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If You Want Me To Sing In Public You’ll Have To Do Better Than A Free Coke
Coca-Cola has long been associated with the holidays: from polar bears with questionable diets, to the myth that the company created our modern image of the man in red. But this year the company’s Christmas marketing efforts completely miss the mark. Instead of turning caffeine addicts into spies for a free bottle of sugar water, Coke vending machines in Europe are giving out free soft drinks in exchange for karaoked Christmas carols.
Anybody Who Uses Buzzwords To Describe Technology Should Be Zapped
Synergy! Gamification! Likes! Viral! They’re all awful bullshit buzzwords that marketing folks love to use to spin their product. The words sound really nice coming out of your mouth but they don’t mean anything. If you can only describe your product with buzzwords, you already screwed up.
What’s It Like To Spend One Minute As James Bond?
Most marketing stunts are just plain annoying, but every once in a while one comes along that doesn’t make you completely hate the company behind it. Such is the case with this cross-promotion for Coke Zero and the new James Bond movie, Skyfall, which turned unsuspecting travellers into James Bond for one very exciting minute.
UCLA Professors Claim eHarmony Is Duping Its Customers
Online dating might be the future of romance, but it still has its fair share of detractors. Including a pair of UCLA professors, who think that eHarmony — a dating site which prides itself on its scientific approach — is duping its users.
Huggable Vending Machine Will Never Love You
In Singapore, you can hug a vending machine and get a free Coca-Cola in return. Coke is, apparently, planning to roll the campaign out across southeast Asia. Would you hug a machine?
RIM’s Cartoon Funtime Experiment Is Backfiring
RIM says so itself: it doesn’t need good phones and tablets, it just needs better marketing. Jonny Phone will buy a BlackBerry if he’s persuaded by a team of poorly-drawn cartoon characters and a hashtag, right? Right? Guys? Right?
Watch These Fake Flying People Freak Out NYC
This is the best prank you can pull on an entire city. The marketing team behind the movie Chronicle tried its hand at viral marketing by flying three human-shaped RC planes around New York City to make it look like real people were magically flying. From the ground, it really looked like you were watching a superhero do its flyin’ thang. Video!
McDonald’s Twitter Marketing Plan Backfires
Remember the #qantasluxury PR fail? It seems someone didn’t learn from it. Somewhere in corporate Hamburgerland, an ad executive with a penchant for “social media” and “the Twitter” thought a McDonald’s-themed hashtag would sell more food. Oh boy was he wrong. Mickey D’s Twitter push is backfiring harder than E. coli vomit.
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