During the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games I had the amazing experience of working at the Coca Cola Happiness House in Live City Yaletown. We went through extensive training in order to make us as informed about the Coca Cola brand as possible.

Our job was to lead people through the pavillion while educating them about the Coca Cola brand and its many initiatives. The tour began with an informational video about the torch relay, they were then brought into the pavillion and given a refreshing Coca Cola at perfect serve temperature.

While inside they could get their picture taken with the torch, play interactive games, all  the while surrounded by acrobats and a life sized polar bear puppet.

At the end of their time in the Happiness House they were encouraged to recycle their bottles as Coca Cola was recycling 100% of their bottles throughout the Olympics and were rewarded with a limited edition glowing bottle.

During this experience I learned far more than I thought I could ever know about Coca Cola and every key message I explained to guests still plays over and over in my head when I see a bottle of Coke.

“Enjoy an ice cold Coke Zero. Zero calories, same great taste.”

Only after the Olympics were done and the Happiness House had been dismantled (but don’t worr they used all recyclable and reusable materials!) did I realize how much of an impact working there had on my view of the Coca Cola brand. By educating others on the Coca Cola brand and building such a high reputation of the Happiness House, so much so that people waited over 2 hours just to get inside the pavillion, I now relate a part of my life to Coca Cola and therefore feel a much larger commitment to the brand.

I’ve never been much of a cola drinker but on the rare occasion I do there is no doubt about which brand I will buy even if they taste the exact same to me. When I go home and my parents have Pepsi in the fridge I feel a tinge of anger until I realize that I shouldn’t have any personal emotion connected to Coke. Yet somehow over those two weeks, Coca Cola managed to build an emotional connection to me as a consumer and employee even if it was by almost brain washing me.

After hearing the “Open Happiness” song for two weeks straight I don’t think I will ever get it out of my head. I’ll even admit we had to learn a dance to this song.

Sometimes advertising campaigns are criticized for being extremely controversial or taking things too far. But by being so controversial these advertisements are talked about by everyone and even brought up in the news or on popular blogs. An extremely famous saying goes along the lines of, any publicity is good publicity.

Something I wonder about is how a company takes criticism over their advertisements. Obviously they know when they film a commercial that it may be viewed by the public and critics as perhaps offensive or even just controversial. An example of this is the Groupon ads that ran during the Super bowl. One of which featured Timothy Hutton talking about the perils of Tibet which quickly turns into how to save money on Tibetan food.

How much did this commercial really harm or help Groupon? Yes, some people may have been extremely offended by how they downplayed some major issues in the world but in the end aren’t they also raising awareness of these issues even if they do end with Groupon advertisements. Half of these prime time Super bowl ads were spent talking about some world issues, starring a notable celebrity nonetheless.

I begin to wonder if Groupon knew the kind of response they would get and actually took that into consideration. I know that personally these commercials were a topic of discussion which ensured that anyone who didn’t know what Groupon does before likely does know. They managed to raise awareness of their company with some collateral damage along the way. Who know, maybe this was Groupon’s plan the whole time..

Marketing nowadays is so much more than just informing consumers about your product or having them know your company name. It’s becoming more and more about gaining the respect of your audience with the creativity of your ad campaigns. This is true of not only print and television commercials but also billboards and other outdoor advertising.

In some ways outdoor advertising has become an art form. Companies are always trying to come up with the most innovative inexpensive ways to grab peoples attention as they drive by a billboard or even an entire building. This type of advertising has been named guerrilla marketing which is described as “an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget.”

Advertising has moved beyond just billboards to entire buildings and even structures such as cranes are being utilized as creative advertising space. Guerrilla marketing takes the idea of billboard and moves so much beyond that. Some of my favourite examples have even implemented technology that allows the billboard to change depending on the weather conditions and shadows to move throughout the day.

Some of my favourites are shown below and you can check out more here on Creative Guerilla Marketing dot com.

Rihanna has been getting a lot of heat about her recently released video “S&M”. So far the video has been banned in 11 countries and restricted by YouTube. It seems she is trying to follow in the footsteps of Lady Gaga but it isn’t working out so well for her. This could be due to the fact that she is almost as famous for her abusive relationship with Chris Brown as she is for her music, and well it seems a bit strange for her to be singing about how “whips and chains excite” her after recently experiencing an abusive relationship.

In my opinion, no one ever did Gaga style videos before and no one should start trying now. Only Lady Gaga can pull off latex body suits and meat dresses. Although I don’t really think anyone can pull off a meat dress. I’m personally a little worried about what Rihanna was thinking when she came out with this but I’m hoping she puts away her chains and whips as well as that lovely latex dress.

Starbucks has had a lot of changes going on lately including the introduction of their new logo which got rid of the words in an attempt to be recognized purely by their logo similar to the Nike Swoosh or McDonald’s Golden Arches. They are also trying to get away from being simply a coffee shop and branching into selling music and even offering alcoholic drinks at some of their locations.

Just the other day they also introduced their new ‘trenta’ drink size that will only be offered for iced coffee, iced tea, and iced tea lemonade drinks. It is 31 oz. which is 7 oz. larger than a venti and 0.54 oz. larger than the average human’s stomach. Although the drink is only being offered in 14 states currently it’s not long before you’ll see people walking around with stomach sized drinks in their hands. Starbuck’s main reason for launching this drink was to compete with McDonald’s iced tea drinks that are currently 32 oz.

Seeing that Starbuck’s no longer advertises the fact that they still offer a short drink and many people think that tall is the smallest size my biggest question is when will it stop? Will portion and drink sizes just keep increasing until they’re double the size of a human stomach? Or will our stomach sizes keep increasing so they match the size of the drinks?