Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category
Dick Smith - The Big Weekend Blackout
Dick Smith did some online advertising recently for ‘The Big Weekend Blackout’ sale they were having. My husband was reading the NZ Herald when he saw the Dick Smith advertisement. He’s not one to normally click on online adverts, but he did as he was curious about this one.
The Dick Smith site had been blacked out, as well as the prices for the Hot Deal products. Even the guys glasses on the Dick Smith logo had been blacked out. In order to find out prices on the Hot Deals you had to go into the shops. Well done Dick Smith for creating some advertising that plays on the New Zealand Internet Blackout campaign. Makes me wonder if they blacked out their site for the real Internet Blackout protest.
Murder Burger’s Bloody Headless Chicken Billboard Removed
Murder Burger is still probably the newest burger joint on Ponsonby Road in Auckland. I blogged about how Murder Burger’s job advert ended up going viral on photo sharing site Flickr, when they first opened their shop late last year.
So, anyway about a week and a half ago they did some billboard advertising that ended up being short lived. Within 24 hours of their ‘Free Range Tastes Better’ billboard advert being up, it was taken down by the billboard company iSite. I reckon someone other than iSite probably would of ended up complaining about the poor old bloody headless chicken . No-one (except for Murder Burger) will get the chance to complain now since it’s been taken down.
The Murder Burger web site says: “The iSite person said they would give us two hours to change the image somehow - by putting a paper bag over the chickens neck or something - so that the billboard could stay up. We told him to go fuck himself.”
If you are already familiar with the Murder Burger site, then this is totally the kind of humourous response you would expect from them, along with their we don’t give a shit what you think type attitude .
As they say themselves, they got better coverage by them taking the billboard down than they would of got from leaving it up. This kind of controversial advertising tends to get alot of attention.
Hell Pizza’s Controversial Halloween Advert
Hell Pizza in New Zealand have hit the headlines again with more controversial advertising. The latest is a Halloween pizza promotion that was on the microsite www.backfromthedead.co.nz. The animation depicts Sir Edmund Hillary, Heath Ledger and the Queen Mother emerging from graves and dancing to Michael Jackson’s song Thriller. People have found it offensive and in bad taste. The site has been taken down.
According to the BBC News, they say the firm’s marketing director Rachael Allison told New Zealand media that the latest animation was part of an e-mail campaign targeting existing customers and that around 5,000 people saw the advert before it fell into the hands of the media.
Mash-up on YouTube
A search for the animation on YouTube comes up with only one video posted. I’m not even going to bother to insert a link to view this video because the video clip doesn’t actually show anything of the animation and it doesn’t deserve anymore views.
When I begun my research on this latest Hell Pizza controversy, this YouTube video had been viewed 15,371 times. Looking at it the following day it had received 17,177 views. So, around 1800 views in one day. For a crappy, dud mashup that doesn’t show the animation, thats not bad in terms of views for that amount of time. And of course the only reason why it has had so many views is because it is the only thing you can find relating to the advert.
I am amazed that no-one managed to get the actual animation onto YouTube, as this is where a lot of banned advertisements end up. Okay, so now you’re curious and probably want to go and check out the mashup video anyway. Honestly, I wouldn’t bother.
Gingerbread Gangster Viral - New Zealand Bakery of the Year 08
The New Zealand Bakery of the Year 2008 competition run by the Baking Industry Association of New Zealand (BIANZ) ended in August. Last year I wrote about the 2007 New Zealand Bakery of the Year campaign on onlinemarketer.co.nz. The viral video for last years campaign was of the animated Gingerbread men Haka. This video proved to be controversial, so enhanced the viral marketing aspect of the campaign. This year they have done another Gingerbread man video, but in a scene from The Godfather film.
YouTube reach
A search on YouTube using the keywords: gingerbread men gangsters turns up 2 listings of the video. It is now a couple of months since the competition finished and these 2 listings together have only had 534 views. At the time I was writing about the 2007 campaign, around a 100 people had uploaded the Gingerbread Haka on YouTube, with them getting an excess of 300,000 views. Okay, so the Gingerbread Gangster video is not as controversial as the Gingerbread Haka, so it was bound to not get as much attention as last years campaign.
The campaign was run in similar fashion to last year. Get the bakeries to register online, assign them a unique number to identify them for judging and voting purposes. Then get people to vote by texting, online voting or instore voting. Once again people were encouraged to send the Gingerbread viral video to their friends on the web site. I am not sure as to whether they did any TV advertising this year. I don’t watch much TV, so I don’t know.
Even though this years Gingerbread Gangsters Viral video does not appear as successful in terms of reach on YouTube compared to the Gingerbread Haka, I still think the concept of the Gingerbread Gangsters is just as good as the Gingerbread Haka.