Coke Zero & Battleship Partnership

Name of Company/Competitor: Coke Zero

Name of Campaign/Spot: They've Come For Everything

Date Launched: 3/24/12

Description: Two men in a boat are relaxing, enjoying a Coke Zero when a robot like battle ship comes out of the water and demands all their Coke Zero

Media Details: TV

'Battleship' brings out big guns for promos

Coke's clout helped enlist barrage of retail partners

Universal's "Battleship" is ready to set sail with the Coca-Cola Co., Subway and Kraft enlisting to serve as the actioner's primary promotional partners.
Combined with Chevron's ExtraMile convenience stores, Cisco, Hilton, Nestle Confections & Snacks, the U.S. Navy, and the USO, the marketers will spend $50 million on campaigns that tie in with "Battleship's" release in the U.S. on May 18.

Plans include TV spots; radio, print, online and in-store ads; in-theater promos; art on packaging; and live events.

Most of the companies' products are prominently featured in the film that's loosely based around the Hasbro boardgame.

Coke Zero is the focus of Coca-Cola's campaign and already has launched a "Battleship" TV spot that the film's director, Peter Berg, helmed.

The spot bowed during the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship on CBS. Coke Zero is the official "fan refreshment" of the NCAA.

Although Coke Zero, a low-calorie brand that targets young males who don't want to drink Diet Coke, also backed Paramount and Skydance's "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" in December, that campaign rolled out overseas, whereas Coke Zero's "Battleship" ads also play in the U.S., giving Universal more marketing firepower.

Coke also is helping to get "Battleship" in front of more moviegoers through its relationship with some of the film's other promo partners.

For example, Coke's clout helped entice retailers to build high-profile displays featuring Coke Zero alongside products from Kraft, including its Wheat Thins, Triscuit, Ritz Bitz, Chips Ahoy!, Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids -- especially leading up to Memorial Day in supermarkets. It will be the first time Coke Zero has launched a marketing effort around the holiday.

Coke's beverages also are served inside Subway restaurants, continuing its cross-promotion with other "Battleship" backers.

"It's very helpful to have Coke as an anchor because they're so strong at retail," said Stephanie Sperber, prexy of Universal Partnerships & Licensing, which brokered the brand deals. "It expands the reach of the film and our partners."

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Celebrity Sighting! Stacy Kiebler wearing "Always One of a Kind" Tee

Stacy Keibler wore a DrPepper “Always One of a Kind” t-shirt on the way to a friend’s house in West Hollywood.

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Coke to focus on events, loses faith in 30-second spot

Coca-Cola looks to focus its TV ad spending on so-called DVR-proof events, while buttressing them with 360-degree campaigns.

With ad-skipping rampant, the company has lost faith in the effectiveness of traditional ads in comedies and dramas, save for the Super Bowl, “American Idol” and other programming that consumers watch live and talk about the next day around the Coke machine.

“The 30-second spots on television (are) no longer the way to do it,” said CFO Gary Fayard at an industry event. “You still do 30-second spots, but if you’re like me, most of the television you watch, you record and when you then watch it, you skip over all the ads … (but) you will watch certain shows live because you want to be able to talk about them tomorrow when you go to work.”

Still, even as advertising is concentrated in live-oriented events and sports, Coke is planning a major Olympics initiative this summer -- a traditional spot can no longer stand alone, Fayard said. Links and integrated campaigns will use social and digital media -– as Coke did with Super Bowl ads this year -- and opportunities for consumers to take some ownership of brands and pass along endorsements is crucial.

“A ‘like’ is not good enough -- you want a ‘share,’” Fayard said, “because consumers today believe … they own our brands. They are the ones that talk to each other … about which brands live up to their promise and which ones don’t, so having that integrated campaign across all the different platforms is critically important.”

Coke plans to continue to ramp up its investment in marketing as it sees positive results and continues with its 2020 vision, hoping to usher in a massive revenue increase by the turn of the next decade. Coke has spent $11 billion globally in marketing over the past two years, with an additional $6 billion or so coming from its 275 bottling partners.

