But this short post isn’t about those changes; it’s about changes in advertising! Did you notice that now you can rate ads on Facebook? Thumbs up or thumbs down? And on top of that, you can choose the reasons why you liked/disliked that particular ad…

Well, this is a first timer for me and I think this is very fair. If you can rate just about anything on the web nowadays, why shouldn’t users be able to rate the ads that target them?

The question is: what will Facebook do with user feedback? Will it charge advertisers more for unappreciated ads? Or will it use this intelligence for upgrading its targeting capabilities, besides its demographic and interests segmentation criteria?

Your opinion is most welcome.

As Donald Gunn taught us in 1978, one of the master formats of advertising is “associated user imagery”. This kind of ad “showcases a type of people it hopes you’ll associate with the product”, in order to transfer the qualities of the people to the product you are trying to sell. In fact, I think this is the format Renault Koreos’ advertisers used to create the following TV ad I just saw last night. The only difference is that here instead of people they’ve got cars.

For the first 47 seconds, this 60-second video promotes the new French SUV in Italy using vintage footage about old Renault models, soundtracked by the irresistible “I’m free” by Rolling Stones, and then finally switches to the brand-new gas-guzzling beast rescuing the old sisters from muddy troubles, concluding with a reassuring voice saying: “4×4 outside, Renault inside”.

I’ve had three cars in my life,and two of them were Renaults. Watching the first 47 seconds I was carried away by all that technicolor galore. But when I saw the 4×4 entering the scene, I jumped on my sofa in disbelief. Even if every single second of the ad was trying to convince me, and was doing it well, then that Renault just didn’t fit it in the picture. Do you remember that classic IQ test question asking: “In this set, which object does not belong?”, that’s how that SUV popped up to my eyes.

In Italy, SUV sales have increased fourfold in a decade, but this growth is parallel to also two other things: the awareness that this type of car is not suited for the European city and that a low-gas/low-emission economy is fast becoming a stark reality.
Releasing a SUV now (emitting 230 g/km CO2 when the limit for 2015
is going to be 125) for the first time in 2008, when even GM is is closing four SUV plants, doesnt fit in the values the Renault brand has long being associated with: vision, innovation, casualness, and daring.

Investigating about the concept of this car I found this old post
describing the Koleos prototype with these words:

The new concept car also offers prompt response and driving pleasure, with a hybrid power unit that combines a two-litre 16-valve turbocharged petrol engine with an
electric motor.

So what happened to the hybrid SUV? I have yet to find an answer.

I think that never like today paying attention to your brand values and your audience (and reality) attracts more money than a good ad. And looking at this 1973 Renault 4 (190g/km) retromercial had me dwelling on another question: what in the world we need SUVs for?

In my last post, I talked about the dangers of user-generated content and asked you how you felt about UGC and how we should use it. Your replies allowed me to dig deeper into this subject.

There have been quite a few sucessfull UserGeneratedContent campaigns these last few years, and the first lesson I learned is that each UGC campaign is a different experience.

In 2006, General Motors surprised everyone when they launched one of the first un-censored UGC campaigns. They gave away videos and pictures of their new Tahoe car, added an online editing tool and waited for contributions to roll in. The website was an overwhelming success, with coverage from bloggers and news site, especially after everyone realized that GM was not censoring the site and that controversial videos (pollution, etc) were intentionally left online.
Fallbacks? Excellent sales and growing market shares.

I highly encourage you to read this article from Wired magazine to learn more about this use case.

MyStarbucksIdea was launched in March 2008 and is also widely successfull: Thousands of ideas, comments and votes have been submitted by customers who are more than happy to contribute to the improvement of their local coffee house.

This use case illustrates a few “UGC” rules:

• Requiring users to log in will help self regulation of posts
• A voting system will act as an auto regulating mechanism: good ideas go up in the ranking, bad ideas get buried.
• Show your customers that you listen.

Dell is now an experienced UGC brand. Their first experience, Ideastorm is a website where users are encouraged to post their ideas on how to improve Dell products (they apply the same rules we highlighted above: login, voting, “ideas in actions”).
In march, they launched a new campaign to promote their “green-computers”. Called “Regeneration”, this operation encourages users to send drawings on the theme “What does green means to you?”

The results are impressive.

UGC of course is about content, and this content can be more than a support to marketing; it can become a key business asset. 20minutes is a free european newspaper, distributed in the streets and subway stations every morning. Their website is more than a substitute of the paper edition thanks to comments on all articles.

How do they ensure high quality content? Users are required to log in, a few moderators read the articles, but mainly users can alert 20minutes when inappropriate comments are sent.

I apologize for the self-promo (20minutes mobile services are developed by Backelite – FullSIX mobile agency). We helped them set up their latest service: a short number to which users can send pictures thru MMS. This new service is becoming very popular and today the frontpage is mostly made of pictures sent by users (protests about the olympic games)

It has been a real pleasure to investigate this topic. Please use the comments to delve deeper.

Since last october and the annoucement of Flash Lite 3 by Adobe, there has been a lot of buzz around this new technology and what it means for mobile web.

Flash Lite’s main challenge is to reach a critical percentage of device coverage … over half a billion devices shipped so far, thanks. More important is the future: Will Flash Lite reach the same level of ubiquity it has on the web today?

Last week a joint announcement made by Adobe and Microsoft that Flash Lite will be integrated into Windows Mobile is a major step forward.

On Apple’s side, things are more confused …

Steve Jobs said two weeks ago that Flash is not the right solution for the iPhone. The Adobe CEO announced last week that they would start working on it themselves … and changed his statement a few hours later because Apple’s SDK license will not allow them to distribute a Flash Lite plugin for the iPhone.

A battle is raging, and there is so much buzz going on that it seems pretty likely that Flash (or Flash Lite) will make it on the iPhone soon.

With or without Apple, Flash Lite will change the mobile web, and mobile advertising. New ad-formats are being prepared and will be launched in Europe before this summer. They use Flash Lite to provide full-screen interstitials ads and sponsored mobile videos. Expect more from us soon…

By trying to tap into the Carlsberg/Lynx audience (guys like myself, and those a lot younger), Coke have developed ‘Football as it should be’. The aim of the game is to help some lucky guy get to the Coke Zero lounge before the big game starts. Based over four levels, all of which combine brilliant video execution, multiple interaction methods and a trio of beautiful women to aid you in your challenges. These include jumping bridges, breaking down walls with a dragon ball and kick-ups with a ball of fire.

The visual execution is a cross between Quentin Tarantino’s Bullet Proof and a Bruce Lee movie – dark and full of texture. Just like a good film, the site is well paced, well structured and rewards the user throughout. It demonstrates clearly how broadband is giving big brands the opportunity to engage with the gaming audience. Where once they were limited to in-game advertising, now they’re able to create and own the experience.

Richard Pittham
Sixandco Group Brand Experience Director, London

I read everywhere about Facebook’s hyper targeted revolutionary advertising scheme. Yeah, sure.

To promote their new website, SOL, one of Norway’s largest news and entertainment portals developed a campaign in which its banners become notepads for a triplet of copywriters, taking turns to wittily comment on the news displayed. Contextual advertising at its best! The dedicated publishing tool developed specifically for this campaign allowed to produce 150 hours of content on the homepage, generating a bit more than 1,000 different ads. This is seriously genius. OK, ok, probably better if you speak Norwegian!