Brand:  Paul Coelho (latest novel: “The Witch of Portobello“)
Execution: MySpace
Target: Passionate fans
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Think of consumer generated advertising and you might think Doritos,  the NFL or Heinz.  But Brazilian author Paul Coelho has jumped headfirst into this space with a MySpace competition to make a collaborative movie of the book for film festival submission.  The rules are straightforward: pick a character and film the segment of the book in which that character is the narrator (there are fifteen).  The best segments get stiched together with a movie that, like the book, is told from multiple perspectives.  The entire movie will be submitted to film festivals.

What Works:
Paul Coelho has involved his most passionate fans with his brand in a way that few professional marketers manage.  While the standard user-generated advertising campaign is well understood – shoot a commercial for my brand and I’ll stick it on network television – Coelho has reimagined the boundaries of this very limited medium.

The framework for this project is what makes it so effective.  Rather than an open assignment, Paul Coelho gives his readers a specific challenge: film a portion of the book from the point of view of one of the narrators.  Narrowing the scope of creativity can significantly enhance both the results and the creative quality – if it’s narrowed intelligently.  And this is brilliant narrowing.

The second success factor for the Witch of Portobello contest is the attraction of the final project.  Instead of having one winner, Coelho will recognize fifteen, and their work will be stiched together in a way that will add unexpected elements to the final product.  This creates a good platform for extending the life of the contest and of the book.

Finally, Coelho hosts this contest through a social network (albeit MySpace) and will naturally attract the kind of talent he is looking for.  In fact, the contest has been so successful that he has shut down submissions for all but a handful of the narrative chapters.

What Doesn’t:
There actually is some corporate involvement here – from Hewlett Packard.  It’s not clear how broad their role is (or if they had any part in creating this competition), but the merest whiff of corporate marketing in this competition could hurt the authenticity of the final product.  This competition will pay back in user interest and loyalty – corporate money might do more damage than it is worth.

Branding Bottom Line:
A novelist takes the serious marketers to school.

Brand: Baby Einstein (Disney)
Execution: TV
Target: First time Moms
Rating: **
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
A testimonial-style commercial for Baby Einstein. The spot starts off showing the green door to a suburban house and superimposes “A Real Mom Talks About Baby Einstein DVDs” over the door. Then we meet Antonia and her son Hudson. Antonia talks about how much she likes Baby Einstein DVDs. As she speaks we see images from the DVDs as well as scenes of her playing with her sons both in an out-of-doors. The spot ends with a voiceover “Make new discoveries with Baby Einstein DVDs” and a product shot of the DVD lineup.

What Works:
If you buy the premise that you must advertise mass-distributed brands on mass media (and we do not), then this spot does the job as well as it can be done. It is not overly slick and would look equally comfortable if shown on a cable access channel. It speaks directly from one mom to others, just as the Baby Einstein videos do. It is fairly single-minded about the brand positioning “by a mom, for moms” which is the strongest positioning for the Baby Einstein product. It doesn’t splash the Disney name – a temptation that lesser marketers in large corporations might have succumbed to. It also is simple, uses strong images and has a good product shot and good branding.

What Doesn’t
I was particularly interested in reviewing this ad because I wrote a chapter of Accidental Branding about the Baby Einstein founder, Julie Clark. When Disney bought out Clark and took over the Baby Einstein brand, they did a good job of keeping the Disney name away from the product. But to make their return, they moved Baby Einstein into broader mainstream distribution and created spinoff products – everything from toys to sippy cups. This expanded the sales of the brand tremendously, but it also began to erode the expertise of Baby Einstein which had been narrowly focused on producing videos for babies.

Disney also started advertising the Baby Einstein brand. It was an unsurprising move, as Disney clearly wanted to bring mass marketing to Baby Einstein. I was very curious to see if they could pull this off, because the brand always struck me as a consummate ‘insider’ brand that thrives on personal recommendation. It is impossible to know if any mass media campaign might be clever enough to sell Baby Einstein without ruining the “it’s my secret” appeal of Baby Einstein, but this spot does not work. The ad straddles the unhappy line between diet supplement testimonial and infomercial. The production values are not bad but it still feels far less well crafted than the Baby Einstein videos themselves and clearly a corporate product.

Branding Bottom Line:
Baby Einstein reminds us we still want a set of Ginsu Knives.