It's never to early to start.

Start shilling that is.

Snack food manufacturers in England are in the throes of what is termed "stealth marketing" to children. The premise is that the kids become brand ambassadors and perform specific tasks, from postering to commenting on social media to direct endorsements during recess. In return the kids get 25 quid, free food, prizes, social prestige, and the fun-filled sensation of childhood obesity. It's a win / win all around.

The idea of empowering the actual consumer of the products is nothing new, but when the consumer is easily influenced, and doesn't have the requisite skills to make an informed decision, is it more like exploitation? Sure, teens will shovel fast food and sugar into themselves, but when you're going after 8 and 9 year olds in a medium where there is no advertising standards watchdog, don't you think its gone too far?

Funnily enough, the British government doesn't think so. They've embraced the idea and are using it to promote healthy eating. Yes, that sound was two truckloads of irony colliding head-on.

Why yes, I do work in an augmented building

Don't you?

Tokyo is saturated with billboards and electronic outdoor advertising, but the N Building has taken the concept, married it to augmented reality and upped the bar for out-of-home display.

In essence, the entire facade of the building is a QR code. Users with a custom iPhone app will be able to scan the building's front and interact with the merchants, extract relevant data and generally know everything they need to know. Augmented reality and architecture, it's cool.

N Building from Alexander Reeder on Vimeo.

A spot of the old ultra violence then?

This would make for an interesting concept to pitch to your clients: new research shows that adverts in violent video games are subject to better recall than ads in more non-violent video games.

Here's the article from the MIT Technology Review.

Now I'm off to find a way to work some Laura Ashley ads into Grand Theft Auto.

KFC sues self over advertising, creates black hole in space time continuum

Crispy or grilled? That is the question.

One part of KFC, the KFC National Council and Advertising Cooperative is suing another part of KFC, the YUM! Brands Kentucky Fried Chicken unit over the promotion of grilled over crispy chicken. Franchisees see the advertising as biased towards grilled chicken and are fearful over slumping sales due to consumer perception of crispy chicken being unhealthy.

The National Council and Advertising Cooperative who designs the marketing programs for the most popular chicken restaurant on the planet contends that Roger Eaton the president and chief concept officer for KFC is promoting grilled chicken over the more well known crispy offering.

So, the whole things comes down to who gets to call the marketing shots, but in the end, it's all about the chicken. Delicious crispy grilled deep fried breaded broiled flame kissed sauteed seared roasted barbequed chicken. Of course that's assuming that KFC is still in the chicken biz and isn't going to evolve into a never-ending loop of litigation.

Mind you KFC has had some pretty weird things associated with it in the past so them playing chicken about the chicken isn't that far fetched.

Someone in Redmond got a sense of humour

And a budget.

It ain't Reefer Madness

But it's a film about drugs all right.

Glaxo has a new drug, possibly developed in answer to Huey Lewis' demand for one. However, this is probably not the drug that was hoped for. It's called Alli, it's an over the counter weight-loss pill that counts amongst its myriad side effects "an urgent need to defecate". Remember those snack foods with Olestra in them and the fun trips to the bathroom those necessitated? Now you can do that all day, every day.

To help promote this wonder drug, Glaxo is funding a film. A film about obesity. Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon are amongst the people backing this potential magnum opus. In the words of those involved “This won’t be a marketing tool at all,” said Robin Bronk, the Creative Coalition’s executive director, adding that working with Glaxo on the project is “a natural progression of our mission to develop educational projects.”

So, there you have it. The drug is good for you and you don't need to exercise; Glaxo has your best interests at heart; and anyone funding a film that obliquely promotes their product is not engaging in marketing, but in education. Just wait till the armed forces starts sponsoring war movies and Virgin Mobile starts a sitcom that revolves around texting.

Now, who am I going to get to star in my debut, funded by the makers of Slap Chop and Shamwow?

The advertising time machine.

Print ads from the last 100 years. Seriously. Well categorized, indexed and organized. And priceless. Very, very priceless. Do yourself a favour and check them out. See how things were done and perhaps 'source' some ideas for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

Advertising on the menu

What is a menu? It's a sales tool. It's selling you food using subtle cues to guide you towards what the restaurant wants you to order. It's not all about price either. It's about using buzzwords and other non-specific cues to influence your behaviour. Just like advertising some might say...

Here's a very interesting article about menu psychology from the New York Times. Just in time for the holiday rondelay of restaurant visits.

Get your freak on.

Here at Oakes & Mowat, we're getting ready for the new year and everything that comes with it. So, for your viewing pleasure, we bring you someone else's content. But it's okay, it's really fun content...

It's the 30 Freakiest Commercials of 2009, from adweek.com. Some you've already seen here, some you'll never be able to forget and some will just confuse you. Enjoy.

Going to the streets to go viral.

So. Gum advertising. Some have goats and dancing Germans. Others have talking pieces of gum with funny foreign accents. And then there's Stride. Instead of hiring livestock or Sean Connery or the Von Trapp family, they went to Chicago and hired Goons to help them get the word out.

The result is a whimsical, soft, and handmade 90 second piece that's already had over a million views on YouTube. Looks like it's working better than a goat...

keep it simple

you not so smart person.

Minimalism. It's not just for minimalists. It's also for marketing.

Users, users everywhere

but not a click to be had.

Facebook now boasts a user base of 350,000,000 people. More than many countries. That's a pretty large market.

Now the problem is how to monetize them. Sure there's advertising on Facebook but how many people actually click through those tiny little things?

Not too many.

With a great beard comes great wisdom.

