Online retailer Woot.com has incorporated bidding on keywords like “GOOG” and “Google Stock” into their SEM strategy for quite a while now however they just recently updated their campaign to feature some rather unique choices in copy. As a result several tech news blogs have picked up the story, asking users whether or not the new campaign had gone too far with the current state of our economy. Overall the responses have been fairly PRO woot.com, with the exception being in regards to one specific new ad whose headline begins with, “Before you jump out of that window…” On TechCrunch, user Chrisco pointed out an October 7th LA Times article describing a despondent Los Angeles man who’s financial grief led him to kill his wife, mother-in-law and 3 sons, all before ending his own life in his Porter Ranch home. The ad, along with the rest in this new campaign, are below:

What’s interesting is the relationship that Google and woot! share. Woot! has relied heavily on word-of-mouth to gain popularity however they’ve benefitted greatly from Google’s AdSense program, even to the point of being a focal case-study on the Google AdSense website! Not only that but Woot.com has had a long history of running campaigns targeting users who are searching for Google stock prices, primarily being positive in nature. An example is one shown below, which was taken a little less than two months ago on August 22nd. The copy reads, “Filthy Rich? We’ll help. - Throw away your newfound cash at Woot. You’re welcome.”

Also: If you’ll notice on the header banner for this post, there is another ad that appeared when searching for GOOG (Googles’ stock symbol) - “Looking for God?” It goes to show you that Woot.com isn’t the only one trying to market themselves in this economy.

So, given the current events, do you think that Woot.com has crossed the line with irresponsible ad copy or are people over-reacting to some tonge-in-cheek sales copy?

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Here’s an update on the Mercenaries 2 commercial that I talked about last week on this site. Apparently the people in charge over at DraftFCB have been watching you guys and liked the response that they’ve been seeing over the music used in the spot.

They recently went back to the Wojahn Brothers in Los Angeles (the folks who created the original music score) and had them create a full length version of the song, which is now available for free download on the recently added download section of the game’s website. Or you can click on the direct link to the song here:
Mercenaries 2 - Oh No (Full Length).mp3

Also included is a ‘making-of’ video (found above), showing what went into the production of the commercial thanks to the team over at Shilo.

Fancy that, an agency that is pro-activly responding to consumer feedback! Nice work.

A big ‘tip of the hat’ goes out to Colin McRae + Isaac Clemens from DraftFCB for the update.

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Wieden + Kennedy, Tokyo just launched a redesign of their website - www.wktokyo.jp. Looks pretty cool, but what’s really interesting about the site is the wealth of neighborhood information that it provides through their custom google maps/links sections.
Here’s a clip from the customized map page:

They’ve also put up a blog - www.wktokyo.jp/blog/

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Now this just makes me want to be a kid again. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the introduction of LEGO MiniMen, the company has release this video on their website (and select target markets). Here we get to see all the different MiniMen that were included in the various LEGO ’scenes’ - Deep sea diver, fireman, astronaut and even the race car driver.

The accompanying website for this celebration is www.gominimango.com. If you’ve got kids I’m sure they’d love all the cool LEGO stuff that’s on there. You can even watch this promo in 3D.

Credits:

Client: Lego
Title: Go Miniman Go
Agency: Pereira & O’Dell
City | State: San Francisco, CA
Pres/Chief Creative Officer: PJ Pereira
Creative Director: PJ Pereira
Copywriter: Robert Lambrechts
Art Director: Jason Apaliski
Executive Producer: Jeff Ferro
Interactive Producer: Juliana Hasegawa
Production Company: The Ebeling Group
Executive Producer: Alberto Lopes, Sergio Salles
Creative Director: Mateus de Paula Santos
Head of Production: Loic Dubois
Director : Cadu Macedo
Lead Modeler: Franck Falgueyrac, Olavo Chagas
Lead Render: Franck Falgueyrac
Storyboard: Libero Malavoglia, Cadu Macedo
Modeler: Cadu Macedo, Rafael Segnini, Sergio Rochas, Diego Aragão Maia
Animators: Yuri Lementy, Cadu Macedo, Marco Antonio Trandafilov, Jason Tadeu de Oliveira, Alexandre Martins, Helio Takahashi, Vitor Viela
3D Rendering: Franck Falgueyrac, Olavo Chagas, Ivan Imanishi, Daniel Sampaio
Textures: Cadu Macedo
Compositor: Cadu Macedo
CG Script Development: Paulo Nogueira, Ivan Imanishi
Stereoscopic Consultant: Andre Rosa

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Twitter is buzzing with the news that last night the Twitter accounts for Mad Men characters Don Draper (@don_draper) and Peggy Olson (@peggyolson) were taken down. At first the outrage was pointed towards the folks over at Twitter, with reports stating that it was because these accounts fall under their new spam restrictions - The accounts were not real people saying real things (yet all were promoting a similar product).

