Brand: Cingular MediaNet (Cingular)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (It is the fifth spot titled ‘Golf Cart’)
Target: see below
Rating:**
Reviewer: David

Description:
Two middle-aged guys are playing golf on a stunning course in the middle of a southwestern desert. As they are discussing their game, they notice a phone on the green. “Hey Look – a phone. Cingular. It’s got MediaNet,” they say to one another as one of the guys picks up the phone and flips it open. “Wow – this guy’s really into racing. He’s got driver stats, schedules, insider info,” he says and as his friend muses, “wonder whose phone this is?” we see a golf cart approaching fast, making the sounds of a race car. It screeches to a halt in front of the two men. The driver, in a golf shirt and racing glasses takes the phone from the men and says, “Thanks. I was lookin’ for that.” Then he proceeds to roar off in the souped-up cart, leaving tire marks behind. “I guess we’re lettin’ him play through,” says one of the guys to the other. The spot shifts to a shot of the phone with the Cingular logo in the screen with a voiceover saying, “Now medianet puts you in the drivers seat with all things racing – in just a couple of clicks.” The last two points are emphasized with closeups of the phone screen and keypad. The voiceover contintues, “And with Cingular, it’s already on your phone.” The spot ends with a logo shot and the tagline in voiceover, “Cingular, raising the bar.”

What Works:
This is a straightforward spot that has nice cinematography, good pacing and a reasonable hook to showcase the product demo. The driver of the racing golf cart is none other than NASCAR ace Jeff Burton, who must have a higher Q score than most b-list movie stars. The proposition here is a straighforward features-and-benefits pitch for Cingular MediaNet. The celebrity endorsement is a classic pitch – if the race information on this phone is good enough for Jeff Burton, it will be great for you.

What Doesn’t:
In the middle of a solid TV spot, Cingular with BBDO have made a slightly surprising targeting choice by juxtaposing two sports that might not regularly meet – golf and NASCAR auto racing. What do the two have in common? It is certain that some of their audience is shared (particularly in the South and SouthWest where both are more practical for much of the year) and that there may be many avid golfers among the NASCAR faithful. It is also certain that golf is the role model for an elite sport – the kind of thing that superstar atheletes like Michael Jordan are passionate for.

The question here is what the effect is of starting the spot of with a straight shot of two men golfing and then introducing the NASCAR element? Will the combined credibility of golf and NASCAR give a halo of expertise to the MediaNet service, convincing the corporate sports nuts who can afford it that MediaNet is a better option for tracking sports than an ESPN mobile phone? Or will the effect be to narrow the audience for the spot down to the point where door-to-door sales might be a more cost-effective selling approach for Cingular?

This advertising blog feels that Cingular has narrowed the appeal of this spot too far with sports that have different core audiences. The question is not just how many people are interested in golf and NASCAR, but how many will be persuaded by the combination that Cingular has real expertise in mobile sports. However good the execution, we feel that the advertising strategy behind this spot ends up narrowing it too far and that it will not translate well to non-NASCAR audiences.

Branding Bottom Line:
Cingular’s best pitch here is for better golf carts.

Brand: Dairy Queen Monster Cookie Blizzard (Dairy Queen)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (It is the second to last spot)
Target: Grown Kids
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
A father and son sit side by side, eating Monster Cookie Blizzards at Dairy Queen. The Dad asks, “Are you enjoying your monster cookie blizzard?” and the son grunts enthusiastically. “But Dad, where do monster cookies come from?” the boy asks. “Ah – well,” the Dad says, at a loss for words. The spot cuts to a monster cookie factor where monsters are pounding out and baking the cookies. As the monsters start to talk, we realize that they have feelings and, apparently crushes too. One monster is making a special cookie with green M&Ms for the lovely, three-eyed Gertrude. The spot ends with a close product shot of the blizzard and the voiceover, “It’s scary good. The Monster Cookie Blizzard with M&Ms. New at Dairy Queen.” The last frame is the Dairy Queen logo with the tagline “Something Different.”