“Our brand health scores are the healthiest we’ve seen in decades, and they continue to improve across the board,” Fayard said.

Coke will also sponsor the European championship soccer tournament this summer along with the Olympics.

Speaking more broadly about Coke’s future, Fayard said projections that 1 billion more people will enter the middle class globally over the next eight years -- with a similar number moving to cities from rural areas -- should prove a boon for the non-alcoholic beverage industry and, by extension, packaged goods businesses.

“No matter how bad the financial crisis has been,” he said, “wealth is still being created and will be created over the next eight years.”

Coke has 15 brands generating $1 billion a year or more in revenue.

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9/10 call social media new form of entertainment; young people want texting in movies!

In an exclusive study, THR and Penn Schoen Berland reveal Facebook and Twitter's influence over what entertainment users watch, reject and write about.

There’s a sea change afoot in how Americans discover and consume entertainment. That’s the finding of an exclusive poll by market research firm Penn Schoen Berland for The Hollywood Reporter.

Nine of 10 respondents view social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook as a new form of entertainment, and more than half say social media sites are important tastemakers in determining what to watch and buy. Perhaps more surprising, 80 percent of television viewers visit Facebook while they watch.

“Social media is the connective tissue that enables consumers to multitask during their entertainment experiences by connecting with others and sharing their opinions,” notes pollster Jon Penn of the findings, based on a survey of 750 social network users ages 13 to 49. And film moguls, take note: The poll found that a majority of 18-to-34-year-olds believe using social media while watching a movie in a theater would add to their experience, and nearly half would be interested in going to theaters that allowed texting and web surfing.

“Millennials want their public moviegoing experience to replicate their own private media experiences,” says Penn.“Having dedicated social-media-friendly seats, or even entire theaters, can make the moviegoing experience more relevant and enjoyable for them.”

Other interesting findings from THR's poll:

• 88% of people consider visiting and posting on social networking sites a form of entertainment.
• 70% of consumers have listened to music by an artist based primarily on what a friend posted on a social networking site.
•  79% of respondents always or sometimes visit Facebook while watching television.
• 98% of all social networkers are Facebook members, while only 56% of social networkers are Twitter members.

 Source

Dr Pepper Snapple Group among brands with revamped facebook pages

(Reuters) - Facebook's efforts to make its social network a friendlier place for businesses and popular brands are off to a strong start, the company said.

Eight million brands, from carmakers to rock bands, switched to Facebook's new Web page format 10 days after the revamped pages were introduced at a splashy launch event in New York last month, according to Facebook.

Some businesses say new advertising offerings that take advantage of Facebook's latest Web page capabilities are helping them reach a broader audience on the 845-million-member social network.

"If there's a specific message we want to drive, we know this guarantees we'll get in front of them," said Steve Baer, director of strategy at Code and Theory, a New York digital marketing agency that recently ran a paid promotion for Dr. Pepper using Facebook's new ads.

Facebook's moves to cozy up to big consumer brands is key to its efforts to boost revenue as the company prepares for an initial public offering that could value the 8-year-old company at up to $100 billion.

One of Facebook's most important challenges is convincing businesses to spend money advertising on its service rather than simply using the social network as a free promotional tool, analysts and industry observers say.

Facebook is aiming its new advertising services at well-known brands like Dr. Pepper, which has amassed more than 11 million "fans" of its Facebook page, but which hasn't done a lot of advertising on the social network, according to Baer.

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group paid to try a new type of Facebook ad that ensures that a post on its brand page will be promoted to its fans in multiple places on the social network.

The result, said Baer, was that the post reached 83 percent of Dr. Pepper's Facebook fans over a 28-day period. Dr. Pepper Snapple Group was allowed to use the new Facebook ad format before it was officially introduced to other advertisers two weeks ago and the level of user "engagement," such as users "liking" the post, was 80 percent higher than normal.

