Is Mayo Really Worth Blogging About?

 I guess I am answering my own question with this post about the new Hellmann’s Mayonnaise campaign that broke recently. It’s called “In Search of Real Food” and is a custom media partnership that is located on the food section of Yahoo (which is a much better idea than trying to drive people to the Hellmann’s site).

The content features Dave Lieberman from The Food Network, who is traveling across the country asking people what real food means to them and why it’s important. It’s all pretty well done. However, that’s not what makes this campaign the most interesting to me. It’s the way Hellmann’s tried to get bloggers to drive more people to the site.

When the site launched, Hellmann’s sent e-mails to a bunch of food bloggers inviting them to the site, in hopes they would write about it. Well, some of them did. And some of the comments were nice, but others were quite naughty.

The lesson here, as if we didn’t already know, is that when you invite consumers to participate in your marketing, you can’t expect them to behave like your agency (which can be a good thing or a bad thing, I guess).

Here’s hoping you all will be enjoying some real food over the Labor Day Weekend.

Do You Need to Change Your Underwear?

If Jockey has its way, those of us with ill-fitting underpants will see the error of our ways and make the switch to form-fitting skivvies (Now I realize that, technically, underwear does not fall into the CPG category, but it—when you’re talking about the functional Jockey brand–is such a low-interest product that it deserves to be included). That is why they created the site Stop Squirming. Here is an article from Brandweek about the effort.

I am a Jockey consumer and I have to say that some of the fine products that I purchased from them fit like a glove (so to speak) while others fit more like a mitten (keeping with the metaphor). But perhaps they have improved their body molding technology recently. In any case, Jockey has decided to increase the percentage of their online media spend from 6% to 20%. Which to me seems like a very nice fit for 2007.

What’s That Smell?

Because of the fact that people truly control the ways they consume media today, those of us who were in the advertising business ten years ago now increasingly find ourselves in the content creation game. After all, with Tivo, DVRs, ipods, YouTube, et. al, (not to mention a zillion and one sites and blogs) there have never been more ways for consumers to control what they watch and when they watch it, and to essentially avoid most marketing messages. That means we have to think of new ways to engage our audineces—and the only way to do that is to create things that are valuable for them.  

You may have already seen this very ambitious content creation effort from Degree Deodorant. It launched earlier this year, but I viewed for the first time this weekend. Working with Fox TV, the folks at Unilever created custom content around the hit TV series “24”. While I am not a fan of the show, I know plenty of people who are, and can certainly understand why a show with many tense moments is a fine match for the product.  Here is a bit more information about the campaign. 

There are two major segments here. One is a series of webisodes based on an original concept, CTU: The Rookie, that follows the adventures of a brand new agent. The second is a flash/comic-book style prequel to “24” featuring the same characters as the TV show. Overall, the production values here are very high. Even the comic-book animation, which can have a tendency to look pretty cheesy, is done very well. The music, writing and acting are all top notch. 

Which makes it doubly unfortunate that the user interface is soooo hard to figure out, and in some cases the site almost seems unfinished. It took me three visits to find the “Rookie” content. And the experience has an annoying tendency to go back to the start of the experience when you click on other parts of the site. I clicked on the “Rookie” content numerous times, only to be sent back to the comic book experience. And it seems to me that that they left off the ending of the prequel (although I may have just missed it). After all the dough they spent on top-notch content, it’s too bad that it is not easier to watch. 

Degree also offers a product for women, and when you get to the Degree site, you have the opportunity to choose between the men’s and women’s content. I clicked on the women’s section of the site, and was treated to a print magazine style interface that was nicely designed. Only problem was that it was the Winter edition of the mag (I happened to be looking at it during a 96 degree day). This does not send a great message to consumers visiting the site for either the first or second time.

Warning: Sexually Oriented Audio

Craig Herrick, a copywriter at Digitas, brought this banner to my attention. It was done by DDB in Brazil. I will not tell you what CPG product it is for, as that would give away the very nice surprise. I have not posted a ton of banners recently, as I don’t believe that they are really the future of online marketing. However, since they are still a pretty good percentage of most marketers’ media buys, I will continue to bring notable examples to your Attention!

The Non-Banner Approach to Home-Page Marketing

If I were looking for a great place to find women (which I actually am on a frequent basis–but for my clients, not for me personally) the home page of i-Village is certainly one of the first places I would look. After all, 17 million women hang out there every month. But, depending on what I was trying to accomplish, I probably would not suggest that my clients put a banner on the home page—too easy to ignore it. Instead, I would try to work with i-Village to somehow integrate my marketing message seamlessly into stuff the millions of women were doing on that valuable home page. In other words, I would try to do what Dove did today.  

In case you don’t see the marketing on the link above—it may only be up for a day or so—here is what they did. There is always a simple poll question–the i-Village Indexs– on the home page of i-Village—people love polls. Today’s subject was: “How do you feel about your hair?” There were three possible answers: 1. It’s curly, I want it straight.  2. It’s straight, I want it curly.   3. I like it just the way it is.  (They did not have my heartfelt response, which would be “I just want more of it.”).

