momorantings

Did Oreo really win the Superbowl? Did Dulux have a Oreo moment during the Brits last night? Real-time content marketing is all the rage, but let's face some facts. Oreo's Superbowl success waa based on a rightly praised but very traditional existing campaign and, I'd argue, they got lucky with the power blackout. The question that will never be answered is what would have happened if the lights had stayed on? Would the versions thay must have pre-prepared to focus upon preditable outcomes of team victorie, individual performances or the half-time show have had the same impact? This leads us to last night's Dulux tweet. Although smart, my guess is that it wasn't genunely real-time marketing as the statuette design was announced long ago. Nothing wrong with that, but look at the small number of online shares. That's really is mini. It's all very well for the writer to suggest the spread was much wider beause he liked the idea, but that doesn't mean it d...

1) Don't define yourself by your department. 2) Being professional means being objective. 3) People must notice the advertising (words that never appear in the brief). 4) It's all about Bernbach's "Timeless Human Truths". 5) Branding: being unable to repeat the ad without naming the product. 6) You don't need twelve housewives from Slough. 7) Ads don't run on the boardroom table. Photo by Nicole Yershon, shoulder by me.

Probably the most frequent question I am asked is if I believe subscriptions are dying.   And if you would have asked me five years ago, I would have answered in the affirmative. I, like many others, believed the subscription model was outdated--a worn out old chestnut that needed to be replaced. I even had data to prove it. From our peak in 2002 until 2007, Arena Stage had lost 40% of its subscriber base! I was convinced we had held onto a failing business model for far too long, until I started testing alternatives.   In 2008, working with  Shugoll Research , we developed several focus groups with specific target audiences, including current subscribers, lapsed subscribers, multi-show buyers and single ticket buyers. During these focus groups, we presented several alternatives to the traditional subscription, many of which had been recently introduced by other theaters, and to my complete horror, none of them tested anywhere near as well as the t...