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Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wizard Wisdom
Predictions from the Past
I was going through about 300 emails this afternoon and found a link to this video. Check it out:
It's all about the People
An interesting article from MarketingProfs.com on Social Media and Marketing:
Easy There, Mr. Popular
According to Brogan, achieving success with social-media tools requires a sober analysis of their usefulness, and the smart implementation of well-reasoned strategies that complement traditional marketing efforts. Let's say you've joined Twitter in a professional capacity and now have 3,000 followers. That's great, but now what?
Reaching your business goals means leveraging that network with a solid plan—not just preening over your popularity. If you want sales, for instance, you should start by differentiating between your real-life friends and your customers. "I don't sell to my friends," says Brogan. "My friends sometimes bring me sales. Two totally different things." With customers, meanwhile, you'll want to move them gently to places like email lists where they're more likely to convert. "Don't let them just reside in Twitter," he notes. "Twitter isn't a database."
Your Marketing Inspiration is to keep Web 2.0 in perspective. "Blogging and social media and all these whiz-bang tools don't sell things," says Brogan. "People sell things. People who know how to sell things sell things. This social media stuff [sic] is great, but it's a set of tools, so you've gotta pull out of the 'yippee! hooray!' cloud for a bit and look at basic selling mechanisms."
Sphere: Related ContentSales Ethics
Think about this past week.
Were you ethical? Everytime? All the time?
Jill Konrath:
Selling to Big Companies Blog |
Should you do "whatever it takes" to close the sale?
Posted: 26 Mar 2009 11:01 AM PDT
As far as I'm concerned, that's a set up for disaster - and here's why ...
When I started my sales career at Xerox, it was clear that poor performance was unacceptable. Each month, the regional offices would post stack rankings of all the reps showing their monthly numbers as well as their year-to-date results.
Being at the bottom of those stack rankings was not only humiliating, but also meant that you'd likely be out looking for a job before too long. Being and staying on the top was something we all aspired to. The accolades, the money and prestige were enormous – and hugely seductive.
Why am I sharing this? Because sellers at either end of those stack rankings (including me at the time), were likely to "cheat" a little in order to improve their positions. Behaviors I saw exhibited included:
- Misrepresenting product/service capabilities, mostly through "omission."
- Selling in other people's territories.
- Casting unfair aspersions on competitive offerings or even their co-workers.
- Giving away gifts under the table to sweeten the deal.
So what's the big deal? Each of these non-ethical behaviors (and the host of others that I haven't mentioned) can have serious ramifications.
Once your colleagues discover your willingness to bend the rules to get ahead, this impacts how much they feel they can trust you. Professionally, you'll find yourself becoming more isolated, as they avoid sharing what's really happening.
Upon sensing or actually uncovering your self-serving behaviors, prospects may refuse to do business with you entirely. Or, they'll get rid of you as a vendor as soon as humanly possible. You'll actually lose work in the long run.
Your reputation as an unethical person or business will spread. Even in major metropolitan areas, the news gets around via negative "word of mouth." From what I've read, the average unhappy customer tells a whole lot of their friends.
With the growth of social media, unhappy customers are more than willing to share the entirety of their conversations and interactions with you. They'll post this information on line for the world to see. If a prospect "googles" your company, they'll get a chance to read all about it.
If you're tempted to be even the slightest bit unethical, don't do it. Instead, do what's right. You can live with yourself much better. And, it's good for business.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday Night Marketing News
Mediapost sends this to me 5 days a week:
by Aaron Baar 
by Sarah Mahoney 
by Karl Greenberg Can Internet Advertising Succeed?
Over the weekend, a friend of mine sent me a link to this article via Twitter. I have wondered about this subject myself, being in the radio business, being on the board of our local Advertising Federation, being a lifelong student of what I call relationship marketing, and also being actively involved in various social media and internet operations.
Recently one of my national clients sent a request to all their radio stations, asking if we had twitter accounts. A few radio stations started twitter accounts, but the problem is a majority of the folks in the advertising business, are not keeping up to speed on some of these developments.
THAT is what will kill the advertising business, I believe, not the internet itself. Smart Advertising Pros keep up with the latest trends and learn and adapt.
The Following is from TechCrunch:
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In it, he argues that the Internet shatters all forms of advertising. “The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed,” he writes. The views he expresses are his own, and we present them here to foster debate. (Obviously, we hope there is a place for advertising on the Internet since it pays our bills).
