Heineken's Bottle Design Contest

Check out this article from AdAge:

What's New Facebook?

With the new upgrade of Timeline unrolling on Facebook, that is not the only change the new year holds.

From the beginning of Facebook, the goal was for the site to be free for all users. With a upkeep cost of $1 billion per year, the only way to keep the site running is to take advantage of advertising.

With the IPO (initial public offering) of Facebook in a couple of months, it is no surprise that they are looking for a new way to add revenue. How are they doing this? Sponsored stories.

What are sponsored stories? To understand sponsored stories, one must first understand Facebook ads. With regular ads on Facebook, a business creates an ad. If you have liked the business’s page, then the story about you liking the page may be paired with ad for your friends to see. With sponsored stories, a business pays Facebook to feature existing posts and activity that mention the business. Like Facebook ads, they’re only visible to friends you’ve already shared this information with.  These stories will also look like other unsponsored stories appearing in your news feed, however they will be identified with a “sponsored” link.

What does the rollout entail?  According to Ms. Ta, a Facebook spokesperson, only a select number of advertisers will be participating in the rollout and users will only see, at most, one sponsored story in their daily news feed during the launch. Goals of this launch are to increase presence of marketers of Facebook and to increase visibility of ads to Facebook users. These goals go hand-in-hand, with an increase of visibility to users comes an increase of marketers wanting their ads seen.

How does this affect mobile? While sponsored stories won’t appear on Facebook mobile until late March, they will no doubt be featured.

Sponsored stories in users’ news feeds have been anticipated and is an obvious step for the company in terms of generating revenue and competing with other mediums as a legitimate placement for advertising.

Will users question the “cool” factor of Facebook now that they are adding even more ads? Will users opt-out of using the site and force Facebook into the “has been” category with MySpace? Will users even care? We will see what happens as the rollout occurs and as Facebook goes from a private to public company.

Some may ask, is this even legal? What about our privacy? Well, you can read Eric Goldman’s discussion of the California privacy lawsuit against Facebook here: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2011/12/facebook_sponso.htm

Sources: 

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-start-placing-ads-user-news-feeds-january/231691/

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-sponsored-stories-ads-2011-12

http://www.facebook.com

Beats by Dr. Dre: What's the Hype?

Lately, I have been seeing these headphones EVERYWHERE. They are the new “it” item with twenty-somethings and those who want to be twenty-something flocking to get them and show them off.

From what I have read, Dr. Dre worked with Monster Cable and Robert Brunner, an industrial designer in order to perfect the headphones, a process that took over two years.

Part of the appeal of Beats headphones is no doubt the name attached to them- the marketing and with Dre and Monster Cable behind it. However, most reviews praise the sound quality of the headphones, commenting on how the listener can hear new aspects of the same songs they have been listening to, often as the artist intended for the song to be heard. The headphones, while also noise-cancelling, pick up on otherwise unheard parts of music, for example crowd noise in live versions of songs.

Features:

• Large speaker drivers and high-power digital amplifier for deeper bass, smooth highs, and clear vocals
• Isolation technology that cuts external noise
• Larger ear-cups for comfort
• Monster iSoniTalk headphone cable that has an answer button, allowing the listener to answer calls while listening to music
• Monster Cable headphone cable with Quadripole 4 twisted pair construction reduces signal loss for balanced sound and clarity
• Scratch-resistant gloss finish
• * The foldable Beats headphones offer a compact minijack connector to reduce bulk and an integrated mute button

Now, the headphones come in limited edition colors such as silver, pink, and orange. They offer over-ear and in-ear headphones, as well as speakers and an artist series features headphones connected to Diddy, Lady Gaga, and Lebron James.

Beats Audio has partnered with HP to produce laptops and desktops that have high quality speakers:

With so many places to get the headphones (Best Buy, f.y.e., Apple, Target, Amazon, Dell, and even Walmart) its easy to pick them up.

OK, so how much are these things going to cost me? Well, there are a few models of the headphones, they are pretty much right around $300- $350, which I admit is a little pricey, but apparently well worth it.

They must be doing something right if they have a warning right on their website about counterfeit beats headphones.

