50 Cent got shot and still whines about it on stage.
Teddy Roosevelt got shot mid-speech and didn’t leave the stage until he finished

The ads, which can be seen below, are modern, visually interesting, cleverly written and – in my opinion – just very well done. While they may be specifically geared towards a younger audience, they highlight things that I didn’t know about those historical figures and make me want to learn more. It’s no wonder the ads quickly went viral online.

The problem is that the Smithsonian had nothing to do with them.

The ads were part of an art school portfolio project by art director Jenny Burrows and copywriter Matt Kappler.

With all of the attention and positive reaction, you would think that the Smithsonian would be thrilled – I mean after all a campaign like this could drive a much younger crowd to the museum and help revenue.

However, according to Burrows’ blog, she contacted the Smithsonian once the ads went viral as a way to ‘cover her ass’, however surprisingly the folks at the Smithsonian were “less than pleased about the attention the posters were getting” and demanded that she remove the Smithsonian logo from the images on her site.

She did – but since they had spread pretty quickly through social media – it was a little too late to really lessen the impact. However, that impact has clearly been positive for the creators of the ads – their online portfolios have been viewed more times than they could have imagined and they’ve received numerous requests from history teachers looking to purchase the ads – logo removed, of course – as posters for their classrooms.

I can’t help but imagine that the ads, if silently embraced by the museum, would have been positive for the Smithsonian as well. Sure, they didn’t purchase those images or get “fiddy’s” permission – but they didn’t commission the work either. They could have turned a blind eye or tried to get permission from the artists and then work with the creators of the ads to extend the campaign.

When you look at their visitor trends, which can be found on their website, the museum, hasn’t been doing so great over the past few years – except for a bump in 2009. Hmm…what happened in 2009…Ah yes, a Ben Stiller movie called Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which if I’m not mistaken was directed towards a young audience. Wonder if there was any connection…and if it’s too late for the Smithsonian to give Jenny Burrows another call.

What do you think? If you were the Smithsonian what would you have done?

]]> http://blog.agencypja.com/2011/03/24/advertising/night-at-the-museum-battle-of-the-viral-ads/feed/ 0 http://blog.agencypja.com/2011/02/09/advertising/2011-super-bowl-ads-and-the-missing-mobile-link/ http://blog.agencypja.com/2011/02/09/advertising/2011-super-bowl-ads-and-the-missing-mobile-link/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:41:14 +0000 Robert Davis http://blog.agencypja.com/?p=1743 So you’re out to re-position, or even re-invent your brand – what better place to do it than the Super Bowl? Everybody watches it, and it’s a time when viewers are particularly receptive to your story; after all, these days the ads are the big story for some, and a close runner-up to the game for many others.

After laying out oodles of cash for television time and impressive spots, what do you do next to help cement your success? This year, you probably did a couple things. You previewed the spot online to build buzz. You made sure your website supported the brand proposition on click through. And in most cases, you built in multi-channel social engagement during and after the game.

But if you’re a marketer at Chrysler, Audi, Mercedes Benz, Skechers or any of the movie studios advertising big new movies, you forgot to think about the guy on the sofa with a smartphone in his hands. Especially the one who was interested in your brand. That’s right – you spent millions to reach consumers in a high-impact environment but didn’t build a mobile site to let them take action right away on the interest your ad created. In fact, nearly half of Super Bowl advertisers didn’t have a mobile site.

To quantify what they missed:

• In 2010, Pew Internet found that in the 30-49 age cohort, 43% of Americans now access the internet on their smartphones. (A 12 point increase over 2009.)
• Among the 18-29 year olds, that number increases to 65%.

And to put it in perspective alongside Twitter:

• Of the 30-49 age cohort, only 7% use Twitter.
• Among 18-29 year olds, just 14%.

To be fair, social media strategies we saw this year had more to them than Twitter – Audi’s “estate sale” Facebook promotion, for example. But Audi’s other big social concept was based on driving use of a conceptual hashtag – and consequently was aimed at a tiny fraction of their audience. (Among 50 – 64 year olds – those likely to buy a big fat Audi A8 – only 6% used Twitter, as of December 2010.) I’m sure the agency would point out that small groups of highly influential individuals tend to profile well against both advanced social media use and likelihood to influence purchasers. I know I’d probably haul out that rationale, but I’m not sure I’d really be able to feel good about it.

And if you’re Chrysler, and you just spent millions on a spot that powerfully communicates a new positioning for a company attempting to rise from its own ashes – how do you justify not providing an immediate next step?

For anyone looking for Super Bowl advertisers with great mobile sites that really delivered on the next step, check out Kia, Hyundai, GoDaddy, and VW. And be sure not to miss SalesForce’s mobile microsite for Chatter, which let you start the signup process for a free trial in a beautifully simple way – and gives Salesforce what they needed to follow up with you through your work email, thus moving the conversation from your living room sofa to the office. The site’s not elegant, but it’s remarkably effective at furthering prospect engagement.

I know from personal experience how hard it can be for the agency to affect decisions about the website; in many cases, the client’s marketing organizations are structured to split ownership of site and campaign decision-making and budgeting. And site development roadmaps are often built with far longer lead times than campaigns. These are gaps best closed by senior client-side marketers. The data is there to justify it – is the will?

Robert Davis is SVP Digital Marketing at PJA advertising + marketing. This post was written with research support from Tessa Sandler.

What is Facebook up to? It’s a very specific kind of new ad format that turns your friends’ actions into a form of promoted content. For example, if you use Facebook Places and check in at Starbucks, Starbucks could pay to use your check-in and any associated comments in an ad on the side of the page that all of your friends will see. This applies to four actions on Facebook: likes, check-ins, actions within a custom application and page posts.

Do Facebook users have any say in the matter? Right now, Facebook isn’t giving you any control over whether your content is being used by the brands. In fact, journalist David Berkowitz recently suggested stated that this kind of action is typical of Facebook: bold, clever and lacking empathy. It will be interesting to see if Facebook makes this an opt-in feature in the near future.

How do people feel about the Sponsored Stories ad platform? Check out the results of our recent poll. You may be surprised with the results so far.

Do people want to be part of a brand promotion? The brand is essentially paying to make visible that which is already visible. But “liking” Coke on Facebook isn’t the same as saying that we want to be part of a promotion for Coke. This seems like another situation where Facebook is taking a bold step and will ultimately ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

Is this change actually going to benefit Facebook users? There’s an inherent usefulness to marketing that makes it a service and not just a play, and there’s certainly a lot of potential here, with obvious dangers in sight. It will likely come down to whether or not we are getting enough utility in exchange for a little bit of our privacy.

Listen to the full episode here: Be Careful What You “Like,” It Could Become the Next Ad Your Facebook Friends See

What do you think of Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad platform?