AdSponge

I hate writing posts where I slam people for shitty work because ‘What do I know?’ I don’t really have much experience. But sometimes the criticism is warranted. Take for example the many blunders from Yum Brands.

Most recently, they requested 50 Cent to change his name to 79, 89 or 99 Cent for a day to help promote T-Bell’s new value menu. The payoff? A pathetic $10,000 donation to a charity of 50’s choice. Are you kidding me? Anyone with the financial stability of 50 Cent is going to laugh at your offer; they’d rather donate the 10K to charity to have Taco Bell leave them the hell alone.

But this isn’t the first piece of excellent work on Yum’s behalf. Oh no, KFC offered Rihanna and Chris Brown free wings if they showed up at one of their stores.  Wonder what dinosaur thought of that gem. I just can’t believe how that ridiculously prejudicial idea even made it to the editors.

One last beaut, apparently KFC also offered to donate $260,000 to its own educational foundation if an NFL player ‘flapped their wings’ in the end zone during the Super Bowl. Glad to see it takes an act of stupidity by someone else for Yum to donate money to their own foundation.

To Yum’s credit, they did plan one decent promotion of late. During March Madness, if a bottom-seeded team advanced to the Final Four, Pizza Hut would give away free pizza to that campus. Of course, this feat has never been achieved, and likely never will. I don’t love this promotion, but it doesn’t place the brand in a compromising position, and even aligns the brand with underdog teams which I don’t think occurs enough.

I’m all about donating money through creative avenues, and I know you can’t just give all your profits away on a whim, but these acts of stupidity leave me wanting to avoid being associated with their brands.

I pulled the vitals of this post from an article on Ad Age. Give them some love too!

Turns out, I have internet access here in Arkansas which I really didn’t expect. I’m in a somewhat remote area of the Ozarks on Bull Shoals Lake. Its been freaking hot so far- mid 90’s yesterday and today, so I’m making use of my time inside enjoying the AC.

Going along with the vacationing/leisurely theme, Ad Age today had a delightful article about agencies with bars at their offices. Personally, I think its a pretty sweet deal if you happen to work there. In creative settings, I could imagine a few after-work drinks actually stimulating some great dialouge between co-workers, and who knows maybe the next great campaign could come from it. If not, who cares- you are creating value for your staffers and allowing them to connect outside of the work environment. I wouldn’t choose an agency specifically if they had a bar or not, but it would probably tip the scales on similarly matched shops.

I’ll be on vacation this coming week, so look for new AdSponge posts starting Monday, July 28. Have a great week!

My girlfriend and I were at Lincoln Park Zoo Tuesday evening, and had a bit of a confrontation with a security guard on duty. We had spent most of the day at North Avenue Beach, and decided to walk through the Zoo to end our day. Lincoln Park Zoo is free and there are many gates where you can freely walk in. These gates have no signage indicating hours or any Zoo information. Blissfully ignorant, we walked into the park to enjoy the animals on display.

Only about half an hour in, a not-so friendly security guard began yelling at us ‘The park is closed!’ We really didn’t expect the Zoo to be closing when it did, but whatever. We kept walking through to begin finding an exit, and the guard kept yelling. ‘You can’t go that way! What are you doing? The park is closed!’ Not understanding why we couldn’t continue on, we kept walking. ‘Hey! That gate is closed!’ referring to a gate a few hundred feet away that we hadn’t even noticed. During all this yelling, she was following us like we were 5th graders on a field trip. After being thwarted by a locked gate, we really were lost for direction. Luckily, a patrolling police officer came to our aid, as he had witnessed some of our verbal beating.

In 10 seconds of conversation, the police officer was absolutely more helpful (and friendly) than the security guard had been for over a minute. The officer told us where exactly to exit the Zoo, and did not yell for going the ‘wrong way’.

So what does this have to do with business, and more importantly marketing? Well, during the guard’s yelling, my first reactions were actually thinking how uneffective her communication was. She offered no assistance, no insight to a solution, and basically had us going in circles. Sound like anyone’s marketing? Maybe customer service has acted this way before? The point being made here is to focus on your communications; is what you’re saying effective? Does it offer support, guidance and insight to a customer’s solution? If not, you may just be coming across as rude, ignorant or stupid, and your customers will go elsewhere without thinking.

On a mission to kill off the dinosaurs, Strawberry Frog prides itself on being more creative and flexible than most in advertising. A post on their blog Viva La Revolucion highlights recent social media efforts for Toyota’s Scion brand. The post does a nice job of spelling out simple strategies when using social media and offers concrete examples Strawberry Frog implemented for Scion. The post begins pointing out reasons social media fails;

To date, social-media marketing is usually a failed concept because brands engage in practices that are alienating to users, and do not provide useful services to them. Social-media marketing also tends to fall between the cracks because it is so new and it is not funded properly.

Several examples follow. Here’s my favorite;

Create social-media content; don’t advertise on it. If you’re not providing content, ensure that you are providing a useful service. Social media helps people manage their social lives. It enables them to do something they are already interested in. It gives them the tools to allow for this. Social media provides a service—information, connection points, etc.

The MLB is selling the Authentic Stars and Stripes hats that are being worn by teams this weekend, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Welcome Back Veterans Fund. The hats are available in all 30 teams, so don’t be afraid to show your national and team pride in one fell swoop, and feel good that some of the proceeds are going to a very worthy cause. Click the screen shot to go to the MLB store.

I would like to wish everyone a safe and enjoyable 4th of July! Gotta rest up for a big week coming up- Nascar comes to town next weekend, which means the week will be filled with checking out show car and driver appearances around the area, Pole Day and a Gretchen Wilson concert on Thursday, and all day Friday at the track for the Nationwide Series race.

See ya’ll on Monday!

p.s. The theme of AdSponge is in limbo, and a permanent theme should be coming sometime next week.

Can’t say I’m surprised by the news that Starbucks is closing 600 stores nationwide. First of all, they were over expanding to the point of cannibalizing other stores, but were OK with it as long as consumers were still drinking Starbucks coffee.

In college, we spent a lot of time reading case studies about Starbucks. They were sort of the ideal company; great growth strategy (we thought), unbelievable brand strength and even admired for being a good employer. Starbucks apparently over-estimated their domestic growth capabilities, and it wound up biting them. We don’t know a lot about the closings yet, but we do know that most of the 600 stores were opened since the beginning of fiscal year 2006. To me, this suggests poor location decisions. Whether opening in new, unproven communities or blanketing existing locations, these stores did not have the customer base to support them and even dragged down other successful locations. The tanking economy doesn’t help either.

Unfortunately, the real loser in all of this is the 12,000 or so employees that will soon be jobless. Starbucks does hope to relocate many of these employees to continuing locations. Lets hope they do!

Overall, I think Starbucks will rebound from their recent struggles. Their ‘return to their roots‘ strategy will pay off in the long run as Starbucks redeems itself as the world’s best coffee experience. I also like their new WiFi agreement with AT&T, as well as the Starbucks iTunes music store. Their brand is strong enough to carry them, and new innovations such as iPhone ordering is just awesome.