As seen on TV: Big branding. Sort of.

Google, one of the biggest brands to never have done a TV spot, finally can't resist. Of course, these masters of all media have a reason: Google TV Ads service.

Here's the ad, a repurposed 'video' that some folks in the Japanese office threw together to promote the Chrome browser:

So far, more than the home cooked ad has been seen more than 2 million times on YouTube. But starting last weekend, it's supposedly airing on regular TV.

So What?

Like so many other Googleys, Google TV ads is all about driving out the middleman. Or rather, replacing multiple middle-earthlings (middlings?) with a superior Google machine form.

In this case, Google TV ads makes you the media planner and buyer, enabling you to select demographic qualities of your target and match that with cable programming and schedules. Then, Google connects you with 'Ad creation suppliers' (the middlings formerly known as 'agencies'), many of whom list their standard creation price.

Don't need custom advertising tied to objectives? Create your own advertising using Google's Spotmixer...a template + stock solution.

But wait, there's more! You get to set your bid for maximum CPM and daily budget costs...interestingly the minimum bid for one thousand impressions is $0.50. And finally, you get to steward your media buy with daily data on what ran, where, and how many impressions were actually delivered.

See the whole product demo here. See prior posts on soon-to-be-Google's lunch DIY ad solutions here and here.

Of course this may not be the solution for a big brand that needs the thoughtful, objectives-driven advertising that we've come to love and adore. Then again, there's nothing like a little deflationary pressure (one of our five themes for 2009) to make what was once laughable, serious...sort of...like Google on TV.

Homegrown advertising: Beating the pros at their own game?

The festivities for Super Bowl Ex-El-aye-aye-aye (isn't the Roman empire dead?) have begun. The teams have imposed curfews on their players (as game prep or PR risk-management strategy I'm not sure). The city of Tampa is decked out to welcome its own sports-infused economic stimulus package...and all of America awaits the informal holiday that has become the Super Bowl...and no Super Bowl would be complete without at least a few memorable ads.

In the democratization of America's last bastion of collective advertising attention, Doritos returns with it's own version of the Super Bowl ad prize...Crash the Super Bowl.

This year's prize of $1 million goes to the winner if their advertisement finishes atop the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter. That's a lot of coin riding on a creative brief that's, well, brief:

"CREATIVE ASSIGNMENT: Here’s the deal. Think of an idea for a DORITOS® brand commercial. Not just any idea, but one worthy of being called the best of the Super Bowl. Maybe it’s an action-packed story about the first time you tried DORITOS® brand Tortilla Chips. Maybe it reveals what life is like for the spices on the surface of the chip. Anything. Make the video that would knock you out of your seat if you were watching the Super Bowl. Make it yours.

Shoot it. Submit it. Make it as one of five finalists and win $25,000. Then, if America votes it their favorite, your video will be aired as a DORITOS® commercial during Super Bowl XLIII. But that’s not all. If your ad gets the top spot on the USA TODAY Ad Meter, we’ll give you a $1,000,000 bonus. Sound good? We thought so. Criteria for the USA TODAY Ad Meter is determined solely by USA TODAY, which is not affiliated with this promotion in anyway."

So what?

Doritos isn't the only company to attempt to engage customers and unaffiliated creatives. Heinz Ketchup's TopThisTv, Miller's Life is What You Pour Into It competition, and others all cast a wide net in the style of America's Funniest Videos: you do the content, we'll pay for the winners...no traditional ad agency need apply. A key element of most of these approaches is that they involve some form of popularity contest (via voting).

Amateur advertising comports with at least one of our five themes for 2009: Testing in the real world.

How so? Amateur ad competitions give advertisers a low-cost way to develop, test and adapt ad concepts in the real world. And then, using engagement-via-voting (or lack of it), advertisers get to determine just what rings resonant with the marketplace...a focus group of self-identifying, self-selecting thousands...or millions?

The winners may not rise to the status of high art branding, but the continued devaluation of that approach to advertising may make the issue of no concern...either way, the advertisers running the competition don't have much loot at risk...and financial risk is certainly something to be managed diligently.

Questions in search of a point of view:

What, if any, risk to the brand exists in amateur ad competitions like Doritos'?

Steelers in a 20-point blowout?

Buying in: Why we desire brands

Buying in: The secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are is the latest offering (in book form) from NYTimes consumer columnist Rob Walker.

In his talk, Walker sought to give his view of why we (as consumers) desire some brands over others. And while no definitive answer emerged from his talk or the questions that followed, he did articulate rational and emotional elements that he beleives influence people's attachment of an idea to a thing (aka branding):

The 4 (and a half) rational qualities that impact consumers decisions include:

• Price
  
• Qualtiy
  
• Convenience
  
• Pleasure...
  
• and maybe ethics (provided it doesn;t require a sacrifice in the first four).
  

Where it gets messy is, of course, the emotional side of the equation. Walker beleives from his interviews and research that the ideas being attached to brands today are so much bigger than ever before. Not merely content to have 'the highest quality soap' as an idea, we attach ideas about body image or global sustainability. 

The marketing world of attaching ever bigger ideas to everyday consumption has created an arms race of ever increasing clutter of ideas. Which leads to another change: a lack of rules is what makes a brand succeed in this environment. Rules about media mix, demographics and the like have to be thrown out or at least deviated from for success. 

At the end of the brand, people make it their own, regardless of what the marketers would like it to mean (e.g., Pabst Blue Ribbon)

To support this notion, the speaker cited several examples of the handmade/authenticity movement or, as he repeatedly referred to it, the 'scene'.

In this scene, big companies cozy up to small ones to get credibility...think Kohl's and Tony Hawk or methamphibians and counterculture-friendly sneakers. Other examples include the handmade marketplace online at ETSY.com

The web didnt make these people creative, they were already that way ;-) It's just enabled them to reach a small, economically viable audience for their work. Freedom of the press no longer being limited to those with the ability to afford one.

Rob submits that consumers don;t want to talk about your brand, they want to talk about their own brands. A term he calls 'murketing'. More on this is available at a site he publishes called Murketing.com

The Anti-Brand: Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto 4 is now in stores. For all the unseemly elements of the GTA game series, it does go to great pains to incorporate parody and, one might even say, satire into the GTA world.

Though I find myself now less enamored of immersive, virtual world/games like GTA, Runescape and Second Life, they do present unique opportunities for hiding humor bombs in the nooks and crannies of the game space. And here comes GTA4 with a satiric smack at one of the decades most revered brands: Apple.

The references play mostly on the perception of some that Apple is a brand for effete elitists.

More screen grabs and description at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

So what?

It's just a game...for gamers. Except that this game is anticipated to sell nearly 13 Million units this year. And with distribution like that for what is arguably as immersive an online experience as it gets, one wonders where a brand's loyalties might be found...or found lacking...in the minds of GTA4 players.

The GTA4 Apple easter egg also reminds me that for any brand that becomes 'fashionable' there will inevitably be a counter-fashion that seeks to think different.

UPDATE 5/7/08: GTA4 delivers $500 Million in sales in the first week...6 million units of the game...that's a lot of engagement anyway you look at it.