Walking the dog

A guy just got all done up in his gear and is ready to ride...too bad the lazy wife wants him to walk his dog. No problem, he'll improvise. The ending is something we all would want to do.

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AIDS will mess you up

I found an advertisement from MTV that's a few years old, and it's a little disturbing. Probably the most literal way to get the point across that I know...

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The best marketers ever...

If there is one company that took their product and blew it off the map, it's AXE. The AXE brand creates body spray, body wash, deodorant and other hygiene products for men. They came onto the market around 9 years ago and have become the dominant force in male products, surpassing Gillette, Old Spice and Right Guard.

The key is their amazingly inquisitive commercials. The best example is the internet only axe ad, displaying their line of body washes. Each one has a "Ability" such as Hydration, Snake Skin, etc. Watch this amazing commercial and you'll see marketing at it's finest.



Now that you've seen it, let's see if you can catch the suggestive and intelligent marketing strategies.
1) The tiles in the shower change color according to the color of the body wash he's using
2) The settings for the "3 day/night" experience are color coded to the washes themselves.
3) After the "Animal" scene, he's wearing snake skin pajama pants, then washes with Snake Skin Axe Body Wash
4) It ends where it began....

Here are some more great Axe Commercials

Copycat Automakers

The economy and the automobile industry is in the crapper. Hyundai came up w/ an ingenious idea of covering your payments if you lost your job, and then letting you return it w/ no effect on your credit. Great for the current conditions right? Well, now look who's falling quickly in suit: GM and Ford.

Wow. This is why GM is failing and will fail. Hyundai's marketing scheme is great, really capitalizing on what the consumer feels currently...and GM really has no ingenuity at all? Can't they come up w/ something different, or individually unique? Why didn't they come up with this before their competitors? The answer: NO EXCUSE.





Oh, and they also came up with the 100,000 mile warranty waaayyyy before everyone else did. Just another example of how the Big 3 Automakers are just a big drag. Maybe GM should just do this...

I pity the fool!!!

Mr. T is an icon to 80's buffs, and to me as well. This is a great skit with Conan O'Brien that I was told about by my neighbor, and while watching it I laughed my ass off. I just recently downloaded "iPity" on my iPhone (an app of straight Mr. T quotes that he rips off when you shake your phone) and this video was the perfect compliment. Why did I download a stupid application like that? Well, because I'm a nerd occasionally, that's why. Enjoy.

AT&T gets in your head...

This commercial has been aired a lot lately and is a perfect example of subliminal messaging. AT&T's logo or call sign is their "full service bars" showing full signal strength, showing that you can get the best reception with them as your provider. See if you can find how many times the "Bars" logo appears in this commercial...here's a hint: above 9 and below 11.

It's a catchy and fun way to get the consumer into their commercial and the product. Plus the strong family tones and popular song help to make this an A+ advertisement.

Yay for the Steelers...

The Steelers won the Super Bowl. Neat. I personally could care less because I HATE those non-shiny helmet wearing badasses, but that's not why this is getting posted. Arizona had the game won...or at least tied. If their defense had a back bone, the NFC West would be getting some more respect and the Cardinals would have a World Championship. But even that's not why this is being posted. This is:



Watching that play live, I was astonished that Harrison didn't get ejected from the game. There are rumors that the Cardinal punched him in the crotch or whatever, but even if he did, this is a little much. Holding him down, and then practically romping on him? Poor showing Mr. Harrison. We all know you're a bad mofo and all...but jeez.

While he should have been ejected, there also should have been a penalty called on the winning touchdown to Holmes for this here:



I mean, the penalty for celebrating would have given the cardinals an extra 15 yards on the kickoff along with 2 timeouts as well. And if the booth would have reviewed the OBVIOUS non-fumble (His arm was moving forward)...who knows what would have happened? Maybe this?



Regardless of all this, the Steelers have won their 2nd Super bowl in 4 years. And I absolutely hate them.

Catchphrases

This is a little more up the Marketing 360 alley, while keeping in spirit of my recent flashback of WWF fanhood. Catchphrases are all around you: McDonald's, Under Armor, Pizza Hut, you name it. To say a word or a phrase and have it stick in the memory of an individual is a powerful thing...and this example is great proof.

Toward the end of Steven Williams's career(AKA Stone Cold Steve Austin)he came up with this great phrase...What? No, that's the phrase: What. Just that word. Repeated after every thing he would say. Seems stupid, and really unnecessary...and it is. But it's also catchy, and even he had no idea how far it would go. T-Shirts, billboards, and the fact that fans still chant it out loud 7 years after he left the wrestling business means that it stuck, and stuck good.

Simply put, it is absolutely brilliant...and once hell of a catch phrase. Here are some of the best examples, including how he came up with it. Hilarious.









And here's what happens when it's used against someone else...Kurt Angle actually really hated this catchphrase because he could never talk or say his gimmicks.

Price check in the cereal isle...

This really has nothing to do with marketing...but I was a big fan of the WWF during the "Attitude Era" of 98-02. I was searching around for some old footage on the net and found this clip. Absolutely priceless.

An awesome scripted fight in a grocery store between Steve and Booker. The writing used to be so creative and fresh back in the day...and this is a great example of it. Humor and ass-whoopin' all at once. How they got the store to let them tear it up to pieces, I'll never know. It's definitely one hell of a mess. In fact, with the economy the way it is right now...it's a little ironic. A little term called scarcity comes to mind? LMAO!!