Investors, competitors and marketers are watching closely to see if Dr. Pepper's initial experience and enthusiasm for the new ads is matched by the millions of other big brands that have Facebook pages.

Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, with 85 percent of the revenue coming from its advertising business.

In courting consumer brands and other businesses, Facebook is competing against the larger and more graphically rich "display" ad formats offered by websites such as Yahoo Inc, as well as against the popular Web search ads where Google Inc is the dominant player.

Facebook's revamped brand pages, which are available to businesses at no cost, offer companies more capabilities to create splashy, media-rich pages within Facebook. A chronological timeline on the right side of the page lets businesses create customized pages to showcase past milestones, and a new "offers" capability lets companies place coupons and promotions directly on their page.

Companies can offer the coupons on their Facebook page for free, as well as pay for the coupon to be seen by a larger audience on Facebook.

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Honest Tea's ready for change

Honest Tea, a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based The Coca-Cola Co., made changes to its label and bottle.

The nutrition facts panel has been updated to reflect that one bottle is equal to one serving to make it easier for consumers to watch their calorie and sugar intake, the company says. Changes to the bottle include transitioning from a dome that was at the bottom of the plastic bottle to a flatter bottom. The original dome design was needed to accommodate the 22 percent plastic reduction used in each bottle, but some consumers thought the dome resulted in a reduced amount of tea, the company says.

Honest Tea worked with its engineers to develop an eco-friendly, hot-filled plastic bottle that also appealed to consumer requests for a flat bottom. The new bottom is stamped with a company seal that reads: Est. 1998, Bethesda, Md.

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Starbucks opens its first juice bar

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Starbucks moved beyond its coffee roots Monday, opening its first juice bar under its newest brand, Evolution Fresh.

The juice bar is in Bellevue, Washington, not far from its Seattle home base. While the company operates about 17,000 coffee shops in 50 countries, this is its first non-coffee retail location.

The company bought the Evolution Fresh juice brand for $30 million in November, and until now its line of juices has only been available in grocery stores. Starbucks plans to roll out Evolution Fresh juices to its coffee shops later this year.

Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) was founded in 1971, but it wasn't until after Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz bought the company in 1987 that it started to expand the idea of gourmet coffee shops on a massive scale. In addition to Starbucks it also operates the Seattle's Best chain, which it acquired in 2003.

Evolution Fresh juices are made using a technique called high pressure processing, which the company said retains more of the flavors, vitamins and nutrients of raw fruits and vegetables.
The store is aimed at health-conscious consumers, offering wraps, salads and soups, as well as vegetarian and vegan offerings.

Starbucks did not give a target for future store plans in Monday's announcement, but it said the move into branded stores will revolutionize the $3.4 billion and growing cold-crafted juice category. The leader in the field today is smoothie maker Jamba Juice (JMBA), which has 750 locations in more than 20 states. 

Source

Side note - Starbucks' sent out all of there promotional material with the word "vegetables" spelled incorrectly. (Pictured above and source)

Diet Mountain Dew - Last Diet Dew

Name of Company/Competitor: Diet Mountain Dew

Name of Campaign/Spot: Last Diet Dew

Date Launched: 2/27/12

Description: Erin Andrews, Dick Vitale, Mike Golic & Mike Greenberg from ESPN compete for the great taste of the last Diet Mountain Dew

Media Details: TV

Coke Zero "Last Request"

Name of Company/Competitor: Coke Zero

Name of Campaign/Spot: Last Requests

Date Launched: 2/1/12

Description: A man bounded and locked in front of a firing squad gets one last request, a refreshing Coke Zero. After reading the word "and" on the can he begins to request more and more items, starting small until he is finally set free on a horse riding off into the distance.

Media Details: TV

Stevia makes a splash in beverages

Beverages ceased being about mere thirst ages ago. Although not without their share of controversy, beverages have become a preferred delivery system for energy and sustenance — so much so that the hand naturally reaches for a beverage when the body feels a lack of vigor.

