Advertising is Dead

Fight Club, Cinderella, And What Storytelling Means For Brands

What has Cinderella got in common with Fight Club Lots, according to Jon King, Story Worldwide’s Chief Storyteller. During the Storytelling for Brands’ session at our London office last week, part of Social Media Week London, we shared Story’s brand-centred approach to narrative content. We draw our inspiration from the most important study of storytelling ever done, The Hero with a Thousand Faces , by Joseph Campbell.

Why You Should Stop Worrying About Big Data And Love Your Consumer

In the post-advertising world, many brands struggle to understand the people they’re selling to and why they behave as they do. As power shifts from brands to consumers, knowing your consumer has never been more important. Even the accounting firm PwC has woken up to the fact that every industry participant will need to invest in customer understanding and engagement. But so long as this point is couched solely in data-analytics terms, it tells only part of the story.

Facebook Sponsored Stories Turn Your Life into a Commodity

Facebook’s Stories project has, for all intents and purposes, fulfilled its end goal. Now a fully-fledged, first-of-its-kind ad network named Sponsored Stories, not unrelated to Twitter’s Promoted Tweets Trends Accounts, it allows brands to affix their name (and corresponding Facebook page) to an organic, consumer-generated activity in the hopes of populating the well-intentioned promoter’s friend network with a more compelling push to purchase.

The True Heart Of Social Media

An inspiring thing has happened to our social media feeds in the last week. The tightrope of life and death that we all walk on was exposed for one young entrepreneur. Refusing to take his situation lying down, he’s using viral marketing to raise awareness for his ailment and motivate people across the globe to help save his life. Amit Gupta was a regular ol’ human being like the rest of us.

Shoot this Bear. Or Dance with this Bear. Whatever.

What do office supplies, chicken sandwiches, and body wash have in common They’ve all jumped on the interactive ad platform, of course Bic, being the newest member of the engaged set, now holds hands with the likes of Old Spice and Burger King after producing a knock-out video series in the latest tradition of interactive storytelling.

Is Foursquare Becoming The Perfect Local Ad Platform?

Local merchants that’ve ignored location-based check-in platform foursquare have just been handed a serious reason to get on board Local Updates, the first-ever way for merchants large and small (all one million of them, currently) to communicate directly with their customers on the platform, has arrived.

How To Become Instantly Famous

No real surprises there. No surprise either that I was drinking imported bottled lager. In fact, let’s just dispense with this surprise thing altogether I was drinking a beer that I often drink and have drunk for a while. I was drinking Vedett a Belgian lager that is, by it’s own admission, just a tasty beer. As they say on their site ‘drinking Vedett won’t solve your problems, make you better looking or stop glabal warming.

Satisfying The Kindle-curious

The Kindle e-reader has been one of the hottest tech items of the past couple of years. Now, in absence of standalone displays, Amazon established a portal where the Kindle-curious can hook up with local enthusiasts worldwide. AdLab tipped its hat to the project, which circumvents traditional paid sales representatives. In connecting potential users with core brand advocates, Amazon turns power over to those most passionate about the product inherently better than any paid pusher.

Is Frictionless Sharing A Boon Or Black Hole For Brands?

As frictionless sharing becomes the norm for applications like Spotify and Huffington Post, it feels like we’re at the cusp of an era of increasingly intense oversharing. Facebook’s new sharing mechanism has already contributed to a distinct decrease in manual curating and the rise of automated sharing through software.

Put a Smile On Your Face

Put a Smile On Your Face Turn that frown upside down ) Campaigns are putting a cheerful face forward with positive messages about the economy. In this day and age, who needs to be dragged further down As the New York Times reports, brands like Levi’s, Bank of America and General Electric are all running upbeat ads. With taglines like The American renewal is happening right now and America. Growing stronger every day, they tell optimistic stories about the country.

Adidas Steps Up Its Game

Trying to inch in on the Nike-controlled basketball market, Adidas is launching a global campaign projecting an image of brotherhood. The spot sports a who’s-who cast of NBA stars and their lives both on and off the court. AdWeek reported that in the basketball category, Nike’s Jordan brand captures 75 and Nike controls 18 , while Adidias owns only 2 of the game. But now it’s putting a full-court press on the competition.

Difference of Opinion

In September, The Huffington Post surpassed the Washington Post in terms of unique visitors. The Huff Post was up 26 year-over-year to 9.4 million uniques, while uniques at the Washingtonpost.com dropped almost 30 to 9.2 million, reports Jennifer Saba at Editor & Publisher . Look out, media giants. You are never safe.

Skittles’ Big Hug on Valentine’s Day

Skittles’ Big Hug on Valentine’s Day Well, another Valentine’s Day has come and gone. This year, Skittles and its army of Facebook followers schemed up a special surprise for one lucky lady and she really could’ve used it. It’s part of the brand’s ongoing Mob the Rainbow experiment. This was a way to mobilize the candy’s 3.7 million fans for fun, on-brand web antics, actively engaging this base without forcing it.