Accompanying the results was a link that simply read: “Say bye-bye to bad hair days.” Clicking on it would take you here, to this useful page on the Dove site. Well, useful for women with hair problems. Not so useful for guys whose hair problem is a lack thereof.

Did You Get an Invite? I Got Snubbed.

As a follow-up to my Coke/Second Life post, I thought you would enjoy this funny article from “Creativity” about what happened when Coke “premiered” their new commercial on Second Life. Again, it shows just how difficult it is, even for one of the best marketers in the world, to knock the ball out of the park while the rules of the game are still being written.

Still, one must give the cola giant credit for stepping up to the plate and swinging for the fences (I promise to never use a baseball metaphor again, honest).

Coke Adds Life to Second Life

A little over a week ago, Attention Shoppers! brought to YOUR attention an article in Wired Magazine that said, for all intents and purposes, ad agencies were wasting their clients’ money in Second Life. The author presented some pretty compelling evidence as to why spending time or money in Second Life was simply not a good idea for marketers right now. Coke, certainly no slouch when it comes to marketing, appears to disagree. Check out this article from Adweek. 

Of course, when you have 3.7 gazillion bucks to spend (not official AdTrax numbers) you can toss a few hundred thousand Second Life’s way without having to meet with the folks in finance.

And I Thought Viagra Was The Wonder Drug

I was driving back from the beach this weekend and had the radio on—adult contemporary, just to keep in touch with what our demo of women 34 plus are listening to. An ad came on for Bayer Aspirin, which ended with a very strong call to action to their web site, wonderdrug.com.

As I applaud any attempt at cross channel marketing, I decided to check it out. I found a site that was attractive and rich with information. However, I wish they had put a little bit more effort into making the experience more interesting by adding Flash and video.  Still, for a product that is basically a commodity, Bayer does a nice job of claiming ownership of the category.

Wal-Mart ‘s Latest Special? Roommates.

Fortunately for me, the roommate I was assigned during my freshman year in college and I hit it off splendidly. So much so that Bob Brin and I remained roomies all four years we spent at good ‘ole Saint John’s. Most of the other pairs in our dorm were not nearly so lucky.   

These days, of course, there is no need for luck, since kids have FaceBook. The site, which is quickly eclipsing MySpace as the favorite place for teens and young adults to hang out, is being used by many students and universities to help match up roommates.   Wal-Mart has decided to join in the fun, buying space on FaceBook that allows kids to take a quiz to determine their “Roommate Style Match.”  (You will have to register on FaceBook to have access to the link, but if you are a CPG marketer, you will want to take a look if you haven’t yet). You answer a dozen questions, see what your style is, then send the quiz to prospective roommates to see how you match up. Finally, you can buy all the stuff—at Wal-Mart, of course–to create a dorm room that matches your style. If you’re interested, here is more information on the campaign. 

It’s not a bad idea, and certainly better than the retail giant’s earlier forays into social networking. You may recall their embarrassing attempt to create a MySpace style site—censored, of course. It lasted a short while before whimpering off into a cyber graveyard. 

In this case, first of all, Wal-Mart is going where huge numbers of people already are having conversations, instead of creating a site and expecting people to show up. And second of all, they are providing something of value to their audience, not just marketing at them. So kudos on both fronts, which are places most CPG companies and retailers fail. 

Will it work? My suspicion, based on numerous campaigns I’ve helped created aimed at this target, is that Wal-Mart has a much better chance at getting girls to participate than guys. At Digitas we have had great success at attracting girls and young women to these kinds of quizzes that tell them something about themselves.  

Guys, on the other hand, are more apt to prefer watching videos such as those that feature squirrels being placed in an unsuspecting camper’s sleeping bag.  

Pop Tarts, Fiber and Community

One of the sad truths about getting older is that you can no longer be totally irresponsible when it comes to your diet.  Which is why, several years ago, I became a loyal Kashi customer.  I eat their cereals—chock full of fiber and whole grains and other wholesome stuff–for breakfast more often than not.  And I am not alone. Kashi is one the most successful health food brands in history. Certainly much of that success has been built on smart branding (that starts with their informative and earnest packaging) that really gives you the impression that the company is honest, caring and genuine.  It almost makes one forget that they are owned by Kellogg’s, the proud purveyors of Frosted Flakes and Pop Tarts.   

In any case, I was quite excited when I read in Adweek that Kashi was redesigning their site, turning it into a community-style destination. The fact that the redesign was being handled by the Barbarian group (a very fine creative bunch) further increased my anticipation.  But I must say, I was a bit under whelmed when I saw the site.

The tone is right, and the photography and graphics are fine, but it just seems a bit bland and boring (not unlike some of their products, perhaps). The site is very static, with little use of video or animation.  And as for the community aspect, well, I give them high marks for the attempt. But at this point, there is precious little community activity going on. Meaning that Kashi needs to do more to drive their loyal users to the site, and then give them a more fun, interesting experience when they get there. After all, there is a reason the Kashi cereal highest in fiber is sweetened with honey.