Let's focus on that moment of controversy though: Research has uncovered evidence the body perceives calories taken in liquid form in a different fashion than it does those from solid food. Specifically, the calories are not "counted" as readily. So while a sugary drink might deliver 140 calories, our internal accountant dismisses that energy and seeks more to fill the need – even though the need is no longer there.

With the needle of the obesity compass pointing toward this, beverage makers stepped up to the plate — or bottle, as it were — and set R&D to the task of creating functional drinks that not only satisfy taste and other cravings but act as aids to weight and energy balance instead of hindrances.

New research from Cargill Inc. (www.cargill.com), Minneapolis, indicates three key factors affect the taste experience of beverages: sweetness, flavor and mouthfeel. These factors must be examined in relation to each other because any time one is modified; it affects the way the others are perceived.

"When producing calorie-reduced beverages, manufacturers typically lower the sugar content of their product, a move that affects the sweetness of the beverage and impacts mouthfeel and thus the total taste experience," says Andy del Rosal, leader of Cargill's North American beverage applications group of scientists. "To compensate for the reduction of sweetness, zero- or mid-calorie sweeteners are added and often combined with taste-masking and enhancing flavors. Although this combination effectively addresses the loss of sweetness, the beverage is still likely to deliver a ‘thinner' mouthfeel and a different taste profile."

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Here's what advertisers can learn from the brilliant March Madness campaign

Although it is a non-profit organization, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) has done a brilliant job of marketing its March Madness men’s college basketball tournament.
By examining the NCAA’s strategies and implementations, marketers can perhaps borrow ideas to improve the success of their organizations.

Brief history
The NCAA started this tournament in 1939 at an old gym at Northwestern University with 8 teams and little media coverage since TV was in its infancy. Today, the competition has grown to 68 teams over 3 weeks competing in regional tournaments and culminating in a final contest between the top two. This year the contest will include 67 games that can be watched live, streamed online, or viewed later.

Amazingly, March Madness has grown into the second most popular sports showcase for advertisers behind the NFL playoffs and ahead of the NBA and Major League Baseball post-season contests. According to Kantar Media, the NCAA was able to parlay this popularity into a TV rights agreement worth $10.8 billion over 14 years. How did they do it?

Branding the tournament and playoffs
With a penchant for alliteration, the NCAA has created brand identities for the entire tournament and interim playoffs by giving them names such as March Madness, Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four. Even non-fans hear these words from sportscasters, late-night TV hosts and comedians.
They pass them on to their friends via word-of-mouth and social media. They also attend branded parties, buy advertised products, and participate in office “bracket pools.” This gets advertisers excited by the prospect of reaching a much larger, highly-engaged audience of fans and non-fans alike – enabling them to leverage their marketing investment.

Expanding media coverage
Media coverage has grown to four television networks (CBS, TNT, TBS, and TruTV) and numerous radio and online channels, such as, cbssports.com, ncaa.com, espn.com, and si.com - enabling fans to watch the games and interact with each other on their mobile devices. The NCAA also created March Madness on Demand (MMOD), which is now called March Madness Live (MML), an online HDTV channel that is completely advertiser supported. Last year, the MMOD service had 52 million visits across broadband and mobile platforms accounting for 13.7 million hours of streaming video and a 63% increase in traffic over the previous year.

Promoting the NCAA brand through online and social media
In addition to traditional TV and radio channels, historical content and commentary are distributed online through favored fan sites, such as Yahoo!, CBS, and ESPN, and MML. Everyone involved with the tournament also communicates via popular social media sites.

• Facebook. March Madness has a Facebook fan page with over 230,000 fans and “like” links to such other sites as NCAA (72,887 fans), iHoops (268,581), and CBS Sports (83,577 fans). Each of these, in turn has their own like links leading to additional Facebook word-of-mouth pyramids.
• Twitter. The tournament is a major trend on Twitter with its own pyramid of followers. The ESPN Tournament of Tweets is very popular with sports fans. Last year it logged nearly 3 million tweets.
• YouTube. At the time of this writing, search results for March Madness yielded 316,000 results, and the tournament has not even started! People can watch videos of games they missed or make their own commentary videos that help to further promote the brand.

