I have no idea if they’ll sell even one tampon, but P&G’s Tampax is the stealth sponsor of a series of viral videos that tell the story of a 16-year-old boy who wakes up with – uh – “girl parts.” And at least from an art point of view… they’re good. Click HERE if you do not see the ad below.
Leo Burnett created the campaign at Zack16.com. Its big link to the brand thus far is when our hero, Zack, gets his first period in French class and sneaks into the girl’s bathroom looking for a Tampax vending machine.
P&G calls it “a learning lab out on the net” that’s “not very heavily branded at all.” Hmm. And so far the videos aren’t a huge hit, with about 10,000 views in the past week on YouTube and elsewhere.
I really wanted to dislike this campaign and - if I were a P&G stockholder - I probably would. I also wonder if the best way to pitch tampons to young women is with stories about young men baking brownies, but what do I know? I hope it sells something.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the work of a good copywriter and have started following Zack on Twitter at @ZackJohnson16. He appears to be trying to figure out how to manage menstruating while at soccer camp.
Note: the “hovers like a UFO” comment is from the Day 3 video. Really – these are pretty humorous.
Here’s a quick post about an article about Disney in the The New York Times today.
The piece is all about a Disney researcher considered to be “the kid whisperer.” Her job is to help the company understand the needs, wants and desires of boys age 6 to 14, and then use this information to drive incremental revenue. While 40% of the audience for Disney Channel is male, for example, girls continue to drive an outsized percentage of (merchandise) sales.
The article follows Kelly Peña as she walks through boys’ homes, unearthing insights such as – while a 12 year old is trying to be tough and mature – he still as stuffed animals on his bed.
While in-home anthropological research is becoming de rigueur in consumer packaged goods, it’s a pretty big deal in the entertainment space, where executives or creatives often believe they “know the target” and pursue a product development process not necessarily informed by real people and their real behavior.
This is a huge simplification, but there is a fundamental difference in both B2B and B2C companies alike that build something new by starting with their customer target’s belief systems and behavior vs. those who start with the best product development process. I was trained in customer segmentation – start with the consumer (or business target) – and build “to suit” – but not everyone is.
If pursued with rigor, I think this type of development work could be extremely helpful to the process of creating new entertainment vehicles and entertainment-inspired merchandise.
Pity the poor retailer right now.
Enormous job losses. Foreclosures. Homelessness rising most quickly among families with children. Fast-disappearing credit card pitches and credit limits dropping on the cards already out there. Selling toys and other kid gizmos is not the happiest business to be in right now.
Kmart obviously knows this, and is pulling out all the stops to get holiday shoppers into its stores and on to its website ASAP. The Sears Holdings-owned chain has launched a Disney-themed “Wish & You Could Win” sweepstakes seven weeks before Black Friday. It is also publishing holiday circulars and newspaper inserts already.
All this produced in me only a fleeting ”this-stuff-starts-earlier-and-earlier-every-year” eye roll - until I saw Kmart’s new TV ads – promoting layaway. Layaway?? Now? I think that this is truly repugnant. A low blow. Apparently most others agree, given that Kmart is one of the few remaining national retailers to offer the service. Wal-Mart and Target discontinued their own layaway services in 2006. Perhaps because such programs prey on the poor? After all, the idea of layaway actually rose to popularity… during the Great Depression.
Suzy Orman is going to have a coronary when she finds out about this…
Word to Kmart: Santa has class, and only wants to bring toys that parents can actually afford. KmartKmart layaway
Title: Stephanie Fierman Goes to… Wal-Mart?
Subtitle: Retailers making the grand gesture to heed consumer concerns in the face of a depression got it goin’ on
As The Wall Street Journaldetailed just today, retailers are slashing prices and discounting like crazy in the face of shrinking consumer demand. Too bad most of these promotions aren’t working. Enter the grand gesture… and I’ve seen two retailers do it particularly well recently.
