Interactive Twitter ad for Volkswagen: I like it!

Found via Adverblog: Your tweet, your Volkswagen: a "rich media banner that profiles your tweets and gets back to you with the recommendation of the ideal Volkswagen for you."

Click on the screenshot below to try it out for yourself:


I'm not sure how this application can analyse my 5,000+ Tweets so fast, but it helped me discover that the VW Jetta is the perfect Volkswagen for me. According to an unverified Twitter source, there are 26,965 active Belgian twitterers. Compared to the 5,5 million online Belgians that's definitely a niche audience but still: very impressive and creative ad campaign.

Wedding Direct Marketing

Have a look at this case study of The People’s Award at the Festival of Media Awards: "Ha’Poalim Mortgage Bank identified weddings as a key moment in which to reach out to this potential target market. It [...] sent out dozens of representatives to weddings across the country to [take] advantage of the tradition of putting cash or cheques in envelopes into gift boxes, [by posting] a congratulations card, an Ikea gift voucher and an invitation to meet with the Ha’Poalim mortgage team to discuss the special mortgage package. [...] For eight weeks representatives targeted hundreds of weddings in the Tel Aviv area on Thursdays – the traditional day for weddings. Twenty-five percent of the couples approached called to set up a meeting, and many more came into bank branches. Ha’Poalim will be targeting weddings again in 2009."

I hate it when a super intrusive Direct Marketing campaign like this boasts such a high success rate. Think of it: these sales representatives crash wedding parties to anonymously put a commercial offer in the gift box? It's almost as evil as the sales people who roam the corridors in maternity hospitals to collect post addresses of young parents, so they can come over with their sales pitch later. I had that once when my son was born: she rang at the door one week after birth pretending to work for one of those maternity consultancy services. I almost killed her when I found out she talked herself into my house to sell me cleaning products.

Weddings, births, funerals are important events in people's lives, and most are forced make important buying decisions around these events. But is this really the right time to cross the border between personal and public life?

Podcast with BBC.com managing director, Kym Niblock

There was a fair bit of discussion at the Interact Congress yesterday that referenced the BBC's iPlayer platform. I thought you may be interested in the podcast I did with Kym Niblock, managing directior of BBC.com recently which covered innovations which majored on iPlayer, the challenges of an international site, social network opportunities, convergence and more.

Find out more with links to listen, download, subscribe and read transcripts here.

Other podcasts in the series here.

Posted by: Nicholas Gill | bluurb.wordpress.com

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |nr_gill@hotmail.com

Makers and thinkers

Paul Isakson, the Director of Brand Planning of Minneapolis digital agency space150, used the Venn diagram above to illustrate the possible value an ad agency could add. In his blog post The Core Competencies of an Agency, he concludes: "I think the days of getting by on great service are done. If I were a client, I'd nix the retainers and pay for ideas and execution of those ideas. I'd hire people and agencies great at thinking and get them to give me their best ideas. Then, I'd find the best makers and get them to bring them to life. I wouldn't want to pay an agency to suck up to me with a bloated staff. Just bring me great ideas and if you can't make them, help me find someone who can."

I'm not sure if I agree. This strategy depends a lot on the skills and knowhow of the client. Maybe he's easily impressed by the "wow" ideas, but cannot assess if, e.g. it is technically feasible and scalable. Or picks a subcontractor who is unable to interpret the "wow" idea into a working web concept.
What do you think?