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A Marketer's Homage To The Soda Can

PepsiCo recently announced that it will add an additional $500 million to $600 million to its roughly $2 billion advertising budget to support its soda brands in 2012, in an attempt to catch up with the heavy spending (and sales gains) of archrival Coca-Cola. Meanwhile, Dr Pepper Snapple Group recently upped its $445 million ad budget by $25 million to $30 million, having gained market share by raising spending by double digits during the recession. If there’s one thing Big Soda understands, it’s that advertising works.

Brands such as Coke, Pepsi, and Dr Pepper gain attention for big-budget television spots in high-profile programming such as NFL games and the Oscars, and there have been many famous commercials through the years, from Mean Joe Greene’s star turn for Coke to Cindy Crawford’s head-turning spot for Pepsi. But no matter how big a hit they score with their ads, nothing is more important to the marketers at Coke, Pepsi, 7-UP, Mountain Dew, and every other soda maker as their packaging.

Think about it. PepsiCo benefits from 1 billion packaging impressions (jargon for exposure to marketing messages) per day—that’s how many snacks and beverages the company sells around the world. Coca-Cola’s numbers are even more impressive, serving 1.7 billion bottles, cups, or cans of The Real Thing per day. Even if each impression is worth as little as a penny, that’s a marketing value in the tens of millions of dollars. Every. Single. Day.

To reap those benefits, however, each brands’ packaging has to compete at the grocery shelf (or vending machine) with dozens of others, all contending for the attention of shoppers. A soda can is the last opportunity a company has to persuade shoppers to tip its brand into their shopping carts. And it’s the single most frequent exposure consumers have to the brand, not only at the supermarket but in their refrigerators, at their desks, and on their countertops.

Read Full Article Here: http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-12/a-marketers-homage-to-the-soda-can

Coke and Pepsi alter recipe to avoid cancer warning

Coca-Cola and Pepsi are changing the recipes for their drinks to avoid being legally obliged to put a cancer warning label on the bottle.

The new recipe for caramel colouring in the drinks has less 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) - a chemical which California has added to its list of carcinogens.

The change to the recipe has already been introduced in California but will be rolled out across the US.

Coca-Cola says there is no health risk to justify the change.

'No risk'
 

Spokeswoman Diana Garza-Ciarlante told the Associated Press news agency they wanted to ensure their products "would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning".

The chemical has been linked to cancer in mice and rats, according to one study, but there is no evidence that it poses a health risk to humans, said the American Beverage Association, which represents the wider industry.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims a person would need to drink more than 1,000 cans of Coke or Pepsi a day to take in the same dose of the chemical that was given to the animals in the lab test.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo account for nearly 90% of the US fizzy drink market, according to one industry tracker, Beverage Digest.

The companies say changing their recipes across the whole of the US, not just in California, makes the drinks more efficient to manufacture.

In a statement Coca-Cola added that the manufacturing process across Europe would not change.

It said that apart from California "not one single regulatory agency around the world considers the exposure of the public to 4-MEI as present in caramels as an issue".

• Formed naturally in the heating and browning process
• Occurs in caramel colouring as well as some roasted and cooked foods
• Can be in some cleaning, photographic and agricultural chemicals, dyes and pharmaceuticals
• Exposure can be through consumption or during manufacturing process
•  Source: California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment 

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Diet Mtn Dew steps out from shadow of flagship brand

Diet Mtn Dew is all grown up.

The newly minted billion-dollar brand is officially out from under the flagship's shadow, gaining a dedicated tagline, marketing manager and a boost in spending. And in a coup for Diet Mtn Dew, it has assumed sponsorship of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Nascar car from Pepsi's Amp brand. Not bad for a product that began life as a line extension.