- 1. There Must Be Something Other Than Advertising:
The expected drop in internet advertising revenues this year was neither unpredictable nor unpredicted, nor was it caused solely by the general recession and the decline in retail sales. Internet advertising will rapidly lose its value and its impact, for reasons that can easily be understood. Traditional advertising simply cannot be carried over to the internet, replacing full-page ads on the back of The New York Times or 30-second spots on the Super Bowl broadcast with pop-ups, banners, click-throughs on side bars. This might be a subject where considerable disagreement is possible, if indeed, pushed ads were still working in traditional media. Mostly they have failed. One newspaper after another is going out of business across the United States, and the ad revenues of traditional print media, even of highly respected magazines, is declining. The ultimate failure of broadcast media advertising is likewise becoming clear.
Pushing a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the consumer is in the midst of something else on the net, will fail as a major revenue source for most internet sites. This is particularly true when the consumer knows that the sponsor of the ad has paid to have this information, which was verified by no one, thrust at him. The net will find monetization models and these will be different from the advertising models used by mass media, just as the models used by mass media were different from the monetization models of theater and sporting events before them. Indeed, there has to be some way to create websites that do other than provide free access to content, some of it proprietary, some of it licensed, and some of it stolen, and funded by advertising.
The idea that content has a price and net applications should find ways to earn a profit without providing free access to other people’s content gets explosive reactions; when virtual reality pioneer and tech guru Jaron Lanier suggested in a New York Times Op Ed that authors deserved to be paid for their content he actually received death threats. But other models are possible and several suggestions for alternative forms of monetization are offered below.
- 2. Advertising will fail:
The internet is the most liberating of all mass media developed to date. It is participatory, like swapping stories around a campfire or attending a renaissance fair. It is not meant solely to push content, in one direction, to a captive audience, the way movies or traditional network television did. It provides the greatest array of entertainment and information, on any subject, with any degree of formality, on demand. And it is the best and the most trusted source of commercial product information on cost, selection, availability, and suitability, using community content, professional reviews and peer reviews.
My basic premise is that the internet is not replacing advertising but shattering it, and all the king’s horses, all the king’s men, and all the creative talent of Madison Avenue cannot put it together again. To analyze this statement we need a working definition of advertising, and I proposed the following, which is as general as I could make it:
Advertising is using sponsored commercial messages to build a brand and paying to locate these messages where they will be observed by potential customers performing other activities; these messages describe a product or service, its price or fundamental attributes, where it can be found, its explicit advantages, or the implicit benefits from its use.
It is frequently argued that the advertising industry will provide sufficient innovation to replace the loss of traditional ads on traditional mass media. Again, my basic premise rejects this, suggesting that simple commercial messages, pushed through whatever medium, in order to reach a potential customer who is in the middle of doing something else, will fail. It’s not that we no longer need information to initiate or to complete a transaction; rather, we will no longer need advertising to obtain that information. We will see the information we want, when we want it, from sources that we trust more than paid advertising. We will find out what we need to know, when we want to make a commercial transaction of any kind. The conventional wisdom is that this is exactly what paid search helps us to do, but all too often they are nothing more than a form of misdirection, as I explain further below. Instead, we will use information that we trust, obtained at the time that we want to see it.
Better targeting of ads using individual interests and individual behaviors will ensure that we do not bore or annoy as many people with each ad, but cannot address the trust issue. As for paid search, it is closer to other mechanisms that allow a website to sell access to potential customers. It works effectively as a revenue source for Google, of course. But it surely is not replicable for the average content website.
- 3. Advertising will fail for three reasons:
There are three problems with advertising in any form, whether broadcast or online:
- Consumers do not trust advertising. Dan Ariely has demonstrated that messages attributed to a commercial source have much lower credibility and much lower impact on the perception of product quality than the same message attributed to a rating service. Forrester Research has completed studies that show that advertising and company sponsored blogs are the least-trusted source of information on products and services, while recommendations from friends and online reviews from customers are the highest.
- Consumers do not want to view advertising. Think of watching network TV news and remember that the commercials on all the major networks are as closely synchronized as possible. Why? If network executives believed we all wanted to see the ads they would be staggered, so that users could channel surf to view the ads; ads are synchronized so that users cannot channel surf to avoid the ads.
- And mostly consumers do not need advertising. My own research suggests that consumers behave as if they get much of their information about product offerings from the internet, through independent professional rating sites like dpreview.com or community content rating services like Ratebeer.com or TripAdvisor
Yes, both network executives and their ad agencies have noted that we are not watching traditional ads, and they attribute this to the fact that we have moved beyond newspapers, televised network news, and broadcast movies, to video games, iPods, and the internet. Porting ads to a new medium will not solve the three problems noted above. The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.
