Microsoft Breaks Free from Control

       Microsoft has recently released their first TV and internet spots for Kinect, the controller-free gaming system for Xbox, and with the claims that the new ad campaign the company well over $500 million, I’m sure we’ll be seeing these ads all over the place for a while. 

Created by long-standing Xbox agency, Agency215, the ads feature players jumping, gyrating, grooving, and moving, shattering the typical gamer stereotype of the lazy couch potato. The players in the ads show people of all ages, marketing Kinect with an “everyone can do it” kind of feel that most elders claim the typical game controller lacks. Instead of having to learn the controls on a handheld console, a player just intuitively moves their body to control what’s on the screen so that “you are the controller” -- Kinect’s main tagline. 

This seems to fit in with the recent trend of Wii and other motion controlled gaming counsels in the past years. By breaking down the stereotype of gaming as something that locks people in their houses for days and making it interactive, Kinect attempts to take virtual reality and turn it into something more, well, real. The ads also show families playfully interacting in an attempt to portray gaming as an activity that brings people closer together instead of isolating them into their own virtual worlds. Also, one of the biggest complaints that parents make about video games is that they don’t encourage kids to go out and get a decent amount of exercise, a complaint that both Wii and Kinect easily assuage. 

However, Sony took very little time to come out with their own justification for not going down this path of free motion video gaming. Recently after the ads for Kinect were released, Sony created yaybuttons.com, a website that gets perhaps just a little too personal and does nearly everything but specifically poke fun at Microsoft for their new initiative. 

Regardless, the ad campaign for Kinect seems to be off to a good start, assessing the problems that most people have with video games straight ahead and revamping the video gamer interest. Also, with the holidays right around the corner, Microsoft couldn’t have thought of a better time to launch it as the gift hunting season begins. It will be interesting to see if their $500 million campaign will pay off. Only sales will tell... 

Microsoft Strikes Back

Yesterday Microsoft unveiled its new Window's Phone 7, its latest attempt to break into the smartphone market, and, with it, its new ad campaign.

The company posted two new ads called "Really" and "Season of the Witch" on their WindowsPhone YouTube account. Targeting consumers who are sick of being married to their mobiles, the new TV ads, created in collaboration with agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, describes the new product as "the phone to save us from our phones". Both ads showcase the extent to which modern phone users are attached to their phones with clips of a bride texting down the aisle, a motorist texting after a car crash, etc. I hate to say it, but several of the scenes from "Really" could really have been taken from my life; e.g. emailing in the shower, texting at the urinal, etc. At the end of both clips, the tag line "It's time for a phone to save us from our phone appears", indirectly portraying iPhone and BlackBerry users as so lost in their phones that they're missing life. As a loyal iPhone and Apple products user, I was first skeptical at the idea of a new smartphone from Windows. However, the new campaign catches my interest. It's catchy, it's timely, and it's true. 

"There's an insight into what's happening in our culture with phones," says chief creative officer of Microsoft, Gayle Troberman, according AdAge. "[Phones] are starting to dominate our behavior. We're challenging consumers to think about the role phones play in our lives. Maybe they can be designed better to get back to life sometimes." 

Fittingly, one sees very little of Windows Phone 7, or other specific phones for that matter, in the adverts until the very end. Even the name of the product itself seems to recall an age when a phone was simply a phone. This certainly is a dramatic change from Microsoft's virtually unremembered Kin, its first attempt in entering the smartphone market. The ad campaign for the Kin seemed to overtly embrace how connected we are to our phones and to each other, practically urging consumers to make their phones the center of their lives. 

However, this new campaign is entirely different. Instead of trying to keep consumers sucked in, the new Windows Phone 7 appeals to those who want to retake control of their technologically dominated lives. This certainly is a noble attempt at reactive advertising, an attempt by Windows to market their new product in reaction to the current growing trends of other smartphones. In addition to just its campaign, the Windows Phone differs from other smartphones on the market by not adhering to the grid of applications -- a signature of the iPhone and Android. While this could be incredibly risky, I think by highlighting its differences as the core of its marketing strategy, Microsoft may finally achieve their decade long ambition to break into the mobile phone space. 

Stupid is as Stupid Wears

As mentioned in last week’s post, methods of advertising have switched in the past decade from the advertiser addressing the consumer to a two directional conversation between the two. Many advertising agencies are creating ad campaigns designed to grant the consumer a memorable experience of the brand with the hopes that it will make a deeper, lasting effect on the contemporary consumer’s short-term memory and invoke a sense of association with the brand which transcends its merchandise. The collective idea behind this method is not to sell particular products but the experience itself, something which holds long lasting value and loyalty for the buyer.

