Cherryflava

Headlines: All the local marketing news…you need to know [Friday edition]

Posted on 31. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

- Miniature, traffic light billboards with an ‘underground’ meaning continue in the Claremont area. This one, a clear follow up to the previous ‘Coke Cat’ cereal killer is now a little old and weathered, but still commands the power to keep us guessing.

- Oh dear – Virgin Mobile have announced that the status of the upcoming Virgin Festival has been marked as ‘postponed’. [Tsk] According to the press release…

‘The festival has been
postponed to early 2009 in order to secure the international line-up that is
more in line with what Virgin Festival stands for throughout the different
countries.’

Apparently…

“Some of the bands that South
Africans kept asking for were simply not available at that time of the
year.”

- Bushmills, one of the premium brands we hold dear in the Cherryflava bar, [which by the way goes very nicely with a splash of red Grapetiser and a large Cuban] are running a new online campaign where you can win a 1966 MGB Roadster. The car is busy being restored to its original glory, which you can follow online at www.bushmills.co.za

- Eat Out magazine and Soweto have turned to The Grid [the Vodacom location-based cellphone social network] for some added value. Mobikasi is South Africa’s first geo-tagged documentary
for cellphones, which explores youth culture in Soweto. Check out Soweto Youth Culture on your cellphone at [http://www.thegrid.co.za/mobikasi], which goes live Wednesday 5 November.

- Don’t forget…the
month of Movember is upon us! For those not up to speed with the term…

‘Movember
(a portmanteau of the words ‘Moustache’ and ‘November’) is an annual month-long
event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November.’

So if you’ve always wanted to look like Magnum – now’s your time buddy. Grow that ’stache…blame the tickler on a good cause. See: Movember

Prediction: In 2009 there will be…a strong commercial heavy metal revival

Posted on 30. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

In tough times, nobody wants to hear Usher ft Chris Brown croon about the bottle of Bollinger they just poured over some loose groupie in a lame attempt to make music that has meaning in a world filled with BMW repossessions and slumming it with Pierre Jordan Brut.

Metallica are back with Death Magnetic – easily the best album release of 2008 and now another 80’s classic outfit AC/DC have hit number 1 on the Billboard chart with their latest offering "Black Ice" smashing that High School Musical drivel into submission.
What’s next? Iron Maiden cracking the nod for the soundtrack of the next Bond movie – a proper Guns and Roses reunion resulting in the band strumming the backing track for the next Sony Bravia ad which features many multi-coloured Fenders getting smashed on an ice stage?

Somebody get Phil Wright to stop selling out by doing voice overs for Top Billing and back on late night rock radio. Stop disrespecting Barney Simon with an arb 30 minute show on GO and give the legend his Night Zoo slot back on 5FM.

Recession times call for something a little stronger. Forget slurping on an alcopop to take the edge off after getting retrenched for the third time, it’s time for Jack Daniel’s slammers with an Absinthe chaser delicately flava’d with a pack of Camel Plain.

No more Amy ‘Whine’ house – the real gods of rock are back.

Read: Heavy Metal clobbers High School Musical – NYTimes
And: Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan on AC/DC and music’s latest sales model – Hollywood Insider

Breadcrumbz: Cellphone-based map making

Posted on 29. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Giving directions could well get a long overdue tech makeover thanks to a picture-based navigation app for cellphones called Breadcrumbz – in other words – something that helps you make maps for dummies with a cellphone. [see video for more]

The software uses the phone’s camera and GPS to take geo-tagged
pictures of the user’s route while Android’s location APIs and Compass
sensor track their progress as they navigate. Android’s Maps API is
then used to overlay route information such as arrows or notes on top
of a map. The result is a personalized, picture-based map that users
can email to friends or upload to the web to show others how to
navigate a specific building or landscape.

Looks like a helluva handy tool to add to the quiver of tricks we already use in our location-based urban games, but alas it’s only available for Google’s Android platform and won’t work on our Nokia N95s. But it’s only a matter of time before the goodness spreads.

More: Using pictures to give directions – Springwise
Website: Breadcrumbz

Halloween marketing: Oh how the mighty have fallen

Posted on 28. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Nicknamed ‘The Gorilla of Greed’, this Halloween you can scare the living daylights out of your equity trader friends with this Richard Fuld [the ex-CEO of Lehman Bros.] mask.

Surprisingly to us, it’s part of a series of masks [The scariest people of 2008] made available this year by respected business media title Forbes. Knowing now that they have a serious sense of humour makes them just that much more… there.
There’s even an Amy Winehouse version, which should you choose to wear it, is guaranteed to get every single drug merchant in Woodstock squealing like a 5-year old on a school outing to Beacon.

Great marketing idea.

Perhaps the Financial Mail can offer us a Julius Malema version?

More: Halloween masks – Forbes.com [get them all]
[via Gawker]
 

Pepsi gets a makeover

Posted on 27. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Pepsi is one of those brands that has just never seemed to really take off in South Africa.

For whatever reason, nothing about the brand or the product has really captured the heart and taste buds of the nation like their competitor has.