In The Hands Of The Masses: 5 Killer Crowdsourced Advertising Campaigns

As post-advertisers, we spend most of our lives coming up with ways to tell brand stories. So much time is spent thinking, brainstorming and discussing that we spend every ounce of gray matter our brains can spit out (some have more than others) in the hopes that our clients and their customers will see the genius in what we’ve done.

The Future of Recorded Music

Here’s a novel concept instead of unsuccessfully pursuing and prosecuting bootleggers, reward those who actually cough up money for your recordings with something extra. Winnetka, California-born hip-hop experimentalist Steven Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus, has done just that, giving those who legally obtained a copy of his 2010 release Cosmogramma exclusive album outtakes and alternate versions via his Trigger web app.

Have Conversations Left Blogging?

Since the advent of the Internet, blogs have provided the masses with a way to publish content. By the early 2000s, brands were catching on to the benefits of blogging, and those who embraced this new type of content marketing were seen as being ahead of the social-media curve. Not only did blogs help businesses rank better for SEO, they also permitted customers and brands to have meaningful dialogue.

Content? Let’s Define It.

The central word in the web revolution turns out to be an old one content. (Our battered old Oxford English Dictionary says it’s derived from the Latin word contentum, which must go back a few thousand years. It was early in the 16th century when the word was first used in English to mean something similar to what we’re getting at today something written down.) Everybody is throwing around the word content these days, but I get the feeling there is no general agreement about what it means.

Super Bowl Alchemy: Ads Become Content

At the end of this post, I bravely name the best ad of Super Bowl 43. Hint NBC got no revenue from this particular ad. Long before the game began, CBS began Super Bowl Sunday by understanding the day much better than NBC. The famously laid-back, magazine-style show Sunday Morning was marking its own 30th anniversary. Part of the celebration was a discussion of the cultural significance of Sunday in American life.

All Dressed Up And In Your Hands

This season’s all about the look book an instrumental tool for fashion brands to showcase new collections. Usually, these glossies feature a pristine vision the clothes worn by professional models in a world sans competing labels. Well, retail trendsetter American Apparel has restitched the idea with its latest volume.Turning tradition inside out, the company called on customers to show how they wear AA’s fashionable basics.

Progressive Platform, Primitive Advertising

With each successive ad-related announcement, micro-blogging service Twitter seems to move further away from a marketing strategy that’s equal to its cutting edge services and savvy, new school users. Its newest venture with client HootSuite is just the latest interruption-as-usual.

Underheard In New York Initiative Humanizes Homelessness

There’s a certain expectation you have when you hear about an intriguing story that may be great content for a blog post. You set aside a half-hour or so to do your research before organizing your thoughts and beginning to write. You wonder how this story applies to the focus of your blog and possibly how you can relate it to the products or services you provide. Then there are those stories that are so powerful that they leave you wondering how your writing could possibly do them justice.

The Digital To Tangible Revolution

According to my grandmother, I’m the greatest photographer on the planet. Of course, my grandmother is also amazed at my ability to operate a toaster and a gas pump. My achievements are well-known among her friends at the croquet club yes, these actually exist. Luckily, I’ve never had to actually prove my photography genius to them as my photos all reside on my iPhone where I can easily alter them using the built-in filters from Instagram.

Botox Says Express Yourself. Seriously?

Every now and then, you get a real-life reminder of why you do your job. It makes you think, Hey, I really am making a difference in this world and, by golly, what I do is somewhat important in the grand scheme of things. This morning I got a real-life reminder. It came to me in the form of a Botox commercial. Botox’s new tagline, and you can’t make this stuff up, is Express Yourself.

MGM Home Entertainment Has More Fun With Faces

Oddcast, the vendor whose name you don’t know but whose work you’re all too familiar with, is at it again. This time, it’s with MGM Home Entertainment. Put your face or the face of your friends into spoooooky scenes from iconic American thrillers at MyMovieMoment.com. There’s more MyMovieMoment.com is pretty straightforward. You put your face in the movie. You like the movie. You buy the movie. It’s commerce married to marketing media.

Extra! Extra! Introducing a Paper For the People, by the People

As publications scramble to regain their footing, one decidedly different paper has risen, reflecting the age of consumer empowerment. It’s time to welcome theblogpaper, which lives online, to the circuit. theblogpaper is UK-based rag written entirely by the audience. Meaning, it’s composed exclusively of user-submitted content raw, unabashed, citizen journalism. As PSFK reported, articles and photos are posted to the paper’s online home, where they’re discussed by the community.

How To Brand For Spotify, Mog And More

Free music streaming services are here to stay. So when will brands really come out and play Saviors like Spotify and MOG, plus the now-seasoned vets Pandora and Last.fm which have dragged the music industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century are now the best bets at monetizing and spreading music legally into the future. And now, via social platforms like Facebook and its Open Graph, they’re encouraging more sharing than ever before.

