At least that's what the F.D.A. wants to make sure you realize every time you pick up a pack of cigarettes. They just released some of the new warning labels for cigarette packs and they are quite the jump up from the old Surgeon General's warning.
But will they work?
This article in the New York Times references that research shows this type of communication does work to deter smoking. They remind me of the warnings I remember seeing on cigarette packs in Europe. That was years ago and apparently they've gotten even more graphic since I was reading (and I'll admit, laughing at) the warnings on those labels. Europe, and other countries in general, tend to have much more shocking PSAs than we do.
That being said, those strong warnings in Europe don't seem to be doing anything to help the problem. The U.S. is decidedly less smoke friendly than Europe—at least from my experience. I have a hard time believing that teenagers drawn to smoking won't just make fun of these. I hope they don't, I hope it hits home, but I'm really not sure that it will.
I just got the upgrade to Adobe CS5 yesterday. Yep, it was a pretty sweet day—until Photoshop CS5 started crashing my computer regularly. I couldn't do anything. I had to constantly restart my entire computer and with a few deadlines looming, my patience with the program got really short, really fast.
After talking with IT, it looked like all I needed was some upgrades, so I managed to work around it yesterday afternoon to hit my end of day deadlines and planned to update first thing this morning. IT graciously updated my computer early this morning before I even got in. Unfortunately, it didn't do a thing.
By crash number four of the morning, I was royally ticked.
What did I do? Well I tweeted my frustration of course. My computer was restarting—again—so I pulled out my iPhone and let Adobe have it—hash tagging everything I could. I wanted anyone considering the upgrade to know this was a very bad potential issue. That and I knew Adobe would here it—if they were social media smart.
Well darned if a guy from Adobe hadn't responded by the time my Firefox was up and running again. Good job Adobe. He also managed to steer me, and IT, to some links that eventually fixed the problem. It still took some sweat and some cursing before it managed to work quite right, but throughout I was able to communicate with someone from Adobe. He even offered to get someone in touch to work through the problem when things were not looking good.
The customer service component of Twitter is quite the phenomenon. Seriously, if you aren't on Twitter, you really should be—just for this aspect if nothing else. And if you're a brand that's not monitoring tweets like mine, you really should be—it can quickly escalate. Just ask Motrin.
The best part about Twitter-style customer service is the timing, the lightening speed that you get in contact with someone—no phone menus involved. The first time I experienced it was at a local restaurant that had built its business with Twitter—they sponsor local Tweet Ups, etc. I'll admit, I originally went there since I'd heard so much about it on Twitter. Well, it was my first time there and my dessert really sucked—it was a giant cookie and it was completely overcooked and dry. I'm not the type to outright tell my waitress that the dessert sucked, but I did tweet about it. The response was immediate—like within a few minutes. Unfortunately I didn't check my phone until I was on the way home, but I was able to express my annoyance and clearly have it heard and got an apology and a sincere effort to keep me as a customer. It made me much more likely to return.
What's the moral? Twitter is fast becoming the best way for customers to interact with their brands. It brings the brands to a somewhat personal level—even if you're just tweeting back and forth with the brand name. They have a personality and if it's done right, it really can make you feel like a valued customer, no matter how ticked you are.
A little over a week ago the Gap suddenly announced a new logo. A very generic logo that boiled down their iconic brand to typeset Helvetica and a blue box. I wasn't a particular fan—my immediate reaction was why? Why do this to your simple, yet effective blue box? A simple Helvetica typeset only improves a logo if it was hideous or too busy to begin with—and that was simply not the case here. All it does is make it extremely generic.
I intended to post about it immediately, though a busy schedule both in and out of work prevented me from really having time to collect my thoughts about it. As luck would have it consumers on Twitter and Facebook ranted plenty for me and shockingly, the Gap did an about face last Tuesday, announcing that they were ditching their new logo in favor of the old one. Thank goodness.
Of course, that was after they ran a crowd sourcing campaign to design their new logo. Crowd sourcing is a cool idea, but maybe not the right approach for your core brand identity—you get a lot of crappy logos. Check out Brand New's post on it, they highlight some of the pieces. And if you scroll down, they'll give you a taste of exactly how generic that new Gap logo really was—by applying the same treatment to a number of other iconic brands. It made me laugh.