A commercial that hits home

I saw this commercial a few nights ago, and it really impacted me. It takes a simple premise: leave the day to day grind and take a vacation....and elaborates on it to a depth I've never seen. Very dramatic and very in touch with today's current condition.

Chevrolet decides to question your manhood...

General Motors is in deep trouble. Most of us already knew that years ago, as the corporation has been posting losses since early 2000, with each year progressively getting worse. Lately, we all bared witness to the "begging" of help from the Big Three (Ford, Chrysler, General Motors) because they are going to go bankrupt and lose even more money and possibly hundreds of thousands of jobs if the government doesn't do anything to help them.

Most people were outraged over this, as let's not forget that they flew up in corporate jets costing 20,000 one way to ask for billions of money because they are soooooo desperate. America said NO, you dug your own grave, so lay in it. Pres. Bush said okay, stating that the high loss of employment would put a burden on the economy. So, here we are a few weeks later....and these ads start popping up:





Interesting isn't it? I find this ploy in marketing not to be unique, and if anything, a tad overused. It's called SMEARING. John McCain used it towards the twilight of his campaign because he was losing the election...so he started attacking and backstabbing, etc. Chevrolet has decided to use the same type of technique in their recent ad blitzing of the Chevrolet Silverado, GM's highest selling model in the lineup. I think this video gives you a great look/insight at what is really going on behind the commercials being pumped out by Chevorlet....





You can see that they didn't forget to also include Dodge into the equation as they also have been blitzing out the commercials along with Ford, all in hopes of making at least one more sale of their lowly line-up before it all goes down the drain. I'm figuring that GM's target audience for these commercials is the uneducated, easily influenced, 35K a year earning morons who picked up their GED at age 20 and never looked back.

Why would I say that? Because these commercials are just flat out sexist, chauvinistic lies. The Silverado has been in dead last(or close to) when it comes to truck sales for YEARS. Ford's F-150 is the #1 selling truck in the nation, followed by Dodge and Toyota. Speaking of Toyota, I found the "Trucker's Truck" ad particularly interesting, considering that Toyota has been the #1 seller in cars and TRUCKS as of late, but that's not the only reason...

The Toyota Tundra received Motor Trends Truck of the Year award for 2008. Did you know that? Does the consumer know that? Chevy's hoping not. Because if you knew that, then you would know that the "All New" Silverado competed against the F-150, Dodge 1500 and the Toyota Tundra, along with others...in tests that really matter: Towing, Gas Mileage, Room, Power, etc. And Toyota won. The commercial brought up how the tundra only gets 19 Highway for gas mileage. But of course it left out that the V6 gets over 50 more horsepower (and it's a V6!), can tow 1000's more weight behind it, is made of better quality materials, and that the Silverado itself only getS 21 Highway. Two miles more....not a big difference.

The ad perceives it to be ridiculous that he gets 19 mpg, and that the owner is a 1970's white trash idiot. I don't think that the owner of a Tundra that costs almost 20K more than a Silverado and is built of high quality materials and provides top-level performance along with being the winner of the Motor Trend Truck of the Year award is anything close to the commercial's portrayal. Funny, cause' when Silverado won the award a few years back they rubbed it in everyone's faces and you couldn't get through a single ad with out hearing about it...but try not to remember that time, as Chevy was only posting 3 billion in losses as compared to the 10's of 100's they face now.







This Honda attack is also odd, because it's almost like purposefully hanging yourself. America's best Crossover? Where do they get that figure? I'm pretty sure Mazda's vehicle has them beat, and both Mazda, Toyota and Nissan have been making Corssovers for years now, far before Chevy tried to ride the "wave".

Do they think we don't have the internet? American's don't look things up? The Traverse does not get better millage than the Pilot, that's just a blatant lie. And while they try to tell you about how it has more storage space, they also forget to tell you that the quality of the Pilot far surpasses the "who gives a crap" and that while the Pilot has been around since 2000-2001, this Envoy (GM's line), or whatever will most likely get discontinued within a year or two, just like all of GM's models. Then of course there are these ones....with the final one being absolutely ridiculous:










So, long story short...this Marketing technique is a smearing ploy in order to hopefully raise sales numbers in order to save their dying corporation. Unfortunately, instead of just cutting production on low selling models, or playing to their disadvantage by drastically lowering prices...they are just bullying every other manufacturer. Why don't they just make one of a single vehicle, like EVERY OTHER MANUFACTURER DOES!!! We don't need a Tahoe, Suburban, Avalanche, Silverado, GMC Sierra, Denali, etc. It's all the SAME. The make the same model for every brand (Buick, Pontiac, GM, Chevrolet, Saturn) and just change the front bumpers and add or remove little parts...hoping to sell more. Ladies and Gentleman, as we all know, this has not worked and obviously everyone in the corporate office of GM should be fired. For this marketing scheme to be the fist thing we see out of the bailout proposition is a disgrace to the Senate, to Americans, and to the proud name that General Motors used to be.

Chevrolet/General Motors is just like those bullies in High School who would never attend class and would be sitting in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco, putting down everyone they saw; especially the popular kids. And of course we all know what happened to those assholes in the parking lot...