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Web marketing – A Portland design firm tailors a contest to draw in “Project Runway” viewers in promoting Levi’s women’s jeans
- BRENT HUNSBERGER

The Oregonian Staff

When Levi Strauss & Co. wanted to convince women that denim can be fashionable, it took center stage on Bravo TV’s popular reality show “Project Runway.”

The company also asked the Portland office of Avenue A/Razorfish to develop a corresponding online marketing campaign.

The result: an online contest that lured 2,500 consumer-crafted designs of denim jackets and dresses. On Thursday evening, five weeks after the Jan. 23 Bravo show, Levi’s announced online the winner of its Project501 Design Challenge: a jacket called “cute in command.” A company official pledged to produce it in yet-to-be determined quantity.

The contest — and Avenue A/Razorfish’s employment growth in Portland — illustrates the rapid expansion of online marketing and the multiple options the medium offers for large brands to connect more extensively with consumers.

Web-based, interactive design has been around for about a decade but is becoming increasingly prominent as Internet use and advertising grow, experts say. The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers estimate that Internet advertising revenue grew 25 percent in 2007 to $21.1 billion. The exact share of interactive online marketing is unknown — but certainly growing.

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BOSTON Independent Toth Brand Imaging introduces the tagline “Keep it pure” in its first salvo for K-Swiss.

The work breaks in March publications and features tennis stars Tommy Haas, Alona Bondarenko and Anna Kournikova and triathlete Chris Lieto, among others, all photographed by Richard Phibbs.

The ads feature two images of each athlete (action shots and stylized portraits) and use no copy other than the tagline.

Toth in Cambridge, Mass., added the footwear business last December following a review.

Toth succeeded the Gale Group in New York on the K-Swiss ad account, though the latter continues to handle PR for the client. PGR Media in Boston, which frequently partners with Toth, added media buying for K-Swiss.

K-Swiss has spent $15-20 million annually in measured media in recent years, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

The company has struggled of late but vowed that changes in products, design and the star-studded marketing push from Toth would spur a turnaround.

Toth cd Joanne Reeves, art director Kimberlee Eten, copywriter Cat Doran and digital designer Matthew Parmet collaborated on the effort.

-By David Gianatasio

Mexico City and New York (January 19, 2008)—A temporary museum housing more than 50 large-scale photographic artworks and 3 accompanying 35mm artistic films by Gregory Colbert will transform Mexico City’s Zocalo into a timeless realm in which the boundaries between humans and animals disappear.
The exhibition, Ashes and Snow, will be on display from January 19 through April 27, 2008. It will be presented in the Nomadic Museum, the permanent traveling home of the project.
Rolex has made it possible to preserve the body of work as shown in its original form at the Venice Arsenale in 2002. This collection is joined by photographic artworks and films from recent expeditions to comprise the work on display, so that the show itself, along with the architecture, evolves as it travels.

http://www.ashesandsnow.org

NEW YORK Miller Brewing is shifting creative duties on its Miller Chill brand to Saatchi & Saatchi from Young & Rubicam, the client confirmed today.

Spending on the brand, which Miller launched last year, exceeded $25 million in 2007, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. That figure does not include online spending.

Saatchi’s New York office, which already handles Miller High Life, will add the assignment, which a client representative described as a project. The shift occurred after the Milwaukee-based client considered creative concepts from both WPP’s Y&R in Chicago and Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi in New York, the rep added. Saatchi’s first work is expected toward the end of the second quarter.

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Research in Communication Design, part 2, departs from the usual reporting of research to dig deeper into issues of importance to research and its development by design. The need for a change in relationship between education, practice and research is discussed along with the practical need for better research dissemination. Theory, method and tool are discussed as possible frames for research activity. The articles in this special issue are introduced in terms of theory, post analysis and conceptual development in relation to research. The issue concludes with a practical argument for the need for research.

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The Advertising Museum Tokyo, Japan is one of the most unique and remarkable museums of the city. Located in the Shiodome area of the city, this fantastic museum houses numerous samples of ancient and modern day advertising in Japan.