Kudos to Gap for swallowing their pride and relenting that what was probably months of hard work was misguided and hated by their target audience (assuming the whole thing was not a big publicity stunt as some have suggested). It really is an interesting study on the power of social media in today's consumer market. Everywhere from brands to politics, one false move can create an enormous wave of bad publicity and anger from the people you're trying to please.
Guerilla marketing is a tricky, but coveted thing in the world of advertising. It can be a highly effective tool, but it in this particular case I'm not so sure. In the grand tradition of shock value PSAs in foreign countries, Canada has this latest one attempting to keep people from speeding.
I first saw this via a friend's facebook post asking a similar question, and if you go by the comments on the Boing Boing post, most people think this campaign will actually have the opposite effect. Speculation ranged from The Boy Who Cried Wolf to possible accidents occurring from someone trying to avoid the girl in the street.
What do you think? Would it cause you to slow down?
I'm not a developer. I learned some HTML and CSS back in school in the days of HTML tables and Flash was the only way to break out of that. Oh, how long ago that was. Now we have CSS3 and @fontface and the web's design capabilities keep growing. I try to keep up on the latest developments since they are really quite exciting, but without getting your hands dirty it's hard to always understand the details and implications of new advancements in web capabilities until you actually see them in use. For awhile now, however, I've been hearing over and over again about how HTML5 is going to change the face of web, and if you listen to Steve Jobs, make Flash a dinosaur. People go back and forth on that argument, but regardless, HTML5 will change web design significantly and I've just seen the first real example pointing that direction.
A friend posted this music video on his blog saying it was the coolest music video of all time, so I clicked of course. To my disappointment, it only runs on Google Chrome, which I had not yet installed (in protest to Google for waiting months to release a Mac version after the initial PC-only release). So I went, downloaded Chrome and in that download time, promptly forgot about it until this morning when I noticed the Google Chrome icon sitting there in my dock. So I finally clicked through to the site and watched the video. It's quite cool—and well worth the extra steps of downloading Chrome. I suggest you go watch it here (sorry, it's just too unique to embed in this blog).
Have you watched it? I love two aspects of this video. One is the customization and coordination with Google Earth—not totally unexpected since you have to enter the address, but still, the animation being incorporated into the custom Google Earth imagery is awesome. Second, the choreographed windows opening and closing as the video plays is a really dynamic way to present. Plus the animation is Can you imagine the possibilities with online presentations in the future?
The animation is built in HTML5 too, not Flash, using HTML5 Canvas 3D, it interacts with you mouse and the music. Ridiculous. You can read about the behind the scenes here, but this makes me very excited for the future of web design.
The program essentially gives monthly grants to different organizations or ideas that are chosen via online voting by the general public. It's like a social responsibility idea generation site funded by a major soft drink company. Anyone can submit an idea and anyone can vote. Pretty cool. There are a four different monetary categories that an idea can compete in from $5,000 to $250,000 and Pepsi awards the top winners in each category—how many top ideas depends on the monetary amount (i.e. many more $5,000 idea projects are funded than $250,000 projects).
So far the level of engagement is huge! It's a challenge just to get your idea in the running (they only accept so many ideas per month for voting) and then the voting competition is fierce. It's great to see so much engagement between a company, it's consumers and a wide variety of charities and community projects.
Okay, I'm gushing a little, but I'm a fan of CSR programs. Some people write them off as merely green washing large corporations to make them feel friendlier, and sure, most companies aren't going to participate in such a program unless they see some sort of ROI, but even so, don't you like seeing corporate money going to good causes? I do.
Shameless Plug
So I've never done this on the blog before, but I am going to give a shameless plug for a cause competing in the Pepsi Refresh Project this month. I know some of the people involved with the Global Genes Project, which is working with the Children's Rare Disease Network for their Pepsi Refresh idea. Essentially, the Global Genes Project aspires to serve as an awareness and funding platform for rare diseases. Rare diseases suffer in these areas simply because they're each so rare, but if you add up all of the rare diseases and the number of people affected by them, you start to get more significant numbers. Therefore the Global Genes Project is a way for many smaller rare disease charities to work together toward mutual goals. Pretty cool idea honestly and it's up for the $250,000 Pepsi Refresh Grant to help jump start it (the Global Genes initiative is only about a year old). If you're so inclined, please check out vote4hope.org where they'll show you three different ways you can vote in the Pepsi Refresh Project for the idea. It's currently around #23 and only the top two ideas get the grant. You get up to 10 votes per day, so you can vote for other ideas too. Check it out!
