Hypersonic Sound Beam & Marketing

Picture the following future scenario. You are walking down the street and you pass by a store that you have never shopped in before and all of a sudden you hear a voice say “One Day Sale at SuperStoreZ”.

You look around for the source of the voice. There is no one behind you or around you and yet the voice persists as if it were coming from inside your own head. You think to yourself – “That’s it, I’ve completely lost it. I am hearing voices and they are instructing me to look for sales. Next stop – Arkham Asylum.”

Here’s the Good News/Bad News

Good News: You’re not crazy. This is a new technology called Hypersonic Sound Beams. I would try and describe it – but here is a direct quote from IRI Technologies that makes the technology:

“The Hypersonic Sound Waves travel silently through space, up to 300 feet away, then convert into an instant sound source whatever surface they impact. Amazingly, if you aim this magical device at a person, their head will become a speaker, and they will hear your message “inside” their head.”

Bad News (depending on your opinion): This isn’t a prototype or future technology – it is already being used. One report from Wired Magazine said that A&E is using it in New York City to promote a show on the paranormal.

As marketers, we are often at odds with where we define personal boundary. Now technology has raised the question of weather or not the mind itself can be a place to hand a billboard or run an ad.

Is this too far?

Cradle to Grave Consumers – and Beyond

Classify this post under “I’m surprised – but we should have seen it coming”.

If you think you are a dedicated sports fan or Trekkie – what better way to demonstrate this dedication by displaying this brand with your journey to the “Final” frontier.

For a currently undisclosed price – Eternal Image will sell you a Star Trek Themed Casket or Urn.

But it is not just dedicated Gene Roddenberry fans that are getting in on the action – Major League Baseball has agreed to license team logos for the same line of products.

So should we interested in this? Should this type of product licensing even be encouraged or is it exploiting and commercially branding one of, if not the, most spiritual events in any family or social group. Other examples of this trend can be found at MIT’s Ad Labs blog under the following post: Brands on Tombstones.

Separating out the ethical questions around such a product – and just focusing on the brand implications, these examples reveal a moment where branding has either overlapped or overtaken religious symbols and icons.

Could this potentially happen with any brand with high emotional involvement? Should brands even aspire to have this strong a connection with a consumer where it literally becomes a proxy for religion?

“Clusty” and its Impact on Brand Zeitgeist

A new web-search engine that is starting to gain some traction in cyber-scape is Clusty. It is built around the principal that any topic that you might search by will actually generate clusters of websites around common ideas that you may not have thought of and may lead to something more specific that you were looking for.

For example: If I go to the main screen and type “Ferrari”, it takes me to a results page that looks similar to something that Google might give you, except for a box on the left side that has the following Clusters:

• Pictures (32)
• Enzo (19)
• Owners (12)
• Reviews (12)
• Maserati (12)
• Ferrari Club (11)

They are ranked by the number of unique sites in each cluster (numbers in the bracket).

So if I were an avid Ferrari owner – I would be asking myself why does Maserati come up with more pages than Ferrari clubs given that I was searching for Ferrari?

Where I see this adding value for a marketing managers is that it provides a quick snap-shot of what anyone and everyone in the world (wide web) is currently talking about with your brand. It sorts through not just websites, but blogs, job postings, images.

Here is another example: Southwest Airlines

This company has always been the darling of business school case studies for their contrarian business practices, fun work culture and their success at being a low-cost airline. This past week, they had to ground several planes because of FAA safety violations.

When I searched Southwest Airlines – the first page generated a list of pages you would expect to be no different if it were pulled prior to this FAA ruling.

Clusty came back with the following Custers:

• Airports
• Tickets
• Planes, Grounded
• Safety, Investigating

I think this paints a more accurate picture of what everyone is thinking about the brand.

Does it not seem like this might be a useful tool to instantly gauge the marketplace? While rudimentary, it certainly can’t get much more current (or dynamic) for market research data.

Digital Marketing Mash-up

I think that a lot of marketers and businesses large and small know that social networking is a trend and not a fad – but still struggle to see how these online communities can exist to enhance a consumer experience beyond narrowing and targeting advertising.

A post on Digital Hive (who we will add to this sites blogroll), supported by an article from the Wall Street Journal gives a great case study (And who doing their MBA doesn’t like a case study?) of the web-company called Etsy that is effectively using social networking to bring together buyers and sellers of hand-crafted goods.

