Tostitos Says No to Fun, Yes to Production Budget

Take a look at this latest effort from the junk food purveyors at Tostitos. Nolaf.org is the “official” site of an organization dedicated to stamping out fun in all its forms—with one of the main forms being the mirth that results from eating a handful of Tostitos.

 

The fake organization idea is not a new one. But give the people behind this work credit for doing it right. They created thirty different videos with high production values, all tied together in a smooth experience. The casting is good. There are even special effects. And a lot of the stuff is funny. I think the target, which I assume to be young males, will spend a lot of time with this. If you want more information on what went into the work, here is a press release from Mekanism, the San Fran-based digital production agency that helped created Nolaf.org.

 

What the clients at Tostitos clearly understand is that today, when it comes to creating sticky  experiences for the online space, you need to spend money. It seems simple, but many clients still believe that if the media is “free”, production should be no or low-cost as well. Or better yet, have consumers create your content. It simply can’t work that way on a consistent basis. Not if you want to use online space to really build your brand in a way $800,000 commercials never could.

Repeat After Me: “Online is Not TV”

 At Attention Shoppers!, we love TV (even if we watch it less these days). The medium that brought us such great moments as “All in the Family”, “Seinfeld” and “The Sopranos” is a huge part of 20^th and now 21^st century art and culture. However, we, like most everyone in the world, aren’t that fond of TV commercials. Of course, when TV was born, commercials were part of the deal. They paid for the programming, and you had to watch them (unless you went to the bathroom or got a snack during the word from our sponsors).

 

Today, despite a world with remotes, Tivo and DVRs, advertisers still create most commercials as if consumers were forced to watch them. Giving viewers just the information that advertisers think is important.

 

Even more surprisingly, many advertisers today are using the internet in the same way. Creating websites and other online experiences that are essentially extended, interactive commercials.

 

This new site from Arm and Hammer begins promisingly, with host Jill Cordes telling consumers that the site will be the place to come to solve “any cleaning and freshening problems.”  That sounds like something that could be valuable.

 

On the plus side, she asks consumers to share there cleaning secrets. On the negative side, every one of her secrets so far is an Arm and Hammer product.  Essentially, online commercials for the products (albeit with coupons). As a consumer, there is no way I have confidence in this site as an objective information source, because it isn’t one.

 

Online, people have literally millions of choices. Most people will not choose to watch commercials.

 

Special thanks to Tina Bronhorst of Digitas for sending this site my way.

White Gold = Lion Gold?

What can you say about Goodby and the dynamite work they continue to churn out for the California Milk Processor Board? This little ditty, called White Gold, is the latest in a long line of kick-ass creations. I don’t even know where to begin to explain this thing (but Adweek does, so I’ll let them do it). But it makes milk seem very cool. I also can’t begin to understand how they can continue to do such high production value work on what I assume to be a relatively tightly-budgeted account. More power to ‘em. Rock on milk drinkers. I bet dollars to Milkduds that  we’ll see this on the stage at Cannes in a couple of months.

I Know Where Your Momma Is…She’s Online

Depending on whose figures you look at (just don’t look at the figures of the Attention Shoppers! staff, as we haven’t looked good since Adam Ant looked good) women 18-54 are now spending as much time—if not more–online as they are watching television. The numbers I am looking at are from Forester, in case you’re interested.

 

Even though I spend much of my day trying to figure out ways to reach these women online, I still find this fact amazing. Even more amazing, however, is how little many CPG companies spend to reach these women online. It is changing, but not nearly as quickly as one would think.

 

But then there’s Unilever. Believe me, I get tired of pointing them out as an example, but they continue to do notable work. The latest is this Web Series, In the Motherhood, that Suave, a Unilever brand, has created. Actually, Sprint is also a sponsor, which is a little strange, but I’m sure there’s a reason.

 

The series stars Leah Remini from “King of Queens” fame and Jenny McCarthy from, um, Jenny McCarthy fame.

 

I get the feeling that, in addition to the standalone site, there is a distributed content partnership with MSN, but I couldn’t track it down.

 

After they’ve finished watching the pretty decent videos, moms can also upload their favorite stories for a chance to travel to Hollywood and see them come to life as part of the series. A lot of them are doing just that. There are also bulletin boards and games and other things to keep moms on the site.

 

Overall I think it’s a nice effort. A couple of quibbles, however. Unless I missed it, there is little to no Suave integration in the videos, except for a “conceived by” mention up front. I think there could and should be a bit of a better connection to the brand, as Unilever has done before with Degree, for example. And I found it VERY annoying to have the featured video start playing again every time I returned to the home page from another section of the site, even though I had already watched the video.

The Recession, Toothpaste and the Internet

Well, it would appear to be official. Everyone from Alan Greenspan to Parade Magazine is saying we are in a recession. That said, the question that most of our loyal readers are asking is this: “what the hell does the recession mean for CPG products and the internet?”. The answer depends largely on how advertisers and agencies react. Because consumers are already reacting.