Isn't that right Tom?

LG makes cellphones. Cellphones are sometimes used for cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is a big problem for a lot of high school age students, in some cases it's even led to suicide. And then there's the problem of teens misusing cellphones and the inbuilt camera to take pictures that, well, pictures that would best not be taken.

So how do you get the people holding your product in their hands to use it wisely?

Give it a Ponder, and let James Lipton help you.

I don't care if you're hungry

You can't sell the commercial rights to my favourite song! If you do, you're nothing more than a sellout, a corporate shill, lower than pond scum.

Isn't that what runs through your mind when you hear a song you love being used to sell cars, or shoes, or snacks? Damn those artists and labels for selling your youth, for corrupting that great song, for trivializing it by using it to sell something to you. Their cynicism in thinking a song you recognize and relate to will make you buy their product...the nerve.

But, you know, artists are people too. And they like to do people things, like eat and have shelter. So when the agency comes calling and offers to buy the rights so they can sell something, and they're willing to pay top dollar, who's to say that artistic principle trumps a growling stomach?

Even The Clash has done it. In 2002, the band incurred criticism when they sold the rights to Jaguar for a car advertisement. In an interview posted on his website, Strummer explained the reasons for the deal. "Yeah. I agreed to that. We get hundreds of requests for that and turn 'em all down. But I just thought Jaguar... yeah. If you're in a group and you make it together, then everybody deserves something. Especially twenty-odd years after the fact."

Here's a great article about the math and the emotion behind selling the rights to a song.

And here's one of the greatest bands in history performing one of their greatest songs.

The movie sucked but the banners are killer

Here are some animated banners promoting a movie. See if you can guess which movie they're for...

Tax this to pretty up that.

Toronto city council is debating a new tax on billboards this week. Links are here and here. The idea is to implement a tax on billboards in the city and use the revenue to facilitate a cleanup and beautification of the city. And anyone who's been outside lately knows we need a cleanup here.

One side of the fence sees billboards as urban blight and visual pollution. The other sees them as a sign of business-friendly city government.

Billboards should be taxed, but so should all the other pseudo-advertising that clutters up the great outdoors. From those plastic signs for roofers to the posters that seem to overlap one another in a space of minutes. If a budget can afford a billboard, a poster or the printing of thousands of plastic signs, it can afford to pay a tax to use public space. If it doesn't pay a tax to use public space, then why should it be allowed to remain? This isn't a freedom of speech issue, it's not an example of government being unfriendly to business. It's about public space and who gets to use it.

The point is...?

From the Pharmatimes.com

US consumer ads “led to higher drug prices”

A new study suggesting that US direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) for a top-selling drug had no effect on prescribing rates but led to a major rise in the drug’s price needs to be followed up, say the authors.

Use of Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi-Aventis’ blood-thinner Plavix (clopidogrel), which first appeared on the market in 1998, did not increase as a result of the consumer advertising campaign for it which began in 2001. However, a “sudden and sustained increase” in the drug’s price after the ads commenced cost 27 state Medicaid programmes an additional $207 million in pharmacy expenditures during 2001-2005, say researchers led by Dr Michael Law of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, reporting their findings in the Archives of Internal Medicine this week.

The price of Plavix increased 12% immediately after the DTCA began in 2001, say the authors, who note that in order to recoup the “substantial” costs of DTCA – which totaled more than $350 million for Plavix during 2001-5 - drugmakers need to generate higher revenues through increased sales, higher prices or both.

“If drug price increases after DTCA initiation are common, there are important implications for payers and for policy makers in the United States and elsewhere. Future longitudinal studies should examine other drugs and settings because many other countries are currently considering whether to permit DTCA," the authors conclude. Currently, DTCA is permitted only in the USA and New Zealand.

In comments to Reuters, Dr Law added: “the public should rightly wonder why they’re paying millions in extra drug costs to pay for advertising campaigns that don’t work.”

US drugmakers’ spending for DTCA has increased more than 330% in the last 10 years, and in 2006 the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that every $1 spent on DTCA generates an average $2 in sales. However, in September 2008, the first-ever controlled study into DTCA – whose authors included Dr Law - reported in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that money spent on such advertising has no effect whatsoever.

Nevertheless, the control or abolition of DTCA has long been a popular target for Congress, and current proposals include House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman’s call for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have powers to ban such advertising for new drugs for up to three years after approval, and New York Representative Jerrold Nalder’s reintroduced Say No to Drug Ads Act, which would abolish tax exemptions for DTCA.

It is in the first few years of a new drug's life that manufacturers "often aggressively market their products and engage in DTCA," and this "increases the number of consumers exposed to safety risks of new products long before they are truly understood," Rep Waxman has said.

Around 30 million people, or about 16% of the US population, are enrolled in the 27 state Medicaid programmes – the federal health insurance programme for those on low incomes – used in the study.

By Lynne Taylor

I've kinda gotta just do the old facepalm/headshake combo after reading this...and then be really thankful I live in Canada.

The ultimate handheld content platform

Version 4.0, with fully licensed content, 26" four colour media display that can be rotated, built-in games, and you can share it without signing a 5,734 page long end-user license.

What a magical age we live in.

Television spot for the printed word

It's brilliant. It's art. It's worth a watch.

You're not as popular as you think

So you've gone and set up a Facebook page for your client. Good for you. Everyone else is, so you should get on that right away. But at the end of the day. How many people have you brought over to the brand? How many of them are going to be influenced by it?

Well, if you're part of the 77%, less than a thousand.

Sure you've got fans but how many and how often do they see you?