In coming up with an objective for this blog, I wanted to find a way to take advertising to a more personal level. As a modern consumer living in New York City, I, like most of my readers, am inevitably to advertising at every minute of my life. On my phone, on the subway, on Facebook, catching a taxi, walking down the street, my visual and audial perception, like yours, are inundated with culturally significant icons, typefaces, images, and sounds which are inescapable to the modern collective consciousness. The purpose of this blog strives to share my personal experiences with ad campaigns which I see around the city and discuss my own opinions of their concepts, visualizations, mediums, etc. Similar to how the dialogue between advertiser and buyer has been opened up, I hope to introduce a new conversation between us, from one consumer to another. 

The Diesel BE STUPID ad campaign is one of those campaigns that have been hard to shake off. The provocatively bold and capitalised slogans making such statements as "SMART MAY HAVE THE BRAINS. BUT STUPID HAS THE BALLS" begin to stick in the back of your mind, especially when one has to walk by the Diesel in Union Square daily to get to class. Created by Anomaly, an edgy, new advertising agency that was founded in 2004, the BE STUPID campaign seems destined for the progressive and unapologetically sexual nature of the brand's philosophy. Winning Anomaly a 2010 Cannes Grand Prix Award, the campaign has received both praise and condemnation from consumers alike. Picturing models in the midst of committing acts which are dangerous, illegal, and often down right stupid, the campaign encourages the youth to discard their inhibitions, have fun, and, essentially, not to give a F@!K while doing it. So, perhaps it's not the “stay-in-school” message you want to take home to your kids, but don't be surprised if they come home wearing a new "TRUST ME, I'M STUPID" graphic tee. 

Underlying its radical, danger-seeking message, BE STUPID appeals to the shopper that is tired of following the rules and is looking for a consumer experience which is radically different. Whether you love or hate it, you have to hand it to Diesel: the campaign is certainly eye catching and their stores hard to walk by without the tiniest curiosity to see what's inside.

My first, first-hand experience with Be-ing Stupid was on a rainy Sunday walk down Fifth Avenue last week. Feeling the rain begin to fall and looking around for a store to take shelter in, I was struck by Diesel's funky window setup equipped with a live DJ accompanied by two male models displaying paradoxical slogans such as "BE STUPID. Get out of the rain." Next thing I knew, a woman handing out fliers came up and offered me the chance to win $1000 if I were to divulge a winning stupid story inside. Intrigued by a pair of red & blue high-tops and the chance to undergo the STUPID experience, I ventured indoors to find that the in-store consumer experience was very much alive, with a photo both where one can confess their STUPID experiences on camera and the DJ seen outside playing the latest club hits. 

Diesel’s method of advertising is an experience meant to engage and captivate the consumer into believing that there is something particularly cool, special, or different about the brand. The shopping experience mirrors the brand’s commitment to innovation, edginess, and being over-the-top and I ultimately felt captivated by the energy of the atmosphere itself. Am I going to run out and buy a shirt stating that my natural endowment makes up for my low IQ? Doubtful. However, I did pick up that pair of high-tops I saw in the window on a whim. Whether it was a stupid decision or not remains to be seen...

Old Spice, New-Age Advertising

The advertising industry has certainly seen a dramatic change in its medium throughout the last decade. As always, advertisers have had to keep up with the emerging technology over the last century to ensure reaching as many consumers as possible, evolving from poster boards to cinemas, cinemas to radio, radio to television, and from television to viral. Ad's like Proctor & Gamble's (P&G) Old Spice commercial featuring former NFL wide receiver, Isaiah Mustafa show just how profound the change to viral has been on the industry. With a record breaking 20 million views on YouTube and 145 million views on the Old Spice YouTube channel, Wieden & Kennedy, the agency behind the successful ad campaign, have substantially raised the bar for its competitors, winning both an Emmy and the Cannes Film Lions Grand Prix. In addition, sales for Old Spice sky-rocketed up to 107 % in the four weeks following the ad's premier (although much of this is due to a series of buy-one-get-one-free coupon initiatives released by Old Spice in April of last year).

Regardless, it seems irrevocable to those in the industry just how powerful popular, viral support can be for increasing sales. In addition, much of Old Spice's success has been to an interactive medium, with Mustafa responding to blogger questions and comments in person on YouTube's Old Spice channel. An emphasis is therefore being taken away on what the brands have to share and say to its consumers and is flipped around so that consumers can instantly give feedback and dictate what they do and don't want. While this certainly makes things easier for advertisers, since arguably the most difficult part of the industry is knowing exactly what consumers desire, it also raises the stakes on creativity and keeping up the consumer's wants and needs at lightning speed.

Although this is, of course, not necessarily new to the the trade; advertisers have always had to be at the forefront of emerging trends and consumer markets. However, the consumers' ability to interact with the advertiser has brought with it a new-age of advertising and a whole new feel to the game, allowing the power of the consumer to more easily dictate the future of the business.