Hands up for the fatties!!!

Despite leftists, liberals, and in general losers’ claim for the contrary, the human race is apparently winning its fight on starvation, as the number of overweight people in the world has surpassed that of undernourished people.

It is pure common sense that the more people are getting fatter, the less are starving, so humanity can proudly march towards the ultimate objective of 6.7 billion hippos.

This and other interesting stats can be found at http://www.worldometers.info/

Final Burp: Pictures are worth a million words. Sometimes figures are worth a million pictures.

Ever wanted to know what makes a great viral?

Quality actors, quality writing.

When I first saw it I had no clue whatsoever about the film (I now know it’s Tropic Thunder), but I knew I was going to watch it.

Final Burp: When the last (supposedly) funny baby will have caused the last laughs on Youtube, it will all boil down to quality. Finally.

They are orange

Here is an instant-blog dedicated to celebrities (and not) proudly displaying their fake tans.

Check it out at http://i-am-orange.blogspot.com/

Final Burp: I guess this is one of the few true examples of guerrilla marketing.

(A different kind of) Cannes Predictions

 

No matter how digitally-lazy I have become, I  have to write a post on Cannes 2008.

And that’s because I think that it has really been a breakthrough edition. Finally.

Here is a spare sum-up of most remarkable works, with some considerations:

1 It’s not about the gorilla. I had to rule that out. I don’t know how it landed the Grand Prix (I guess it’s that bit of Cannes logics that I still don’t get). Yes, it may be funny, but I don’t see the idea.

(Apart from: let’s put a monkey there. Monkeys are fun!)

(I know it’s not a monkey, it’s an ape)

(You get the point)

And it really doesn’t matter how many people have seen it, as Cannes has never been about effectiveness. If it were, we would have seens tons of direct-response tv ads landing lion after lion…

2. Impressive work by Nine Inch Nails. It’s so much part of their art you can’t even consider it advertising. It’s experiential art, and I think it belongs to a different category.

3. A piece of tech-masturbation by Uniqlo, that landed the Cyber Grand Prix. I don’t really love it, because it seems “web tool for the sake of it”, with no real idea/insight, but it’s interesting as a showcase for what widgets can be.

4. Kudos to the Halo team at Microsoft: a simple, inspiring idea (ie. promoting an action game without any real action), and a very good execution. Not much interaction, and that’s good: it’s about becoming familiar with the Halo legend, and that’s much bigger than You-User.

5. The Millennium Phone by Droga5 definitely deserved the Titanium Grand Prix. Just like NIN, it plays in another league, and shows how, as the digital age progresses, brilliant agencies may become all-purpose “idea factories”, well beyond communication as we now intend it.

6. There had to be something from Crispin, and here’s the much talked-about Whooper Freak-Out. Two considerations about this:

1. Reality rules. And by that I don’t mean reality shows. I mean real vs virtual. 
2. Simple rules. How many advertising creatives in large agencies would have considered that, well, enough of a “creative advertising idea”, as opposed to “a dull client idea”? And how many of them would have tried to come up with some sort of spectacular, metaphorical film imagining an imaginary Whopper-free world?

And now some predictions for future Cannes editions:

1. Tv and Press will become marginal.  Ok, this is an easy one. With growing media convergence, there will be no point in having stand-alone “Tv” and “Press” categories, as the most meaningful works, or indeed all works, will have some sort of integration. Traditional Tv and Press ads will be the equivalent of the comic strips page on newspapers: you spend only a few minutes and half a brain on them in exchange for an easy laugh, but then you move on to the real stuff.
2. Cyber will become a display of tech skills. Again, with cyber being the center of creative works that will most likely feature some other media, there’s no need for a separate cyber category. On the other hand, there may be a need for a category that would award technical innovation, rather than creative ideas. (If you want to know the difference, Uniqlo vs my long-time favorite Gamekillers)
3. Integrated will split. With pretty much all remarkable work going multi-media, there will be a need to split Integrated into different categories. No idea yet what those categories will be, but it’s sure worth spending some thoughts on…
4. Titanium will part. Titanium was born as a distant relative of advertising already, and even though in its youngest years the advertising family tried raising it under its own roof, it’s now pretty clear that the two don’t share much. Titanium will increasingly become a category awarding business innovation, even though it’ll be still hosted in the Palace. It’ll draw a different crowd and just work according to different rules. It will then part in spirit, if not in body.
5. Cannes will die. Ok, that’s a long shot. But with advertising, entertainment and many other industries (search, anyone…?) blending into one, single discipline of brand promotion, and creativity taking on larger challenges besides pure communication, there will be no need for an Advertising Festival. But oyster-lovers need not to be scared: Cannes may easily evolve into a different kind of festival, a mash-up of the current adv parade, the Academy Awards, a business fair and a Ted Conference.

 

Final Burp: Going through both works at Cannes, and daily projects here at Dare, I’ve been wondering way too often already: is this advertising? It doesn’t look like it is. (And that was a good sign). Let’s just not call it advertising anymore.

There’s some poetry in this

 

It’s something about the music, the empathy, the peace of mind… Damn! It almost gave me goosebumps.

 

(What does it have to do with brands? It can, as long as the brand doesn’t spoil the poetry. The whole trip was actually sponsored)

Final Burp: It’s the closest thing to the idea of “world peace” that I’ve seen in a long time.

Long time, no blogged

I have been neglecting this blog for way too long, but I have two very good reasons for that:

- I turned 30, and that alone was enough to keep me distracted

- As soon as I was recovering from that (no, I really wasn’t), I moved to London

This is why I haven’t been around for a while, and also why I’ll need to quickly make up for it, or I’ll lose any credibility as a planner in a web agency (yup, that’s the new sponsor of my mortgage)

 

Final Burp: I’ll have to learn lots about virtual world, and some bits about real world, too. For instance, looking the wrong way when I cross the street.

Why Derek Zoolander* may save the movie industry

 

The movie industry traditionally looked at films as a sort of one-shot product: a film is produced and sold, so that you can start producing (and selling) another one. In case of success, here comes the sequel. Other sources of revenue were limited to home video and television, and this sources became more significant with the arrival of DVDs, pay-tvs and pay-per-view.

Despite a shift in the revenue portfolio (movie theaters, dvds, tv) the business model is still focused on producing one, single piece of entertainment, and selling it all over.

Some categories of films (sci-fi, kids…) have taken this business model farther, through licensing agreements, so that the latest Disney films gives birth to dolls, backpacks, pencils, videogames, and pretty much anything.

Apparently, this may mean that films are treated as brands.

But only to a certain degree: the original creators of the film are often responsible for the film alone, with licensee are allowed to exploit it in a number of ways. If we look at it more deeply, this is still the case of a producer creating one, single piece of entertainment, to be replicated.

What the movie industry hasn’t done yet (with a few exceptions) is looking at films as just one, major step in a longer narrative process: the film allows you to introduce the story, or to express a climax, but then the narration (the brand) goes on with many more pieces of entertainment.

And here is where Derek Zoolander starts to matter: Zoolander was created as a typical Hollywood one-shot product. A film is made, and later sold on dvd/pay-per-view/cable/… Should we be lucky, we may expect a sequel that is as good as the original.

But if we look at Zoolander as a brand, we may come up with so many more opportunities: a modeling school, of course; a make-up and hairstyle line; weekly tips on what to wear that you can download on your mobile; a website where you can upload your picture, so that Derek can give you suggestions for a makeover… Much more than the traditional licensing.

The “Derek Zoolander’s Group for really really ridiculousyly good looking people” on Facebook now accounts for more than 200.000 members. I’ld guess that most of them would love experiencing more Zoolander content, and Hollywood has no interest in leaving that to Facebook alone (or to consumer-generated films on youtube)

 Star Wars is one of the few examples of Hollywood films that are actually managed as a brand: you can experience the world of Star Wars in so many more ways than just watching the 3 great, original films (and the 3 subsquent prequels, if you really really have to).

