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The Edouard Alert
Your one and only source for advertising news and digital reporting
Trident Audits Your Facebook, Really Wants You To Have Fun (And Fails Miserably… Again)
There’s something refreshing and sort of comforting about bad advertising that makes it almost necessary to expose yourself to it every once in a while, and this new campaign from Trident and agency Saatchi & Saatchi New York definitely falls into that category. After launching what will probably remain the most terrible and boring TV spot of the year (and yes I do like the song, no one’s debating how good that song is), Trident is at it again with a web application and a supposedly viral video that just as desperately try to instill some fun into the brand.
Here’s how it works (it may sound familiar): the app connects with your Facebook account, scans your data and generates a short animation that pulls some of your content. I have to admit I almost fell for the retro execution but I got bored very quickly, especially when they generated my “fun audit” at the end (and recommended the gum flavor I should chew on). I’m 89% fun by the way, which is fine I guess (see below). But here’s the real problem: we’ve seen so many of those activations recently that this is just a tired trend. And it’s all the more annoying that, in this case, it doesn’t tell a story.
Also, the video that comes as an introduction to the app just feels off. You can see they took their cues from the likes of Old Spice and DollarShaveClub.com, but it just doesn’t have their genius. Now I can definitely see who they were trying to go after with this (yes, Millenials, duh), but it simply doesn’t work. Unfortunately, just because you declare people are going to have fun doesn’t mean they will. Actually, it looks like the harder you try, the harder you fail.
(Source)
#hashtagnews #82
- #Apple announced yesterday it sold 35.1 million iPhones and 11.8 million iPads in Q2 (Source).
- After months of speculation, #Google‘s cloud sharing service Google Drive finally launched yesterday. The service gives new users 5 GB of free storage and replaces Google Docs (Source).
- Business Insider reports that after a slowed growth in March, #Pinterest is now losing users. Monthly active users are down from 11.3 million on March 1 to 8.3 million today (Source).
This App Lets You Squeeze The New “Nike Free” Shoe With Your Facial Expressions
Nike in Japan and agencies Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo and ROOT Communications want you to make faces and embarrass yourself in front of your webcam. The brand created a fun web application to communicate the product attributes of its new Free shoe, an incredibly flexible shoe that you can squeeze with your hands and now, thanks to the app, with your face. The app combines facial recognition technology and expression recognition technology to let users bend, twist and control the Nike sneaker using your facial expressions. The app calculates facial flexibility from the eyebrow to the chin, in order to define the diagonal movement of the shoe, and the symmetry of the mouth to define the horizontal movement of the shoe. In addition, the application recognizes the color of the user’s clothes and the background to automatically coordinate the color of the shoe using the NIKEiD customization system. Pretty cool.
(Source)
In Mexico, The Faster You Purchase Your Puma Shoes, The Bigger The Discount You Get
Puma claims they have the fastest sneaker in the world, the Puma FAAS 500. That’s quite a statement and actually I think what they’re really trying to say is their sneakers makes you the fastest guy in the world but, you know, legal would never allow them to say that. Anyway, Puma in Mexico had this idea to reward those of its customers that really are fast and they found a fun way to do that. They teamed up with Mexico City-based agency Circus and created an in-store campaign that they call “The World’s Fastest Purchase” experience. The idea is simply brilliant: you come in to a Puma store, get a ticket with the hour when you checked in at the store and then your mission is to grab a pair of sneakers and to make it to the register as fast as possible. Once you’re ready to pay, the cashier calculates the time that you spent buying your shoes and gives you a discount based on how fast you were. Less than 3 minutes gets you 20% off, less than 4, 15%, and so on. Pretty cool, huh? Also, you know what’s cool: a ticket dispenser disguised as Usain Bolt (you know, the guy that actually is the fastest guy on the planet… and runs with Puma shoes).
(Source)
Beach Shower In Rio De Janeiro Looks Like A Giant Sprite Soda Fountain
This one is pretty self-explanatory (and pretty damn cool): in order to communicate their tagline, “Refresh Your Mind”, and to create awareness for their products, Sprite installed a shower on a beach in Rio De Janeiro, so that people could wash themselves after swimming (which only makes sense when you know it’s already in the eighties over there… we need some of that sun here, damnit). Now that in itself is pretty sweet, but it gets better: the shower actually looks like a giant soda fountain… you know, the kind you find in quick service restaurants that makes people look like hamsters sipping at sugary water. Anyway, back to that Brazilian giant soda fountain/shower: people apparently take a total of 1,500 showers every day, which is pretty impressive and gives great exposure to the brand. Now I guess if they really want to go all the way, they’ll have to make people shower in soda… but I hope we all agree that would be pretty gross (this guy definitely doesn’t though), not to mention you’d probably have to go take a plunge again afterwards.
(Source) (FR)
#hashtagnews #81
- #Facebook has filed a new amendement to its S-1 to IPO that notes it now has 901 million monthly active users, making it likely it will pass the 1 billion mark this year (Source).
- Rob Quish, who took over as CEO of #JWT’s Atlanta office just a year ago, is leaving (Source).
- Facebook has acquired $550 million in #patents from Microsoft. The patents were part of the $1.065 billion in patents Microsoft purchased from AOL earlier this month (Source).