The post talks about bringing together “really crucial interactive consumer behaviours: shopping for and buying stuff, social networking and e-commerce”

Probably one of the more interesting uses of this site is the “Alchemy” section – where potential customers can post what products they would like from the community that currently aren’t available. Next to the hypothetical product – the request also includes an “Ideal Price”.

“Buyers can post requests for custom handmade items, and then sellers bin on the opportunity to make the goods.”

So there is a lot going on with this site: community building, customization, brokering, branding, brand loyalty & entrepreneurship.

We at the SMA wonder if there might be lessons that bigger firms could take from this growing web-business?

Zombie Guerrilas

As cool as it would be to have walking undead monkeys as part of anyone’s marketing mix, this post is slightly more conventional in marketing topics.

The New York Times reported this weekend about Sony BMG’s Guerrila marketing campaign to get people talking about the 25th Anniversary of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” being re-released.

Dance groups from London to Copenhagen have been asked to break into a full choreographed homage to the 15-minute dance in the original music video in public spaces – and then disband as soon as they are formed.

Needless to say – clips of the “spontaneous” dance breakouts have been posted to what is becoming an increasingly important battleground for viral and guerrila marketers: YouTube.

It isn’t exactly clear if Sony is commissioning these dancers, or if the dancers are approaching Sony who is supporting the performances.

Sony IS making it clear they are involved in these events. This is an often overlooked component of other guerilla marketing which have done more to alienate consumers who feel duped.

John Ingrassia, the Sony BMG commercial music group president says that campaigns like this are about “Engaging Consumers.”

I wonder what the SMA community feels like about these marketing tactics – and specifically in this case – where a non-traditional campaign might actually serve the brand better (and be easier to execute) than trying to involve the original artist.

Contrary to Popular Belief

I was riding the bus to York earlier this week when we passed a billboard Ad for Canada’s National Newspaper: The Globe and Mail. Here is what it looked like:

There is a picture of a chicken in the middle, and three thought bubbles each indicating what it means to a different columnist.

I then overheard someone on the bus say how similar it was to a certain university’s marketing campaign. I did some digging in my magazine collection and found the following print ad for York university. Note: this was in a magazine published in December 2007.

It shows a gift bag of wine and what it can mean to….wait for it…3 different areas of study. What a fine bit of Deja vu?

—

In class this week, we had a guest speaker from Taxi speak to us about the history of the Telus “Future is Friendly” campaign, which, if you are keeping count, has been around now for 10 years. Starting with Clearnet and then carrying on through the acquisition by Telus, “Future is Friendly” was revolutionary because it positioned a cell phone company in a completely different area that the major players in the Canadian market.

Its success cannot be denied. From being a late entrant in a market dominated by national players, Telus has exponentially grown marketshare, brand equity and continues to still be in the “most liked” campaigns according to Marketing Magazine [citation needed]. To the credit of both Taxi (Telus’s Lead Agency) and Telus, the company has been very disciplined in staying with a consistent message for a time period much longer that most other campaigns in the telco. industry.

Simple. Consistent. Different. Effective. To paraphrase a page from Marty Neumeirer’s book “Zag” – When everyone else is zigging, you should look to zag.

So why so often do competitors who have the resources to take their brand in any direction work so hard at imitating another brand’s success? Apparently in marketing, imitating is not flattering for anyone involved.

Lost and Found

For company exec’s, brand managers, entrepreneurs and even lowly bloggers, it isn’t enough just to have a presence on the internet – your market also needs to be able to find you. The internet can behave as much an intermediary as it can a communication tool – and thus value is created by connecting and meeting the needs of buyers and sellers.

Searching Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a growing niche industry within web-consulting. If you want to know what is on the cutting edge of search-marketing – there a series of events called the SMX or Search Marketing Expos.

They have global events – none in Canada so far – but the SMX East is happening in New York on October 6-8, 2008. Take a look.

The Age of Persuasion

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to CBC radio on Saturday mornings – you are missing out on a terrific half our of great marketing/advertising journalism hosted by Terry O’Reilly. The show is called The Age of Persuasion and it’s on CBC Radio 1 at 11:30 on Saturday mornings.

The show offers insight and stories into the world of marketing, usually focusing on one theme per episode.

If you did miss the show and want to catch up on old episodes, you can stream them directly from the website. They are currently working on trying to get a podcast off the ground, but are in negotiations regarding copyrighted material used during the shows. Hopefully they get it figured out soon.

Pop Goes the Print Ad

This is really great, simple creative. Thanks to The Cool Hunter for covering it. Created for Arcor Bubble Gum by Leo Burnett in Sao Paulo.