There are videogames, roleplaying games and comic books adding original pieces of content to the Star Wars universe, so that you can even get a full sense of it without having actually watched any of the films.

Cloverfield is another interesting examples, with trailers and teasers scattered all over the world, with original footage that has no clear relation with the film itself.

In this perspective, the film is only a significant investment in the creation of a brand, thus giving a very different meaning to box office figures.

 

Final Burp: How many films are interesting enough that people want to be involved in the story long after they exit the movie theater?

 

*Disclaimer: This post was originally supposed to be based on “L’allenatore nel pallone”, an italian cult-movie on the most unlikely football coach. But then I realized that Derek Zoolander is more of a global icon than poor Oronzo Canà.

Freeconomics

 

I was supposed to write a post on the movie industry: this is not yet the post I had in mind, but it’s still got something to do with it.

The entertainment industry is currently struggling for its own life: it produces content that costs big bucks, yet its consumers have become accustomed at getting it for free. And they don’t want to go back to the old days where you had to pay about 19$ for every record you’ld have in your music library, or (gosh!) 7/8$ for each and every movie you’ld watch.

Broandband + Peer2Peer have resulted in millions of consumers getting and sharing all that content for free, and not seeing much wrong in it.

In the last issue of Wired, Chris Anderson offers a broad view on the economics of free: how the digitalization of many industries is at the same time forcing and allowing companies to give away products and services for free, and how it’s still possible to make (loads of) money out of it. (If you were wondering, yes, you can read the article for free)

Anderson also offers a list of 6 possible free-marketing strategies, with examples of successful activities.

Though noone can deny that so many industries must sort out the contraddiction between suppliers that are determined to get paid, and consumers that are not willing to pay, it’s still unclear whether some of the examples provided only succeeded because they were attractive, new experiments (Prince, Radiohead) or if they can evolve into sustainable business models.

 All in all, Freeconomics promises to be a concept that we’ll have to spend thoughts and time over and over again in the future.

Final Burp: “Every economy that becomes digital, eventually becomes free” (C. Anderson)

Intro thoughts on movie promotion

This video is actually the first 2′28″ of “Music & Lyrics” (translated in Italy as “Scrivimi una canzone”).

For those of you who are not familiar with the film, it’s the story of Alex Fletcher, a has-been pop star from the ’80s (Hugh Grant) who’s offered a second chance at stardom by writing a song for a famous britneysh fictional popstar (By saying this I don’t imply that Britney is in any way real…)

In the film this video is used to introduce Alex Fletcher and his old band (the Pops) and it’s just, well,  brilliant!

The hairstyle, the moves, the shirts, the way instruments are (not) played, the visual effects, the dancing doctor (my favorite) make it look at the same time very realistic and dropdead funny.

I don’t know if this happened anywhere in the world, but running this video on Mtv would have been a terrific way to promote the film.

After watching “Cloverfield” I’ve been thinking at how the movie industry promotes its films, and this provides additional food for thought for a later post.

Final Burp: Actually it’s not about how to promote a certain content. It’s about wondering what that content is.

Seen on Tv, and on you

Thanks to both Blog Placement and Emarketer for this post on a very interesting retailer that turned the concept of product placement upside down.

If the basic idea of product placement is to start with something you produce and feature it in entertaiment, here you have someone taking products featured in entertainment, and selling them online.

 At SeenON! you can shop for clothes and accessories worn on, let’s say, Ugly Betty, CSI or Grey’s Anatomy (and other tv shows and films), but also for electronics, furniture and beauty care.

For once, it seems like something most people have been waiting for, one way or another.

Final Burp: Give us what we’re waiting for. Sounds like what marketing is supposed to be for.