What Works:
This spot certainly is something different and displays great imagination and ingenuity. Although framed in the father-son context, it works as well appealing to the fatherly crowd as directly to the kids. In fact, some of the references to adolescent romantic hijinks might be easier to decode for adults than for children.

We chose this spot to review because it features some of the best and most convincing product photography we have seen. The ice cream looks rich and inviting and a close up on the spoon shows the appealingly moist bits of cookie. Young brand managers and assistant account execs could take this spot as a training video for how to produce great food photography.

What Doesn’t:
To the extent this spot is targeted at children younger than 12, we believe (as we have detailed before in our post ‘The Boomerang Effect: Advertising to Children‘) that it is a bad idea. However we also believe that these spots are very effective at reaching adults as well, and this spot delivers particularly well against the adult male audience.

The brand position ‘scary good’ is not especially differentiated. While this spot will effectively sell the new Monster Cookie Blizzard as a destination treat for Dairy Queen, we are not sure that it will build the brand equity of the franchise.
Branding Bottom Line:
We will not be watching any more DQ spots before dinner time.

Brand: Planters Nut Lovers Mix (Kraft Foods)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Nut Lovers
Rating: **
Reviewer: David

Description:
A dapper, animated Mr. Peanut rushes out of a cab at the bottom of the Empire State Building in Manhattan and up to the observation deck as dramatic orchestral music urges him on. He looks right and left coming out of the elevator, wanders around, almost giving us his search in desperation and finally sees what he is looking for – the winsome pistachio. He sweeps her into his arms as the voiceover says, “For those who love pistachios, new Planters Pistachio mix is made just for you.” The spot shifts to a package shot with the tagline spoken and superimposed “50% pistachios, 100% love.” The last shot shows the rest of the ‘Lovers Mix’ line extensions including Cashew, Macadamia and Pecan.

What Works:
Kraft and FCB New York do a nice job of creating a dramatic and memorable setup for the Planters Lovers Mix line extension. The Sleepless in Seattle parody is a nice metaphor for the Lover’s Mix as peanut meets pistachio. Full animation is a good choice here as it gives New York a vintage art-deco feeling that fits with Mr. Peanut’s monacle and top hat. The soundtrack does a good job of setting this spot apart from conventional animation. Because Mr. Peanut is in virtually every frame of this spot as the brand icon, the branding in this spot is excellent. The execution is ownable as it is impossible to imagine a rival nut manufacturer (like Emerald, for instance) running this spot.

What Doesn’t:
This spot raises the ongoing question of the effect of line extensions on core brands. From our perspective, while Planters may be a reasonable brand to guest host other nuts, advertising the mixes dilutes the core brand equity for Planters. Why? Culturally, there is an ingrained prejudice in the US to think of peanuts as ‘cheap nuts’ versus the more exotic, expensive and desirable nuts like Cashew, Pistachio and Macadamia. So while mixing peanuts with these premium nuts might increase the value and appeal of the peanut, it also reminds this advertising blog that peanuts are lowest-common-denominator nuts. This might not be a problem on shelf where we’re conditioned to look for the product mix we want. But as television advertising this comes off as an Arthur Miller/Marilyn Monroe marriage which tends to remind us that the peanut is just a working-class guy next to the glamorous pistachio. So although the execution on this spot is good we feel it is a mistake for the brand equity of the base Planters brand to be reminding us that we’d really rather splurge on Cashews or Macadamia nuts.

Branding Bottom Line:
Planters makes Mr. Peanut look frumpy next to Ms. Pistachio

Brand: Mountain Dew Code Red (Pepsico)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Male Dew Drinkers
Rating: ***
Reviewer: David

