The Power of Human Energy

"There are 193 countries in the world, none of them are energy independent." So, why should you care? That's the question energy company Chevron Corp. is trying to get people to think about with their new integrated global advertising campaign. "Power of Human Energy," Chevron's new campaign, is all about engaging people in energy issues, while promoting Chevron's own energy efforts. The new campaign will launch in the U.S. on September 30 and internationally on October 5.

Four spots will appear on television in the U.S. and regionally in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, on channels such as CNNI, BBC, and Discovery. In addition to television spots, the campaign also includes print ads, online ads, and special events.

Chevron's campaign will debut in the U.S. as a two-and-a-half minute television spot entitled, "Untapped Energy," on CBS's "60 Minutes". This will be followed next by a series of 1-minute and 30-second television spots, which will be viewed globally. Regarding the theme of these commercials Chevron Corp. said that the ads will focus on the effect energy has on our lives and the commitment, ingenuity and responsibility Chevron practices to bring energy supplies to the market. You can check out their entire campaign including print, outdoor, and online elements here.

Chevron's biggest aim is to encourage education and participation on vital energy issues and decisions. This is evident when you visit their website willyoujoinus.com, which includes an extensive compilation of information that influences a lot of the present day challenges and an open on-going discussion on the most up-to-date issues.

It isn't a secret that energy demand is soaring at rates never before seen. In fact, according to Chevron's website, some say that in 20 years the world will consume 40% more oil than it does today. This is astounding, but unfortunately not that unbelievable. So I guess we have to make a decision: do we wait until crisis forces us to do something? or as Chevron aims, we can join together and commit to change. This is not an easy task, but the actions we take now mean incredible things for the future.

This open discussion, led by Chevron, will hopefully reshape energy use, or at least the way that we look at it. The interactiveness of the campaign is brilliant, because energy-use really is an issue we all have to deal with. The campaign brings education and awareness to the many important issues, while stressing that this is something we need to join together to solve. The time is now, says Chevron: corporations, governments and every citizen of this planet must be part of the solution as surely as they are part of the problem. It's all about a conversation, and it's time to start talking.

Information in this post came from this article.

New Outdoor Campaign that has Travelers Targeted

Starting next month, airline passengers around the world will be targeted with giant ads located underneath flying planes, most likely on the runways of some of the world's busiest airports. Each advertisement is twice the size of London's Trafalgar Square (or three football -- soccer-- fields together). World’s biggest ads network launched, an article posted on utalkmarketing.com explains that marketing company, Ad-Air, is offering the world's first in-flight outdoor advertising sites. Basically billboard space on the ground so big you can see the ad from the sky. This will give brands new exposure to a giant global audience through these massive digitally printed advertisements.

The first giant ad will be on display for 12 months in Dubai starting next month. After this, the company plans to have 42 sites in operation within the next year. The highest concentration of sites will be at London Heathrow and Dubai.

Ad-Air has spent the last five years researching and securing placement spots around the world's busiest airports. These include Paris, Madrid, Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing, and Bangkok. The plan is that each airport will have up to four placement sites.

According to the article, each advertisement will be held in a non-permanent frame just above ground level. They will be surrounded by fencing and landscaping to ensure that it is not a visible annoyance to local residents. To protect fertile land, the digital ads will be created out of a lightweight woven PVC mesh, which allows air and moisture through. This will decrease the environmental impact on land.

Ad-Air aims to reach a high quality audience of passengers. The best segment th
at will be reached through this new form of outdoor advertisement is the hard to reach business travelers who will be exposed at a moment when they have little to distract them.

In terms of cost, advertisers should expect to pay about $200,000 (£100,000) for production and $30,000 for installation. These numbers may seem absurdly high, but the number of passengers that could be exposed are even higher. For example, London Heathrow has had 67.5 million passengers pass through its terminals in the past year.

The article stresses that feedback from clients and agencies around the world has been extremely positive. I have to say I am not surprised. Advertising in this way is completely new and revolutionary. Marketers will be reaching their audience (millions of airline passengers) while they are free from the distraction of other marketing messages. This is a massive audience, bored with looking down at monotonous land below, who will be surprised to find a new creative billboard looking up at them. This will definitely expand into a powerful word-of-mouth campaign, which serves great to better reinforce the brand. If the creators can maintain their guarantees relating to the environment and the neighboring communities, then I think this plan could possibly pave the way to radical ideas in outdoor advertising. Digital advertisements you see from the sky while flying from London to do business in Dubai ... what next?

John Sharkey, Ad-Air chairman and former Managing Director of Saatchi & Saatchi, is extremely excited about the implications of this new form of outdoor advertising: “The launch of Ad-Air is one of those rare moments in advertising that really changes the face of the industry and the possibilities we can offer clients."

