For the first time in over fifty years, the iconic Chiquita banana brand is changing their label. The little blue stickers that have been their product’s differentiating trademark will be redesigned. What is interesting about this campaign is that they are calling upon their consumers to design new stickers. The contest started earlier this summer and the brand received hundreds of consumer-generated images that were eventually narrowed down to fifty finalists. The banana giant then encouraged the public to vote for the winning design. Today, after collecting thousands of public votes on a great variety of different directions including monkeys, smiley faces, robots, beach combing bananas, and oddly, lucha libre masks, eighteen winners were announced. These lucky designers will soon see their own design grace the iconic Chiquita bananas in grocery stores nation-wide this November.
This design contest is part of a growing trend where brands will incorporate their customer base into the branding of the product, implying ownership and creating an emotional connection with the brand. Also, by allowing social media connectivity linking to facebook, it allows users to run their own mini campaigns for their design focused on the Chiquita brand. For a product as generic as bananas, Chiquita has done an exceptional job.
Over the past seven years it has become increasing common and expected to see product and service commercials in the theater before the movie. This month AT&T has taken the next step in creating the first cinematic 3D spot intended for theaters with detailed animation, impressive visuals, and an original score for its new “Rethink Possible” campaign. The spot is available in other mediums but was produced with movie theater audiences in mind. It is currently being shown to the handful of people watching the 3D coverage of the World Cup and will be shown soon in theaters. This is interesting because it is an innovative step towards the new wave of inevitable 3D commercials that uses the new technology mainly for entertainment. It doesn’t allude to phone services at all when it shows a small fish chasing after an orange ball. Eventually bigger fish come and take the ball away then the small fish breaks away only to the surface to find an endless forest of trees that produce the orange balls and copy urging audiences to “Rethink What’s Possible”. It will be cool to see what other commercials are released in the near future made specifically in 3D for theater audiences.
Last week Nike launched its FIFA World Cup “Write The Future” campaign with an epic three minute ad featuring star international players including Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, and Cristiano Ronaldo. The concept behind the ad is that there are certain amazing moments in during the game that can change the player’s lives and write their place in history flashing forward to the potential future based on the outcome of the moment. The commercial was directed by Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who previously directed and produced Babel and 21 Grams. To premiere the video Nike released a ten-minute short film to introduce the video and talk about the concept and production. Interestingly, the video is only viewable if visitors click the “Like” button making visitors become fans before they can view the video. This could become a new trend for brands making their content accessible only to registered fans.
Nike is now getting aggressive with their soccer marketing efforts competing directly with Adidas who launched their “Every team needs” world cup campaign months ago to start building hype for the event and their products.
This month, Swedish furniture giant IKEA launched an interesting campaign in Paris. Using four high traffic metro stations as their venue, they displayed furniture collections on the subway platforms. The subway walls were also lined with prints showcasing interiors of IKEA’s showrooms transforming the stations into living rooms. This interesting, interactive campaign gave potential customers a chance to interact directly with the brand and try out products in a memorable atmosphere where commuters can comfortably wait for their train in style. Sure, this campaign is risky with the extremely high possibility of vandalism and damage done to the furniture and wouldn’t work in every subway station but this experiential marketing campaign will no doubt be talked and tweeted about long after it has ended.
Earlier this year Dominoes pizza launched a new campaign in an attempt to re-brand their pizza. With consumer behavior shifting towards natural foods and gourmet offerings Dominoes adapted by changing their recipe and using better quality ingredients to improve the taste. To announce this they chose a risky campaign where they would admit that their then-current recipe tasted bad and quoted customers saying the crust is like cardboard and the sauce tastes like ketchup. It seemed like a huge risk openly admitting to your customers that you have knowingly been selling them a bad product for over fifty years. Also, the existing Dominoes customers are not buying their pizza for its superior taste, they are buying it for convenience. I personally thought this ad would backfire and burn bridges causing Dominoes to lose their loyal customers that still continue to eat their pizza in spite of all the better alternatives available.
Although it was extremely risky for the brand to devalue all their past brand messages and product lines, this campaign accomplished exactly what it set out to do; it got people talking about the brand again. “New and Improved” is one of the most overused phrases in marketing and simply communicating that they have a new recipe wouldn’t have been as effective without publicly bashing their product beforehand. In early January when the campaign launched, people were actually talking, tweeting, and blogging about Dominoes and the brand received more attention than it has in the past decade.
Yesterday it was reported that their new recipe and brutally honest campaign has been a success, at least in the short term, as Dominoes has more than doubled its fourth-quarter profit with curious customers trying their new recipe. Time will tell if this success will last but this early victory has been very interesting. As long as they can keep the momentum going and the novelty does not wear off, Dominoes big gamble with their brand will be well worth the risk.
Muscle Milk, a protein drink made by CytoSport beverages, has recently launched a new campaign featuring viral videos and special edition bottles. The campaign also features Shaquille O’Neil, who recently became only the 5th player in NBA history to score 28,000 career points, as the spokesperson and star of the viral videos. “Special Edition” bottles are featured in almost every beverage campaign and viral videos are no longer considered the pinnacle of new media, but what makes this campaign stand out is how the viral videos are delivered incorporating the actual bottle. It is part package advertising, part viral campaign, and part augmented reality campaign. The drink container will include a link on its packaging that consumers can visit to view the videos by holding the bottle with a special marker code in front of their webcam to watch O’Neil jump out of the bottle!
Unfortunately, this special-edition Muscle Milk will be released exclusively in Ohio, O’Neil’s home state, for now. The videos are not exclusive however; anyone can visit the campaign’s page, and print out the interactive marker to view the videos. Although this campaign was likely very expensive and will only reach a small market to its full potential, it is very interesting to see how marketers utilize relatively older technology (webcams) for new exciting ways to reach customers. Also, it serves as another unconventional medium utilized by Shaq to market his brand; following his incredibly popular Twitter, his business with Efuel, and the unforgettable Shaq Fu video game.
