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by: Will Murai
I have never seen someone use Corel Paint so effectively. This piece as well as many others are on display at Will’s website WillMurai.com. They are unique because each work shows you something new every time you look at it. Check them out, you will see what I mean.
Have you ever watched Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central? He is a daily case study on how to talk to teenagers and 20-somethings alike. He has the power to get his “nation,” as he calls it, to rally behind him for whatever cause he chooses. Case in point, the WristStrong Bracelet. He recently broke his wrist and is now promoting wrist awareness through the purchase of a WristStrong Bracelet. The only rule is that you must surrender it to someone more famous then you. Pure Genius.
Another example is his gag on Wikipedia. He got his “nation” to go to the infamous website and edit the Elephant post so that it said that the population had tripled in Africa last year. For months after, both his wiki entry and the elephant post were locked by the administrators because of the resulting attack. You’d almost think that getting through to teens was easy based on how well he can connect with them.
Colbert Green Screen Challenge
His target audience loves his monologues lampooning this person or that person. They love his challenges that get people involved in the show like this one and this one. He has a venerable teen nerd army that he bends to his will.The best part is that those examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
Between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, they can sway the opinion of many youngsters around North America.But how should the rest of the world go about it? Sure it works for Colbert and his team of writers but how about your average run-of-the-mill marketing person?
In my humble opinion, the Colberts and Stewarts of the world work because they thoroughly understand their audience. And I mean, thoroughly. I can’t vouch for their research practices but whatever they are doing is working. All I can suggest is that you watch the show, just once. Even if you don’t like it, you will be able to grasp why teens and 20-somethings are enthralled by it.
Marketers have their research and their man-on-the-street consumer interviews and many think that is enough. But after all that nonsense is done, we still get mediocre advertising that screams “We’re trying to be cool!” Just look at my post on Walmart/Target yesterday. I know I am preaching to the choir about this issue but the fact remains that, like the quote says, “I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted … I just don’t know which half.”
I’ll bet that a lot of the waste was meant for the youth demographic.
Check out the following for some non-traditional applications of advertising. Some good, some bad.
An Adrants reader who wishes to remain anonymous for fear the reader’s common sense might offend the twisted logic of most in this industry who love to spew meaningless blather in pitches and on their websites wrote:
“My personal POV is that there have to be big clients out there who are so sick of hearing marketing blather and buzzword blah blah blah from agencies that they would welcome a straight approach like this:
‘Hi. I’m SomeGuy from ABC Marketing Shop LLC. I’m not here to BS you. Why you might want to talk to us:
1. Me and my team aren’t any smarter than anyone else. But, we’re good people and easy to work with.
2. We’ll take you to Vegas or wherever and buy some nice dinners and good wine, and collectively do some decent work.
3. We won’t waste your time and money with our proprietary planning horseshit or that type of thing.
4. With your help (you are the experts in your business after all), we will come up with our best guess as to what will work and go with it, and adjust on the fly.
5. You won’t have to worry about budget creep, cost over-runs, unexpected invoices and all that crap. Decent work, nice people, low stress.’”
Is honesty and common sense too much to ask?
Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam did up this little documentary on their Coca Cola Happiness Factory spot. Reminds me of the shorts that Dreamworks always does before their movies. It’s very cool, take a look!
Update: Check out this Mini movie forwarded to me by Tim Keil.
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