As the article notes, the kinks aren't all worked out yet: The ad areas are not floodlit, which effects exposure during the evening. This problem, they hope, will be addressed where legislation allows.

Read about it

Check it out for yourself

Global Marketing in 5 Steps

When companies attempt to expand their businesses into the global market, many times they are unsuccessful. Crystal Vilkatis, writer for Red Rocket Media Group, explains that it is because marketing efforts are not adapted to reflect the specific country's differing values, beliefs, and culture. In her article Global Marketing: 5 Steps to Succession, she suggests that companies need to change their marketing approach when working internationally. She introduces 5 steps that can help companies move to a global level and market internationally.

Her first vital suggestion, which encompasses all others: Research .. and research more. Market research is especially important when marketing internationally because the targeted audience is much different than previous audiences. Researching demographics is important to discovering where there is a want or need for the product.

Vilkatis stresses learning as much as possible about the country being marketed. Cultural differences have a significant impact on what messages are portrayed where. Countries can differ in so many ways. This includes language, religion, social structure, and education. There are also vast differences in values, preferences, tastes, and traditions. If, she says, one does not take the cultural differences into account then most likely their campaigns will be considered meaningless. This ineffectiveness can damage the credibility of the company.

Through research, Vilkatis suggests identifying important groups of consumers through market segmentation. This can be done through demographics, social factors, psychological traits, and any other purchasing behavior that sets a group apart. Once a segment is determined, a marketing mix that will appeal to them must be created. This unique mix contains choices about product attributes and various strategies for communicating the message, which includes distribution, pricing, and placement.

Vilkatis's forth suggestion requires looking at the world more as a single entity. Discovering similarities between consumers all over the world creates new segment groups who can be targeted in the same way. Values, age, and lifestyle choices are three traits that frequently translate into similar purchasing behaviors. If companies can do this then, in some cases, they can sell a standardized product worldwide using the same basic marketing mix.

Vilkatis final step requires a look into whether standardized advertising is the best option for the campaign. Using the same ads instead of developing new ones per country is a huge money saver and may yield more results, but streamlining a campaign to fit more than one country is no easy task. Cultural diversity makes it hard to develop one message that will be successful worldwide. Also standing in the way are various laws and regulations, which vary from country to country. Vilkatis points out that what might be acceptable in one country is illegal in another.

Vilkatis major suggestion, it appears, is to do your homework. Find out who you are targeting and what the best way to reach them is. If you're lucky, maybe the message can work in more then one place. The most important thing is finding how the product is needed or used and then attempting to reach the people who want it.

Read this article

Red Rocket Magazine

GOOGLE to the Moon

Through this blog I hope that you will gain insight into the global world of marketing and advertising. Advertising around the world is quite a broad topic. Technically I can talk about anything in the realm marketing or advertising going on in the entire world; this is an incredible amount of news and information, there are endless stories and new developments coming from every corner of the vast Earth. Certainly "Global" is about as far as marketing money can or should go, since market research doesn't even include the stratosphere, but what if I, or a company, were to think bigger then that? Bigger then the continents, the oceans, the entire planet. An article that I read recently reported that such a company is thinking this way. Internet supergiant Google is looking to expand their market out of this world and straight to the moon.

What better way to get your name out there then to shoot it to the moon?

In a Los Angeles Times article entitled, Google to Sponsor Space Race to the Moon, the company announced their desire to spur a modern day space-race. Google and the X Prize Foundation have teamed together to create Google Lunar X Prize. This competition will award as much as $30 million in prizes for landing unmanned rovers on the moon to perform certain tasks.

Although this spacey decision to spend investor dollars and corporate earnings on a race to the moon seems like a great way to waste money, Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co., sees it as a great move: "This will probably frustrate investors at first glance, but when they see what this does for the Google brand, I think they will get their money's worth. If you are going to do something creative with your marketing dollars, you might as well shoot for the moon -- literally."

So what exactly is Google's idea of creative marketing? The competition, open internationally, challenges participants to land an unmanned vehicle on the moon, have it travel at least 500 meters and beam video images and other information back to Earth. The first company to win the race by 2012 takes home $20 million. Additional incentives include at least $5 million in bonuses for finding lost relics from the U.S. Apollo landings or detecting water ice.

It is estimated that the cost of building and landing this type of rover is between $20 million and $40 million.

I will be honest, after reading this article, I initially questioned Google's thinking. This is a great marketing tactic, which will surely bring a lot of recognition to the already universal brand, but I have a hard time seeing the appeal of this type of space travel. I didn't realize companies would be interested in (without help from NASA) building their own (very expensive) rockets, launching into space and exploring. Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation, however, said that since the announcement of the contest, potential competitors have already surfaced. Apparently space travel has always been a popular hobby in Silicon Valley. There are numerous examples to illustrate this. Elon Musk, a founder of PayPal, has already worked to develop rockets through his company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Mogul Richard Branson and his Virgin Group have even begun plans for "Virgin Galactic", the first commercial spacecraft, and of course, we all know GoogleEarth, which has recently updated to include moonscape images. Google is also working to develop Moon 2.0, which will hopefully be a launching pad for solar system exploration.