- 4. Alternative models for monetization are available:
Again, my research suggests that there are three general categories for creating value that can be monetized, including selling real things, selling virtual things, and selling access. Some websites exist solely to sell real things. Many of the best-known perform aggregation of demand, so that there will be enough customers to justify stocking and selling items for which there is only limited demand. Amazon is merely the best-known example. Sites like Amazon and Zappos are especially good for long tail items … where else do you go for a copy of the Green Sea of Heaven, Elizabeth T. Gray’s magnificent translation of the Ghazals of Hafiz, or for a pair of size 20 basketball shoes? Selling real things online has been studied since the advent of interest in eCommerce and will not be discussed further here. Other websites sell virtual things. These activities fall into three categories:
- Selling content and information, from digital music to news and information. Some of these sites are funded by subscriptions, like Gartner Research; some are by direct micropayments for purchases, like iTunes; and some currently attempt to fund themselves through advertising, like Business Week or The New York Times, while still searching for a more effective business model.
- Selling experience and participation in a virtual community, including Second Life and World of Warcraft, Facebook and MySpace, Flickr and YouTube, or LinkedIn. Not all of these have found a way to charge for participation.
- Selling accessories for virtual communities, like completed homes and stores, furnishings, clothing, and pets in Second Life or characters and accessories that would be difficult to earn in World of Warcraft, although this behavior is generally despised by serious World of Warcraft players.
Finally, some websites create and sell access to customers. Again, this can be divided into multiple categories.
- Misdirection, or sending customers to web locations other than the ones for which they are searching. This is Google’s business model. Monetization of misdirection frequently takes the form of charging companies for keywords and threatening to divert their customers to a competitor if they fail to pay adequately for keywords that the customer is likely to use in searches for the companies’ products; that is, misdirection works best when it is threatened rather than actually imposed, and when companies actually do pay the fees demanded for their keywords. Misdirection most frequently takes the form of diverting customers to companies that they do not wish to find, simply because the customer’s preferred company underbid. Misdirection also includes misinformation, such as telling a customer that a hotel is sold out when, indeed it is still available, if the hotel has chosen not to pay a promotional fee, and then allowing the guest to choose an alternative property. Misdirection is, regrettably, still a popular business model on the net, although for reasons I explored in an earlier TechCrunch post on Google it seems ultimately to be unsustainable. More significantly from the perspective of this post, it is not scalable; it is not possible for every website to earn its revenue from sponsored search and ultimately at least some of them will need to find an alternative revenue model.
- Evaluation, assessment, and validation. The opposite of sending a customer someplace other than where he wants is providing the customer enough information for him to make an informed choice on his own. Recommendations on TripAdvisor.com allow potential guests to evaluate and validate recommendations provided by Hotels.com; not surprisingly, Hotels.com originally owned TripAdvisor, and benefited greatly from it. Since Hotels.com did not attempt to influence or censor TripAdvisor content the website was (and is) trusted and helped put recommendations from Hotels.com at a level of trust comparable to those from an experienced travel agent. There are at present only a few other examples of website symbiosis like this, where community content on one site adds considerable value for another; consider also the relationship between the Beeryard’s list of new beers and Ratebeer.com, where clicking on the name of a newly arrived beer at the Beeryard will allow you to examine reviews on Ratebeer.com.
- Social search. Social search is a way of tailoring search based on the user’s network of friends. Rather than searching for any hotel in Chicago, or for any hotel that paid for the keywords “hotel” and “Chicago” I would like to be able to ask for the hotel where my friends stay when they are in Chicago. This invades no one’s privacy, avoids the annoyance of pushing ads at me when I am not searching for something to buy, and provides more relevant results than paid search usually can deliver. There are many problems with this, including the fact that my friends may not be on Facebook or other networks yet and those that are may not post their hotel or automobile or restaurant preferences. Most seriously, while it is clear how Microsoft might benefit from this, using its Facebook connection to undercut Google sponsored search, it is not clear how Microsoft or any other firm could monetize this directly.
