Nothing says manly like, um, paper towels. At least that’s what Brawny will have you think this week with the launch of their recent online campaign, the Brawny Academy. This series of webisodes and the microsite, which Fallon created and launched the first mobisode Monday, features 8 men who are sent to North Carolina by their unhappy wives to literally clean up their act under the leadership of the flannel-clad Adonis himself: the Brawny Man.

Following the successes of Fallon and Georgia Pacific’s last online viral campaign, Brawny Innocent Escapes, the two companies teamed up again to create a new spin for their typically mom-targeted product.

As Sarah Tollefson, Account Supervisor for Brawny Academy,tells ADOTAS, “From the beginning, Fallon and our clients at Georgia Pacific recognized that we needed to create a platform that would not only defy existing category conventions but also inspire our target consumers to engage with the brand on a deeper level (most advertising in the paper towel category is polluted with side-by-side product demonstrations and stereotypical portrayals of smiling women in pristine white kitchens, elated to be cleaning up after cute kids and their “silly” messes – tsk-tsk, smile).”

So the creative heads took a step back from their usual angle and thought about the husbands of these hard working women and what they could do to help out a little more around the house when it comes to keeping it clean. “The concept is rooted in a universal truth: women want support and understanding,” says Tollefson. “With Brawny Academy, we’ve created a platform that provides resolution by arming women with tools to help their husbands become better men. The Brawny Man is the central figure that serves [not only] as an advocate for women, but also a role model for men.”

She continues, “We’ve literally built a place where women have sent their real husbands to learn from the Brawny Man, where they will be put through an intense training regimen that includes everything from household cleaning scenarios, to handyman activities, to improving their communication and personal skills that show their wives they care in a manly way. Hilarity ensues throughout the transformation of these men, but the ultimate mission of Brawny Academy is to create better, more proactive, more compassionate husbands. We think women will appreciate both the intervention and the comic relief.”

As for what you can find when you visit the Academy–in addition to the 8 webisodes–the site offers a downloadable Brawny Academy field guide, and step-by-step lessons the men folk can follow to take care of their wifeys. They even brought the Brawny man to life for the first time with this campaign with a flannel and denim wearing look-alike (or close enough any way).

The campaign, which is advertising online via banners on female-friendly lifestyle and entertainment sites like iVillage, as well as AOL and Yahoo, will target “women 30-54, skewed married with children, household income $75K and up.” Tollefson adds, “Attitudinally, our target views themselves as proactive life managers that are constantly juggling many tasks and balancing the responsibilities of home, work, and family. They are buying premium products, and have high expectations of themselves. Ultimately, we are targeting women who are seeking support and understanding of their daily lives.”

But Brawny isn’t just relying on the advertising standards; it’s taking the word to the street virally. In addition to the usual “send to a friend” option, Tollefson says, “We’re always looking for viral opportunities to get consumers to pass along and spread the word. We are also in the process of creating shorter digestible clips of content that can be easily passed along or posted on user-generated content areas like YouTube and Google Video, and of course, some grassroots efforts involving our moms, aunts, sisters, and friends.”

Wipe the slate clean at the Brawny Academy: http://www.brawnyacademy.com

ADOTAS: First, tell me a little bit of where you’re from, and how you got here.

Dana Jones: I started in the media business by actually being a disc jockey at a very well-known radio station here in Los Angeles called KROQ. I worked there for a number of years, and during that time got to understand the music business pretty well. Fast forward—I start my own ad agency [in the 80's called Dana Jones Advertising]… which I started making ads for broadcast and that morphed into print.

And then Napster comes out…business had morphed [so] I started building websites for clients. I was very fascinated with the Internet when the Internet came along. And then Napster comes out and of course I’m there, poaching songs and feeling some amount of guilt, but not a lot, and then thinking—’geez, I remember when working at KROQ we had to write down the songs that we wrote for BMI and twice a year or something they’d figure out licensing and we’d pay them money.’ And we did the same thing for ASCAP.

So, I knew there was lost revenue here—equally on the publisher/writer side and probably on the artist side. Is there any way to make Napster legal? And that’s where I got the idea—this is back in the dial-up days of the Internet when Napster just came out. Very few people had broadband. And I’d sit there for three, four, five, ten minutes—just watching the progress bar go to download.