Diamandis envisions this as a contest to potentially expand our current methods of space exploration: "Our hope is that the technology coming out of this will really spark a commercial revolution that will see new types of companies and new types of robotics used to explore the moon, asteroids and beyond."

So, my personal opinion would be that there are much better ways to spend over $100 million here on our own planet. There are parts of our global world now that could definitely use companies sponsoring new development and exploration, and recognition gained for playing a part in the global community can't be bad. From a marketing perspective, though, I can absolutely see the appeal of being "the first company in space", and for Google, there's nowhere left to go but up and away.

Read this article and more here.

Saatchi & Saatchi for Gordon Brown

The United Kingdom's Labour party has recently appointed agency Saatchi & Saatchi to handle its advertising for the next general election. "not flash, just Gordon." was Saatchi's winning pitch. Gordon Brown is the newly appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, rumored as planning to call a snap election.

Saatchi has had previous political experience, most notably they are credited with aiding Margaret Thatcher win the 1979 general election. "Labour isn't working" was their winning slogan for that campaign. Saatchi has ironically chosen to work with Labour party member Gordon Brown in a move that has been said to be "laced with irony and interest".

The campaign created for Margaret Thatcher turned Saatchi & Saatchi into a well-known agency, but founding brothers Maurice and Charles Saatchi have since left to set up rival firm M&C Saatchi.

Additional comments regarding the new account, delve into the company's move from Thatcher's conservatism and the liberalism of the Labour party. An editorial comment stated, "the idea of the agency that packaged Thatcherism turning its hand to Brownism is incredibly provocative." It seems that the motives for this move were probably not rooted in political ties. Representing a large general election means an incredible amount of exposure for an agency; although there is not much money in political accounts, the publicity generated is very valuable.

Robert Senior, Saatchi and Saatchi cheif executive, in comments made regarding the appointment said, "We have the opportunity to take the strength and conviction that Gordon Brown has shown as prime minister and apply our creativity to that to do the right thing for the country."

Read more on this, and other world news.

Multicultural Marketing 101

Marketing to a multicultural audience is no easy task. If you take a look to past campaigns and their attempts to fit a diverse group into a 30-second spot, you might be pleased to see that American advertising does have some ethnic variety. But take a closer look at multiple campaigns trying to make it work and you might start to see a pattern.

In the June 2007 Washington Post article, The Potholes of Multicultural Marketing, author Warren Brown points to current flaws in many American companies' attempts at expanding markets to reach a more international consumer. American companies attempting to make their products global are getting into trouble because, although there is diversity in advertisements, portrayals of our "melting-pot" society tend to look the same after a while.

Brown used cars to illustrate this point. Think back, if you can, to the last car commercial you saw. Now try to remember if the commercial featured racially mixed occupants driving in the car or truck. If yes, who was driving? Most likely, the driver was white and male. If the driver was female, she was probably white. Black or other occupants of color usually sit in the front passenger's seat, or they sit in the rear. Rarely do they sit behind the wheel.

This not so subtle but frequent attempt at inclusion has been called "Multicultural Marketing 101". Monique Tapie, communications director for Global Advertising Strategies, explains multicultural 101 as the marketing assumption that "all Asians are alike, that all African Americans are alike, that all Spanish-speaking people are alike, that we are all alike, which means that we're all mainstream, with "mainstream" still considered to be white."

We live in a country that doesn't want to offend anyone through mass media messages, which, in advertising, translates into, for lack of a better word, a formulated seating chart -- a woman here, man there, black person there, Asian here, Latino there. The purpose of this seating chart is an attempt to send the message that this company can be for anyone.
"We're being fair. We've included everybody. Buy from us."

To many, these types of ads are turnoffs. They are not being fair, and if one were to look deeply it could be seen that this seating chart places certain groups in a symbolically subordinate position. Multicultural Marketing 101 assumes that all Asians are from Japan, China, or Korea and all Spanish-speaking people are from Mexico. This method obviously does not yield the best results, and for those who have spent most of their lives trying to overcome discrimination, it can be aggravating to still be stuck in the passenger seat.

There are other strategies, which companies like Global Advertising are attempting. They rely on in-depth studies of cultural groups, differences within the groups, and how lucrative market segments can be found in these groups. It's a good idea to actually take a look inside these groups, instead of just considering them one entity with the same ideas, interests, and values. Ethnic marketing is not a matter of exploitation for profit, says Tapie. "It's simply a recognition that differences exist."