Content Marketing Is Not The Hot New Trend

The term content marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in marketing lately. It didn’t appear in Google searches before late 2007 (see graph below), but now it’s stormed onto the scene helping turn brands into publishers. Several blogs are dedicated to the method (this being one of them), and the Content Marketing World conference attracted hundreds of marketers this summer.

Three Secrets To Successful Branded Viral Marketing

Like the search for the Holy Grail, viral marketing success has been an elusive treasure. While we see a new wave of viral content every day, there’s no clear path toward creating the next big thing. If there were, I’d be teaching my cat ninja skills (maybe I already am) and filming my twin babies talking to each other while watching the money pour in. As difficult as it is to create viral media, it’s even harder when it’s branded.

Drive-thru Marketing: Bite-sized Content For An Impatient World

I know that at some point in my life I did. I could wait in lines, sit through three-hour college classes and even read a book for hours, all without feeling as though I’d missed out on something. But not anymore. Today my patience (or maybe it’s just my attention span) has deteriorated to a sliver of what it was.

What Panda, Penguin And Social Media Really Mean For Brands

An article recently published on Fast Company has caused a bit of a stir in the content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) communities. Written by Veronica Fielding, CEO of Digital Brand Expressions, it explains how the recent Panda and Penguin Google algorithm updates mean that social engagement rather than search engine trickery yields top results.

Social Media Strategy Step 1: Find Your Audience

I’m a child of the 80s and a teenager of the 90s. Though my parents didn’t spoil me with riches, they did hop on the Internet bandwagon early. It’s a pretty impressive and serendipitous thing, if you knew my parents. I love them dearly, but let’s just say they’re not very tech savvy. Every visit home is a new tech problem I have to fix, which is usually a result of my mom forgetting her password or my dad deleting an icon.

Lessons From This Summer’s Biggest Social Media Blunders

When a brand makes a PR fumble, regardless of the faux pas’s size, the brand’s response and the action it takes afterward nowadays, largely in the arena of social media can often be more influential and telling than the blunder itself. The poor handling of an error can altogether overshadow the original mishap. And that makes sense. We want the brands we love to display good character.

Three Ways The Second Screen Is Shaping The Future Of Television

Have you heard of the second screen If not and you’re a marketer of media, you’d better listen up and learn fast a number of television networks and individual programs have started taking this concept seriously and are, as a result, tightly weaving audiences into a more dynamic viewing experience.

Why “Tweet First, Ask Questions Last” Doesn’t Work

Social Media hasn’t just exploded it has taken off into the stratosphere. Companies and brands are stampeding towards WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter faster than someone with 100 Twitter followers can call themselves a Social Media Expert. But while you may be able to lead a horse to water you can’t make it drink. Simply leading a brand to HootSuite doesn’t mean they have anything great to say.

The Best Advertising Isn’t Advertising Anymore

For decades, advertising was a joyous place. Executives enjoyed two-martini lunches as they watched the ad dollars roll in. Ads were spread through every new medium from print to radio to television. Ad agencies were held to vague benchmarks, and they promised massive exposure (as measured by metrics like number of print subscribers, average daily travelers passing by a billboard or number of television purchases) to the highest bidder.

Is Tumblr Doomed?

While Facebook and Twitter constantly load up on new features many of which premiere to groans from avid users Tumblr is scaling down and making things simpler in order to foster a positive artistic community. Tumblr also stands out by refusing to employ traditional digital-advertising methods. With more than 64 million blogs and 15 billion monthly page views, Tumblr could easily make millions through display, banner or video ads.

4 Lessons In Creating Dynamic Social Content

Why would I care Why would I share These are two key questions that Droga5’s chief creative officer, Ted Royer, says his agency considers when creating social content for brands on Facebook. Royer and Carlos Figueiredo, associate creative director at Publicis Kaplan Thaler, hashed out what makes engaging Facebook content during a Creative Week panel titled Newsfeeder The Most Creative Posts From Facebook Brands, moderated by BuzzFeed’s CCO, Jeff Greenspan.

Buzzfeed’s Native Advertising Is Omg Win!

This may have been my hardest assignment yet. BuzzFeed is killing it on the interwebs lately (WIN), and not just because it creates some of the most shareable content around. It’s killing it softly, so to speak, monetizing its wildly successful site by partnering with brands to create branded content that people actually consume, enjoy and share with their audiences. But why was this a difficult assignment To write about BuzzFeed means one has to peruse BuzzFeed.

Why Most Native Advertising Will Fail

Are you familiar with the term native advertising You may have read about it on popular blogs Age, but can you put your finger on exactly what it means Whatever it is , native advertising doesn’t work simply because someone put the word native before it and because it doesn’t fit the standard definition of advertising the 30 second spots, the billboards, the banner ads.