Description:
Four people play the carnival game that has you shooting water into a clown’s mouth to inflate and burst a balloon on his head. A teen/young 20′s looking guy pops his balloon first. “That’s a winner” the bored, red-headed attendant says. The guy looks at the shelf and sees a 20-oz bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red nestled between the legs of a stuffed animal. “Oh – I’ll take the Code Red,” he says sounding slightly surprised. “That’s not a prize, it’s mine,” the attendant says flatly. “But it’s with the prizes,” the guy insists. “Not happening!” the attendant says as he scoots off the booth and reaches for a water gun. “I’m not lookin’ for trouble,” the guy drawls as he steps away from his friend with another water gun. “Well, you found it,” says the attendant as the screen shot moves from a rectangular box to widescreen format and we hear the familiar whistle from the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” in the background. As the two men draw their water pistols we see a stream of water going into the guys mouth and then the attendants. Their heads begin to inflate to comical size. Then in a moment the attendants head bursts with a wash of water and it is over. We see the guy’s hand grab the Mountain Dew Code Red. He drinks a long swig and then we see the attendant as he says, “Well, that got ugly,” as water runs out of his ears. The spot ends with a graphic of the dynamic Mountain Dew Code Red graphic.

What Works:
This is a funny and visually compelling spot that has enough storyline appeal to be watched several times. The inflating heads are a very clever device and the spot plays it well enough to be surprising, entertaining and memorable. The branding in this spot is also good as the Code Red bottle is introduced early in the spot and makes several appearances before the logo shot at the end. The unexpected twist in this spot (when the heads of the two guys expand balloon-like as they are being shot full of water) makes this execution very memorable. The use of the spaghetti western music and widescreen-effect perfectly serves up this satiric spot.

What Doesn’t:
Although the branding is good in this spot, the brand positioning is hard to unravel. Code Red seems to be differentiating itself based upon the take-no-prisoners attitude of the brand users, personified in this spot by both the game-playing guy and the game booth attendant. However it is not at all clear if this brand user attitude is specific enough and sufficiently differentiated to be ownable. This advertising blog believes that this spot may create a lot of buzz of the type where the spot’s story is told (or the visual effect is described) but the brand gets lost. Not because the branding is bad, but because the branding is not tied to user imagery that is undeniably owned by Mountain Dew Code Red. This may improve as the campaign progresses, but for the moment it impairs the spots ability to build the Code Red brand.

Branding Bottom Line:
Soda is fine, but that head-inflating trick rocks.

Issue: TiVo inks Upfront Deal with Interpublic Media
Commentary by: David

AdAge reports this week that TiVo has signed a deal with Interpublic Media, essentially giving Interpublic’s clients preferred rates and access to TiVo advertising and data in return for an upfront spend commitment.

This is a big deal for TiVo, but also a big deal for an industry that keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. In this case it’s a good shoe and TiVo may turn out to be the savior of the advertising industry instead of the execution it has been portayed to be.

Why? The conventional rap on TiVo is that it is really just ad-skipping technology. A way for consumers to watch what they want when they want without all those pesky commercials. In reality, consumers who want to avoid commercials have had lots of ways to do so for some time and while three-quarters of TiVo users do skip commercials nearly that many skip commercials in real time with channel surfing, refrigerator runs and the Internet.

But we’re not really defending DVRs. They are an inevitable development in an industry where power is increasingly shifting to the consumer. TiVo is important because it is a company of marketers who are actually thinking that there might be advantages to be had from DVR technology for the advertiser as well as the consumer.

If the war between old-fashioned television watching and DVR usage seems likely to be won by the DVR then advertisers had better hope that TiVo wins the war with generic DVR boxes in the war within DVR-land. Why? Because Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Cablevision and other cable and satellite companies are just not set up to do anything useful with the technology that they are putting into consumer’s homes. They treat DVRs as an extension of the cable box – a piece of equipment.

TiVo sees the DVR as something more – a window into the mind of its consumer. By knowing what each consumer watches, it can set up mass customization to deliver relevant messages to consumers who may be interested in them. This works in a few ways. Currently, marketers can submit advertising content for a specific audience (viewers of American Idol, for instance) and have those people who choose to do so watch a commercial, enter a sweepstakes, etc. In addition, they can flag a physical commercial with a TiVo button to allow a consumer to request more information.

In the future, TiVo should be able to go a step further and customize the in-show advertisements to the specific owner of the box. As any TiVo user can attest, you have to watch those commercials at high speed to forward through them (there is actually a way to get around this, but few subscribers do it). When you see something interesting, you tend to stop and watch it. The trick is to make the advertising interesting which is easier to do when you can target the spot much more narrowly.