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court made a wildly unpopular decision to eliminate the limitations for corporate entities' campaign contributions. Essentially, any corporation or union can give as much money as they like to any candidate this election season—and we're starting to see some of the consequences. We will inevitably go through a long, annoying season of terrible, often misleading tv, radio, online ads and robo calls.
Bad advertising aside, the new law change seems to have brought about more controversial corporate donations. Perhaps it's just more scrutiny on those donations, but brands beware—consumers are watching who you're giving political money to and they may not always agree with you.
Take the recent news with Target. About a week or so ago, gay rights groups and other liberals learned that Target had given $150,000 to the conservative Republican, anti-gay candidate and they got upset. Very upset. Boycotts were organized, flash mobs popped up and the controversy has made it into the top national news. Oops. It's an interesting move on Target's part since they target pretty young (which often translates into liberal), trendy consumers. Perhaps they thought no one would notice? Best Buy also gave to the candidate, and while not feeling the heat quite as much as Target, they're not being spared either.
In the NPR story, GE (which owns NBC, CNBC and MSNBC) was given as an example of a company that did political giving right. It gave exactly the same amount to both parties for the hotly contested governor's race in Wisconsin. On the flip side, Comcast gave money to both parties, but it gave more to the Democrats.
So should brands really be dipping their pocketbooks into politics? I don't think so. If you're a brand and want to support the political system, or even a specific candidate, you're going to have to give to both parties or risk alienating customers. In today's very polarized political climate I think a lot a people will stay more loyal to their politics than their brands. What do you think?
If you haven't heard about the Old Spice campaign from the brilliant minds at Wieden + Kennedy, you must have unplugged yourself from the internet or boycotted all social media outlets. The hilarious, real time social media campaign has taken the internet by storm, confounding industry creatives with the speed and quantity of responses.
If you're unfamiliar with the campaign, here's the gist. Old Spice has a character called Isaiah Mustafa (from their TV spots) who has nice abs (and knows it), sits around in a towel all day charming ladies (and gents) in that cheesy, suave ladies man kind of way. What W+K did was make this character instantly accessible by having 30 to 60 second videos of him posted to YouTube that actually answered questions and comments from consumers that were posted on Twitter and Facebook (and even Yahoo! Questions)—in real time.
It's a campaign that's taken social media advertising to an entirely new level. Instead of using Twitter and Facebook to mostly respond to crises or user comments and complaints, or even to sometimes run a contest or game, it's actually letting users interact with a brand's character via video. Everyone in the industry marveled at the mere ability to turn around cleverly written videos so quickly. W+K isn't revealing all their secrets behind the productions, but W+K's global interactive creative director, Iain Tait, sheds a little light on their process in this Fast Company post. They were able to produce nearly 100 custom spots in a day based on their plan and strategy for a quick turn around. There's been much speculation as to how they wrote so quickly. I'm guessing some of the situations he acts out were already pre-written with props that went with them and just tweaked to be customized, but some of the responses and definitely written on the fly—like the response to taming wild whales. At any rate it feels like customized, real time responses like the Burger King Subservient Chicken campaign did years ago. It's just revamped and on a new level and actually responding in real time, to some extent anyway, where the Subservient Chicken was more or less very cleverly written code and video. Like the Subservient Chicken campaign did years ago, it's also blown the current standards of internet interaction with your customers out of the water and given agency creatives everywhere a brilliant social media campaign to aspire to. Bravo!
Sadly, the responses have ended after two days of custom replies—Mr. Mustafa has to sleep sometime you know—but is this the new social media advertising of the future? Would a stunt like this ever work quite as well again?
The spots range from responses to the likes of Demi Moore and Alyssa Milano and @biz (the founder of Twitter) to a marriage proposal (she said yes). If you haven't seen the videos check out the YouTube channel or some of the ones I've selected below. They'll give you a good laugh.