- Contextual mobile ads. At present contextual mobile ads delivered by SMS appear to offer much promise. Imagine a hypothetical all-knowing information-based firm that (i) knows your location because you have registered to have the information from your in-phone GPS shared with your friends and (ii) knows that you like Thai restaurants because it monitors the content of your email and your online restaurant searches and (iii) knows that you are hungry because you just said so in a text message or Twitter post you sent from your phone. What a great time for them to text you an advertisement for a nearby Thai restaurant, sent directly to your phone. But why would you trust this? I remember when Hotels.com used to refer me to the same hotel, albeit at different prices, when I asked for a two-star or three-star hotel close to my office; I was never sure which was more amusing, the 80% price increase for the same hotel when I was willing to splurge on a three-star for my visitor, or the fact that there were comparable hotels 20 blocks closer to my office. I suspect that my hypothetical all-knowing firm will similarly be providing sponsored content; perhaps I will take a couple of additional seconds in order to find the restaurant I really want. This probably does not work as a form of advertising.
Of course no one knows yet, but if I had to guess, based on my meatspace experience, I would offer the following guesses for successfully monetizing the net in the future:
- Selling Virtual Things: People will pay for superior, timely, original content and for superior online experiences. Presently I willingly pay for the Financial Times, The Economist, and Foreign Affairs, I value the content, and, indeed, I feel I need it; I will continue to pay for them online. Perhaps I would not be willing to pay for archive material, which I expect that I would be able to find elsewhere, but I will cheerfully pay for the newest content online. Similarly, I willingly pay the cover change for my favorite jazz clubs in New York, and expect that I would cheerfully pay to participate in Second Life or World of Warcraft if, indeed, I had any interest in those virtual experiences. I guess, ultimately, if we compete for status through our purchases of accessories, clothes and homes in meatspace we will probably continue to purchase virtual accessories in Second Life, though I can’t say I fully understand this yet.
- Selling Access. Misdirection will fail totally and completely. I use a Mac, but I have abandoned Safari for Firefox. I have an iPhone and an iPod but I have never used the little white earbuds, preferring instead to purchase a pair of Shure E500 phones that I think sound vastly superior. Similarly, I would be equally happy to purchase a search service that worked for me, rather than accept a free one that works both against me and against the firms I patronize. In contrast, while people will continue to value community content and social search, these will be difficult to monetize. Finally, contextual mobile ads will, likewise be difficult to monetize. With information easily available, I will make my own restaurant choices, irrespective of those pushed at me via SMS, especially when I know that those pushed at me have been pushed for a fee, rather than based on an impartial assessment of my preferences. Yes, I can imagine SMS ads initially succeeding if they provide discounts, but ultimately this leads to little more than a bidding war for traffic and benefits no one other than the firm that provides the text messaging services. I can think of a few commercial SMS services that will benefit everyone, such as letting the most loyal guests of a restaurant know when it is still possible to get a reservation if they act immediately, eliminating the inefficiency of empty tables, but the restaurant will do this itself, using its email or cell phone contact lists. I don’t see this as advertising, or as being monetized by any intermediary. Of course, in an age before texting and email restaurants would have welcomed the all-knowing intermediary as the only mechanism available for communicating quickly with its most loyal customers. Now, restaurants have lists of their most loyal customers and can send out real time messages of interest. If the Blue Note were to text me on some night that I am in New York that it is still possible to get a table for two for Clark Terry, or Tria were to text me on a day when I was in Philadelphia that, surprisingly, there was no wait for an outdoor table right now, I’m sure I would respond to both. Of course there is no intermediary for this interaction, and this is more like direct communication than paid advertising.
The internet is about freedom, and I suspect that a truly free population will not be held captive and forced to watch ads. We always knew that freedom comes at a price; perhaps the price of internet freedom and the failure of ads will be paying a fair price for the content and the experience and the recommendations that we value.
(Photo by nickyfern).
Sphere: Related ContentPassion
This is from the Bad Pitch Blog. Read through it and see how you can apply it to your sales life:
Show Glamorous Passion: A Thought for Today
Stay informed about the world. I can’t say this enough! Any reporter will tell you to tie your idea to a trend. Sharpen … sharpen … sharpen! Smart PR pros need to make trend watching a 24/7 habit. Only then will you be sharp enough to spot the fresh ideas that make your company a natural tie-in to the news.
Take the words “I don’t care” out of your mouth forever. Do you hate sports? Well, before you paper your bird cage with the sports section, at least skim through it. You may find a tie-in to your company that you would never have dreamed of if you’d considered it fit only for canary carpet. By the same token, if you don’t normally talk to people who are interested in arts and culture—maybe you’re a techie who lives and breathes routers and switches and VPNs— start hanging out with a cultural crowd in your workplace. Or just go to a new play or art exhibit once in a while.