So this upfront deal is a good sign that some advertisers are wising up and looking to the future with and without TiVo – and recognizing that they’ll be much better off if TiVo succeeds.

Brand: BMW
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (link is to AdCritic, a pay site)
Target: Affluent Free-Thinkers
Rating: **
Reviewer: David

Description:
In close focus black and white, we see an untrustworthy looking white executive smiling at the camera. As the spot progresses, we see a variety of these executives, all in close focus. The voiceover says, “Beware of the Benedict Arnold. He is behind your idea before the meeting. He even high-fives you and pats you on the back. But the second the idea meets the least bit of resistance, the Benedict Arnold flops like a pancake.” Then the spot shifts to an interior shot of a spotlessly clean factory. The voiceover continues, “At BMW, ideas are everything,” and the shot shifts to a view of the sealed assembly line tube with pristine sedan bodies moving through. “And as an independent company, we make sure great ideas live on …” here we see a completed sedan outside the headquarters, “to become Ultimate Driving Machines.” The spot closes with a view of the logo and the “Ultimate Driving Machine” tagline.

What Works:
This is a novel advertising strategy from BMW and one that gives us some clues as to their future brand positioning. Instead of simply touting BMW as the driver-oriented, no-compromises ultimate driving machine company, BMW is repositioning itself Saab-like as a company of independent-minded engineers who get what they want when it comes to car design. And on the positive side, this probably reflects reality, as any car maker more worried about corporate bureaucracy or consumer acceptance would have hesitated before introducing the Chris Bangle designed 7 and 5 series cars into the marketplace over the past few years. It also has some relevance against BMW’s biggest competition in the USA – Daimler Chrysler and General Motors. These are both vast bureacracies justly criticized for sometimes losing uniqueness in the design process.

The spot also has a unique look, crafted by the agency GSD&M in Austin which will not be confused with other car commercials.

What Doesn’t:
While we appreciate the originality, this advertising blog feels that BMW’s new spot is too high-concept to sell many cars. The selling proposition requires consumers to take to heart the proposition that an independent company will make more driving and safety innovations than a big bureacracy. Which makes some intuitive sense, but is left entirely without support in this execution. What features are there in a BMW that Mercedes, Volvo or Cadillac would have been too fearful to engineer into their vehicles? Is a BMW just supposed to feel quirkier or more individualistic? (And if it does, it creates another problem because quirky but smart cars was Saab’s longtime positioning.)

The other problem with this spot is kinetic. If BMWs are ultimate driving machines, one ought not to show them standing still. It sends the wrong message. As impressive as the assembly line and finished product in this spot look, they are both static images. If the BMW purchase is to be an expression of an individual’s passion for driving (on a smaller scale than a Maserati purchase would be), then the associate with the brand should not be static.

Branding Bottom Line:
BMW has us paranoid about buying a car from the Man.

Issue: Johnson & Johnson and Coca-Cola weaken the Upfront
Commentary by: David

Today Susan Vranica of the Wall Street Journal reported that Johnson & Johnson, one of the nation’s largest advertisers will skip the upfront and that Coca-Cola which will participate does not plan to make any upfront buys. The Upfront is the glitzy coming-out party for the new season of network television shows during which nearly 80% of advertising slots in primetime shows are traditionally sold. Johnson & Johnson is a significant player in the upfront, having spent nearly $500 million in television advertising last year alone.

The decision not to attend the upfront is a declaration of independence which has been a long time coming. The Wall Street Journal quotes Kim Kadlec, Johnson & Johnson’s chief media officer as saying”What we found is, if we can synchronize our business-planning cycle [with buying media time] it will benefit the brand and that is what this is all about.” In English that means that it was never helpful for large advertisers to have to buy advertising time in network television shows 5 – 11 months before the advertising actually was scheduled to run. The power of prime time television perpetuated this system for years and in spite of the J&J and Coca-Cola decisions it is likely that a significant volume of advertising will still be sold in the upfront.

