Seinfeld on Soda Commercials

[image via the Gotham Gotham Comedy Club]

Jerry's opening monologue from a Seinfeld episode titled The Phone Message:

The bad thing about television is that everybody you see on television is doing something better than what you're doing. Did you ever see anybody on TV like just sliding off the front of the sofa with potato chip crumbs on their face? Some people have a little too much fun on television: the soda commercial people - where do they summon this enthusiasm? Have you seen them?

"We have soda, we have soda, we have soda", jumping, laughing, flying through the air - it's a can of soda. Have you ever been standing there and you're watching TV and you're drinking the exact same product that they're advertising right there on TV, and it's like, you know, they're spiking volleyballs, jetskiing, girls in bikinis and I'm standing there - "Maybe I'm putting too much ice in mine?"

Trashing Toronto: Bad Idea but Good Publicity

Recently an ad campaign for Niagara Falls has been causing quite a stir in Canada. In brief, here's what it's all about (via CBC News)
"The Niagara Parks Commission is coming under fire for an ad campaign that portrays Toronto as a city riddled with noise, crime and gridlock. The commission is running four television ads and eight online videos in a campaign that calls on people to leave the stress of the Ontario capital behind and drive to nearby Niagara. The ad has already earned rebukes from Tourism Toronto, as well as a city councillor, Joe Pantalone, who has asked that the campaign be discontinued. The Niagara Parks Commission has said the campaign was meant to be light-hearted and not intended to offend anyone."

I have one of the videos embedded above for you'll to see. Obviously, the more feathers this seemingly innocent ad campaign ruffles, the more media exposure it will garner for Niagara Parks. At the same time, on a more subtle tone, the more people stand up to defend Toronto and rave about its good points, the better it gets for the city right? Win-win I say.

And on a side-note, I have been to the Niagara Parks and found it to be unbelievably crowded on both sides of the border and would never go there again. Toronto, on the other hand is a big city and like every big city in the world has its own advantages and disadvantages so trashing it seems kind of immature and silly even for the sake of some hard-to-come-by publicity.

Hotel Room in Melbourne - Free of Charge!

Yes, you heard right.

You can stay for free at the
Lost & Found Hotel Room in the heart of Melbourne. That's what I call aggressive promotion and I like it!

According to PSFK "Tourism Victoria-run e-newsletter Lost and Found recently added a hotel room to their venture, offering lucky subscribers the chance to experience Melbourne’s cultural offerings free of charge. Decked out in products exclusively made in Victoria, the furnishings, gourmet offerings, music, fashions and bath products all “tell a story about Melbourne as a city of creative people producing interesting things.”

Mumbai Traffic Awareness

Image via adoholik. Click to enlarge.

This is an example of an effective outdoor campaign. I know because I have driven to work on these very roads. Yes, the laws of billboard ads (short copy) does not work here 'coz as every Mumbaite will tell you, hell you can read a magazine cover to cover and maybe even a paperback given the long hours you spend stuck in traffic.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

Banana Juice. Designed by: Naoto Fukasawa, Japan. Image via adoholik

 Pop-up Popcorn. Designed by: Packlab, Finland. Image via adoholik














How many times have I reached out and bought something just because it looked good on the outside? If you ask me, of all the P's in marketing, packaging rules when it comes to an impulse buy. Yeah, yeah...don't judge a book by its cover...but haven't we all been guilty of it at one time or another?

Branding a Seaport

On a recent trip to Portsmouth, I was stumped. I couldn't think of a fitting slogan for the city. It's a New England harbortown, favored by tourists and rather rich in history, art and culture.

Cities are branded by professionals with the help of logos and taglines which are then plastered on buses and brochures. Logos are a different ball game altogether, they need to be much more than visually attractive. They have to tell a story. Like the hidden arrow in Fed Ex. If you look closely, you’ll see an arrow that’s formed by the letters E and x. This arrow symbolizes speed and precision, two major selling points of the company.

What about cities then? On the heels of the FIFA World Cup 2010, Johannesburg in South Africa is being touted as the "golden city" and trying to rope in some serious business for its tourism industry.

New York City or "The Big Apple" is "The City that Never Sleeps", Las Vegas is "Sin City", Chicago is the "Windy City", Hershey is "The Sweetest Place on Earth" while "Cleveland Rocks!"

On a recent drive to Philadelphia, "The City of Brotherly Love", we saw this cute sign-off logo (shown on the right) on billboards and web portals.

Well, branding a city is not cheap on the pocket. According to a 2007 issue of Next American City, "Last year Baltimore paid San Francisco-based Landor Associates $500,000 to come up with “Get In On It”."

Plus it may take months to finalize. Everybody from politicians to tourism boards will have a say in it. You also have to consider the fact that people are usually very sensitive when it comes to their hometown. Get the brand message wrong and you ruffle a lot of feathers.

Here's the  history of city-branding as mentioned in the Next American City,
"Railroad companies may have been the earliest city marketers. As author Geoffrey Ward points out in his book Selling Places, Nebraska was sold to the public in 1881 as “a new brass key” that would “unlock vaults of wealth for the farmer and the stock raiser,” according to a railroad advertisement. The settling of the West by rail also led to cities competing to be the major hub of the heartland, a battle Chicago eventually won. These early efforts contained elements of the trend to follow: sell a place and its potential with a slick marketing image."

People are drawn to brands, as is evident by the record number of visitors in Las Vegas following their "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas" campaign.

Some city slogans are official while some just caught on. Few of the unofficial ones have a negative spin on them but more often than not, the tone is upbeat and it's a device to improve tourism.

Coming back to the task at hand, Portsmouth needs a brand identity. Voted as one of America's prettiest towns by Forbes.com, there's a sketch of a ship on the harbor trail markers in Market Square. Well, that just says "seaport" to me. What about the rest of it? What defines the city? Dennis Robinson, history writer and editor of seacoastNH is trying to get the branding perfected and he was the one who set me thinking on cities and their brands.

I don't think it's easy to define the city and everything it stands for in one line but this pretty much sums it up for me Portsmouth: Wish You Were Here

It may not be the best slogan ever but it captures the essence of the place and that to me is the first step of branding.