To make any marketing campaign successful, it's necessary to immerse yourself in information. Learn as much as you can about what you're selling and who you're selling it to because almost every humorous (or not so humorous) marketing mistake made through global campaigns could have been prevented through a bit more audience research.

Tapie finished her interview with The Washington Post pointing out that America is composed of different cultures. "If you plan to sell to those cultures," she says, "you better try to do a better job of understanding them."

Consumer 3.0: They aren't just like us

We are now living in a world that is more connected and instant then ever before. We are constantly being bombarded with media messages influencing almost all of the decisions that we make on a day to day basis. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported on media multitasking and America's youth and found that today's youth uses media in a much different way then any other cohort. This generation is all about media multi-tasking, using multiple forms of media and balancing more then one message all at the same time. For example, I am right now typing into my blog, listening to i-tunes, and checking my e-mail, all while the t.v. is on in the background. Now it may sound like a lot, but a media multi-tasker would not be that impressed because this is their norm. Introduce generation 3.0, as Peter Lauria calls them in a February 2007 issue of Media Magazine. Generation 3.0 is the new group of media multi-taskers growing up in our fast paced world, and they don't look like consumers at all. They are as much a creator as a consumer, as Lauria states, "Consumer 3.0 writes, edits, splices, shoots, and manipulates original or reproduced content".

Media is being used as a tool now to create identities for this generation's youth. Most kids have a myspace or a facebook, which instantly connects them to millions of people all over the world. On this page they can create, explore, or explain through their words, music, videos, and pictures their own personal identity.

So how do you reach or even just learn about an audience that knows how to use media maybe even better then you? I would say instead of learning how you can target this audience and make them listen to you, the industry should listen to them. Involve their work in projects, get them involved. This is a generation that doesn't just want to read about what's going on, they want to act, create, move. What better way then to stand aside and let them?

Welcome to my world.

We all live in the same world, and it is a world that is constantly becoming smaller and smaller. We have become increasingly globalized in almost all aspects of life. Business, Technology, Knowledge. In just one day, a person can take off in a cargo plane filled with chickens off of a dirt runway in one of the poorest countries in the world and 15 hours later land in New York City, one of the busiest wealthiest cities on this planet. No longer do we live isolated in our homes, our towns, our states, or even our countries. We have the option to be connected to any person from every small corner of the world to share our views, interests, experiences, and feelings on any subject we see fit to divulge.

This is a blog on global advertising. It is my purpose to inform you on what it is that's going on over there, wherever that is. In an expanding marketplace, advertising has the potential to create ties that can bond and networks that can connect. Here, I will show you how the industry is attempting just that.

We are members of the world and we should all embrace our citizenship, spread our compassion, and truly step into this globalized society.

Podcasts? Podcasts. Podcasts!

About a year ago iTunes began to feature a new download: podcasts. Seeing that it was free and not knowing what exactly this new feature was, I checked one out. I wasn't sure where to start, or what I wanted to listen to, so I quickly just choose to hear one fan's reaction to the season finale of the show "24". My original podcast experience did not leave me hooked on these homemade radio shows: I found them long, hard to follow, and too opinionated to have any real credibility. I also couldn't get the image of a lonely prime-time t.v. obsessed man sitting in his basement talking into a computer microphone, hoping someone would just listen. I was not impressed, and have not streamed a podcast since...

However, I was very recently asked to listen to an industry podcast (Marketing Edge byAlbert Maruggi) and really examine this quickly growing method of obtaining real industry information. I was ready to really see (or hear) how this new communication now fits into our constantly changing and expanding world. This experience gave me a different, more positive opinion of podcasts. I listened to two casts by Maruggi, and after spending the first few minutes wondering "what is this guy talking about?", I actually started to follow what he was saying. Maruggi has a very enthusiastic and easy to follow voice, and it is obvious he comes from a position of experience in the business. I also liked that he incorporated interviews with other experts, offering a dialogue that I could easily follow, while introducing multiple ideas and views on whatever topic he was discussing.

If I were to become an avid listener of podcasts, Maruggi offers an easy to follow option. He has broadcasted episodes on many topics ranging from health care to youtube, so he is obviously well informed. The casts I listened to were also relatively short, so I wasn't left bored and itching to close the tab and move onto something else. Finally, I liked how this information only required my listening ears, leaving my hands and eyes free to do other work while I listened. His information was very useful that I would go as far as suggesting listeners take notes.

So I may not be hooked on podcasts yet, but my second experience has definitely surpassed my first. I can now see how this new idea fits into the industry and adds to our ever evolving search for new information and ideas. Who knows, in a world where anyone can be an internet star, by my third listen I may start my own.