Johnson & Johnson’s withdrawal, however, marks a decisive and permanent shift in the balance of power between content providers and advertisers that mirrors the power shift also taking place between consumers and advertisers and is no less significant. Sumner Redstone famously said ‘content is king.’ There are still destination shows and superpower-scale events (like the Superbowl), but there are now many, many options for content. Not only have the number and quality of television shows increased but they now compete directly with web-surfing, satellite radio, podcasts, blogs, and other forms of new media for eyes and ears. Beyond that the same content may be found in different distribution channels (watch Lost live, record it to your DVR, stream it from ABC.com or buy and download it from iTunes).

What does this mean? It means that content providers must think carefully of consumer needs, distribution channels and the revenue model for each and every piece of content they produce. It means that advertisers will increasingly be able to choose the platforms that they prefer to support and will get a say in how these function. And it mean that consumers will ultimately accept or reject each model that advertisers and content providers present to them. Where consumers rejected individual shows before they may now reject entire revenue models.

Television networks should take this as a good thing, in spite of the loss of early revenue for the television season. They are still the kings of content – very little of what is produced in the other distribution channels (save print media and the slickest of online) approaches the production value of network television. What the slow death of the upfront proves is not that television is going away but that expansion opportunities are opening up. If some of the myriad creativity that is put into developing programming goes into thinking how best content can be delivered through new media, consumers, advertisers and networks alike will benefit.

Brand: GE Ecomagination (General Electric)
Execution: DVR/PR
Link: Click Here
Rating: */*** (DVR/PR)
Reviewer: David

Description:
GE teams up with BBDO to answer the question – how can we deal with the TiVo/DVR crowd that routinely skips through advertisements? The answer in this case is to embed a commercial within a commercial. Now running in the last one second of the GE Ecomagination spot ‘Singing in the Rain’ featuring Elli the dancing elephant, the first GE One Second Theatre uses the frame-by-frame advance feature of DVRs (or VCRs, although that seems even less likely) to allow time-shifting television watchers to get background info on Elli and the cast from the commercial. These stills give some tongue-in-cheek trivia for the elephant suggesting, for instance, that Elli appeared in a teenage exploitation film called ‘Don’t touch that trunk.’

What Works:
We applaud the basic thought at work here. It is a good sign when a traditional company and an ad agency are thinking actively about a problem which affects only about a tenth of their users. TiVo and other DVRs are a growing phenomenon, however, and it makes good sense to try to find creative ways to make advertising more appealing to these audiences who may be more prone to ad-skipping than traditional television viewers (although some evidence disputes this).

The solution in this case is something DVD watchers may be familiar with – an Easter Egg. An Easter Egg is hidden content on a DVD that can be unlocked if consumers know where to look. It may be cast bios, an extra deleted scene or a featurette, but many DVDs have them. The GE Ecomagination easter egg is just a bunch of stills in the last one second (60 frames) of the standard Ecomagination television commercial.

This ‘One Second Theater’ also functions as PR. In fact, in the view of this advertising blog, the campaign is more effective as PR than as advertising. Being the first to loudly proclaim a solution to the DVR trap gives GE some halo in the business community as an innovator (and let’s not forget that many of GE’s products are sold business-to-business.)

What Doesn’t:
While we like the idea of building advertising solutions for DVRs, we are not sure that the GE One Second Theater is a big idea when it comes to advertising. Instead of creating something that really uses the DVRs core functionality to some advantage (interactivity and the rich viewing data that could allow targeted advertising), One Second Theater is more like a sleight of hand that feels more gimmicky than substantial. In fact, as the frames of one second theater are in plain sight but just running too fast for the eye to behold, it could technically be considered subliminal advertising.

We certainly hope that GE and BBDO will take the next step and design some real innovation for the DVR generation. TiVo has shown that audiences will voluntarily watch targeted advertising if it is relevant. Unfortunately, the DVR era is being defined as much by hardware manufacturers as real marketers, and the TiVo level of marketign savvy is conspicuously absent from the DVRs that many consumers rent from their cable or satellite companies. But the hardware is still there and should allow for some clever advertiser to concoct richer content.

