Dr Pepper learnt a tough lesson in Great Britain last July with the huge scandal concerning the status take-over promotion on Facebook started as part of the brand’s ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ campaign. Having tendered apology for the blunder (the thing was that a mother found her 14-year-old daughter searching for the meaning of her new status update with ‘two girls, one cup’ phrase referring to a notorious porn video), the brand closed the activity. Now, the buzz went down and almost one year later, the brand comes back with another teen-oriented project, dubbed ‘Pepperhood,’ which definitely will not have any unwanted after-effects.
digital campaign
Doritos has initiated another fight between its flavours to see which of them is the ‘strongest’. Building on success of other themed advertising pieces, which included the spots for the Egyptian and U.S. markets as well as the large-scaled ‘The End’ promotion in Canada, where people were encouraged to ‘destroy’ one of the new additions, A (in the white bag) or B (in the black bag), the snack brand has kicked off a similar integrated promotion for Australian consumers at the www.battleoftheflavours.com website. Now, two new Doritos flavours, Hot Mexican Salsa and Thai Sweet Chilli, are placed against one another on the digital spot, and consumers are invited to support their favourite by suggesting the effective battle moves against the competitor.
Timberland, whic is committed to promoting active lifestyle, is rewarding individuals who want to spend more time outdoors. To promote its new range of Earthkeepers footwear, the brand teamed up with brand experience agency BEcause and Groundspeak, the location-based technology specialist, to launch the ‘Trail of Heroes’ campaign, which encourages consumers to explore the world outside their homes and set out on a search of ‘treasures,’ uniquely designed set of containers (geocaches) hidden across in six European megalopolises—Milan, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Brussels and London.
We often talk about the ‘face of the brand’, but what about the idea brands have bodies as well? Someone has finally taken a daring attempt to visualize brands and present them as living creatures with faces, bodies and even tails. We’re speaking about the newly-launched online project www.brandtoys.com, where the formidable brands come to life as funny toys.
MINI, which last year launched a hilarious geo-location campaign in Stockholm, has now running a new awesome international promotion in another European capital, Berlin. For the new advertising initiative dubbed ‘It’s Personal,’ the brand merged billboards and interactive technology, inviting just everybody—both in the real and digital dimensions—to tap in and get featured on the giant MINI Photo Box, located at the corner Kurfürstendamm and Joachimstaler Straße in the German capital.
Guitar Center, one of the biggest stores specializing in music gear sales, has teamed up with Apple to run series of public workshops entitled ‘Recording Made Easy’. As said in the tagline, the purpose of the free workshops series is to familiarize general public with functionality of Garage Band software developed by Apple.