Pepsi: A do-good-brand

The Inspiration Room presented today this interesting project. I love when companies are starting to do good. Sure, it´s to earn money in the end, but as long as they are actually doing good, I can´t see a problem with that. When states are overspending and causing nations to fall, it highlights the importance of having your finances in order. When you do, you have room to help. Just as you need to love yourself before you can love someone else, capitalistic values lead the way to altruism and generosity. 

"Pepsi‘s partnership with the My Shelter Foundation Liter of Light project in the Philippines has won Gold for “The New” at the London International Awards. The Isang Litrong Liwanag (A Liter of Light) project, based on research by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), involved installing solar bottle lights to provide a unique daytime lighting solution for urban poor communities living in homes without natural light sources. Pepsi sponsorship involved the installation of used plastic Pepsi bottles on roofs to refract sunlight into 55W of light. This cuts down electric bills and helps reduce carbon emission. The brand has installed over 20,000 lights through the combination of volunteer action, online donation and direct sponsorship.

To spread the project, Pepsi helped establish a center to train volunteers and educated companies, schools and people on how to create and install lights. A model community, wherein every home is lit by at least 2 bottle bulbs, was established to help take the model across the global Pepsi system.

The project was covered by TedX, BBC and NHK. It received ‘Best of the Best’ at the 2012 Global Pepsi Performance with Purpose Awards and was specially commended at the 2011 World Climate Conference.

See more on the Liter of Light project at aliteroflight.org and the Liter of Light Facebook page.

Credits

The Pepsi Bottle Light project was developed at BBDO Guerrero, Makati City, by chief creative officer/executive creative director and copywriter David Guerrero, group creative director/art director Dale Lopez, copywriters Rachel Teotico and Raymund Sison, art directors Dennis Nierra, Tim Villela and Ley Mababangloob, agency producers Jing Abellera and Ino Magno, account directors Carmella Q. Montilla, Fran Gonzalez, Dalla Sucgang and Denise Gamo, working with Pepsico International brand manager Michael Eric Rosales and marketing director Steve Romasanta, and My Shelter Foundation founder Illac Diaz. The production team included creative technologists Marissa Manaloto and Xerg Aguilar, social media strategist Roshan Nandwani, programmer Dennis Billano, production manager Al Salvador, graphic designer Manny Vailoces, photographers Karel Sevilla, Leo Dino, Joy Aquino and Aids Tecson, technical developer Chico Jabines and editor Ed Santos."

Coke keeps celebrating happiness - now on an Instagram look-alike

Psfk reports today about Coca-Cola´s new photo site, filled with pictures of Happiness.

It´s so simple but yet so clever how Coke keeps repeating its love for "happiness" and sticks to the value, the message, the theme. It makes all communication attempts line up nicely and strong. In the eyes of people its clear and consistent, making people trust the brand. Repetition is the key, and even if a marketer gets bored of a certain message or way of doing things, it´s important to understand that the consumer meets a LOT of messages and brands every minute, and will need some time to pick up your marketing idea. Dare to stay focused, dare to keep still.

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• COCA-COLA LAUNCHES
• INSTAGRAM COMPETITOR

Coca-Cola is planning to launch a new photo-sharing service called ‘Happy Places‘, and has released a free iPhone app that shows what it will be like. The app, which looks similar to Instagram, lets users take photos and share them with their social networks. It focuses on what makes people happy, letting them search by relevant hashtags such as #music, #beautiful, and #joy.

Your day, your friends, your trips, your music… your life is full of happy moments worth storing and sharing. Happy Places by Coca-Cola is that place where you can upload photos of your happy moments, share them, and remember them any time you want. Take a picture or pick one from your albums, add it to your profile, and share that moment of happiness with your followers in Happy Places, or your friends in Facebook or Twitter.

Popsop reports that the app lets Coca-Cola fans create a profile, browse photos, and get notifications on new photos added in their interests. Users can also create their happy moments offline and then upload them when they have a wi-fi or 3G connection.

Happy Places

Pay with a tweet - more common?

Cassandra Daily reports about some interesting Twitter-campaigns, where twitter meets real life.

Kellogg’s Tweet Shop: Kellogg’s London promotion for its Special K Cracker Crisps, the Tweet Shop was a 4-day pop-up shop that accepted tweets as payment for snack samples. “Shoppers” were asked to post a review containing the hashtag “#tweetshop.” Once their messages appeared on the store’s LCD screen, customers received a box of the chips. Proving that plenty of people are willing to sell themselves out, the stunt garnered significant participation, with tweets like “Forget Trident Layers, I want to be paid exclusively in Cracker Crisps” and “At the #tweetshop – getting my crisps. For free. In exchange for a tweet. Must be the future.”

BEV Vending Machine: South African beverage company BOS Ice Tea has developed a Twitter-activated vending machine, called BEV, that dispenses a free can of its Rooibos drink when a customer stands in front of it and tweets with the hashtag “#BOSTWEET4T.” An overhead LED screen shows the person’s Twitter handle and a countdown until the "free" can emerges. When the drink is delivered, colored lights blink while a speaker amplifies a robotic voice telling the person to enjoy their beverage. Rigged with a series of microphones and cameras, the conversational machine delivers a series of playful messages for passersby, saying things like “You look thirsty, human. Let me help you.”