The Advertising Museum in Tokyo was set up in December 2002 by Yoshida Hideo Memorial Foundation, marking the 100th birth anniversary of late Hideo Yoshida, the fourth president of Dentsu and the father of Japan’s advertising industry. The museum houses a detailed record of the achievements of Hideo Yoshida as well as numerous ancient and modern day commercials, not only of Japan but also of the world.

The museum has a collection of around 135000 advertisements, right from the Edo period. Most of the advertisements displayed over here are in the form of woodblock prints, pamphlets and handbills.

The Advertising Museum is a two-storied building. One can get complete information about the museum from the information desk located at its entrance. The museum has two grand and huge exhibition halls. There is also an audio-visual room where a large number of conferences and seminars are held. The audio-visual room is equipped with all the modern gadgets and latest technological facilities. The AD Information room has a large number of television screens where they can see different types of radio and television commercials. You can use the ADMT Intranet System to get all sorts of advertising related information.

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For thirty six days now I’ve been taking an image of the sky from my apartment in Manhattan. It wasn’t until I started noticing that most mornings have a really unique colour to the sky that I thought there might be something to comparing the colour day to day. There isn’t any specific time for me to point my camera in the same direction though for the most part I’ve been taking the photograph somewhere between 7 and 9 am. As the sun starts rising earlier my time will probably adjust accordingly.

It’s a fairly uncomplicated process with the photos. Whether it’s sunny or cloudy doesn’t really matter because each day is unique. I always make sure that the crop of the sky is in a 4:3 aspect ratio with my Leica D-Lux 3. One of the cool yet unexpected things that happens when I upload the photos to flickr and place them in their set is that they create a square which is what the image above is. I always mark the date and time on the photo as extra information that I might want to use at a latter date.

I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon with this New York Sky Colour Study but over periods of time like this I might do some visual experiments with it. Between the colours and data there’s some really fascinating things I can do both online and with print.

Here’s a link for you and I think this is an excellent visual experiment that anyone with a digital camera could/should attempt. – Chad Brown Keep up the great work Michael Surtees!

As the cell phone morphs into a Web-enabled information and entertainment device, most leading print publishers have begun creating editions for the third screen. But can an old medium make the leap to one of the newest?

Matt Jones, director, mobile strategy and operations at Gannett Digital, Gannett Co.’s online unit, thinks so. Jones sees mobile as a natural extension of flagship USA Today, launched for road warriors 25 years ago. USA Today has had a mobile Web site since 1999, and last summer, Gannett launched mobile versions of its 84 community dailies and 19 TV stations. “If you think about consumption habits of newspapers, you see people taking them with them,” Jones says. “I think they lend themselves very well to a digital platform.”

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NEW YORK Trial and error. That’s what the last few years have been about for industry players like Richard Ting, executive creative director of mobile and emerging media/applications at R/GA in New York. The key word in his title is “emerging,” and what is clear about mobile marketing is that it has yet to arrive.

“Agencies and brands are still learning about what can be created in the mobile space,” says Ting, whose agency recently created mobile efforts for Nike’s Zoom and Air Force 25 shoes. The fragmented landscape with ever-changing carrier and handset restrictions has made designing for mobile “a difficult proposition,” he explains, and “working with carriers is always a long and arduous process that often stifles the creative and launch of mobile programs.”

Even though cell phones have an estimated 80 percent penetration in the United States, the mobile platform is still limited in its offerings and reach. Although media experts all agree “mobile is big,” it is still far from becoming a mainstream medium that reaches the large audiences most advertisers covet. Nor has it garnered the creative accolades that typically validate and help grow nascent technologies.

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NEW YORK In his hit song, “People Like Myself,” hip-hop artist Timbaland writes that people like him “only hang with self cause that’s the way to go.” But Timbaland found another way to go: He struck a precedent-setting deal with Verizon Wireless to distribute a collection of songs directly to the carrier’s V Cast subscribers, and to create content such as behind-the-scenes video footage of his recordings. Timbaland’s marketing effort helps Verizon as well, as the carrier aims to be a destination for young urbanites attuned to cutting-edge music and culture.

Timbaland is just one of several hip-hop artists and producers who are pioneering the mobile media space. And in transforming it into a major marketing platform, they can serve as models for brands ranging from packaged goods to autos trying to reach consumers on the move while leveraging new technologies.

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