Absolut Drinkspiration

A big thanks to Great Works' Planner François Bécar, who gave me a heads up on the latest campaign from Pernod Ricard’s Absolut Vodka. In a clever move to drive customer engagement and affinity, Absolut has just launched 'Drinkspiration', an impressive iPhone App that allows users to choose the right drink.

The App bases it's recommendation on the following inputs

• your mood
• the time of day
• the weather
• alcohol type
• drink color
• shape of glass
• type of venue, and more

The best thing about the App, however, is how it integrates with your Facebook and Twitter accounts and incorporates GPS functionality to give a live trend forecaster showing in real time what cocktails are being ordered around the world.

François said “Absolut is the first cocktail brand to have their own application,” and “is trying to position itself as innovative and the application shows just how creative and bold the brand is in reaching out to consumers in many different ways.”

Click here to download the free application on iTunes.

Google Ad Planner

Anyone using their Google Ad Planner account will have noticed a distinct change. From today Google has launched their redesigned account interface, offering four key improvements:

• Find sites and manage your media plans more efficiently
• Review full data for a site simply by specifying the site's URL
• Merge and copy media plans
• Navigate between pages without losing the audience you're working with

In addition Google have removed the Google Analytics filter restriction that previously affected publishers.

Budweiser Lyrics - TV Ad

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a great blogger preview of the new Budweiser Lyrics TV ad, hosted by WHPR. The event was introduced by Charles Wong, Budweiser Marketing Manager, and Matt Delahunty, DDB Account Director, and gave a crowded room of bloggers first glimpse at Budweiser's latest TV outing. The ad itself will go live on the 4th July, coinciding with Independence Day, and is the first Budweiser ad to be created for a foreign market that will also feature in the US.

The ad is driven by The Beatles song ‘All together now’ and is shot entirely from a moving train going around Chicago's L track. As it passes different people and locations, the lyrics to the song are spelt out in fun ways. Total filming time took 50 hrs over a 5 day period, in some serious cold temperatures. Obviously the logistics of all of this should not be lost - consider that every missed take required a full loop of the track to get back to the shot location. This meant that everyone had to be in perfect position at the exact moment needed. Beyond this it was also necessary to make sure that for each shot the train was going at the right speed to catch the action and keep in time to the music.

The ad also marks a first, as it will mark the launch of Sky’s Green Button technology. What this means is that the ad will appear exclusively through sky's system for the first week of the campaign.

So without further delay, the ad...



I have to say I absolutely love the ad. I've always loved 'All Together Now' but in this case I think it perfectly fits with the positioning and attitude that Diageo are trying to reflect. In the context of the current global economic situation the emotions drawn from the ad are exactly what people want - a 'pull together', 'can do' , 'get it done' attitude. Obviously this also fits in brilliantly with Obama's America.

The ad also forms the backdrop to a larger digital campaign based around the new Alltogethernow.ie Website (going live this Saturday 4th July). The site calls for people to upload their own take of one of the 'lyrics' through a video or photo of themselves holding up a number, letter or word. The site also provides behind the scenes footage, Director’s tips and a host of other content.

The ad was Written by Dave Henderson and Richard Denney, and filmed by Director Chris Palmer. The music was performed by ‘The Hours’.

Also, check out this great video from Krishna De of her interviewing Matt from DDB's last night:



Finally, a huge thank you to Cliodhna, Kate and Ruth for a great evening.

Gen Y - The Lost Generation

Fantastic use of copy, with an equally gripping VO. I really like this.

Who to Target with Social Media

I wrote a while back that the last 12 months has seen Social Media move from a why idea to a how idea. Brands are no longer questioning the use of Social Media, they are starting to question how to use Social Media. Whether they like it or not the conversations are happening, and brands are now realising that the question is whether or not to participate, not whether or not to create.

Unfortunately for a relatively small country we have to consider the size of the target markets that can be reached through Social Media platforms. The latest figure I heard for the Irish market are:

• Twitter - 41k
• Facebook - 610k
• Bebo - 1.7m (though this is considered to be very skewed to minors)

So what's my point? Well, my point is that Social Media campaigns either rely on large populations to enable sufficiently large target markets to make Social Media viable, or target huge generic demographics (all women, or all under 50's) that can be achieved in smaller overall populations. Generally speaking though, people often fail to see the ways to effectively use Social Media without either of these situations. Social Media is about creating content and engaging in conversations where your target market is - if all your potential customers use Facebook, then you engage with them on Facebook. But consider that instead of creating the content and driving the conversation yourself directly to your potential customers (who very few may be active within Social Media), you entice others to do it for you. You instead target a very small, specific demographic of people within the Social Media environment.

What do I mean? Well content is king as we all know, and content created by your peers is generally given a lot more weight then corporate messages, at least in the digital world. So go after the poeple who can do this for you - bloggers and Social Media advocates. This isn't something that hasn't been thought of; I'm not professing to have come up with this idea. I do however think it's a very good method of promoting yourself through the best channels available to you, in one of the most credible fashions.

Of course I have a great example of this being done. Experience Commerce, a social media agency based in Mumbai, recently launched a new campaign for the Mitsubishi Cedia called The Great Driving Challenge. The campaign is described as "[a] kind of a reality show on the web; where web, mobile, travel, automobile and competition are nicely woven together".


The Great Driving Challenge is a competition where couples (1 male and 1 female) compete to win Rs1,000,000 by blogging and tweeting for 12 days while they are travelling. The campaign creates a huge amount of UGC all about Mitsubishi Cedia, including votes and testimonials about driving it. So ultimately when you go online and search for the car, what you see is a huge amount of complimentary reports. The campaign is also supported by a full suite of online and offline advertising, as well as a number of clever user interactive activations in shopping centers.

The benefit from a campaign like this is huge - if you have multiple people all creating content about your product or brand across a wide collection of Social Media platforms, you end up with more positive press and user endorsements then you can shake a stick at. In the case of Ireland you also have a method of utilising Social Media without the need for an extremely large population (and yes I know the population of India before anyone is too smart - but this type of campaign is not dependent on a huge population). The key to a campaign like this is to get on board that small, select, key group.

There is, however, a very important thing to consider. I cannot be bought, and I would hope that none of the other bloggers I know could be bought either. So if you expect me to write about your product or brand, expect an honest response. If your product or brand don't hold up, you may be facing a torrent of bad online coverage.