That’s when I kicked everything. I thought, ‘hey, what if an ad runs during this down time, and you’re watching an ad.’ And it’s a real rich, full-screen ad, and the person watching the progress bar has got nothing but time because they want to get the next song downloaded. This would be a long-form commercial, and the advertiser would be paying on behalf of the viewer for the rights to the music.

Back then, singles were $3.99 online. And then, it was a big deal when they went down to $1.99–all pre-iTunes, of course. There was no way that—even though I could sort of on paper prove that the value of the ad might be worth a couple of bucks a play—there are no advertisers out there that are going to pay that kind of money, especially on a mass market basis.

I went to some record company execs, and I said ‘Listen, I know for the BMI/ASCAP folks, it’s a couple of pennies a play. It’d certainly bring that kind of money… maybe a dime and no interest.” All they were interested in was [RIAA CEO] Hilary Rosen suing everybody. I felt that the idea was good, so I decided to start the company anyway. Also at that point I was well aware of all these lawsuits having to do with patents, so I filed patents right away. So we went to start it with a couple friends and went forward to Salon.com…and I believe it was April of 2000.

A: How did Salon.com come into the picture?

DJ: Then we thought this doesn’t have to be for music, this could be for anything that’s premium online. And Salon—I had been reading a lot in the press how they were on death’s door and they had tried everything—they were willing to try anything. They tried the subscription model where 30 percent of their content was behind a wall. So we approached them with the idea of taking their premium content and allowing people to come in after they watched an ad instead of paying $38/year for a subscription. And they were amenable to that. It took us a long time to make the first sale, which was Mercedes Benz. And that was launched in the middle of November in 2002. And within a couple of weeks, the management at Salon—Michael O’Donnell, [who was] the CEO then—made the decision to go all premium with an Ultramercial alternative to get it. They’ve held that business model ever since.

A: It’s amazing Salon took the chance with something new.

DJ: Well, they were really close to going out of business. That’s why we picked them, because of the press that we read. They’re running out of money, nobody wants to put any more money in, they’re going to be a dot-gone. We figured if this could save them, it would be a heck of a proof of godsend for us. And that’s what happened.

ADOTAS: First, tell me a little bit about Findology Interactive Media.

Jon Waterman: Findology Interactive Media was founded in early 2000 and offers a wide range of products and services to drive publisher revenue and achieve advertiser goals.

The company works to establish connections between both advertisers and publishers that help them effectively target their audience and increase the return from their online brand. Our network currently includes over 350 publishers, tens of thousand advertisers, and generates billions of monthly impressions.

A: How does it compare to your former CEO roles (AIS Network and Way Internet)?

JW: Findology’s focus is to build a diverse network of premium publishers and advertisers and develop the products that make the internet their most valuable media channel, while growing our infrastructure to maintain our high level of client and customer service.

A: What have you learned from this experience so far?

JW: I’ve learned that providing multiple services to both publishers and the advertisers is a key component of success in this industry, and expanding upon the core components of what your company does best is the way to achieve that goal.

A: What does the increased adoption and advancement of search technologies say about the state of our industry?

JW: I think it is really pretty clear — search is here to stay. Its evolution shows that search marketing is a solid industry with a strong foundation to build on.

A: With the recent launch of Snap.com, which is stirring up a lot of attention because of its unique model, are you considering altering Findology?

JW: Findology’s PPC search product is doing better than ever, so we don’t feel the need to alter our model. We are always working to enhance our offerings, for instance, at AD:TECH, we previewed a new product — Guaranteed ROI — which is based on a CPA metric in the search space. Look for more information about this product in the next few weeks.

A: What sorts of changes do you see for search moving ahead?

JW: The industry is doing very well and continues to gain momentum as a worldwide accepted business channel. There will be changes throughout the industry, but I feel they are enhancements, such as CPA search, more sophisticated and detailed data analysis.

A: What is unique about Findology against a growing field of search companies?

JW: At Findology, we’re really more than just a search company. Search is one of our offerings, we provide publishers a targeted sponsor listing feed, but we also provide contextual tools to enhance site navigation and monetization.

We really pride ourselves on developing flexible technology, providing our clients with the highest level of customer service, and being able to customize our products to fit their exact needs.

