Fun with Facebook. And money

"I gotta harvest my crops real quick."

"No I can't leave yet, my tikka masala will be done in 3 minutes."

"I have to go to Cuba for this gang war."

None of this is verbatim, but this is the kind of stuff people have said (myself included). I don't work on a farm, cook anything with a weirder name than spaghetti, or go to Cuba to assassinate rival gangs (I keep my gang wars local). But once upon a time, back in the day, I played all the stupid, time consuming games on Facebook such as Farmville, Cafe World, and Mafia Wars. It became so difficult to keep up my strawberry fields and pot roast that it felt like work and I had to quit.

A turkey dinner takes 2 days to make or something like that. Saving up enough Godfather points to buy that AK-47 could take weeks. You have to have patience to play these games. Or a credit card. Yeah thats right; instead of waiting for those Godfather points to accumulate you can just buy some more! With real money! Thankfully I never went that far, but I know there are suckers out there that did.

The creators of these games are smart. Drug dealer smart. First they give you the product for free, knowing you will get hooked. Then they let you have a little more from time to time. Soon enough you need more than you're getting and that's when they have you right where they wanted you. They've set up a nice little online shop where you can get your fix of purple cows and whatever ethnic foods your cafe serves. They've been able to monetize people wasting their time. If you're reading this while waiting to harvest your acai berry tree don't kid yourself: you are wasting your time. Hopefully not your money yet.

Not only useless, but 99 cents too.

As demonstrated by many iphone app developers, people will pay $0.99 for just about anything. One of the first apps I downloaded was the Zippo lighter. It's a digital cigarette lighter that flickers when you move your phone. It came free with 28 different "skins" for your lighter, which will come in handy when you open the app once every 3 months because you're really bored.

I noticed in a recent Adweek column that Zippo has started releasing new skins for $0.99 each. They feature Harley Davidson, Ozzy Osbourne, Bob Marley, The Who and other crap. The reason I'm posting about this is because it was smart, if maybe a little obvious, for Zippo to start making money off of this.

I guarantee anyone who bought the bought the Bob Marley one was stoned at the time. Not because its Bob Marley, but because they paid $0.99 for a picture of him that also has a flickering flame.

Whatever happened to using soap?

These days there seems to be a craze in marketing body wash to men. Everyone including Axe, Dove, Nivea and Old Spice have gotten in on the game. After browsing a few of their ads it became clear that what they all are saying is that they have made a body wash that cleans, smells good and can still be manly. Or something.

I was going to write up some crap about swiping their ideas but I thought it would be more fun to talk about Old Spice and what they've become. Here is a nice quote from Old Spice's youtube page: "Don't smell like sunsets and baby powder. Smell like jet fighters and punching". They aren't even marketing what their product does, they're marketing an attitude which in this case would be "swagger".

A quick glance at the Old Spice website shows 18 different flavors (?) of body wash. I have used maybe 2 of these ever and I can only guess what they all smell like. Some products even feature Odor Blocker for 16 hours of freshness. Shouldn't they all have this? Does Old Spice pay a team of scientists to come up with new ideas for body wash? If they've churned out 18 already I can only imagine what didn't make the cut.

Here are some guesses as to what some of the body washes smell like:

Deck Scrubber: Filthy, filthy pirates.

Aqua Reef: Salt water and snorkels.

After Hours: Strippers, cigarettes and bourbon.

Gameday: Locker rooms and spilled beer.

Arctic Force: Snow? Polar bears?

What is ipad?

When the ipad first came out I had no idea what it was. Is it a big iphone or a small computer? According to the newest ad from Apple, ipad is everything, even magical. Why does everything they put out have to be so cool?

By now I've had the chance to play with one and have seen the ipad around. I still don't quite know why I would need it, but I'm pretty sure I want it. Like their ad says there isn't even a learning curve with their technology anymore. If you have used an ipod ever you pretty much know how to use the rest of their shiny, beautiful crap. Apple's genius is making products that we didn't know we wanted or needed.

I swiped this from Tim Christy's blog. I also wrote it.

The Super Bowl is the most watched television program every year and this year was no exception. The game was watched by a record 106.5 million people in the U.S. alone, breaking the 27 year old record held by the final episode of M*A*S*H. We all know that for the advertising industry the Super Bowl is, well, the Super Bowl of advertising. Half the fun (or all the fun if you don't like football) is watching the commercials and seeing what advertisers will come up with next.

