Some say Starbucks can no longer depend on WOM alone. Some say Starbucks has saturated the market. Either way, I think their new TV campaign is really cute. It’s not too intrusive and it doesn’t even talk about products. So, I say congratulations to Starbucks (and their agency, W+K).
However, critics bring up a good point – the ads lack identity. They could probably be used for some other brand and still work. It makes me wonder how effective the campaign will be in increasing sales/store visits.
Nike’s ads for the U.S. Women’s World Cup team star Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight on The Office. I don’t see any connection, and I don’t think they’re funny. I assume they were trying to get a certain target interested in watching women’s soccer games. Maybe an older more professional audience? I think they could have involved the players more as actresses in the ads. This would allow America to get to know them better. Or maybe Nike doesn’t really want America to know the players – they are the ‘The Greatest Team You’ve Never Heard Of.’
Filed under: ads
I saw this ad in the subway coming home from work one day. I studied it so intensely that other people started looking at it to see what it was. I even took a picture of it with my phone. The ad shows “The Affluencers”, a packaged guy and girl who are the perfect ‘frontrunner’ segment. The bottom of the ad says, “Most affluent + most influential + most engaged viewers = THE AFFLUENCERS” which is followed by the tagline, “Watch what happens when you buy Bravo.” At first, I thought – how cool, they’re advertising to me, a media planner! I have never seen an ad targeting media buyers and planners. But as I continued to think about it, I began to wonder how effective this would really be. Would this ad be enough to convince a media maven to buy on Bravo’s network? Then, I started to wonder whether Bravo was trying to kill two birds with one stone. Are they targeting both media planners and television viewers? Maybe the ad will make up-and-coming ‘affluencers’ think, “Hmm…I want to be that girl in the barbie-style packaging…maybe I should be watching Bravo.” I never really decided how I felt about the ad. By the time my train came I left confused and unaware of Bravo’s intention. What do you think?