A: What are you goals for the company and for yourself?

JW: We want to stay ahead of the curve, continue to develop innovative products and services, and be competitive, while maintaining a level of respect.

According to Chris Portella, Organic’s media manager, they’re out there but there’s still room for advertisers to get creative and targeted. “From a media perspective, we see a lot sites offering cookie-cutter skin sponsorships. The majority of them are based on wrapping a brand around a media player, or the border of a page,” Portella explains.

“Successful sponsorships are subtle in design, but effective with their presence. They give users the choice to use their skin and offer bonus features; the goal being to provide a richer experience that doesn’t interfere with the user’s primary purpose for being there. Yahoo’s IMV sponsorships do a good job of delivering on these principles. They offer 5 tiers of sponsorships; the most basic is a standard template-ized layout and the most advanced is a fully customizable experience with major functionality integrations, including the ability to host a game. [But] regarding un-skinned opportunities, I think that contextually relevant functional skin sponsorships is uncharted territory.”

And while page takeovers are present, at least on some bigger name sites, the growth potential in this medium is being taken on by the consumer, not the advertiser via user generated content.

Take MySpace, for example. Kids, teens and adults have taken it upon themselves to create skins for their profiles using anything from pictures of their dogs to landscapes to…gasp…their favorite brands. Free MySpace tweak pages like Whateverlife.com, among hundreds of others, offer all sorts of codes for the News Corp. company’s addicts to have their fill and make their profile unique and representative of themselves. Type in “free MySpace codes” and a world of HTML layouts, graphics and cursors (not to mention Fastclick and Casale pop ups) are at your disposal. Whateverlife even has a brand layout page where users have submitted their homemade layouts of their favorite brands like Roxy and Abercrombie & Fitch.

The point: these were made by users, not advertisers, and are being used for free by anyone and everyone. Talk about an untapped viral opportunity for user generated content. You can’t pay for this kind of branding, and you don’t necessarily have to. So why aren’t advertisers offering skins instead of banners for the sites they run on? Similar to the recent MSN.com beta home page where users can chose which color scheme they want (MSN brand related colors like blue, orange, and green, etc.), why not offer free branded schemes instead?

One reason, as Organic’s group director Tim Armitage asks, “Why don’t more brands offer skinning to make customers feel a stronger connection to the brand, as well as a stronger connection to their own experience with the brand? Perhaps most companies consider it too much of a hassle, while others may think that the graphical translations of their brand’s identity might risk brand dilution or fragmentation.”

Armitage continues, “I think that some brands are better suited to reinventing and re-interpreting themselves than others. Target would be a perfect brand to offer skinning. However, I think there are a lot of blue chip brands that would initially resist it, but might be surprised by how well skinning would be received by their customers.”

If you grew up ever wanting to be Storm or Wolverine like I did, you’ve probably been tapping your foot impatiently waiting for today’s release of the latest X-MEN flick, “The Last Stand.” For those of us who are in the know, the good news is you’ve had plenty of time to get hyped with new media agency Hybrid Studio’s online campaign since it launched in September.

The campaign, which is every bit as flashy as the movie hopes to be, follows the Southern California-based agency’s work on the first two X-MEN movies. As Jeff Lin, president and creative director for Hybrid Studio explains it to ADOTAS, “At the beginning of the campaign in Aug ’05, we visited the movie set in Vancouver. We were able to see the production art, read the script and get a feel for this movie. We did the first and second X-MEN site for Fox, both of which were groundbreaking at the time.”

Lin continues, “We were again tasked to come up with something amazing. Our internal goal was to set a new standard for movie Web sites. We base our ideas for the Web site on the X-MEN movie property, our intimate knowledge of the comics, and we give it our interpretation of what the online extension of that X-MEN movie’s world would be. As fans ourselves, we wanted to build a site that we would love. The hard part is to come up with a concept for the site long before we even see a photo or a trailer.”

Regardless of having to blindly create the campaign, the agency came together and created a fully interactive campaign complete with a “mock browser” “The concept was to create an intriguing interface that would have depth and layers of complexity,” Lin says. “We really wanted fans to feel rewarded for visiting the site and spend some serious time on the site. The best thing we can do is help generate a buzz for the movie through our online design.”

