NYT: keep people shopping with "it's new" strategy

In the advertising section of today's New York Times, Stuart Elliott reports that companies like General Mills are churning out new products to pique people's interest and keep them shopping rather than saving or going without.

What about our local food companies, like Dagoba, Kettle Foods, Bob's Red Mill and Reser's?  What strategies are these companies (and their respective marketing and/or PR agencies) employing to keep sales up?  If you're a local food company, or have one as a client, please share your strategies and/or "wins" in these recessionary times via the comments section.

Read the full article.

"Don't judge too quickly. We won't."

You may recall a couple of these spots if you watched the Super Bowl this year, but you may not remember (before this post) what brand was associated with the spot.

David, the brand manager from the ThirdWay Advertising Blog, who reviewed the two spots aired during the Super Bowl, didn't seem to think it hit the mark.  He uses the IAG National Consumer Survey to validate his opinion.  The survey, which, according to his post, "[shows] both spots on the top 10 list for 'Most Liked' but neither on the top 10 list for 'Most Recalled,' for which the measure is recall of the brand name."  So yes, in his narrow view, these commercials might be a humorous, yet ineffective, bit of branding.  

But he forgot to widen his scope to include the YouTube factor.  

As of 5:56 p.m. Tuesday, March 24, YouTube had 68 results for "don't judge too quickly commercials," a phrase that populated itself after "don't judge too."  The second search result has had almost 1.7 million views.  And I found out about these spots from an email forwarded to me from a person that had received it as a forward.

The spots aren't where Ameriquest missed the mark.  Here's where they fumbled the proverbial ball:

• There's no Ameriquest channel on YouTube for them to host the conversations that are happening on the Internets; and
• The company's Web site looks like a glorified "parked" site.  The header even lists the site as being "hosted for free by GoDaddy."  Lame.

Final word: commercials are worth wasting a few minutes to watch (click play below), but Ameriquest's overall brand strategy blows.

Want to watch other funny commercials?  Check out Funny Place: the funny side of advertising at funnyplace.org.  They also include print ads on their site.  The only standard, as far as I can tell, is that the ad (in whatever medium) has to be funny.

Sci Fi refreshes its brand

On July 7, Sci Fi will implement its new brand, SyFi, on its television channel and corresponding Web site, according to the New York Times.  Landor Associates (a subsidiary of WPP) teamed with an internal team to develop the new brand.

Sci Fi is part of NBC Universal, which is part of General Electric.  WPP also owns Olglvy and MindShare, among other communications and media services companies.

Read the New York Times story

Read the press release

Thoughts anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?