The winner thus far has to be Wal-Mart, with its announcement last week that it’ll be pricing several top toys at $10 for the holiday season. Both Target and KB Toys scrambled to follow with their own cuts, even adding items to the discounted list… alas, too late to get the spotlight. One of the most important people in my life is rabidly negative about Wal-Mart: its politics, its employee policies, its chilling effect on local commerce… She’s never been in one and never planned to go. When this announcement was made, the earth stopped rotating, pigs started flying and she said that, if she had kids, this promotion would get her into a Wal-Mart. That’s serious success.
The second smart promotion I noticed recently comes from KFC, where marketing is now led by Javier Benito, formerly of Coca-Cola and Starwood. KFC has introduced the Value Meal, a “complete and affordable meal for today’s value and time-conscious families,” consisting of seven pieces of chicken, one large side order and four biscuits. The twist here is that the marketing campaign challenges consumers to create the same meal for under $10 on their own. The TV commercial highlights a mom and her two kids moving through the grocery store trying to replicate the meal (at the butcher counter, the little girl exclaims, “7 pieces of chicken is HOW MUCH??”).
While the ad has generated a lot of buzz online from (mostly) women saying that they could beat this challenge any day of the week, it’s… generated a lot of buzz online. I think it has good potential to break through an awful lot of clutter.
Both of these are examples of retailers thinking outside the box and swinging broadly toward the outfield. Just because you have a bat, doesn’t mean everything has to look like the same old ball.
Most people think that comic book fans are all single men who either live in their parents’ basements and/or have entire rooms filled with action figures.
It’s not true. Some of them are married (budumbum!).
But seriously folks… I’m not going to share proprietary research here, but chicks are a growth business in the comics world. I met plenty of great women during my years at DC Comics who love comics and graphic novels, and manga has only fueled female awareness in the US. Several recent superhero movies, such as Ironman and The Dark Knight, have also featured storylines and characters that made them watchable for a widening swath of women.
So it’s only sensible that Marvel would come out with an updated line of Halloween costumes for women. This is a really smart, fun idea that will bring new customers into the fold and get devotees to ditch their handmade Spider-Girl costumes in favor of a “real” one. One-third of adults say they plan to buy costumes for themselves this year, with 62.5% of women saying they plan to celebrate the holiday vs. 54.7% of men. and the witch thing is so old-school.
The costumes will not only sell, but they also give Marvel additional moderately-priced SKUs to position at mass retail.
I spent most of my childhood trying to get out of going to Sunday school. One of my companions in this weekly endeavor was Davey and his dog, Goliath, of the show of the same name.
“Davey and Goliath” first aired in 1960. It was produced by Clokey Productions, Inc., creators of Gumby, for the United Lutheran Church of America (ULCA). Dick Sutcliffe, a former newspaper reporter working in Manhattan for the ULCA, was the person who got the idea to use stop-motion animation to teach gentle lessons about G-d and being a good person.
Davey and his best friend, Jonathan, was one of the first interracial friendships appearing on television. The show has been translated into 40 languages and broadcast on every continent except Antarctica.
And, come on: who could resist a talking dog that only its owner could hear?
Dick Sutcliffe died at the age of 90 on May 11, 2008.
In yet another tribute to “retromarketing,” PBS is reviving The Electric Company, a ’70s skit show that was all the rage when I was a kid.
TEC was way cool, as I recall. PBS broadcast 780 episodes from 1971 to 1977. The show continued on in reruns until 1985 and, to date, DVD boxes sets have been tremendously popular. Even iTunes has already gotten in on the action that introduced Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno (“Hey you guyyyys!”) to the elementary school set.
Exactly what can bring a dead media brand to life is the subject of an article in The New York Times Magazine. Familiarity, positive associations and loyalty that transcends a currently available physical product (or, in TEC’s case, a show) are certainly key measures. In a crowded marketplace, though, I would imagine that a creator’s confidence that it can not only revive loyalty to the existing format but create revenue streams that may not have been available the first go-’round. Since the Internet, video on-demand and the overall home entertainment business were not widely accepted consumer propositions in the 70′s, I’d say that PBS has a good shot.
P.S. Could “Come on and zoom, zoom, zoom, zooma zoom!” be far behind?
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the work of a good copywriter and have started following Zack on Twitter at @ZackJohnson16. He appears to be trying to figure out how to manage menstruating while at soccer camp.