The site includes all the usual suspects: downloadable wallpapers and AIM icons, ringtones, character profiles, movie trailers and photos, a downloadable game, and The Cure Summit forum, but it also includes downloadable X-MEN III Remote Widgets for iTunes (available in Apple and Yahoo). Very cool branding for the desktop. Additionally, one of the components of the campaign that has been sparking much of the attention to the Web site is the MySpace page the agency created along with the page takeover on the main MySpace homepage that’s been driving the traffic.

The site, which was created from a combination of Adobe Photoshop, 3d max, After Effects, ActionScript, database integration, and Flash 8, is one of the more impressive visually than most online campaigns. In fact, when asked what viral features were integrated into the site, the company said the look of the site itself has brought more word-of-mouth attention than “any e-card we could have built” because as Lin put it, “Good design and creativity is the original and the best viral element.”

But for all you X-MEN super fans, like me, who might be a bit apprehensive and skeptical at any derision from the comic book roots, Hybrid Studio has had only positive feedback from their target demographic, the “alpha fans.” “We’re really proud of the fact that the fans who were previously skeptical of the upcoming film, its new director had now changed their minds completely,” Lin reassures us. “Since the official site was released, one of the fanboy sites which was notorious for trashing this upcoming movie, the director, the studio, and even the studio exec ceased up in their criticisms.

“That was such a huge turn of events… from such scathing criticism to utter silence as soon as this site was released.”

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]]> http://www.adotas.com/2006/05/take-a-stand-online-with-hybrid-studios-x-men-campaign/feed/ 1 http://www.adotas.com/2006/05/upsnaps-tony-philip-free-has-a-nice-ring-to-it/ http://www.adotas.com/2006/05/upsnaps-tony-philip-free-has-a-nice-ring-to-it/#comments Fri, 19 May 2006 13:20:06 +0000 Jaime Gottlieb http://www.adotas.com/2006/05/upsnaps-tony-philip-free-has-a-nice-ring-to-it/ Just because the industry is all abuzz about mobile video and rich media, doesn’t mean for a second we should forget to put the phone back up to our ears and listen. At least that’s the argument Tony Philip, CEO of mobile search and live entertainment company UpSnap would like to make. Between the deals his Davidson, NC-based company has inked with NASCAR In-car Audio and ESPN Radio, UpSNAP’s free 411 service, and a recent partnership with Pay Per Call company Ingenio, Philip’s also answering the calls of his consumers.

But this isn’t Philip’s first go ’round with mobile search and SMS, not by a long shot. According to our talks with the exec, he’s an old hand when it comes to all things mobile. And not only did he bring search to UpSNAP’s roster of features, he took the cost out of dialing 411 by offering the service for free, something the company touts as a first among firsts. As he put it, “My first real taste of mobile marketing came from working with companies like Mobile365 (previously Mobileway), Motricity, and Lycos Europe. With a background in internet search I recognized a need for similar services on mobile devices,” he says. “In a similar fashion to the Yellow pages model whereby merchants pay for the cost of listing their business and providing toll free number in order to attract customers, I felt that a similar model could be deployed on phone devices. As such I founded UpSNAP to deliver free 411 information to consumers and have merchants fund it through a Pay Per Call model.”

It was through a deal UpSNAP inked with San Francisco-based Ingenio earlier this month that has made this Pay Per Call model possible for UpSNAP 411 users.
So why did they decide to use the Pay Per Call service? Here’s what Philip has to say about the decision: “Pay Per Call is an efficient way to connect merchants with consumers. Ingenio brings world-class web-based PPC, while we bring a similar mobile based solution. Our model keeps the service free for consumers, which drives a lot of adoption and usage.”

He continues, “Merchants eager to extend their reach into the growing mobile channel find high value and ROI in the model since they do not pay until a customer calls them. They are also finding that when a customer does call they are usually in the midst of a buying decision and this allows them to speak with the customer at that purchase point,”

As for how UpSNAP’s dual appeal, Philip adds, “Consumers liked the idea because they were able to get 411 info for free as opposed to paying a couple dollars to their carriers. Merchants like it because they only paid for the service after a prospective customer actually called them, and they found that customers who did call were at the buying stage of the purchase process.”

