and enjoy the view, or will your brand name stick into people's heads? Many brands have come across this dilemma when they buy too much into an idea that does not have a clear advertising goal. When I first saw the Manhattan Mini Storage ads, I was sure that they had fallen into this trap. I see these ads everywhere I go: on the subway, on billboards, on buildings, in phone booths... Every time I see one I try to find a point to the words written. Do they somehow relate to storage? Do the lines "Michelle Bachman says God told her to run for president. Why doesn't God talk to smart people anymore?" somehow convey a message about Manhattan Mini Storage and why we should store our extra stuff with them? After further research I discovered that they also feature ads like "Remember, if you leave the city you'll live in America", "We have more wiggle room than Herman Cain's morals", and my favorite, "If you watch Hoarders and wonder what the Big Deal is." Why haven't I seen these? These ads clearly encourage people to stay in New York and store their extra stuff. But why would they also run ads that are not as effective? Couldn't they just write the bad ones and throw them out as great ideas that almost work, but ultimately don't? According to their company page, Manhattan Mini Storage tries to run ads that "speak to the people of New York city." While I am all for speaking to the people of New York city, I don't think they should waste their ad space on ineffective ads, but instead, try to stick to their great ideas.

Do you Grub?

GrubHub has some really funny advertisements. While on the subway, I'm always pleasantly surprised by the good-quality humor that GrubHub bestows upon us. Not only this, but GrubHub's customer service is unmatched. If there is ever the slightest hiccup with my order, they do not hesitate to throw a $5 coupon at me. If the problem was actually a real problem, then a $10 coupon is in order. Every time you call GrubHub you feel like you're talking to a real person with an interesting life story and an overwhelming desire to make you feel good. I don't think any other company would sit with me on the phone to analyze why the delivery man was mean to me, and then throw in a $10 coupon to make me feel even better. If this isn't enough, for every 3 orders you make GrubHub gives you four cards to click on, with one card leading to free food. You can even win free food for a year! While you might think these odds are slight, I for one have won much more than my fair share. GrubHub was #4 on Fast Company's 2012 list of top innovative food companies, coming in right after Chobani. No other delivery website makes the list, crowning GrubHub the king of delivery. So what has made GrubHub such a huge phenomenon? Their quirky sense of humor and consistent branding have made many people GrubHub fanatics. Even their subway ads seem to speak to people. Each advertisement boasts their South Park-esque characters engaging in sexy situations, albeit in dorky ways. One of their most recent ads features a couple laying in bed while searching the internet for food, with the woman exclaiming that she wants "Something Spicy!" Their Facebook page is constantly asking customers to fill in the caption for an image of their characters engaged in not-so-ordinary situations. The funniest entry gets free food. Each image generates from 50-200 comments, not so bad considering that they have a little under 100,000 followers (more than any of their competitors). Yelp, Delivery.com. and Seamless have nothing on GrubHub! Sure Yelp has daily food deals and coupons, but who needs them when GrubHub provides you a funny video as a consolation prize when you fail to win free food?

The Times Square Victor(s)

There has been much talk about the "me" generation. For those of you that haven't heard, the chatter is all about our new generations' fascination with the "me." Since we now have the power to easily post the happenings of our lives on sites like Facebook and Twitter, we have become way too preoccupied with ourselves. What fun is it to go to a party if we cannot post the pictures up on Facebook the next day? It seems like every smart company out there is taking advantage of our mesmerization and have somehow incorporated it into their advertising campaigns. This fact rears it ugly head when I walk through Times Square every morning on my way to work and see a huge gathering of people outside of Forever 21 trying to catch a glimpse of themselves on the interactive billboard. Everyone stands there with their cell phones out, snapping pictures of themselves. Every picture inevitably includes the numbers 21, which are placed strategically within the display. Not only is Forever 21 amassing a huge crowd of tourists outside its stores every day, but I bet many of these people choose to share this picture with all of their Facebook friends, becoming brand advocates in the process. As I walked through Times Square staring squeamishly at these people who seemed to have lost sight of themselves, I saw ANOTHER group gathered doing the exact same thing in front of another store. I didn't catch what other store it was since I was still rushing to work, but I bet it was American Eagle, who has recently rolled out an interactive billboard of its own. With all of the billboards on Times Square fighting for attention, may I present you the victors!  As I conducted research online trying to figure out if this constituted copyright infringement (it doesn't) I learned that the Forever 21 billboard also features individual people who have tweeted or written about the company. Talk about capitalizing on the "me" generation!