Everyone in the biz will tell you that reporters like to talk to well-rounded people. Plus, you’ll be much more fun at parties. But if you talk nothing but gobbledygook, journalists will get bored even if their job is to cover your industry.
I also suggest identifying some well-known trend watchers whose ideas you respect and trust. Perhaps it’s a pundit with political leanings similar to your own, or a writer for the New Yorker or the Economist whose work you find insightful. Or, better yet, start reading the work of writers with whom you don’t agree, for a different perspective and a better shot at seeing the whole picture. Whomever you choose, follow their work as often as you can. Seek out their books, their articles, and their broadcast appearances. This knowledge gives you grist for all of your dealings with the media.
Here’s one piece of advice that PR pros know but won’t tell people: Think kindly toward the media! Journalists aren’t as jaded as you’ve been told or led to imagine. That “I’ve-heard-it-all-before” attitude doesn’t exist, at least not among journalists of any repute. Faced with shrinking newsroom staffs and resources, plus far heavier workloads, journalists today can’t afford that brand of cynicism.
No, they want help from good sources.
Thankfully, in-the-know types are pushing for change. What’s the media of the future going to be like, then? Interactive news means a broader world, allowing us to see much more than ever before. According to veteran news guys, networks will one day put up a “barker channel” that will steer you to interactive applications. If you want to get more information on a current event, you’d simply click on a certain spot on your screen. The result looks like Headline News, except that you’ll be able to click on the little paragraphs to get in-depth information on the story in broadcast-quality video. Dreams like that bode well for us in the news gathering and information industry, which is exactly what PR people must match and compete with daily.
The people who make news are coming to grips with a news flash:
Digital doesn’t have to mean trivial. Matt Drudge, master of all things light and airy, said a few years ago: “Sure it will be digital, but it will be larger, more gorgeous than ever before, and completely and utterly fascinating, in order to grab [the] attention of an ingrained, thrill-seeking world.” …And a super well-informed one at that, right?
One of the coolest things about being a really informed person is that you’ll be brimming with fresh ideas, from fashion to corporate management. You then become one of those sources reporters love: a PR pro who tosses out interesting ideas and trends, even if they’re not always linked to a story about your company or product. And voilà ! You will soon become an expert in the “thought-you’d-be-interested-in-this” e-mail subject, one of our favorite things to do (except, of course, in 2001, when it became the header of an e-mail containing a huge virus).
This way, next time you call with a pitch, you’ve already built up a reservoir of honest respect.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Thursday Night Marketing News
From Mediapost:
by Karlene Lukovitz 
by Aaron Baar 
by Karl Greenberg Fresh Ideas
I get this each week from Springwise.com:
Tourism & travel
Linz has scattered unique hotel lodgings throughout the city’s
metropolitan area, in effect turning the entire city into a one large
hotel.
Retail / Gaming
Offering consumers a convenient way to sell unused games, Amazon
has launched a program to offer gift cards in exchange for second-
hand video games.
Lifestyle & leisure
For EUR 219, visitors to Männerspielplatz can shed their office
trappings and get seriously dirty while playing with excavators, wheel
loaders, Caterpillars, quads, Jeeps and more.
Non-profit / Social cause
SmallCanBeBig was formed on the premise that small donations
can add up to a big difference for families on the brink of financial
disaster.
Homes & housing
For employers who want to give their staff the option of working at
home, the OfficePOD is a 2-by-2-metre freestanding structure that
can be installed in a day, typically without planning consent.
Transportation
We've already featured bike-sharing schemes in Paris and other
cities in Europe and North America, and recently we spotted a few
like-minded efforts popping up in Asia.
Marketing & advertising
Spareground bills itself as "the one-stop shop for finding somewhere
to store your sports equipment, keep your caravan for the winter, park
your car, graze your horse or find somewhere to display your art."
Lifestyle & leisure
Much like a free-hanging trapeze, the Jukari FlySet -- developed by
Reebok and Cirque du Soleil -- can be used for swinging, jumping,
hanging, kicking, pulling up and strengthening.
Non-profit / Social cause
San Francisco-based Replyforall gives users a way to raise money
for their favourite causes by simply adding a tailored signature to the
e-mails they normally send.
Media & publishing / Lifestyle & leisure
A social networking site designed for dogs, Dogtree is a free service
that aims to help dog owners find playmates and walking friends for
their canine companions.
Food & beverage
Condiment maker Beerenberg has introduced Provenance Pathway,
an online tool that lets customers trace their jam or sauce from ‘soil
to shelf’.