One brand's advertising that stood out to me the last couple years was Miller High Life. In 2009, MillerCoors wanted to do something different to stand out from its main competitor, Anheuser Busch. AB last year also had secured the rights to be the exclusive national alcohol advertiser for the Super Bowl. In this year's game, AB had six ads that ran about $3 million each. MillerCoors has been positioning the High Life brand as being the best value. According to then High Life brand manager Kevin Oglesby, "Miller High life is all about quality and great value so it wouldn't make sense for this brand to pay $3 million for a 30 second ad". The solution formulated by ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi was to air a one second commercial only on local NBC market affiliates. This would enable the brand to reach a lot of people all over the country while also poking fun at its big spending rival.

For this year's Super Bowl, MillerCoors adopted a similarly themed strategy but opted for a full 30 second ad to be carried on local market CBS affiliates. The campaign is titled"Little Guys on the Big Game". Instead of just showing a beer commercial, the ad featured the popular High Life deliveryman spokesperson giving air time to four actual small business owners. Current High Life brand manager Joe Abeeg says, "Miller High Life is all about common sense and nothing makes more sense than giving deserving small businesses the opportunity to be part of the big game... What better way to show our appreciation for hardworking Americans who share High Life's values than by providing a prime-time stage for a few of them to tell their story."

The reason why I picked this as my "cool find" is the attitudes and beliefs this campaign is expressing. Our country is currently in one of the worst recessions in history. Miller High Life has been positioning itself as being the best value and as a beer for regular, hard working Americans. By giving up its only Super Bowl advertising to showcase small businesses, it gives the impression that MillerCoors understands what people are going through right now. It also makes it seem that MillerCoors is trying to spend more responsibly during a time when some major corporations are being criticized for overspending. It's also fun to see Miller crashing Budweiser's super expensive Super Bowl party yet again.

I think strategically it works very well. What better way to be a brand of the people than to actually feature and help out some regular people? It gives the brand some credibility as being socially conscious of what is going on around the country and not just trying to sell something. It remains to be seen whether or not the small businesses featured will be helped out much by appearing in a Super Bowl ad, but it does give them a ton of free advertising.

Ideas NOT to swipe

I don't know if anyone else has seen Kraft Miracle Whip's re-branding campaign. You haven't? Good because it sucks almost as bad as Miracle Whip tastes (I don't know or care if that was proper English, I'm blogging).

I first started seeing ads over the summer. If I remember correctly it was while watching Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (great show) On Demand. On Demand shows typically have only one sponsor and one ad is played at each commercial break so during the course of an episode I may have seen up to 5 or 6 shitty Miracle Whip commercials.

Why do I hate them so much? Well, part of it has to do with how much I simply hate the taste of Miracle Whip. The other part is how they are trying to reposition the product. I don't have to look up very much consumer data to know that old people are the heaviest users of Miracle Whip. They ain't getting any younger. I understand the need for Kraft to find new consumers to eat this trash but I don't like how they went about it.

The new commercials basically show how much fun hipsters can have while consuming Miracle Whip. Yayyy! Bitter flavored mayonnaise is cool now! I live is inner SE Portland (hipster central) and I don't see them buying Miracle Whip at the grocery store, only PBR and American Spirits.

These commercials just seem really forced and inauthentic. It feels like there is a disconnect with Kraft's message and whomever they are trying to target. Just because you throw young, cool looking people into your commercial, that doesn't make your product young and cool. I assume most young people are either smart enough or sarcastic enough to not buy into what Kraft is selling.

Master of controversy

Tiger Woods has been no stranger to controversy lately and his newest Nike ad is no exception. The new ad released right before the Master's Tournament features a voice over by his deceased father apparently lecturing Tiger.

Nike was one of the only companies to stick with Tiger after his transgressions became public, not that they had much choice because Tiger Woods IS Nike Golf. A lot of people think it's creepy or too weird to throw his dead father into an ad. Maybe it is. It is also brilliant on Nike's part.

The controversy generated by the ad is part of it's brilliance. I've seen the ad nearly a dozen times now, and not once in a paid TV spot. I first found it linked on Facebook by some friends who work at Nike. In the days after it released I started seeing it all over talk shows including The Daily Show, The Jimmy Kimmel Show, and Larry King Live. Everyone had an opinion on it and everyone wanted to talk about it. Without spending very much money the ad had seeped its way into the consciousness of the entire country in a few short days.

Love the ad or hate it, you still saw the swoosh an extra dozen times that week and that is why I would swipe it. No, I don't want to make ads with dead people, but I do like the execution of it. Anything Tiger related was going to generate a buzz and the timing of this advertisement capitalized on that.