But for this mobile search company, its features don’t stop at dialing for information; UpSNAP has also been building up its roster of audio content providers. “UpSNAP has evolved to not only deliver text-based information to mobile phones like jokes, horoscopes and of course free 411, but also now delivers audio-based entertainment like NASCAR In-Car audio, and ESPN radio,” he tells us. Add to that a gamut of content genres including podcasts, comedy, pickup lines, bible quotes, news, music and calorie counters, among some 150 additional radio channels.

With a free service, however, this regular conference speaker—he most recently made a stage appearance at last month’s San Francisco ad:tech—you have to wonder how he pays the rent. “The most common question I get is: How do you make money? This is really a core part of our value proposition to our partners,” he tells us. “We have a patent pending process that allows us to insert Pay Per Call into text messaging and WAP. This allows us to offer free content, like 411, Jokes, Horoscopes, etc. for free and support it with advertising, very similar to what Google does with Pay Per Click on the web.”
And while their search and SMS offerings have been adding up, UpSNAP’s continuing to work out deals for more and better content. As he tells us, they have plenty of other “interesting conversations in the works”.

No doubt, over the phone.

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]]> http://www.adotas.com/2006/05/upsnaps-tony-philip-free-has-a-nice-ring-to-it/feed/ 1 http://www.adotas.com/2006/05/lip-sync-your-little-heart-out-with-cingular-promotion/ http://www.adotas.com/2006/05/lip-sync-your-little-heart-out-with-cingular-promotion/#comments Tue, 16 May 2006 13:13:44 +0000 Jaime Gottlieb http://www.adotas.com/2006/05/lip-sync-your-little-heart-out-with-cingular-promotion/

Following the success of last year’s Cingular/iTunes campaign MakeMeDance.com, New York-based digital agency Atmosphere BBDO has launched its latest interactive campaign for the wireless provider that’s got us singing all about it.

This latest campaign, Lip Sync Battle, isn’t a nod to Milli Vanilli, but a grassroots viral effort that encourages youngsters to submit videos of themselves lip syncing to the featured Cingular Sounds artist(s) of the month—this month’s being Rianna and her hit “SOS”. Users can in turn view and rank the syncs from highest to lowest. This latest addition to the Atmosphere/Cingular push comes as part of their ongoing deal to enhance youth engagement of Cingular’s music platform, Cingular Sounds, which was constructed to provide downloadable music ringtones and content from exclusive new artists every 6 to 8 weeks.

As Tarik Sedky, Managing Director, Client Services at Atmosphere BBDO tells ADOTAS, “This campaign was born out of the challenge to build an innovative program that supports the Cingular Sounds product offering. The challenge was to go beyond a traditional advertising campaign and develop an experience that fully integrates the product into the lives of youth in a relevant fun way.”

He adds, “Our vision was to look beyond traditional marketing avenues and come up with an idea that taps into the way youth use their mobile devices and the online space. It further embraced the idea of user generated content and interaction. Marrying these two themes together with the Cingular product was at the heart of the idea and how the program came to be.” The hosting and maintaining of the microsite and mobile features, we’re told, is under the watchful eye of DNA Studios.

Now that Atmosphere has allowed us to make that little orange guy dance, they figured wannabe singers should get their chance to shine on the proverbial stage. According to Sedky, “The concept is centered around the idea of letting youth show their passion for the exclusive artists Cingular brings to them by lip synching to featured songs.” He continues, “The program enables users to generate and own content in a relevant and meaningful way that ladders back to the Cingular product offering [of exclusive ringtones from top artists]. This program perpetuates user engagement in two important ways, 1) sharing videos and 2) enabling the public to vote on who has the best video on the site.”

The Lip Sync Battle campaign, which launched the last week of April and will run through December 31st, is strictly digital. Sedky explains, “Cingular is leveraging relevant media properties such as mtv.com, mp3.com, EA.com, bet.com, artistsdirect.com, AOL and BOLT.com [to drive traffic to the site with online ads]. In addition, the program is empowering youth to pass along the program via viral, send-to-a-friend functionality on the site. It will also be shared with Cingular customers via email.” According to Atmosphere, so far the viral campaign, which has both an IM and email send to a friend aspects, has already helped the campaign take flight. And with the targeted demographic in the 12-24 range it’s no surprise the blogosphere has already picked it up.

