Rarely do banner ads get my attention. The latest campaign from eBay stopped me in my tracks. They’re beautifully designed, well conceived, and engaging. This one was a quick cooking lesson in seared sea scallops. You can roll over each of the items to see average prices, and click to search for them on eBay. These are great examples of acknowledging that consumers will engage with your brand if you are providing something of value - rather than just broadcasting your marketing message.
HTC has been slowly expanding its brand awareness beyond techies into the mass market mindshare. This recent spot is a great move in that effort. They’ve injected just the right amount of hipness as to not alienate the non-hip while making all the other players (except for Apple) look ordinary. It’s a spot that’s easy to connect to.
Their tagline “Quietly Brilliant” speaks to how they’ve been an understated innovator. I suspect that that will change as they gain ground in the marketplace.
You don’t need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you.
Sparks went off when MasterCard’s Worldwide CMO Larry Flanagan realized that when you provide value to consumers you’ll have their attention.
Larry’s realization seems to align with a previous post I did that talks about how that’s exactly what MasterCard hasn’t been doing.
I have to admit the demo of the Priceless Picks iPhone app caught my eye. But after playing with it I realized that it’s just more of the same fluffy, 3D, useless crap - the user reviews seem to agree.
I continue to be disappointed with how MasterCard fails to bring to life one of the most icon brand platforms in recent history. Truly priceless indeed.
When doing some financial research recently, I came across a bank that I had never heard of before: Ally Bank.
I was impressed with how frank and human the language on their site was. I was even more impressed with the interest rates and terms they had for their banking products.
Thinking that this was too good to be true, I decided to do some digging. Turns out Ally is the newly-rebranded GMAC. GMAC as in General Motors, as in the bank that’s received two government bailouts.
I also then made the connection to the sponsor of one of my regular podcasts, NPR’s Planet Money. Well, the other shoe finally dropped, and Planet Money decided to do a program on GMAC last week as they’ve gone back to the government for a third bailout.
Kudos to the team for tackling the tough issue of critically reporting on a major sponsor.
A few weeks ago my wife had a bit of an accident in the kitchen with a cutting knife. As we quickly took action to slow the bleeding I scrambled to look online to see if the wound was serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room for stitches.
I landed on About.com’s First Aid site. And after reading some informative articles I clicked to watch this video on how to dress a wound. Would you believe that I first had to sit through an ad spot? The video is currently playing ad-free, but I’m not sure if that’s because they caught this monumental fail or if the campaign had wrapped.
A few weeks ago my wife had a bit of an accident in the kitchen with a cutting knife. As we quickly took action to slow the bleeding I scrambled to look online to see if the wound was serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room for stitches.