Disney All-In On Content Marketing With “Oh My Disney”

The format is perfect for the way audiences consume and share media today. The content is easy to consume, relevant, entertaining and frequent, as the site posts dozens of times a day. Brands like HBO and Velveeta have even joined in, co-creating content with BuzzFeed. It’s a publishing model that requires lots of staffers and community contributors to keep the content fire hose pumping. So it was quite a surprise to see that Disney has launched its own BuzzFeed-like site.

Not Everyone Is A Storyteller

Lately, everyone in advertising has become a storyteller specializing in engaging content. This isn’t true, of course. But I understand why everyone’s making the claim Digital is the only part of advertising that’s growing rapidly social media is the red-hot center of digital to make social work, you need conversation-starting (and sustaining) content. So content creation now is the biggest challenge of 21st century marketing. It’s time-consuming and complicated.

3 Carmakers Embracing Brand Stories

My first car was a gray 1987 Honda Accord LXi hatchback. Well, it was actually a two-toned gray, since I never bothered to get the replacement panels painted after a fender bender (primer gray was close enough). I bought the car using the money I earned scooping ice cream and washing dishes at Brigham’s restaurant the two years before. It was a stick shift, and since I didn’t know how to drive a stick yet, my mom had to test-drive it as I sat in the passenger seat.

Food Truck Culture: Is There Room For National Chains?

Food truck fanatics, hold on to your tongues Fast-food giants from Sizzler to Taco Bell to Jack in the Box to Applebee’s have fully functional food trucks parading down streets across America. Some just hope to capitalize on the current food truck trend, while others predate it. Should supporters of what some might call authentic food truck culture the kind incubated in Portland, Oregon Los Angeles and other cities be worried about these flirtations by the big-timers they already vie with…

Rock-Solid ABS

Enjoy your college years, kids They blow by all too quickly and you wake up one day in a bad job market with student loans and credit card debt wondering why you tried so hard to graduate on time. At least some of you are getting something out of college. A company called All By Students is partnering with colleges and distributing five-subject spiral notebooks to students for free.

Can Customer Reviews Be Trusted?

This post originally appeared in our July issue of Live Report from the Future of Marketing, our monthly Post-Advertising newsletter. Subscribe for free here. They’re but one of hundreds of sites that allow anyone to publish their review of a business, product or service to the world, but on July 15, 6-year-old Yelp celebrated passing the 20 million review mark.

Why Streaming Services Could Upend Cable Tv’s Content Model

Cancellation is almost always a death sentence for a television show. Some are revived decades later, like the 80’s soap opera Dallas, which was reborn with a handful of original cast members this past June, but most live in our hearts, minds, and in DVD box sets. Arrested Development, which was cancelled in 2006, has cheated death.

Social As We See It: Digital Trends

In the marketing world, getting in on the ground floor of the latest digital trend can pay huge dividends for users, particularly if they’re brands. But it’s difficult to know exactly which emerging site or app to dive into with both feet. Not every idea pans out, regardless of how much VC funding is acquired. True success depends on widespread adoption of the masses, or at least a dedicated community who simply can’t do without that service.

Dish Network’s Hopper Fights The Future Of Traditional Advertising

The commercials for Dish Network’s ad-skipping DVR, the Hopper, are quite memorable and humorous to a native of Massachusetts, like me. The actors have thick Boston accents, and they repeatedly pronounce the name of the device the way any good Red Sox fan would Hop -ah. It’s ironic, though, that the Hopper’s commercials are so memorable. The device’s primary function is to eliminate commercials altogether.

The Big Facebook Update: Is It The Best Of Times Or The Worst Of Times For Brands?

There was much hand-wringing when Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the f8 conference to unveil new changes to Facebook. I don’t want my profile to change I don’t want to share so much personal information And, for brands in particular I just learned how to use Facebook to market my brand what do I do now The good news is that the days since then have shown that change, while it will always frighten some people (an effect that seems to be amplified a thousand-fold when it comes to Facebook…

Marketers Take Notice: Reddit Is Very Much Here

From Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dave Grohl to a five-year McDonald’s employee and a valet for the stars, the I Am A ____, Ask Me Anything (AMA) section of Reddit takes on people from all walks of life. It can be a scary place. No moderator. No filters. Only rule is that you prove who you are.

Why Your Cpg Brand Isn’t Remarkable And What You Can Do About It

Marketing Apple products is easy. Well, not really (on both accounts), but let me explain. Apple products computers, phones, music players, tablets and other digital devices are some of the most expensive products on the market. But devoted fans come out in droves to purchase the latest editions, seeming not to mind that they’re paying a premium for the mass-produced technologies. I’m not faulting them.

