Month: November 2011

This is definitely one of the funniest and innovative ads I have ever seen, something that will definitely catch the attention of males.

Olla Condoms – Unexpected Babies

Brazilian agency AGE Isobar organized just such an insidious campaign for Olla condoms recently. The agency apparently targeted specific males and created actual Facebook profiles for their unborn children by tacking “Jr.” on to their names, who then attempt to friend Daddy. Well, is it effective? Although this campaign may be considered insidious and violates Facebook’s usage guides, I still think that it is effective as it acts as a effective reminder for a lot of males despite some may ignore it. Definitely an alarm bell for dissolute males!

Now let’s look at another marketing campaign from class:

MINI vs Porsche

Mini Cooper vs. Porsche 911 at Road Atlanta

Although this campaign did create a lot of buzz online, it had more negative impacts. From my perspective, a Mini verses a Porsche? What a ridiculous idea. The result was that Mini lost by 2 seconds, which is like an eternity on an Autocross course. My question is, why did the marketers of Mini pick Porsche for the challenge? The cars are completely different in aspects such as design, brand positioning, price and target market. It is no surprise that Porsche will win unless a miracle happens. From what I know, Mini is owned by BMW, so why don’t they just challenge a BMW or another brand that has similar price and target market? Proposing a challenge with less hope of winning does not seem smart and could do more harm than good to one’s image.

Just personal opinions, please feel free to comment!

Reference:

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/friend-request-your-unborn-child-actually-condom-ad-136767

http://www.headlightblog.com/2010/06/the-mini-vs-porsche-challenge-%E2%80%93-more-online-than-on-the-track/

After reading Shayla Hardy’s blog “Using Celebrities in Ads is Not fulfilling Expected Return”, I do not completely agree with Shayla’s opinion that celebrity endorsement is not effective as an marketing strategy.

In her blog, Shayla mentioned that nowadays, celebrity endorsement is a pricy option and is limited in terms of adding value to the product and ultimately winning over the consumer. From my point of view, it really depends on the type of product that we are talking about. In some industries, celebrity endorsement play a huge role in their marketing as the performance of these celebrities directly affects purchase intentions and actual sale of their products. Take sports products for example; the reason why Nike and Adidas are so dominant in the market is because they have most of the world’s top athletes promoting their products. Derrick Rose was named NBA’s Most Valuable Player and as a result, his signature shoe caught the world’s attention. For people who are passionate for basketball, Rose’s performance will definitely have a psychographic affect on their purchase intentions. For me, although I am not a huge fan of Rose himself, I definitely had the incentive to buy his shoes as I imagine myself playing like him on court after putting on his shoe. （Which is unfortunately unrealistic ）. My purchase intention that was raised by Rose’s performance will further stimulate me to do research on the product. Finally, the characteristics of this product such as price, quality and special feature is what will finally influence my decision on whether to buy it or not.

However, it is true that for some products, celebrity endorsement may have a reverse affect as the more commercials, magazines, bus ads consumers see, the more phony they seem. Just as Shayla mentioned, what are the chances of a celebrity using an $8.00 drugstore product. I think that whether celebrity endorsement would be successful as a marketing strategy really depends on the nature of the product and its industry.