A far more interesting trick would be to take a 60 second spot and make it a 10 or 20 second spot so that it plays normally at FF speed on a TiVo or other DVR. That at least would cause a bigger PR stir and get the attention of those who are not already looking – a big improvement on One Second Theater which requires some concentration and expert use of the remote control.

Branding Bottom Line:
We missed that One Second Theater but feel a strange desire for popcorn.

Brand: McDonald’s
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (link is to AdCritic, a pay site)
Rating: **
Reviewer: David

Description:
The spot opens with a man watching his friend gobble down a McDonald’s Premium Chicken Sandwich with some alarm. The music is forbidding. He says, “Man you keep eating those – you’re going to turn into a chicken.” The spot then follows the friend as goes home, keeps eatching McDonald’s chicken sandwiches, starts leaking feathers and eventually gets out of bed to reveal chicken feet. The spot ends with a black screen with “all-white breast meat Premium Chicken Sandwiches,” followed by the McDonald’s logo and the “I’m lovin’ it” tagline.

What Works:
This ad certainly gets our attention. It has roughly the same pacing, cinematography and scoring as an M. Night Shyamalan film. It is utterly unlike anything we’ve seen from McDonald’s before. It is a memorable spot.

What Doesn’t:
This spot has issues on several levels. First, it completely violates the brand character of McDonalds which is meant to be approachable and fun. This spot is scary and forbidding. Secondly, it misses the fundamental brand positioning for McDonalds – the place for kids of all ages. Every time McDonalds has aimed its advertising to adults it has misfired, most famously with the McLean Deluxe. McDonalds is a place for families, first and foremost. It is true that heavy-eating adult males are the most significant user group for McDonalds, but as this advertising blog has noted previously, these men come to McDonalds to recapture a connection to their childhood and adult advertising will not necessarily have the expected effect on this group.

What is McDonalds thinking? Even the basic selling proposition is flawed here. We are supposed to be more attracted to McDonalds Premium Chicken Sandwiches because they are addictive and might turn us into a chicken? McDonalds seems to have turned back to the Burger King school of advertising that believes that any talk about the brand is good – even if the talk is about how absurd the advertising has become. We are surprised that DDB Chicago is behind this brand disaster.

Branding Bottom Line:
Memo to McDonalds – please stop scaring our kids or we’re not coming back.

Issue: Time Warner Inks Agreement with BitTorrent
Commentary by: David

Time Warner today announced a deal with BitTorrent to sell video content over the Internet using BitTorrent technology. Here is the story from Forbes.com.

BitTorrent, for those who do not remember its earlier incarnation as a prime target for the anti-piracy movement is the invention of Bram Cohen. It is a clever method of distributing very large streams of data by using peer-to-peer connections rather than direct delivery (at least that is the best technical description you will get in this advertising blog. Try here for more technical details.)

This is big news for technologists and content providers because Bittorrent promises significantly faster delivery times than conventional file transfer options. In fact, a movie could be downloaded in this manner in as little as 10 minutes (although most will take longer).

But the announcement is much more important because of the unmistakeable signs it provides that at least someone in the motion picture industry is waking up to reality. This advertising blog has been very critical of the industry for inadequately addressing the challenges and opportunities of the Internet and the implications of piracy. We have previously suggested that distributing movies more widely in more formats earlier and for a lower price might actually expand the size of the industry rather than shrinking it. We bemoaned the possibility that Hollywood was going the way of the music industry and copyright-protecting itself into irrelevance.

Fortunately, Time Warner is proving us wrong with this significant deal with Bittorrent. We like it much better than the Movielink deal because it allows for simultaneous release of online movies with DVDs but at a lower price. It will also allow you to burn a playable DVD from the Internet. The pricing issue is a key one because without a lower price for Internet-delivered movies there is no market. The lower price creates the opportunity to build a strong market for movies on the web which may be complementary to the Theater and DVD markets. It also decreases the barrier to viewers who may want to watch a movie in multiple formats – from the big screen to DVD to laptop viewing. Most importantly, though, it is a step towards acknowledging that the Internet has a major role to play in content distribution and that it cannot be treated as clone of other distribution channels.