There’s No Content Like No Content

I’m annoyed to see Google’s use of a Rembrandt self-portrait across their logo today, on the 470th anniversary of his death. I live a short way from Kenwood House in London, home to one of Rembrandt’s greatest late paintings. In this painting, the sad sack stares us down, brushes bunched in his fist a confection of in-your-face paint strokes which brag about being the difference between what things are and what they mean.

How Story Platforms Help Global Brands Go Local

While the current turmoil in Cairo may obscure the post-revolutionary optimism that pervaded the city last winter, that mood was powerful at the time. Despite the chaos in the virtual absence of government, the metropolitan region of some 14 million was taken over in January by an Arabic pop music video urging people to go crazy by committing acts of kindness to spread happiness.

What Billions Of Cicadas Taught Me About Storytelling

Billions of buzzing (relatively harmless) insects will descend upon the eastern United States from Georgia to New England in the coming weeks. If you’re not familiar with them, cicadas are a unique species. For most of their lives, cicadas live underground as nymphs, digging and feeding on roots.

Getting The News Into Brand Newsrooms

Celebrating Oreo’s now-famous twi-jacking (Or is it twit-jacking ) of the Super Bowl for the brand’s own milk-and-cookies purposes, the ad business erupted early this year with ecstatic chatter about so-called brand newsrooms. While the chatter focused in minute detail on brands and to a lesser extent on rooms, there was virtually nothing about what constitutes news. Apparently, the ad people peddling brand newsrooms know nothing about news.

Baking Brand Storytelling Into Your Lunch

Any restaurant is rich in stories, from the founding of the establishment to the experiences of its patrons. Because of that, the restaurant business is an interesting venue for content marketing, social media and brand storytelling. I like to think that the best part about going out to eat, particularly with friends, isn’t the food (though don’t get me wrong I adore food). It’s the stories we share and the stories we create.

3 Television Shows That “GET” SOCIAL

Television has been social for years now, but the rapid embrace of real-time marketing in 2013 (and we’re only two months into it) has shifted social TV into a higher gear. But the topic of brands reacting to television programming via social channels has been discussed ad nauseam. I’m not sure anyone can write an article lately about social media without mentioning Oreo, and this year’s Oscars apparently invited every brand to the social media party, whether it was relevant or not.

3 Brands Winning The Real-time Media Game

The blanket of snow that fell across the UK a few weeks ago reminded me of one of my favourite marketing campaigns in recent years. If you haven’t seen this fantastic piece of opportunistic advertising before, the Polo Snow Stamp was pressed into thick snow on cars, park benches and roads across London, creating a perfect replica of the iconic white mint with the hole.

Is Twitter A Gold Mine For Character-based Brand Storytelling?

My wife has never seen the movie Goonies , released in 1985. That’s a shame. So many classic lines, and one of the most well known yet practically silent characters, Lotney Fratelli, better known to the masses as Sloth. The strong, silent type, Sloth had only three audible lines, but anyone who has seen the movie can recite his most famous one, Sloth love Chunk For the more than two decades since the movie’s release, the only words Sloth muttered were those in his three lines.

Brand storytelling, eggs and fair trade

I was reading the Guardian on Sunday. Yes, the Guardian comes out on a Saturday, not a Sunday. I was being lazy, reading yesterday’s paper over poached eggs on toast before venturing down to my friend’s allotment to plant some carrot, beetroot, bean, leek, shallot, garlic and onion seeds. Wearing Hunter wellies. That’s how middle class I am. I’m straying. On page 2 of the guardian I saw an ad encouraging me to egg a politician’.

Coca-cola Falls Flat Tackling Obesity

This past weekend my beloved New England Patriots, a team in the U.S. National Football League, lost in the conference championship game, falling one game short of the Super Bowl. I was devastated and inconsolable, and even as I write this I sadly consider what could have been. Up until what ultimately became the Patriots’ final game, their season was fantastic. They won 12 out of 16 games and earned the second seed going into the playoffs.

10 Marketing Lessons You Can’t Learn From Walmart

I’m not ashamed to admit that one of my favorite movies is You’ve Got Mail a complete rip-off of Sleepless in Seattle , even using the same lead actors (Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan). Ryan’s character runs a small independent bookshop in Manhattan, while Hanks’s character is opening a large retail bookstore with low prices (if only he’d known how technology would change the way we read) just down the block. In the late 1990s, when the movie was made, this was a common story line.

Youtube’s Original Channels: One Giant Leap For Brandkind

Back in South East England, rolling through the mists of time (well, the late ’70s ), to when my main mode of transport was a space hopper and Pong was the ultimate in console gaming, I was taken to the cinema by my parents every week. Back then, local adverts were played between the B and A movies as part of the show Wedding dresses ‘, The sharpest suits ‘, The best chicken tikka in town only 50 yards from this theatre’, they would announce with pride.