Lifestyle & leisure
The KaBOOM! Playspace Finder is a user-generated online directory
that lets anyone enter, search for and rate play spaces in their
community.
Marketing & advertising
Sample U is a joint effort with Alliant International University to offer
new market research opportunities for sampling and testing new
products.
Automotive / Marketing & advertising
It’s the equivalent of being handed a cute puppy, knowing you can give
it back if you don’t want it: Renault is hoping that once consumers
spend a weekend with its new Megane Hatch, they'll want to keep it.
Life hacks
Developed to warn them in advance, MediClim emails registered
users when changes in humidity, pollen count, barometric pressure
and temperature might change how they feel.
Eco & sustainability / Retail
Partnering with brands like Best Buy and Home Depot, TerraCycle is
introducing a non-recyclable packaging collection system in American
big-box chain stores.
Education
SmartyCard offers what it calls the world's first "learn, earn and play"
experience by rewarding kids for completing educational games
with prizes from popular vendors and family sites.
Lifestyle & leisure
Aiming to deliver a stress-free, memorable pre-wedding celebration,
Well Rehearsed is an event planning company that focuses solely
on rehearsal dinners.
Non-profit / Social cause
In Ireland, a new grassroots initiative is aiming to tap into the wisdom
of the crowds, through a campaign to solicit ideas for the country's
economic recovery.
Life hacks
Zumbox has created an online mailbox for every street address in the
US, so anyone in the country can begin using its service immediately
to send and receive all-digital mail for free.
Sphere: Related Content
New Ad Campaigns
From Amy:
Baseball. Sex. Mini Cabrios. Not necessarily in that order. Let's launch!
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Gatorade launched a TV and print campaign promoting G2, its low-calorie sports drink. The campaign teams up well-known professional athletes such as NBA star Kevin Garnett, Candace Parker of the WNBA and volleyball player Kerri Walsh with athletes in their own right, everyday athletes who have one thing in common with their more recognizable counterparts: the same first name. The first TV spot pairs Kevin Garnett with Kevin Crowe, a man who took up swimming daily as a stress reliever after he was laid off twice in one year. "I've never had to tell my wife we can't pay the mortgage," says Garnett. "I've never led the Celtics to an NBA title," counters Crowe. 
Kohler launched a print and TV campaign this month that depicts its kitchen and bathroom fixtures as a way for homeowners to add some personal touches around the house. In the first TV spot we see a whale swimming above and underwater while a woman takes a bath. She ups the volume on her VibrAcoustic bath, which allows her to hear sound underwater. The spot ends with the woman and whale relaxedly floating underwater. 
Valspar paints launched a TV, print, online and outdoor campaign that oozes color. It's great, and the TV ads are not what you're used to seeing when you think of a commercial for paint. One TV spot begins with a cello losing its caramel luster. Next, the bright red color from a group of Chinese lanterns vanishes. "Now the colors of life can last a lifetime," says a voiceover, as the paint from a statue drips into a can of Valspar. 
MINI Cabrio is launching a global print and TV campaign next week that takes the "Always Open" tag line seriously. Don't even think about putting the top up. A man is paroled from jail and picked up in a MINI Cabrio, top down, in "Best Buddies." The parolee is obviously cold and makes the extreme error of reaching for the button to put the top up. The driver leaves him on the side of the road with a briefcase and the contents he left jail with. 
The Chicago White Sox launched two of five TV spots that will run throughout spring training. And you thought you had unusual rituals. The first ad shows a man who grows a beard beginning with the last day of the regular season until opening day. His wife disapproves, leaving him constant hints, like disposable razors in his cereal box. 
Here's another campaign heavy on color, especially lots of pastels. This time it's Ray-Ban. The global effort kicked off with a viral ad showing a chameleon morphing into the color of whatever Ray-Ban it touched. 
LifeStyles Condoms launched a TV spot promoting its latex-free SKYN Condom. Eschewing humor, typically used in condom ads, this spot gets right down to the nitty-gritty, showing couples making out in dark lit hallways, undressing in the back of a car, or in the bedroom. 
Yesterday was World TB Day, and Seiter & Miller launched a TV campaign to raise awareness about the global epidemic that kills one person every 20 seconds. The spot likens the TB epidemic to that of a plane crashing or a natural disaster. The last two events may be out of your control, but stopping TB is within reach. "Deadly. Contagious. Treatable. Stoppable," concludes the ad, 
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