"We hadn't put a lot of resources behind [Diet Mtn Dew]," said Brett O'Brien, VP-marketing for Mtn Dew and flavored carbonated drinks. "It was something that you found and then you were in this exclusive club, because we didn't talk about it much. As that exclusive club grew bigger and bigger, it became clear we had to put some dedicated resources against it."

Founded in 1988, Diet Mtn Dew has had strong growth even as the carbonated-soft-drink category slowed in recent years. The brand, targeted at Gen X males, cracked the top 10 soda brands in 2005 with a 1.4% share of the total market, according to Beverage Digest. In 2010 it had a 2% share of the $74 billion category.

Full-year figures aren't available yet for 2011, but Beverage Digest reports that, excluding fountain sales, Diet Mtn Dew's volume was up 2%, while the overall category's declined 0.5%.

The brand increased sales by skirting the "diet" stigma carried by some other soft-drink brands that appeal to Gen X males. Diet Mtn Dew skews 60% male and 40% female, while the base brand is split 70%-30%.

"We attribute this to the strength of the Dew brand with male consumers," said a spokeswoman. "The brand halo from base Dew seems to counter the negative "diet' perception."

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Coke Zero Jump Starts NCAA March Madness

March Madness is starting early this year for fans and viewers. That’s because Coke Zero is tapping into the intense loyalty NCAA basketball fans have for their favorite teams and their passion for all things NCAA Men’s Final Four to launch the Coke Zero School Shout Out.

Starting today through March 10 (or while supplies last), fans can text “0” plus their favorite NCAA Division I basketball team to “2653” to score one of thousands of free NCAA March Madness Live access packages and the chance to watch all the Tournament action across multiple digital and mobile platforms. In addition, fans can register at www.enjoymoremadness.com for the chance to win a trip for two to the 2012 NCAA Men’s Final Four in New Orleans.

“The NCAA March Madness fan experience is about much more than just the action on the court and whether your favorite team wins or loses. For fans, it’s about enjoying every moment of the action to the fullest extent from Selection Sunday® through the Final Four,” said Katie Bayne, president and general manager of sparkling beverages, Coca-Cola North America. “During this year’s tournament Coke Zero is offering fans an interactive platform that engages fans throughout the tournament, along with great prizing, so fans can enjoy more NCAA March Madness like never before.”

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Honest Tea Cuts the Sugar

Sweet tea may be sweet because it’s loaded with sugar, but Honest Tea thinks there’s a market for the popular beverage that goes easy on the sugar load.

The Bethesda-based company, acquired by The Coca-Cola Co. last year, has started a national rollout of “Not Too Sweet” Tea, a traditional sweet tea it says has 40 percent less sugar and calories than other leading sweet teas.

A 16.9-ounce bottle has 25 grams of sugar and 100 calories. The sweetness comes from a combination of organic cane sugar and organic stevia, the company said.

Honest Tea, founded in a Maryland kitchen in 1998, sold a 40 percent stake to Coke in 2008. Coke bought the company outright one year ago.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. Trades No. 88 for a Diet Mountain Dew

Diet Mountain Dew (Diet DEW) is bringing a humorous spin to the 2012 NASCAR season with a new ad that demonstrates how far Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will go for the great taste of Diet Mountain Dew.

The :30 second spot, "Trade," which was created by BBDO New York, will hit the air waves this weekend as Earnhardt debuts the No. 88 Diet Mountain Dew/National Guard Chevrolet for the first race of the 2012 NASCAR season. The ad features a lucky shopper driving away with the ultimate prize after Earnhardt makes a surprising trade for an ice-cold Diet Mountain Dew because "Yeah, it tastes that good."

Mountain Dew and AMP Energy have been partners on Earnhardt's cars since he joined Hendrick Motorsports in 2008. Diet Mountain Dew assumes the primary sponsorship role for No. 88 with the start of the 2012 season and AMP Energy will remain as a major associate sponsor, retaining a significant presence with the team.