5 Big Ideas For Content Marketing

This post originally appeared in our August issue of Live Report from the Future of Marketing, our monthly Post-Advertising newsletter. Subscribe for free here. Most marketing agencies approach their content with the standard brush. They take a look at the latest tools and trends, and pull together a few tips here and there. That subtle approach is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this difficult economy, that’s no longer good enough. Desperate times call for bold strokes.

Post Ad Anachronisms of the Mad Men Season 4 Premiere

If you’re at all interested in the ad biz, we know where you were last night at 10pm on the couch, eyes transfixed on the tube, eagerly ingesting the premiere of Mad Men’s fourth season. We grinned and beared the commercial interruptions (surprisingly engaging and relevant, thanks in part to BMW) to spend our Sunday evening catching up with Don Draper and company.

Levi’s Tells An Odd, Out-of-place Story, But a Story Nonetheless

While it may not be revolutionary, Levi’s Go Forth campaign has taken up a storytelling-as-advertising approach that is, while perhaps not conceived and executed as well as it could be, a cut above many other foot draggers.The new push investigates the story of Braddock, PA, a small town that’s been trying to get back on its feet. We are all workers, the jeans maker claims. It’s brand-backed journalism, laid out in episodes, presented not peddled by Levi’s.

Enter the Storytelling Matrix – No Red Pill Required

BREAKING NEWS Storytelling is the most engaging way for a brand to interact with consumers. OK, that’s hardly a new point of view, although you’d be excused for thinking so as it’s recently gained new cache through the wise words of Tom Peters, IBM’s Jon Iwata, Tom Foremski, Levi’s jeans, and many others. The Storytelling Matrix, however, takes the science of storytelling to new levels of sophistication and complexity.

Congress Turns Down the Volume

Is your thumb sore and blistered from hitting the mute button We have good news for you. After decades of complaints from TV viewers who are sick of obnoxious ads blaring in their living rooms, Congress has decided it’s finally time to set internationally accepted standards of television advertisement volumes.

Photo Apps Add Nostalgia to Social Sharing

As we have evolved as a society, so too has our technology. In this past decade you could have found a digital camera that accepted 3.5 floppy disks (can you believe they’re still for sale ). Rewind another decade and you probably could have hunted down a Polaroid camera with relative ease for your immediate photographic desires. However, now the best cameras in our households are often the ones in our cell phones.

The Old Spice Guy is Back, but Do We Still Care?

After a six-month hiatus, our favorite shirtless alpha-male with striking brown eyes and bulging pecs is back for Round 3, and just in time for the Super Bowl. The newest Old Spice campaign will tout their Fresh Collection (a line of deodorant, body spray and body wash). The commercial will be debuted on one lucky Superfan’s social network feed before the Super Bowl.

Kenny Mother-F**King Powers Shakes Up The World Of Training Shoes

The world of athlete sponsorship has long been dominated by sweaty men and women exercising in slow motion. K-Swiss is taking a different approach to brand storytelling in their attempt to get into the training shoe market. And that approach is Kenny Powers. Kenny Powers, played by Danny McBride, is a fictional character on the HBO series Eastbound and Down known for his aggressive behavior and incessant cursing. Not quite the typical mascot for a company.

Will Mobile Rule The World?

You know Grandma Mildred’s annual holiday proclamation Everyone is using them dang cellular telephones You can say that again, Grams. And while she may still be resisting the constant influx of newfangled tech and software, almost everyone else has embraced mobile with open arms. A while back, predictions had Internet usage on mobile devices overtaking the same on desktops and laptops by 2015.

The Future Of Automobile Advertising

Growing up, all I wanted was a black Pontiac TransAm that spoke to me and helped me fight crime through a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of criminals operating above the law. What I got was a 1985 Peugeot 505s with cigarette burns on the canvas seats and a tape player that didn’t have a reverse button. Cars have come a long way since the forward-thinking days of Knight Rider .

When Political Ads Attack, Everyone Loses

With additional reporting by Adam Uhrynowski. We’re all familiar with mudslinging in political commercials, debates and speeches. In the recent Iowa caucuses, negative advertising was more apparent than ever. But why do America’s leaders spend so much time pointing out the competition’s flaws and defending their political (and personal) histories rather than promoting themselves Does it even work What if brands reverted to this tactic We’ll answer these questions and more after the jump.

Staying True To The Story: Where The Lorax Went Wrong

Why haven’t I gone to see the movie adaptation of my favorite childhood story, Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax It wasn’t the trailers or previews, but rather the antics of Universal Pictures’ marketing department and their eagerness to slap a Lorax Approved logo on any product within earshot and produce beaming endorsements for any brand however ill-suited they might be willing to pony up. When compared to the lessons from the original story, the irony kills. The blasphemy is palpable.

The Ufc’s Knockout Content-marketing Punch

I was sitting in my middle-school homeroom class when a friend revealed that he had brought in a VHS of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). We had watched plenty of martial arts movies my favorite being Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Bloodsport in which martial artists of various disciplines from around the world gathered in one place to find out which martial art was supreme. Finally, someone wanted to play this story out in real life.