Sync your little heart out at http://cingularsource.com/music/lipsync/

First, tell me a little bit about Greenlight.

We’re a 6-year old search engine marketing agency that improves its clients’ ROI on paid search, and optimizes their website so it appears in organic search results, too. With offices in New York and London and over 25 dedicated search staff, Greenlight handles the search engine marketing for many FTSE, NASDAQ and NYSE firms.

What makes your company stand out above the rest?

Well, we have a great list of clients that I’m pleased to say continues to grow, including companies like Microsoft, Hotels.com, Pricerunner, Monarch Airlines, HMV, etc. I can say we have them as clients because we’re good at what we do; we deliver huge improvements in ROI, which would take a much larger investment through traditional marketing channels. I’m sure clients like ours wouldn’t stick around long if that wasn’t the case.

We’ve also overcome some huge technical and organizational obstacles that have broken the wills of some of our competitors. I think it’s the powerful and all too rare combination of technical, marketing and general business expertise that our people bring to the projects, in addition to their extensive search expertise, that allows us to always find a way to make these really complex projects achieve fantastic results. I think working at the deep end on every project really teaches you to swim, and that’s where we’ve spent our existence thus far.

We’ve also developed some industry firsts, such as our structured SEO methodology, and ADAPT, which is a pay per click tool that allows product- and inventory-based advertisers to control their paid search campaigns and to work better with Google’s latest quality based bidding method.

What are some of the challenges you see in SEO and what changes need to be made (with technology or otherwise) to overcome them?

As I think I hinted above, organizational challenges are some of the most complex. The SEO flag-waving generally starts with the marketers, who by and large have the customer remit within the company, and who need to generate public awareness of the company and its products or services.

The common perception is that it’s easy to get to be Number One in Google — or any of the other search engines. However, the reality is quite different — and that’s part of the educational challenge search marketing companies like Greenlight face, as well as delivering tangible results. Daring to be ambitious enough to be top on Google, it quickly becomes evident to them that to rank on Page 1 there’s a whole world of variables that need to be controlled and adjusted to achieve this lofty goal. The hard bit is that often a number of those variables are under other departments’ control, outside of Marketing’s jurisdiction, and these other departments often have no incentive to buy into the project — corporate websites are a prime example.

As one rather disgruntled (and in IMHO slightly unreasonable) IT executive told us, “We’re not about to change our $@&$ing architecture just for some goddamn SEO company”. Now that’s probably an extreme response, but it does happen, and this type of attitude can slow down projects and often bring them to a halt. So it’s important to understand that a search engine project is multidisciplinary: it involves coordinating hundreds of variables across a company’s web development, editorial, content and marketing strategy. The keys to fine-tuning that coordination are often held by others in the organization, so getting them all to play ball is often the linchpin of the project.

If you’re the kind of person who would run out and buy the new Britney Spears fragrance Fantasy, without blinking an eye, do we have a campaign for you. Taking Goodby Silverstein Partners’ FantasyBritneySpears.com online campaign globally and into the mobile marketplace, Omnicom’s mobile marketing firm, ipsh!, worked with GSP to create what it’s calling the first-ever cross-continental mobile marketing campaign.

Omnicom’s ipsh!, which was hired to help strengthen brand loyalty and awareness of the Elizabeth Arden fragrance, now allows fans worldwide (e.g. UK, U.S., UAE, Spain, Italy, South Africa) to download the same ringtones (of Britney-recorded messages, not songs) and Fantasy-branded wallpaper off the Fantasy website. The site also offers an interactive game where players can upload pictures of their “crush”, play the dating game with Cupid’s bow and arrow, watch the Fantasy TV spot, send-to-a-friend, and even download audio of Britney herself telling the Cinderella story of her and hubby Kevin Federline.

The Fantasy theme of the site surrounds the viewers in a fairy tale, page-turning experience. Britney tells users her own fantasy, which takes place in a forest ala Fern Gully–only without the tractors cutting it all down–and shares a story about a girl (herself) chasing and being chased by a boy (K-Fed) until he strikes her with Cupid’s arrow. Of course, the real story could be translated a bit differently, but as long as consumers are picking up the scent—and according to ipsh! project manager, Ken Singer, the company is already seeing “significant consistent traffic”–nothing else matters.

