Opportunity Marketing

Is it a coincidence that the home page of Amazon.com is promoting the Kindle as "easy to read in sunlight" and "thin and lightweight" when the recent nytimes review of the iPad says "You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile"?

Make Way for eBooks and Book Ads

Last month, Barnes & Noble launched an online store for digital books with 700,000 titles. Moreover, they intend to stock more than a million eBooks in the coming 12 months. To read them, you can download the free eReader from their website which is compatible with iPhone, iTouch, BlackBerry, PC and Mac. It is interesting to note here that it is not compatible with either Kindle from Amazon or the Sony Reader. To get ahead in the battle of eBooks, Amazon recently released a free software to turn our iPhones and iTouch into Kindles.

If all this wasn't enough, now there are talks of placing ads in e-books! Imagine scrolling down Pride and Prejudice to find an ad for a toothpaste. Thankfully, the ads will try and be contextual or be based on the customer's user profile. As if that is any relief.

Don't get me wrong here. Though I love the smell of a brand new book and lose track of time in a bookstore, I am not really averse to the idea of eBooks. I am all for technology and moving on...and of course, marketing.

I see the bright side like how ads in eBooks will bring down the cost of both the books and the reading devices.

The ad revenue will positively impact the author, the publisher, the e-book store, the device manufacturers.

The competition between Amazon and Barnes & Noble will result in more and more eBooks and also a better reading experience.

The printing world is anyway trying to revamp itself through this digital revolution. One more change wouldn't hurt.

But what if this trend trickles down to print? According to Austin Modine in The Register, it is a possibility for anybody who wants to avail of a lower price in an on-demand book from Amazon.

Now that may be taking things too far. Or is it the future of reading?

The Magic of Touch

It is time we lost the keyboard, the mouse and the remote control. It is all about touch, tap and flick! On March 13 2009, Levi Strauss & Co.'s Dockers San Francisco brand launched the first interactive “shakable” mobile advertisement. Of course, the innovation made use of iPhone's inbuilt accelerometer technology and is available within a custom-built ad network of iPhone applications such as iBasketball, iGolf, iBowl and iTV.

Motion sensitive and sound-enabled, these ads are here to stay. Though a relatively new advertising format, they are catching on fast as the world gets caught up in "interactive play". Apart from ensuring that the consumer spends some time with your brand, these ads also help by having a targeted reach and capturing the all-essential data. Here I must mention that though knowing your consumer inside-out sounds like a sweet deal, the world of data capturing is murky and it is best to obtain the required permissions before plunging into a sea of information.

"The Dockers iPhone ad, titled "Shakedown 2 Get Down," features Dufon, a.k.a. Orb/Orbit/Orbitron, a freestyle dance expressionist from a Seattle group called "Circle of Fire," dancing around the screen wearing Dockers Vintage Workwear Khakis. In between levels of gameplay in the select application, users are prompted to shake the iPhone setting off Dufon's dance moves." - says www.mobilemarketer.com

"Click to view" will soon become a faint memory. It is all about tilting, shaking, rotating, pinching, swiping, flipping and tapping. You gotta touch it to play it. Think of your GPS, your grocery self check-out, movie tickets, train tickets, ATMs and many more applications of daily use. It's all about interactive touch-screens.

Technology is moving ahead and so should advertisers.

'Trust Me' me on TNT - branded entertainment at its best

Creative executives, Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny are part of the team responsible for creating "Trust Me", a series premiering tomorrow on TNT. The authenticity is provided by the fact that both have worked at agencies like Leo Burnett, JWT and Y&R.

Now, what does this mean for all the brands competing with each other in every possible media in every possible way? Can we hold the television viewer's attention in today's fast paced touch-screen dominated world? Let's hope so, for Unilever's sake. Apart from being one of the sponsors of the show, Dove hair care products are actually being woven into the story-line. Which of course is no big deal since the show deals with brands and products anyway.

And that is why big brands like Apple, Chris-Craft boats, Effen vodka, Green Giant, Hallmark, Frosted Flakes from Kellogg’s, Nike, Pillsbury, Potbelly Sandwich Works and Starbucks have jumped on the proverbial bandwagon. Not all of them have the luxury of being the focus of an episode, some are merely being mentioned or featured...in-show or in-film brand placement as we know it.

To balance out the heavy dose of real brands, the show also has a few imaginary products like Arc Mobile Cellphone Service. But is that enough to ensure that the series maintains its distinct flavor and doesn't become lost in a sea of brand promotions? In order to preserve its individuality, the script of the show may sometimes deviate from what the sponsors prefer.

According to the Jan 21, 2009 New York Times - David Rubin, United States marketing director for Unilever hair brands in Chicago is fine with it. “What is so central on any branded integration,” Mr. Rubin said, “and I’ve worked on a bunch, is that with the ones that do it right, the brand’s involvement adds to the story being told without usurping the storyteller’s job.The show has to be great entertainment for me to succeed in doing what I’m trying to do.”

True, and given the premise of the show, it will be fairly impossible for it to be anything other than entertaining. Having worked in an advertising agency including two of the three mentioned above, I can safely say that no advertising firm can dare to be boring. Ego clashes, weird fashion choices, creative temperament, hard-to-please bosses and unreasonable client demands...all add in making an ad agency unlike any other.