There’s really only one day a year when people anticipate advertising—Super Bowl Sunday. That makes it a kind of television Mecca for adnerds.
So kids, it’s poll taking time: what’s your favorite Super Bowl commercial?
I love 2003’s Terry Tate: Office Linebacker spot for Reebok. “Hey Janice.”
On my Sunday search for inspiration on the Interwebs, I found this photo and laughed. Then I thought immediately of the most obsessive detail man in our agency, Willie. The dude completes a crossword puzzle every day. Not just occasionally. Every day. He knows words and rules.
In communication, words tend to be important. The classic less/fewer rule is a good example of a grammatical error that many of us make on a daily basis.
Thanks Willie. You help the agency operate more affectively. Kidding. Just kidding.
Football fans know awesomeness when they see it. According to today’s ESPN Sports Nation poll, 65% of Americans are more pumped up about the Senior Bowl than the Pro Bowl this weekend.
You may be thinking yeah, but is that statistically significant? With over 80,000 votes from all 50 states, yes.
The kids at the Square would like to think it’s the advertising, but we’re willing to admit that the game, the players, the organization and the sponsors make it great. We’re glad America agrees. Hooray for football! Hooray for democracy!!
Building a new website is one thing. Building a new business model is another. With NDI, manufacturer of the finest floral and botanical reproductions in the world, we did both. Here’s the story.
NDI had previously only sold product through high-end retailers, such as Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. They came to us with a challenge: build a site that sells direct to the consumer without alienating our trade customers. And make it awesome.
We’re happy to present to you our solution: NDI’s new storefront.
Visitors can shop the entire inventory (over 4,000 products) in a very intuitive manner; products are organized by five different filters. The store recommends similar items and optional upgrades for products like trees and greenery. Customers can come back and quickly reorder previous purchases or update their information. The site also serves trade customers, with trade-specific content for logged-in trade users.
From a management standpoint, the site is built with a custom CMS (content management system) that allows NDI to update everything in their online store: track orders, edit individual items or multiple items at once, and reorganize categories for seasonal promos. They can also access their customer database for real-time info on each customer.
In the two weeks that we’ve been live (and debugging), the site has already seen good results. Sales are happening—66 percent of the visitors are new to the site and the average site visit is almost 9 minutes.
Take a look around, buy some flowers. And if you see any bugs in the site, holler at Janine.
As we continue to develop the site, we’ll keep you updated.
The recent dustup over NBC’s The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien has been nothing short of entertaining. Show business aside, this little episode of popular culture offers a unique opportunity to witness challenger brand positioning and public perception unfold on a grand scale.
What I’ve found particularly interesting is the inordinate amount of public outrage at NBC (and Jay Leno) and the beloved, nearly deified status that Conan has attained with even the most fair-weather fans. I think it boils down to a couple of things: the public has an innate sense of fairness, they gravitate almost uniformly to the underdog or challenger, and they love it when the underdog exhibits real backbone.
Would I necessarily call Conan O’Brien an underdog? Probably not in a vacuum. In fact, Michael Ian Black articulates quite well the irony of feeling sorry for Conan in his blog post, Norma Rae:
How did a Harvard-educated, multi-millionaire late night talk show host magically transmogrify into a guy who got laid off at the local car plant? The overreaction to Conan’s departure has been kind of astounding; as a nation, are we really that concerned about who hosts “The Tonight Show,” a television program that stopped being culturally relevant around 1986?
When you consider the Conan brand in the late night television competitive environment, maybe he is a challenger brand. Rob Sheffield, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, describes Jay Leno as the Godzilla of late night TV:
Leno’s got the stomach for fights. Like Paul McCartney, another nice guy wrongly dismissed as a cream puff, Jay made his bones in the sleaziest, nastiest showbiz shark pools on earth. He plays nice for the old ladies, but his street-fighting instincts are off the charts. He’s left plenty of carrion on the late-night highway. Arsenio Hall, Chevy Chase, Magic Johnson — Jay knocked them all off the air, and you can bet he still savors the memory of their death cries.
Whether Conan’s ratings would’ve been better had NBC not led in to his show with a watered-down and (in my opinion) not terribly funny hour of Jay Leno will never be answered. NBC’s decision to revert back to Leno is seemingly the late night equivalent of Coca-Cola’s decision to yank New Coke off the shelves. The experiment didn’t work. However, that logic doesn’t hold up because, unlike New Coke, Conan has cemented his iconic status with existing fans and endeared himself to millions more.