Is Songza the new Pandora?

One morning as I sat in Starbucks, my eyes drifted onto a business card that was sitting on my table. It read: "Play Music For," and then had a list of words such as "Cooking With Friends," "a Pick Me Up" and "Making Out". Music for making out? I had to take a look at this. Right away I searched for Songza on my laptop and low and behold, they had music for all these events and more. Called a "Music Concierge," Songza detects what time of day it is and then very nicely asks you what you want music for. If it's Monday morning your options will read: "Waking Up", "Easing the Tension", or "Office Crowd Pleasers". On Saturday evening, options change to "Drinking at a Bar", "Pre-gaming with Friends" or "Relaxing at Home". After you click on one of these activities, the Music Concierge asks you what genre of music you'd like and then gives you an option of three stations to listen to. I became addicted right away. With Spotify giving way too much freedom and Pandora not giving enough, Songza is exactly what the doctor ordered. With stations such as "Soft Pop", "Indie Sell Outs", and "1990's Prom", Songza has everyone covered. On the Songza website, they proudly proclaim that they do not use any alogorithms, rather, all songs are handpicked by Songza staff members. Though Songza is only number #40,799 on the Alexa list for top websites, I'm sure this number will soon sky rocket. Who doesn't want their own music concierge providing them with an hour by hour soundtrack? I know I do. I'm currently obsessing over the "Soft Pop" station and surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly) can't stop listening to the "100 Worst Songs of All Time" station.

Oreo Hearts Facebook!

I don't know about you, but Oreo's Facebook page is definitely on my top five. Oreo knows exactly what type of posts to put on Facebook and exactly when to post them. Who are these creatures working at Nabisco with the mythical powers to know exactly what type of content to put and when to put it? It won't be a surprise to hear that Oreo has more than 27 million likes on Facebook. I have always been uber impressed with Oreo's facebook activity, but they have since taken it to a new level. Have you noticed that they are posting a new Oreo illustration EVERY SINGLE DAY? While Google illustrates their logo a couple of times a month, Oreo has surpassed them and have taken them up on a challenge. Will Google accept the challenge? Instead of merely taking on holiday's such as Mother's Day and Martin Luther King's Birthday, Oreo has decided to tackle more important events such as the advent of the air conditioner and the six year anniversary of twitter. They also recently did an illustration announcing the opening of Ice Age. Wait, what? Oreo is now making money off of their amazing posts? Aren't people annoyed by unsolicited movie ads? Well in this case, the opposite is true. 3,205 liked the image and 469 shared it! Now THAT'S advertising insight. More exciting than this, came Oreo's support for gay marriage. Who else but Oreo shows support for gay marriage by showing an Oreo cookie filled with multicolored creme? Move over Obama, Oreo has just stolen your thunder! What was the result of this such illustration? Reading through the comments I spotted quite a number of people professing their love for Oreo and saying that now, they will definitely never stop eating Oreo's. There has been much media attention to the fact that this image spurred the creation of an an Oreo boycott page. With this page only amassing 103 likes, however, I highly doubt Oreo is breaking a sweat. So how does Oreo fare with its cookie competitors? Mrs. Fields has a measly 32,957 likes and Chips Ahoy, another Nabisco brand, has less than a million. Maybe they should take a tip or two from Oreo.

The Immaculate Conception

 How does lululemon attract customers to its stores? I mean, the front of their store sports a logo which looks more like a horseshoe and doesn't really scream high end yoga. I remember one day while walking through New York getting completely lost when my friend told me he was in lululemon. I must have passed the store about 15 times while staring at that logo, wondering what the heck that store was selling. How is it then that lululemon has become such a phenomenon in New York? While at my yoga class I spot the elusive horseshoe mark on quite a number of yoga mats. Does their marketing tactic of providing a sort of cult branding work well for them? Can lululemon achieve what has taken Nike years to achieve by downright refusing to show their brand name? These are the types of questions I want to answer in my blog. I chose the name Adsights since insights are one of the main drivers of amazing advertising. Insights are what separate great advertisements from not so great advertisements. They are those aha! moments that take hours and even months of careful thinking and researching. According to the lululemon site, it took them 20 names to finally come up with lululemon and tons of remaking of the clothes to come to the perfect product they have today.