"Diet Mountain Dew is off to a strong start in 2012, with solid growth and the news that we've passed the billion dollar sales milestone," said Emily Silver, senior marketing manager, Diet Mountain Dew. "And, with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on-board to help us spread the word about the great taste of Diet Mountain Dew, we only expect things to accelerate from here."

Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew are known for engaging their loyal and passionate fan base. Now, to celebrate its new sponsor relationship, Diet Mountain Dew is joining Earnhardt in inviting fans to join the DEW Crew, an online community for Mountain Dew, Earnhardt and NASCAR fans.

Building on a legacy that began when Mountain Dew was the sponsor of NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip's 1981 and '82 championship seasons, Diet Mountain Dew is extending the DEW Crew from the pit to the fans at home. Fans who sign up at dewcrew.com beginning today at 5:00 p.m. eastern time will enjoy access to exclusive content and earn points for the chance to win exclusive prizes. Plus, DEW Crew members can help participate in decision making activities for the No.88 race team.

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Glamour Sets Up Virtual Store in New York

Glamour magazine has set up a shoppable wall in New York that's reminiscent of Tesco's virtual supermarket in a South Korea subway station last summer and Procter & Gamble's similar effort in Prague last fall.

Much like its overseas predecessors, Glamour's shoppable wall lets consumers scan 2-D barcodes with an app on their phone to buy real products for home delivery.

The Glamour Apothecary Wall stemmed directly from Tesco's effort. "We thought 'How can we bring that here?'" said Bill Wackermann, exec VP-publishing director of Glamour, part of Conde Nast. "We're not about supermarkets, but we are about beauty products."

The wall is stocked with items from Unilever , C.O. Bigelow, Johnson & Johnson , John Frieda, Elizabeth Arden, Clearasil and Versace. "Some of these accounts are longstanding advertising partners of Glamour, people that are willing to take an innovative step forward," Mr. Wackermann said.

Glamour is again using SnapTags from SpyderLynk as its 2-D barcode provider. The magazine used Facebook-enabled SnapTags in its September issue and SnapTags set up for e-commerce in its March issue. Separately, it has just introduced a redesign meant to help ad-page sales and newsstand traction.

The wall, across from the Standard Hotel in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, will be up through next Tuesday.

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Twitter radio reads you your tweets

The Social Radio reads tweets out loud to mimic a personal radio broadcast station. Users can search for tweets via hashtags of Twitter accounts and the app converts the texts into audio. The Social Radio app is available to download for free on Android phones and is currently in private beta mode for it’s online service.

The Argentinian startup company hopes that Social Radio will allow users to rethink Twitter and utilize the social media site for other means, such as tuning in to follow a sports game, have tweets read out when you’re driving, or simply to listen to comedic posts.


Source: http://www.psfk.com/2012/02/twitter-radio-app.html

Face-Recognition Billboard Displays Ads to Women, Not Men

An interactive billboard at a London bus stop can scan your face and determine if you're a man or a woman by using facial recognition technology. The display then plays one of two messages based on that information.

Plan UK, a global children's charity, is using the billboard to raise awareness about the choices unavailable to women around the world in their "Because I'm a girl" campaign.

Women are shown a short video advertisement depicting girls who've been stripped of the privilege to make choices about their careers, educations or spouses.

Men, on the other hand, are only shown statistics regarding the issue. Naomi Williams, a Plan UK campaign manager, says the full advertisement is not available to men so they can get "a glimpse of what it's like to have [their] basic choices taken away."

The set-up cost nearly $47,000 and boasts a 90 percent accuracy rate in determining whether passersby are male or female, Time reports. The organization hopes to raise about $400,000 in donations with the two-week campaign.

Read Full Article Here

Do you think advertisements targeting men and women based on facial recognition is a cool way of engaging your target? Or and invasion of privacy? Are you more likely to stop and interact with an ad if you know it has singled you out to participate?