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All Time Top 10 ads from Super Bowl
Individuals or companies alike – we all need to communicate our products or services via smart or at least well-liked marketing. One way of coming up with new ideas is to look at some of the best commercial ads ever produced. The commercials - past and present - demonstrate several marketing techniques we can apply elsewhere. Some ads are actually up to 30 years old but greatly appreciated work of art. FYI Super Bowl advertisements cost about $2.6 million for a 30-second spot (2007/2008) so you might want to consider the sales effect before you decide to go for this audience.
The Introduction of the Macintosh (1984) - Steve Jobs wanted to launch the Macintosh with an
inspirational commercial that was as revolutionary to the product itself. Apple turned to its advertising agency - Chiat/Day. The agency hired the best science fiction oriented director they could find, Ridley Scott, whose previous movie Blade Runner, possessed the visionary feel they were striving for. To Jobs’ surprise, the entire board hated the commercial. Panicked Apple ran back to Chiat/Day to try and get them to sell back the ad time. Chiat/Day, still enthusiastic about their ad, was very hesitant, and only managed to sell off 30 seconds. Rather than take a loss on the 60 second ad, Apple decided to go ahead and run “1984.” The spot ran during the Super Bowl and many witnessed the groundbreaking commercial. For the week following the Super Bowl, talk shows and news stations ran the ad dozens of more times, totally in awe of the production and vision. Apple received over $5 million in free publicity from these re-runs of the commercial. The ad was such a big hit that it was ranked as the top television commercial of all time in a 1999 TV Guide survey. Coke's famous "Mean Joe Greene" (1979) -
This TV spot was listed as one of the top ten commercials of all time by "TV Guide" magazine. Chances are you remember every line and camera angle, but can you name the two teams that played the same year? By 1988, Coca-Cola was voted the best known and most admired brand in the world. Still, Coca-Cola did not institute a uniform marketing program in each of its global markets. The company often tailored the flavor, packaging, price, and advertising to match the tastes in specific markets. This ad was replicated in a number of different regions using the same format but substituting famous athletes from those regions (e.g., ads in South America used the Argentine soccer star, Maradona, while those in Asia used the Thai soccer star, Niat).E*Trade “Monkey,” (2000) - In the glory year of the dotcom ads, the online trader proudly blew $2 million on a spot featuring a dancing monkey. "What are you doing with your money"?
Terry Tate: Office Linebacker by Reebok (2003) -
TV commercials created by Rawson Marshall Thurber, for Reebok, based on a short film pilot he created in 2000; Tate was first shown at Super Bowl featuring Lester Speight as "Terrible" Terry Tate, an American Football linebacker who "gives out the pain" to those in the office who are not obeying office policies. It's easy to understand why the company's productivity has increased 46 percent--an extra minute at the water cooler and you're road kill. Monster.com's "When I Grow Up" (1999) - This commercial was named to Time magazine's list of "The Best Television of 1999" (Dec. 20, 1999 issue). Born in the state of Massachusetts in the year 1999, monster.com is a great, popular website for employers and job-seekers alike.
McDonalds let Michael Jordan and Larry Bird play for a Big Mac (1993). Larry Joe Bird (born December 7, 1956) is a retired American NBA basketball player, widely considered one of the greatest players of all time. Michael Jordan so dominated the basketball world that, for the second half of a pro career that spanned 1984-98, there was no debate about the game's supreme player. This shoot-out creates a lot of nostalgic feelings but it actually never revels who wins the Big Mac...
Herding Cats ad from EDS (2000) - "This man right here is my great grandfather. He’s the first cat herder in our family. Herding cats. Don’t let anybody tell you it’s easy." - you just read the intro. The producer recruited real cowboys and real cats and took them all to Tejon Ranch, 70 miles north of Los Angeles.
Tabasco smoking up a Mosquito (1998) - another way of telling your customers that your product
lives up to the expectation of being HOT. This ad is simple, funny and violent. With no dialogue, no music and only two characters (including the exploding insect)...Xerox assisting monks (1977) in facilitating copying many many years before you were born... This commercial has won every single award given by the advertising industry, including the Cannes Film Festival's Gold Lion and the first cash prize ever given by the New York Advertising Club. It also was judged by The New York Times to be one of the top 25 commercials of the 20th Century and is in the CLIO Hall of Fame.
The Budweiser Frogs (2005) are three life-like puppet frogs named "Bud", "Weis", and "Er", who began appearing in American television commercials for U.S. Budweiser Beer during Super Bowl XXIX.
Do you agree now that the Super Bowl ads are better than the game?
To wrap up this input session on how to advertise your products or services I would like to end with a great Condom Commercial - Enjoy!
Optimalprint Launches in Spain
Oslo, Norway (Optimalprint) December 20, 2007 -- Optimalprint announced today the launch of its Spanish website www.optimalprint.es an online printing service dedicated to individuals as well as small and medium sized companies (SMB) in Spain.