Facebook’s New Admin Features And What They Mean For Brands

In the last few weeks Facebook has rolled out a number of new features that Page Administrators have been clamoring for (at least we at Story have). However, unlike the Timeline rollout that featured a billboard at the top of your page notifying admins of the new features, some of these latest updates have flown under the radar. As I’m sure you’ve come to expect, we at Post-Advertising would never leave our readers in the dark.

4 Lame Excuses For Not Creating Content

Content marketing is all the rage, and brands of all shapes and sizes are focusing more time, effort and budget dollars on creating entertaining, useful and relevant content that audiences will want to share. Some brands, however, still stand at the water’s edge, not so sure an always-on commitment to social media and content creation is right for them.

Twitter Wrote Tim Burton’s Newest Stainboy Saga

Tim Burton is anything but your typical storyteller, and his recent foray into the world of social media world is further evidence of the man’s crazy genius. Burton’s Cadavre Exquis tells the story of Stainboy, the internet’s most peculiar superhero. The story of Stainboy is really the story of us all, in the sense that his tale was penned by the twisted minds of Twitter. Stainboy’s story was tweeted 140 characters at a time by authors from every corner of the Twitter universe.

Mobile Consumers to Brands: Ads Must Inform or Be Ignored

A recent survey from Yahoo and The Nielsen Company has revealed information that comes as no surprise to those of us who subscribe to the post-advertising ideal. According to the survey, which polled US mobile internet users, being informative and being relevant are the two most important criteria in advertising on mobile devices.

Ads Behaving Badly: 8 Examples Of When Trying To Do Right Goes Horribly Wrong

It’s certainly not unusual for brands to fall over themselves to attach themselves to worthy causes the environment, education, human rights. Because what consumer doesn’t want to believe their purchasing dollar is going toward the greater good But even if we give brands the benefit of the doubt and assume that their hearts are in the right place, their heads are always firmly focused on the bottom line.

Brands: Can’t Buy My Love

Desperation is never attractive, even when it comes to brands. Nevertheless, it’s apparent that brands have stooped so low as to actually buy Facebook likes (25,000 guaranteed for the low, low price of 1,757 ). Who knew in a marketing medium based on transparency and honesty, brands would zip up their hoodies, dawn a fake beard, put on their sunglasses and travel to the seedy underworld of black hat social media to inflate their social metrics Fraud in the world of digital marketing isn’t…

What A Lemonade Stand Taught Me About Storytelling

I was on my way to play golf this past weekend when I drove by a young girl selling lemonade on the sidewalk in front of her house. I have always made a point of stopping and purchasing (insert product here) if a child is selling it (not their parents the child). Unfortunately, I was running late, and this time I couldn’t stop. It broke my heart.

Occupy Wall Street Does Have A Message: Telling The Protesters’ Story

CNN business reporter Alison Kosik tweeted to the world on October 4 Purpose in 140 words or less bang on the bongos, smoke weed She later apologized and deleted the tweet, but to be fair, she was far from the only otherwise sensible journalist who curiously dismissed a massive grassroots uprising taking hold, for many of them, right outside their front door. (Erin Burnett said on air, What are they protesting No one seems to know.

Google Rewards Real Storytellers

Google has finally rewarded those steadfast providers of valuable, high-quality content over purveyors of drek. In the main objective of their recent search algorithm revamp codenamed Farmer, Google has yanked republishers, editorial mills, aggregators, and other wholesale sources of otherwise weak, unorganized content (such as Associated Content and Mahalo, to name two of the most egregious offenders) off their high-ranking perches and slashed their search results by adhering to a new system…

The Paperless Drivers’ Republic

Over the past six months, Drivers Republic , the online car magazine and social community site, has stolen a march on competitor print magazines with dwindling readerships excluding the fanzine for the Three Stooges’ pantomine that is Top Gear , of course.As the leading UK print titles saw their sales drop by between four and 14 per cent, Drivers Republic ‘s audience grew 200 per cent during the same period.

Why Telemarketers Are The Worst Brand Storytellers

There’s a certain feeling I get, and I’m sure we all get, when I answer the telephone and am greeted by a telemarketer. There are a few feelings, actually. Sort of like the five stages of grief. First, I feel a bit foolish, as if I’d been tricked into picking up the phone. This is especially true when it’s a number I don’t recognize yet I answer anyway on the off chance that it’s an emergency. From there I get impatient.

Adopt Or Die: The Anxiety Of Checking In On Foursquare

I should be, considering I write for a digital content marketing agency’s blog. I post photos on Instagram, share thought nuggets and articles on Twitter, argue on Facebook, capture looping slices of life on Vine (and now Instagram Video) and check-in using geolocation apps. The manner in which I, along with millions of others, experience and share life’s moments is decidedly different from the way we did a mere decade ago.