Lastly, let’s take a look at the who’s who wearing Beats:

Sources:

Beatsbydre.com

Geek.com/articles/gadgets/review-beats-by-dre-headphones-20080730/

apple.com

Advertising on Facebook

How does advertising on Facebook work?

1)    The Like Button

a.     When someone visits your site, they can simply click on the Like button to show they like and support your page. This enables posts from your page to show up on their wall. Also, their friends have the opportunity to see that they liked the page and check it out.

2)    Fan Pages

a.     Fan pages allow you to promote a business, website, cause, place- pretty much anything. To set up a fan page you can just log into your Facebook account and click on the “Account” menu. Then click on “Manage Pages” and Facebook will guide you through the set up process.

b.     Pages can contain a lot of information such as the website URL, address, telephone number, products you sell, photos, news updates, etc. Good fan pages are a great way of attracting attention and visitors to your website.

3)    Facebook Ads

a.     These ads can be clicked on, “liked,” or made to disappear. Facebook ads can be set up as a pay per click or pay per impression, but are different from most PPC ads because they have pictures. It is important to have a good picture as this is what draws the audience in. If you use the pay per click method then the price you pay for your ad will vary based on how successful your ad is and the higher the click through rate, the lower your cost per click.

b.     How does Facebook know what ads might interest me? Well, when you set up an ad in Facebook, you can chose the demographics of the people that you want to show the ad to. The target audience can be narrowed down by age, sex, location, interests, etc. In that way, Facebook ads can be more targeted than Google AdWords or Yahoo Ads.

c.     Before setting up your Facebook Ad make sure you read how the auction for Facebook ads works. Basically, you bid on the ad the amount that you are willing to spend per click or thousand impressions on that ad. A bid range is then suggested based on how much other advertisers are willing to pay for the same target audience. Past performance history of the ad as well as the quality of the ad are also taken into account.

d.     Also Facebook doesn’t allow some types of ads, so be sure to check that your ads follow Facebook’s policies.

Coca-Cola’s Australian Campaign: “Share a Coke”

I just returned from an amazing semester abroad in the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia at Griffith University. Aside from classes, I spent my time at the beach and exploring. I’m not a big soda drinker, but this campaign by Coca-Cola convinced me to buy a couple bottles for my friends.

The “Share a Coke” summer campaign offers customers in Australia Coke bottles with different names printed on them. The names replace the Coca-Cola logo. There are 150 names available that are supposed to represent a cross section of the Australian population. They are popular names in Australia, making sure to take into account the ethnic population. 

Not only can you share a Coke from the grocery store or a ‘servo’ (gas station), you can share a virtual Coke on their Facebook page.

Here are their "Share a Coke" commercials:

 -  Share a Coke with Matt:

- Share a Coke with your Pop:

- Share a Coke with Kate:

- Share a Coke with Luke:

- Share a Coke with Alex:

- Share a Coke with Jess:

- Share a Coke with Laura:

- Share a Coke with Steve:

- Share a Coke with your Nan:

- Share a Coke with Tom:

- Share a Coke with Rob:

- Share a Coke with your Sis:

- Share a Coke with your Bro:

- Share a Coke with Mel:

- Share a Coke with Dave:

While most of the commercials are very similar, they each offer a personal touch, compelling the audience to "Share a Coke." I think this campaign works really well. At first I thought it was stupid, but I saw people buying Cokes just because they had the name of someone they new on them. Out to eat, I watched a girl grab a Coke, then put it back in the cooler and grab another one which had the name of her boyfriend on it and present it as a gift to him. My friend also tried to make amends with one of my roommates by placing a Coke with her name on it outside of her door. I have never seen her so excited. 

If only they would bring this campaign to the US.

Denver Water Ads: Use Only What You Need

The campaign carried out by Denver Water has been promoting water conservation through using only what they need in their advertisements too, from park benches and billboards to bus and taxi ads.

Denver Water is committed to helping people reduce the amount of water they use on a regular basis by encouraging the conservation of water through limited the use of sprinklers, full flush toilets, leaving faucets running, etc. 

Here are all of their ads: enjoy!