Optimalprint brings increased competition within the online digital and offset printing services in Europe. According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, there are over 3,3 million registered companies in Spain of which almost 90% have less than 6 employees. Optimalprint's online printing solution reduces print costs for the SMB market with up to 90%. Entrepreneurs and small businesses get access to a very cost efficient printing solution, supporting increased growth and profitability.
"With 45 million inhabitants in Spain, the country is an important market for online companies focusing on South Europe. Broadband penetration in Spain is, according to Eurostat, increasing rapidly, representing a 34% growth rate during 2007, now reaching about 40%. More and more customers in Spain are using the Internet to cut costs while improving services," said Henrik Müller-Hansen, Optimalprint's CEO.
Wedding invitations, birth announcements, christening invitations, party invitations, menu cards, thank you cards, postcards, business cards, letterheads, brochures, flyers, folders and envelopes are only a few of the print items that will now be available at Optimalprint.es.
Optimalprint offers online printing services to all of Europe. This online printing company has since its launch in March 2007, grown to become one of the most visited sites for online printing services in Europe . Optimalprint ignites the traditional, and in many aspects, inefficient printing industry, by minimizing human interactions in the printing production process. Optimalprint is committed to bringing the best online printing experience to individuals and professionals throughout the European market, through its innovative software, customer service and Internet offerings.
Decrease Your Supply Chain Costs
Management
A supply chain constitutes a set of activities ranging from production and manufacturing, to logistics, warehousing, transportation, and final delivery of goods to the customer (Handfield RB, Nichols EL.
We will focus on the logistics, transportation, and final delivery of goods to the customer - rethinking these parts of the supply chain can significantly improve your bottom-line result. From the start of our operations Optimalprint has completely changed how we work with logistics, transportation, and final delivery of goods to the customer, decreasing logistic and distribution costs with 60 to 80%! Some of these cost saving actions are non-theoretical and "easy wins" while some requires a lot more work.
This blog-post is written to get your started with rethinking every part of the shipment / distribution process of your goods and services.
Logistics - Input factors in Optimalprint's packaging process
- Optimalprint has used a cardboard box which cost has varied depending on size from $ 0,35 - $ 0,60. Optimalprint is now testing a semi-automatic packaging machine that thanks to corrugated board, purchased on a reel, will decrease cardboard cost per parcel to approximately $ 0,10-0,20. Thanks to the reel support, this packaging machine can adapt the parcel size with the actual size of the product. How this machine will work in the daily operations is to early to tell but we are now finally in the test-phase, a big step forward for a start-up.
- Packaging has been human capital intensive for us. We have spent on average 60-90 seconds per parcel with this semi-automatic packaging machine we will decrease this time with appr. 50%, close to 30 seconds. Investing in a machine however, requires some economies of scale .
- Making order and customer information very visual for the people involved in the actual packaging of your products. We have placed computer screens next to the packaging process that clearly displays to the person packaging - Order ID, Picture of the product, Name of the customer, Address to the customer and matching products (if the customer has ordered other products from us that can be put in the same parcel).
- Adding a barcode system that is linked to our order and customer service system. We have developed this system ourselves and basically only paid for the hours used and a barcode scanner for a total cost of $ 120! Before we had to manually check the order as "sent" in an excel-sheet and in addition match the products visually with the original order. We estimate that our barcode system reduces time spent in our order system with 99%! Before we spent 90 seconds and with the barcode system we are down to 5 seconds for each individual order. This barcode system is also a requirement for further automation in the post-printing process.
Transportation and Final Delivery
We used to send all parcels produced in a country with the incumbents post service to the various destinations within Europe. With growing order volumes, arbitrage opportunities have arised within the European post systems. Depending on where the customer's order is printed and where the customer wants us to ship his or her parcel we are now able to add another distribution solution that also involves DHL or UPS. We ship in bulk - overnight - to a EU-country that supports the most cost efficient distribution to a certain bulk of our customer orders. Besides the direct cost savings, we can also shorten distribution time to the destination country that DHL or UPS send the bulk of products to.- We are now investigating if we can send, via UPS or DHL, to a EU-country but let yet another country's post system handle the distribution. An example - If we print in Denmark, ship over night via DHL or UPS to Sweden but instead of letting Posten distribute from Sweden to the rest of EU, we let the Swiss Post deliver from Sweden to a certain destination such as for example the UK. Such a distribution system now indicates a cost reduction of roughly 20%.
- When the customers register we have started offering registration of the customer's cell phone number. The advantage for the customer that have orders that are so big that they must be sent to the local post office the cell phone number gives us the opportunity to communicate with the customer via SMS. This increases customer satisfaction as well as lowering our customer service costs since some customers call us to find out about the status of their order.