Now the global Pepsi brand is undergoing another logo design transformation…because frankly it’s time for one.

Frank Cooper, Pepsi’s VP-portfolio brands said; "We felt like, as we move out of this traditional mass marketing and
mass distribution era into today’s culture, there’s an opportunity to
bring humanity back, both in terms of the design but also in the way we
engage consumers," he said. "By making the logo more dynamic and more
alive … [it is] absolutely a huge step in the right direction."

The new logo is a white band in the middle of Pepsi’s circle that
loosely forms a series of smiles: A smile will characterize brand
Pepsi, while a grin is used for Diet Pepsi and a laugh is used for
Pepsi Max. [via Adage]

A vague brand redesign rationale always sounds like somebody was tasked to come up with some fancy meaning to justify why the agency spent 5 months and ‘north of $1 million’ on coming up with almost the exact same logo that they had before, but with a weird grin as the white bit.

More: Laughing lion blog

[...]

Free Business Idea: Smash hit retail

Posted on 24. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Our office usually doubles up as one of these on a daily basis, but we had to bow and genuflect to this business idea courtesy of Springwise.

Called Sarah’s Smash Shack – it’s a safe and easily washable space for people to go and smash stuff.
We’ve always had a fantasy of smashing a white Steinway baby grand piano with a nickel-plated hunting axe in a sound-proof room, so with any luck it looks promising that our dream may actually oneday become reality at a place like Sarah’s.

After donning protective gear, smashers are escorted to one of the
break rooms, where they stand behind a waist-high barrier and hurl
their arsenal at a stainless steel wall. To make the process more
personalised, customers are encouraged to bring their own soundtrack on
MP3, and to write messages on whatever they’re about to throw. There’s
also the option of flinging objects at a photo or mantra of choice. A
VIP room is available for group smashes. [via Springwise]

All you need to start one of these potentially lucrative retail outlets is some space in a shopping centre, old stuff from fleamarkets a couple of masks and a Slipknot album or two.

See: Sarah’s Smash Shack

Snoop through somebody else’s phone

Posted on 23. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Nokia are running a very unique and engaging marketing campaign with their agency Wieden + Kennedy London.

Understanding what complete nosey bastards most of us are they’re giving you the chance to snoop your way through someone’s phone, including text
messages, personal contacts, diary entries, photos, voicemails and
private video clips.

The fictional branded entertainment follows the lives of three hip and trendy youths Anna, Jade and Luca who, like most youths these days, live their lives on their cellphones. You can check out there Facebook pages as well and find their the characters’ phone numbers and call or text them directly.

As well as traditional TV, print, outdoor and radio, each character’s story is told in real time through the website, where the audience can access the characters’ Nokia 7610 handsets and over 3750 different pieces of mobile media content over the campaign period.

At
the end of the six weeks the characters’ stories all end on crucial
decisions that will affect their future. These questions will be shared
with the audience, giving them the opportunity to influence the
storylines themselves.

Cool idea which we’re sure will appeal to many.

More: Welcome to Optimism – W&K Blog
Website: Somebody else’s phone

[via]

Breaking News: The latest trend in South African news broadcasting…complimentary comedy

Posted on 22. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

As if recent political programming in South Africa wasn’t entertaining enough, the SABC have stumbled upon a brilliant strategy ensuring their otherwise dull programming gets a fair whack of viral exposure online.

Taking advantage of the oldest schoolboy trick in the book – watch Nhlanhla Nene, Chairperson of the South African parliamentary finance portfolio commitee in an interview, which aired on SABC 2 last night.

Something tells us that budget cuts over at the national broadcaster’s studios are seriously starting to affect quality programming.

Classic.

[see video here]

Keep this bus from being featured on the next episode of Dirty Jobs

Posted on 22. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

Seems that all over the world [besides Singapore] people think of public places and transport as a giant rubbish bin.
In Holland, a couple of busses were plastered with these ‘wraps’ – this one saying “Don’t turn the bus into a garbage truck. It’s just as easy to throw your trash in the waste bin.”
Not too sure how the filthy buggers inside the bus will be affected by messaging on the outside of the vehicle, but perhaps food for thought for motorists behind the thing who think of the streets as an ash tray.

[via adgoodness]

2008 Product Placement Awards: Did you buy an Apple because that woman in that TV series used one?

Posted on 21. Oct, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry.

I don’t know too many 30-something blokes that didn’t want to drive a Ferrari 308 GTB like a hooligan when they were ten.
Or for that matter didn’t pretend to ram a loaded magazine back into a nickel-plated Colt .45 as part of general playground banter.
Let’s be honest, the only reason everybody at one stage in their lives owned a BMX was because of ET.

That was the power of product placement then, and thanks to a general allergic reaction to the ads before the show starts, the art of scripting brands into movies is big business today.

It’s a bit old, but Brandchannel recently published their best and worst product placements of 2008, which is still an entertaining read even if you don’t watch many movies.

The product that seems to have scored the best from the global survey was…

Ford Mustang. Proving once again that it takes very little to convince an audience that something that can’t go around a corner properly is actually a decent car.

Read: 2008 Product Placement Awards – Brandchannel