The public realized he was getting a raw deal. They saw Conan as a put-upon underdog, and they cheered when he pushed back with weeks of (in my opinion) hilarious barbs at his bosses at the network. The fact that Conan’s exit speech was heartfelt and genuine sealed his canonization:
To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me, and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
It’s simple. People love an underdog with tremendous heart and nothing to lose. And that’s Conan O’Brien. The patron saint of failed late night programming.
We love French people. And apparently they love us.* Our Van Kampen Investments “Give Smart” campaign was just featured on a French television program showcasing advertising from around the world.
If you are inclined to view our work with subtitles, this link is for you: click on the “L’Actu section” in the right nav.
*We think they love us. We don’t speak French, so we can’t be sure. But they are smiling before they introduce our work, so that’s gotta be a good sign, right? Any translations would be appreciated.
I collect TV spots like kids used to collect trading cards. And from time to time I go back and watch them. But the one I keep going back to more than any other is a spot BBDO did for Monster.com. Unlike so many spots we watch, it never gets old to me. It is beautifully done. Spot on animation! And it tells a story as vivid as any Pixar movie, although that is not the reason I hold it in such high regard. It’s the message. This work of art is called, ‘Stork.’
When we talk about making ads memorable and making ads stand apart, spots like Apple’s ‘1984’ or Volkswagen’s ‘Snow Plow’ come to mind. But do their messages have the emotional tie that my ‘Stork’ has? I ask you…
What BBDO did with this message was go to the very heart of why you should use their product. Not only did they do that, they touched on a universal truth. With emotion. On top of that, they said nothing. No words were spoken at all.
This, to me, is the most powerful form of communication. If you can tap into a universal emotion directly related to the product you are selling, you have not only done your job, you have made something that will burn into someone’s brain for a long, long time. Who needs words?
I, for one, will spend the rest of my career trying to create something as beautiful as this spot. ‘Stork’ is why I am in advertising. I guess you could say it’s my Joe DiMaggio.
We know a thing or two about football down here in Alabama. First, I present to you Exhibit A. And if that’s not ample proof of our pigskin prowess, then I direct you to Exhibit B: the inaugural Ad Agency Fantasy Football League. Still not convinced? Then I’ll have you examine Exhibit C: Red Square Agency’s CHAMPIONSHIP ring. That’s right, cue the Queen baby. We are the champions.
Several months ago, there was a movement afoot. A league of the finest agencies from around the country would assemble via the web and compete in pretend football. The founding parties included Toth, from Cambridge, MA; Freedom + Partners, from Brooklyn, NY; AgencyScoop, from Brooklyn, NY; Mekanism, from San Francisco, CA; Traction, from San Francisco, CA; Rodgers/Townsend, from St. Louis, MO; Firstborn, from New York, NY; Moosylvania, from St. Louis, MO; our very own advertising lawyer, Michael McSunas, from Chattanooga, TN; and little ol’ Red Square Agency, from Mobile, AL.
With our intrepid leader, Willie Waite, at the helm, victory was in hand from week one. In the words of the man legend himself: “This is a great honor for the organization. We’ve worked so hard all season. To get to the ultimate pinnacle…it’s amazing. We have to thank all of the members of Team Red Square, from the window cleaning guys all the way up to Pop. Everyone was a tremendous asset to our first ever championship.”
It’s kind of like the end of Rudy, only Rudy would’ve been pretending to play football with other kids on the Internet.
One of our newest clients is the Hangout Music Festival. There’s not a whole lot we can say about this yet except: 1) it’s on the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama; 2) it’s May 14-16; 3) the acts are going to be killer; 4) we’re handling the design, advertising and PR.
According to stories that have run in the press, the festival will be the surfside equivalent to the Rothbury Festival and Coachella.
Acts will be announced soon. You can read more here, and be sure to sign up for email updates.
We love football. We also love advertising. So you can imagine how happy we were to work on the 2010 Senior Bowl. It’s pretty much the perfect storm of awesomeness.
The game is football’s premier pre-draft event, annually featuring the country’s best senior collegiate players and top NFL draft prospects. It also happens to live in our hometown of Mobile, Alabama.
When we began work, our creative team raided the Senior Bowl archives and brought back stacks of old programs and footage from the 1950s and 1960s. We decided the stuff was too cool not to use. So we built a campaign that recalls the rich heritage of the game, packages it as a world-class event and addresses multiple audiences with a single rallying cry.
You can view the campaign here. Or, if you don’t have quicktime, you can see the spot here. It’s up! It’s gooooooood! (Sorry, couldn’t resist the football pun.)
Thanks to our production pals Shiny Object and Stuck On On.