If you haven't already heard, the YMCA has officially embraced its nickname The Y (note the web address though). Maybe it's just me, but I don't love that idea as much as I think I should. It becomes less personable when it's the real name and not a generally accepted nickname. They could have just made it an official nickname or slogan or something and kept the official name. I mean future generations eventually won't know what the song YMCA is referring to! (kidding)
The naming aside, the Y also updated their logo. Interestingly enough, their new logo actually has YMCA in it (as well as a tacked on 'the') where the old logo was just a Y, which is partly how it got its nickname. So now that YMCA is no longer the official name, it's suddenly important enough to include in the logo? It's a little odd, don't you think?
Parts of the new logo are okay. Parts of it are not. As Brand New stated in their review,
The evolution is clear: From a hard-angled, tough-looking logo to a round-edged, soft-looking logo that plays well with the rest of the identities of the twenty-first century in pretty much all capacities. It is bubblier, it is lowercase, it has gradients, and it comes in various flavors. Unfortunately, all of the changes feel a tad gratuitous in the final execution.
In other words, it has a genericized early 21st century look to it. Notice the soft pillow gradients that were rather needlessly applied? They complement the rounded corners so well. (gag) Nothing against rounded corners, but that combo appears in 90% of all web icons and is far too generic and over-used to actually be used in a logo. Yuck. I do like the logo better when it's presented in one color. Then it just a modification of the shape, which works much better I think.
Even without the cliche pillow gradients, the color choices are very questionable. We have lots of options. It kind of reminds me of the 2012 London Olympics logo in that way—although the designers of this logo clearly didn't remember all the bad press the London logo got for it's 80's neon color schemes. They may vary, but they're all pretty bright, and very trendy, colors. Not the best idea for long term branding. I suppose they're trying to make the logo young and hip, but 5-10 years from now those colors will be anything but hip. The 2012 logo can kind of get away with it simply because it's meant to be trendy to the times and after the Olympics it'll be outdated anyway—a keepsake to the time and place of the event. But that's not the the same for a brand, so the trendiness reflects poor long term judgment. Especially for a brand that's been as iconic as the original Y logo. Yes, it needed some updating—it screamed retro 60's, but still, those new colors are quite the leap.
When was the last time you used MapQuest? Anyone? I think the last time I ventured to that site was through a link on an out of date website. Any other time, I'm all about Google Maps. That's not to say Google Maps is perfect, it's not. Google has led me to the complete wrong location a couple of times, but in the past few years, regardless of Google Maps' mistakes it has swept the internet mapping market. I want to say the shift began when Google introduced Street View and continued as Google Maps was automatically included on iPhones and Blackberrys. Then came walking and biking directions, the ability to shift your route, automatically giving you alternate routes and times and the live traffic feed.
Well, MapQuest has finally revamped, a couple of years late, but they're trying nonetheless. They have a new logo and a revdesigned website. First off, the new logo is definitely an improvement. I like it, thought as mentioned in Brand New's review, I originally saw M to the Q, which I really liked, until the video showed me the little MQ creature thing. Now that's all I see and I kind of liked the other direction better. Oh well. The logo itself seems to be molded around being a good icon, like an iPhone or iPad icon, which is a little different, but smart approach. The new logo overall is secondary to how the MQ functions as an icon and all in all, much improved.
The new MapQuest website is also much improved, though the real question is if it can recapture some of Google Maps market share. The revamping makes me want to give it a shot again, but unless it proves to be significantly more accurate than Google Maps, a switch back is doubtful. While they've finally incorporated some of the perks of Google Maps, like traffic and street view (though Google's is on a larger scale). They've also copied a few other features like customizable printed maps. While MapQuest is touting some of it's features that Google doesn't have, like saving your own maps, they're relatively small things I don't see a huge amount of use for. The little icon buttons that show ATMs and Gas Stations are nice though—I can definitely see the use for that if I needed something like that on the go, however, I see that mostly useful for a phone app and other popular applications, like Siri, already have that covered. The biggest lack in the new design, is if they were going to copy so much of Google's features, they really should have worked in the walking, public transporation and biking directions that Google has. Honestly, I think those are one of Google's best features.
Overall, the website, logo and icon are nicely designed, but in terms of functionality, it's hard not to feel like MapQuest is trying desperately to play catch up to Google Maps. What do you think?