 

I mentioned Parade Magazine for a reason. This weekend, Parade (which has one of the highest readerships of any magazine/newspaper in the country) published their fascinating, annual issue entitled “What People Earn”.

 

“What People Earn” is an amazing sociological statement on what is going on in this country right now, but I will not get into that here (one tidbit–the $35,000 salary of a teacher is listed next to the $12 million income of Leona Helmsley’s dog). Just in case you do not get Parade Magazine delivered to your home, which I cannot fathom, here is a link to the report.

 

My opinion is that Parade Magazine is a pretty good reflection of American society as a whole. The people who read Parade buy the majority of CPG products in this country. And, according the Parade reporters, these people are not feeling good right now. They are cutting back on eating out. On traveling. On buying clothes. And according to one respondent, they are switching from buying name brands to buying generics.

 

Most agency heads are saying that clients are not going to change their spending at this time. I’m not sure I agree. In fact, I know that some clients are already cutting back a bit. However, my belief is that the smart CPG clients will react to the recession by INCREASING their online spend. That’s because everything we have learned points to the fact that online marketing has a much better ROI than traditional media. And unless the TV networks significantly reduce their ad rates (HA!) things will only get worse in the months to come. When dollars are tight, and profits margins are slimmer, ROI should rule. Right now, online should rule.

Eva Longoria and Ice Cream—the Perfect End to an Evening

You probably didn’t know that Mrs. Tony Parker’s latest role was that of an ice cream lover. If you did, then chances are you have already visited Magnum Manor, Eva’s latest digs. Just as I did this evening.

 

This is a promotion for Magnum Ice Cream, which seems to be a European brand—I am an ice cream fan, and I have never seen it in my local Stop and Shop. In any case, the URL had UK at the end of it, and the site was designed by the Swedish agency Storackers McCann. So the experience has a certain Euro flavor.

 

I liked the site—the video and flash are nicely integrated with a number of very cool surprises. There is precious little here about ice cream, however. And I’m not sure if Magnum’s quality is closer to Ben and Jerry’s or Dairy Queen.  But this site is probably aimed at women who know. And if Eva likes it, that’s good enough for me.

Even Coke Is Having A Tough Time Figuring This Stuff Out

Yesterday I posted some work done by one of the greatest marketers in history, the Coca-Cola company (By the way, I promised one of my Digitas friends, Inal Olmez, that I would try to figure out how that Coke Zero Game was performing; according to Compete—and I’m not saying these stats are correct—4,700 people hit the site in March, so the answer would be not so great).

 

Coke, of course, has created some of the most fantastic, and effective, TV commercials ever. But that doesn’t mean that they are having the same success in the online space. Check out this article from Adweek today for an interesting take on how Coke is evolving the way they think about the social media space.

Coke Plays Games

Remember that wonderful Advergame, called Get The Glass, that Goodby created for the California Milk Processor Board last year? Well, the Swedish interactive agency that ACTUALLY created the game, North Kingdom, is back at it.

 

Here is a game that they created for Coke Zero in Germany in support of Coke’s sponsorship of the 2008 Euro Football Championship. It launched a couple of months ago and we tagged it with Delicious, but then forgot about it, and just got around to looking at it today. Well, it’s no Get The Glass, but it’s certainly well done.

 

Basically, your task is to help a guy down on his luck get to the Coke Zero Lounge in time to see the big match. To do so, you have to carry out a number of tasks, such as jump a car over a bridge, kick a ball through a wall, etc (actually, those two were all I was able to do before I gave up). There’s plenty of branding, but it doesn’t really get in the way of the game.

 

The acting and writing aren’t exactly A-list, but technically the game is pretty sweet. Coke certainly spent a few Euros on this.

 

Starbucks Wants to Go Home With You

No longer content to take your cash when you are trying to wake up for work, Starbucks now wants your grocery dollars as well. That’s right, your favorite cup of Joe is now making a big play in the CPG space.  Take a look at this brand new site. It uses a blackboard motif that will be familiar to Starbucks regulars and includes a nicely done quiz that will tell you exactly which sack of beans is best for you.  There’s also a section that displays chalkboard art from Starbuck’s baristas. But there is only one drawing. From a Canadian Starbucks. Surely they could have put up a few more at launch, but then I quibble, I suppose. Perhaps all the baristas are busy baristing.

40 Million Reasons Why Yahoo Created Shine

Yesterday Yahoo launched a spiffy new web site aimed smack at the middle of the CPG target audience: women 25-54. With 40 million women per month already visiting their site, the big brains at Yahoo (soon to be big brains at Microsoft) decided to put all of their female-oriented content in one place, create a lot more of it (with help from their friends at Hearst and Conde Nast), and make bloggers and other contributors a huge part of the new experience. They call it Shine (with from Yahoo in smaller type).  I didn’t spend a ton of time on Shine today, but I liked what I saw. Here is what the PR people at Yahoo had to say about their handiwork. And here is a different take, from FoxNews.   You can bet that all of our CPG media partners will keep a close eye on this site. It will certainly provide some clear competition for iVillage and Glam, the reigning queens of the women’s online world.