Twitter employees fired back that it wasn’t their initiative, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice issued by AMC. Apparently these twitter accounts were NOT all part of a marketing campaign for the show! I will say this, each of the accounts (there’s more than just Don and Peggy on Twitter) seems to have stuck to the character they were portraying. While AMC has the legal right to protect their brand, why ruin a good campaign? Especially one that is free?

Ben Kessler found the rest of the cast who had Twitter accounts and posted them on his blog. They are:

and

- Apparently a new Peggy Olson account has been created, this time with an underscore in her name. One of her first ‘tweets’ was in regards to the account suspension:

MG Siegler from VentureBeat was the first to report of the DMCA takedown:

Twitter has responded back to me on the issue. Apparently it wasn’t a spam issue at all, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice that Twitter’s support team responded to, co-founder Biz Stone tells me. I guess AMC didn’t like others playing the roll of its Mad Men characters besides the actors who play them on TV.

I wonder if this was the inspiration for the influx of fake Mad Men accounts (taken from SomeEcards.com):

I don’t think this is the end of this story….

UPDATE! Mario Parisé from the StrategicText blog has come forward to reveal that he has been twittering under the Paul Kinsey (@paul_kinsey) account. It is still (as of 12:45pm EST) online. He’s got a great post about it over on his site. Go check it out.

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In a classic display of dry British humor, Nokia has produced a new campaign highlighting the geo-locating service found in their new Nokia Maps application (which apparently is now pre-installed on select Nokia phones). An intro video created to showcase the new service is shown above, but the rest of the campaign is called “Lost Characters” and includes several interesting webisodes, the first one entitled “Pirates.”

Equally strange are the other spots in the campaign, featuring both a lonely goth as well as a lost chicken.

The accompanying website for the campaign is pretty neat, created by Fat Man Collective and includes:

A range of online content all designed to show how new technology should be remarkably simple. A Personal Navigator in the introductory film shows the lost beginner how to use Maps, then specific Personal Navigators for the Runner/Cyclist/Driver/Walker in all of us show us how to get the most out of your chosen activity.

- source

Work Club was the agency used with Ben Mooge, Eloise Smith and Greg Mutton getting creative credits. Emmalou Johnson and Jo Dillon were the Agency Producers .Ben Whitehouse at Joy@RSA was responsible for the “Introduction” film shown above.

Richard Ayoade directed these commercials for Kog Industries. Post Production was completed by Framestore CFC with Adam Windmill as the Editor. Anthony Moore from Factory was responsible for the Audio Post Production with Adelphoi Music getting credit for the score.

The others in the series can be found below:

Goth -

Pac Man -

Lost Chicken -

The Tourist -

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W+K just launched a new campaign for Nike which features a television spot showcasing various athletic displays of “courage.” The video is accompanied by a page on Nike’s website - www.nike.com/nikecourage/

On the website I thought the video display was pretty neat - They tied-in the time mark on the video clip with the various events posted around the page so that as a new event appears in the video, the marker switches to give you an explanation of what occurred. You can also select an event with your courser to jump right to that description.

At the end of the video it prompts you to visit their YouTube page and submit your own version of “Courage.”

So far (Thu. night) the only video shown in the group is the same one from the Nike website. There are also only six members in the group and a few of them look like spam-accounts/fake.

This courage-montage was produced by Endy Hedman (Ben Grylewicz was the agency EP) with creative direction provided by Jelly Helm, Steve Luker and Hank Corwin.

Ralf Schmerberg directed this piece for @radical.media (With Ben Schneider and Donna Portaro as E/EP). Online credits are given to Vendetta Post, Audio post was done by “Lime and the song playing is called “All These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers.

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To showcase HP’s environmentally friendly solution for 3M’s printing problem, Goodby Silverstein & Partners has created a four-part series to air on HP’s Enterprise Services portal.

Using stop-motion photography in combination with live-action shots, director Bucky Fukumoto shows us a pretty cool series using 3M’s Post-Its to help tell the story.

Here are the other three parts in this series:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

The Directors Bureau was the production company used with Anne Johnson as the Producer (David Fisher was the Agency Producer), Tarin Anderson as the DP, Eric Archer as Production Designer and featured animation created by Brian Covalt.

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I’ve posted about Guy Kawasaki’s latest venture before, Alltop.com, however yesterday was a big day for the site in that they finally added a marketing/advertising section and Everything’s Better With Brentter is amongst the chosen few listed there.

So head on over to http://marketing.alltop.com and you’ll find my RSS feed listed alongside a lot of other great marketing/advertising sites.

Thanks for the add Guy, alltop’s a great website that keeps getting better each week!
-Brent

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