But regardless of whether or not you buy the “true love” story, since Brit and K-Fed’s fairy tale is more tabloid than Shakespeare, ADOTAS finds out what made Elizabeth Arden go mobile. “The campaign is a branding exercise–the client [Elizabeth Arden] is marketing the Britney website as a whole,” says Singer. “Perfumes are products that personify personalization. Mobile technology is the technical equivalent–the mobile phone is the most personal device available. The message of “personalization” made a mobile marketing campaign a perfect vehicle to launch a youth-driven fragrance.”

As for how they are getting the word out about the pop idol’s pretty in pink perfume, Singer tells us that other than the send to a friend option, they’re letting Brittany do the talking. As he tells us, “All of our ringtone/wallpaper campaigns are intrinsically viral. The wallpapers have images of Britney and the ringtones are recordings of her voice. Every time the phone rings, Britney’s voice will be promoting the fragrance to anyone within earshot.”

How does your fantasy stack up? Visit www.FantasyBritneySpears.com to find out.

When you read “Still Sexy at Sixty”, a few things come to mind: Bea Arthur twenty years ago, Angelina Jolie thirty years from now, or the classic and the always-hot ’46 Packard Clipper today. In any case, what you may not guess right off the bat is that one of Italy’s favorite two-wheelers, the Vespa, has reached this ripe, yet still vibrant age group.

And just to cement its hip factor, the mod-friendly scooter’s Pisa-based manufacturer Piaggio announced last week that it’s enlisted the services of UK agency New Media Maze to create an online viral campaign that will help drive traffic for the Vespa LX as part of its marketing drive. “We were brainstorming ways of communicating the fact that the Vespa LX is still sexy at sixty,” Dave Smith, Managing Director of New Media Maze tells ADOTAS. “One of the themes we explored was the Kama Sutra, and one of our creatives changed that to Kama Scooter. Whilst we presented several ideas to the client, we knew immediately that Kama Scooter would win out.”

Smith describes the microsite setup, saying, “The web site contains an interactive book detailing 9 new sexy positions involving the Vespa LX. Visitors to the site read about the positions in the book, and then watch a short video clip featuring two gorgeous catwalk models enacting each position.” He adds, “The videos are all very erotic but work safe, so we’re already seeing a huge viral spread as men send it to each other.”

Oddly enough, however, the site neglected to include the classic “Send to a Friend” form because as Smith explains, it doesn’t need it. The site also lacks any real interactivity apart from mini video clips—filmed by Studio Film—of two models on fairly visible strings and studio fans blowing their hair working the hot for each other, girl-on-girl style. Call me a tough critic, but while they may be two attractive women playing the interchangeable roles of pleasured and pleasurer, it certainly doesn’t mean the viewer has to buy their acting skills.

But given the 16+ male demographic this campaign hopes to reach and the ‘sex sells’ motif, it’s hard to imagine they give a hoot about any Oscar nomination. And while the puppet strings may be as effective as those in N’Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye” video, Smith spreads only good words about the feedback they’ve been getting over the last week.

“We love it, the client loves it, and we’ve had amazing feedback from our peers,” he says. “In terms of feedback from the general public it’s been mixed, with about 95% loving it and 5% not. The Vespa brand is a highly emotive one, and existing customers tend to care dearly about it and can have very fixed views on how it should be represented. As such, there’s been massive debate in blogs and forums around the world about the merits of the campaign.

Smith adds, “We’re obviously delighted to have created something that not only is viral but has kicked off huge traditional ‘word of mouth’ at the same time. Stats-wise, we’ve clocked up just over 130,000 uniques since launch and we’re expecting that to grow exponentially in the coming weeks.”

But given that they’re not running ads to get the word out, this should be an interesting test for word-of-mouth marketing. We’re just glad they didn’t hire the Golden Girls for the roles, even if Bea can still hang with the big boys…er…women.

As Smith eloquently summarizes, “I’ve been dying to see sexy women flying around on wires and getting off with each other, and now I’ve fulfilled that fantasy. Thank you Piaggio, we’re confident this will ‘take off’ on the net”.”

No, thank you.

Scope the new Vespa LX, or just two women on strings with feathers at: www.kamascooter.com.