PunkMoney: PunkMoney, a twist on peer-to-peer sharing economies, is a platform on which tweeted promises are currency. For example, someone could tweet "@Alice I promise to mow your lawn next week. #PunkMoney @Bob,” after which the vow will appear on the site’s ticker to be redeemed at a later date or transferred to another person. The “#PunkMoney” hashtag identifies and tracks what happens to each promise over time. Creator Eli Gothill, who was partly inspired by OWS grievances, designed the system to be “entirely trust-based, and between peers, so it encourages community. The only way that this money has value is if people trust each other.”

Disney re-shapes the princess role.

I really like how Disney is showing that being a "princess" is not the same as wearing uncomfortable glass shoes and search for princes :) But I am missing the little boys? Can´t they be princesses too? 

Disney has released an inspirational new video to celebrate the Princess inside every young girl. It rebrands “princess” by framing it in terms of bravery, trust, loyalty, kindness, generosity, compassion, standing up for oneself, and standing up for others.

The ‘I Am a Princess’ video shows what the company believes it means to be a Princess today. You can check it out below:

http://www.psfk.com/2012/10/disney-rebrands-princess.html for full story

Swedish article... Gratisprovernas dilemma

Varför gratis inte är gott

Skrivet av Carolin Dahlman

Häromveckan rusade jag runt på T-centralen i Stockholm och någonstans i gångarna stod ett gäng ungdomar och delade ut något. Sweet, tänkte jag. Alla gillar ju presenter. Så jag öppnade handen och fick… en pump handdesinfektion. Jaha. Läs mer Kommentera (0)

Show don´t tell why you are good. Actions speak louder!

I love this campaign from Forsman & Bodenfors. It´s a part of the "exaggerate trend" where more and more brands are not just telling what makes their products really awesome, but actually shows it by overstating the practical benefit - and in that way making it emotional.

The world-record holding tightrope walker was challenged by Volvo to walk between two semi-trailers, speeding toward a tunnel in order to demonstrate the precision of Volvo’s FH trucks. Scary!!!!

Another example of a brand that exaggerates. From Psfk: 

VENDING MACHINE DISPENSES CHINA PLATES [VIDEO]

Corelle wanted to demonstrate how chip-resistant its dinnerware was, so it set up a machine that dropped down its plates when customers purchased them.

Agency Grey in China developed a unique promotion to demonstrate the strength of Corelle‘s dinnerware. The company wanted to demonstrate that its products were chip-resistant, so a vending machine was set up to dispense plates to customers. People could purchase the plates the same as they would a typical vending machine snack and they dropped down without a scratch. You can see the machine in action in the video below:

via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/08/china-plate-vending-machine.html#ixzz256IR61PH

Planning is useless and a waste of time and money

Is planning and strategy useless?

I´ve worked at agencies where planning is seen as "overhead", something extra, like a little decoration to add on to the most important creative work. Where deep knowledge is seen as unnecessary - "it only complicates things".

They might be right, those people. I am not sure. Agencies who are planning hostile win awards and those who have loads of strategists fail. After all, advertising is a creative art, and it´s mysterious and magical in its way to think completely different and evoke emotions by avoiding the straight line from message to receiver.

Maybe my role is pointless. Maybe I just disturb by adding too much insight on the market, the product, the brand, the consumer? I read a lot, spend hours trawling through articles, blogs, websites and videos to find out more - to find those nuggets of insights that will lead to revelations about the relationship between brand and consumer. To find out what really triggers them. To understand them beyond "women 22-24 y old who buy shampoo".

When it comes to shampoo I don´t need to know everything about the active ingredients or what the factory it´s made in looks like. There are such things as "too much information" - but it can be interesting to look at women´s beauty regime, psychological phenomenon when it comes to shampoo ads, trends in beauty or retail, lifestyle trends, how people speak about hair and shampoo on blogs or to interview people on brand perceptions, their view on priorities and usage. From hours spent on digging there may be insights that makes the strategy clearer, edgier.

Or not.

You could just make an ad that looks like most. Just use a sexier lady and more foam. Just say "shampoo" with a hotter voice or add a little "made from extracts from exotic flowers in remote places".  And it can work! Creative people can even be truly creative and make untraditional ads that makes you love the brand.

Sometimes I doubt the value of myself. Especially when I meet amazing talented creative people, or when I read bunches of articles without finding much new, or when others doubt the value of me.

I love my job and of course I find myself very important - LOL - but it´s a fact that strategy sometimes is simpler than you think. And it´s also true that if you never even consider finding insights, building brands, choosing among paths, using the left brain, you will most likely fail.

Guess we need a combo. Common sense. The ability to see our own value or uselessness and be creative on the subject of planning or not planning.

What do you think?