Beach-vertising: There really is no escape

Before my hols are too distant a memory, I thought I'd better post these pics.  It seems there really is no escape. The perils of working in marketing and advertising I suppose. I studiously and successfully avoided digital, tv, radio and press, barely encountered any outdoor, and only limited in-store.  So where did they get me?

At the beach!

If you can't reach people by traditional channels, I'm the first to advocate going off-piste. It's the age old principles of traditional mass reach - find where the people are and interrupt them there. In this case, when it's blistering hot outside and everyone is seeking respite via the breeze by the water, that means catching them in creative ways.

Route 1) was the moving billboard / flyer technique for a pop-up store event :
Advantages: Employing eye-candy to sport said moving billboards / deliver flyers leads to pleasant associations with message delivery.
Limitations - easy to miss if you were enjoying that essential siesta, having a swim or had your nose in a book.

 Route 2) - ye olde drag-a-banner-behind-a-plane-flying-over-the-beach technique. Arguably this is outdoor but not of the sold by JC Decaux variety.  Employed in this case by retailers such as IKEA and LIDL and an assortment of local bars, clubs and other attractions.
Advantages: reached people in places other media could not.

 Limitations: I rarely wear my contact lenses to the beach so often hard to read the message! Being honest, it might have been home improvement week at Lidl but it was escape from such responsibilities of daily life I was after.

Still, points awarded for trying, and if nothing else it served as brand awareness prompts.

Publishers: How not to serve ads...

One of my colleagues just flagged this clanger to me:

The London Weekly have been caught this morning trying to serve MPU ad copy into a space rather too small. Oooops. If I was Jet 2 I wouldn't be very happy paying for those impressions, especially as the links are broken too.

I rather think they put this leaderboard in the wrong place too... Maybe they got it for "half price"!?

Catchy Tunes & Bands in Banners from Malaysia

Apparently I'm a bit behind the page and the notion of Banner Concerts was pioneered last year via a Belgian Bank called Axion.

They built sets that were scale models of traditional ad formats, streamed live music performances into banners in situ and then  encouraged X-Factor style interaction and voting for favourite acts.

Nice. Who said financial services always had to be dull?  Here's a short video that brings the initiative to life:

As my friend Faris says, Talent Imitates, Genius Steals. So applause and compliments to the originators of this Malaysian mash up of Banner Concerts.  The winner will be announced on November 21st 2009.

Meanwhile this cheesey but incredibly catchy pop song has been playing every time I've opened Firefox for the last week.  But if you can't be bothered to go over to the campaign page, here's the video on YouTube.

I love the notion of content and digital display working hard together to deliver engagement. Smart.

Twitter Advertising in Malaysia

Whilst I was hanging out with my ASEAN buddies last week someone told me that you could advertise on Twitter in Malaysia.  Curiosity aroused, I dug a bit deeper to find that Churp Churp  have basically taken an existing blog seeding model and applied it to Twitter.

Interesting stuff and well worth clicking on that link above if only for the nice graphics of how WOM works.  I wonder how long it will be before we see this rolling out in the UK / elsewhere.