What is Social Media Storytelling?

My parents and many of my friends still don’t understand what it is I do every day. They envision me frolicking in the fields of Facebook and Twitter, swapping gossip and sharing funny memes. They must think I have the best job in the world because my profession is social media exactly the tool used by everyone else to procrastinate and avoid doing their real job. The combination of social media and storytelling, the term social media storytelling could be the holy grail of buzzwords.

5 Ways To Anger Your Brand’s Fans And Lose Credibility On Facebook

It annoyed me. It even made me a bit angry. I saw that a Facebook friend of mine had commented on an FM radio station’s page (that I was not a Facebook fan of). The post included a slightly distorted image and promised that my mind would be blown if I just typed the word Club in the comment box. The post had been commented on more than 1.6 million times, shared more than 4,700 times and Liked more than 80,000 times.

Welcome To The Future Of Advertising

Consumers controlling brands, optimizing search, utilizing paid, earned, and owned media all aspects can seem pretty confusing. So what’s a poor brand to do Never fear Help is on the way Our storytellers created The Future of Advertising, a step-by-step video walking you through marketing in the modern era, starting with discovering a brand’s core story (what we call the Story Platform) and creating different narratives based on it.

Why Celebrity Ads Fail

According to a new infographic from Crowdtap, consumers trust recommendations from peers over all other forms of advertising. That’s right. Earned media a suggestion from his neighbor, his college buddy or even his dentist’s cousin will influence Mr. Consumer more than a high-budget television, print or online banner ad.

Transmedia Storytelling

Transmedia storytelling is one of those monikers that runs the risk of being added to a Bullshit Bingo card some time very soon. On the other hand it could just be the saviour of brand communications. Google it and you’ll get all sorts of definitions that talk about evolving non-linear brand narratives, brand communities and deeply immersive narrative universes.

Old Spice’s Shirtless Isaiah Mustafa is Talking to You, and Only You

For anyone who thought deodorant and body-wash marketing was nothing but lather, rinse, and repeat, Old Spice is proving, yet again, that there’s much more to it with the shining genius that is the Old Spice Man a soaped up slice of comical manliness that went viral and has now evolved into a masterful multi-channel juggernaut of success. For all the single ladies who were convinced that the Old Spice Guy’s tickets to that thing you like -cum-diamonds were just for them, well, now they are.

5 Social Media Tips To Ignore

Do a quick Google search or scour the front pages of your favorite social media blogs and you’ll find a seemingly endless array of articles providing you with tips and advice on social media (this blog included). But if you read enough of them, which I do, eventually you’ll see those tips and bits of advice contradict each other. Don’t post on Facebook more than once a day, or your fans will un-Like you. Post more than once a day on Facebook to keep your People Talking About This score high.

Is Facebook A Failure At Customer Acquisition?

There’s no questioning the power of Facebook, quite new in the grand scheme of marketing, as a tool to engage with fans on a deeper level and with more regularity than anything before it. Typical advertisement media radio, TV, print, billboards were always one-way. Social media now allows near-real-time two-way engagement that has the ability to turn lukewarm consumers into brand advocates.

Holiday Season Brings Many Ads…Or Does It?

With marketing and media on a collision course, we are seeing more and more pieces of online media that confuse us. Is this media Is this an ad Sometimes it’s both, but a lot of times, we’re not sure. Here are a few examples, the first of which I think we and the rest of the interwebz has already sussed out. Turn on your spidey sense In a bizarre scene, a woman drives away with a tow truck in tow. Hilarious, I’m sure.

Belle & Sebastian Are Writing A Song About You

For the beloved Scottish indie-pop group Belle & Sebastian’s newest record, Belle & Sebastian Write About Love , the 7-piece replaced the typical enter our sweepstakes and buy our record contest experience with something infinitely more personal. Something about their music has always felt like they’re singing to you, and only you. And now, they are. In short, they asked each B&S hopeful to ponder the album’s larger concept by (quite literally) having them write about love.

Location-Based Marketers: Where Is Everybody?

Inquiring marketers want to know Where are you They’re fixated on location-based social networking as the next way to hook consumers. They’ve got platforms in place and cash in their wallets so where the heck is everyone According to this recent New York Times piece, less than 5 percent of plugged-in Americans have adopted location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla and only 1 percent actively use them in any given day.

Restaurant Owners to Negative Yelp Reviewers: Go Get Hit by a Bus

Adding the word constructive doesn’t make it much better either. Heck, just having someone point out that you’ve got a spec of broccoli in your teeth can ruin an entire day. As if the better solution would be to leave it there. Ignorance is bliss New websites are popping up every day allowing consumers to rate, review, and criticize any and every experience they’ve had, including hotels, restaurants, products, services, doctors, even car dealerships.

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