Author Archives: grant.hunter

To be honest we forgot to post this a week ago but that’s quite apt, as you’ll see. Mother’s Day happens at different times, generally in March or May, around the globe. The second Sunday in May seems to be the one most countries celebrate. Out in the States Coke Zero jumped on the fact that boys often forget to send their Mums a present. Using Twitter they offered up the chance for sons (and daughters) to get their own Motherpiece delivered to their Mums to say sorry. Ten painters were hired to work in rapid response style in the Droga5 NYC agency. The guys with the best excuses were asked to send in a photo of themselves and the painters got to work to create a portrait. Now looking at the results we’re not too sure who the artists were but the results aren’t exactly flattering (we’ve posted some of them below) check out the hashtag #motherpieces for more. Contagious reported that each picture was turned around in ten minutes and then the original was posted to the ‘lucky’ mum. 50 pictures were created in total. It’s another example of a rapid response platform and it has shades of Orange’s Feed from the UK but we’d argue the results are no where near as good. Hat’s off to Coke and the agency for their rapid-fire bailing out though. It certainly helped a few forgetful guys to come out smelling of roses (that said we can’t help thinking that sending some flowers might have been better received by some of the mothers).

The hairdryer of the EPL and the longest serving manager  (Sir Alex Ferguson) called it a day this week after 26 years at the helm of Manchester United. It’s an incredible reign and a number of brands jumped on the story.

Our favourite is the simplicity of the Nandos Uk Tweet (Thanks to @bluespen for the heads up). It’s well known that Man United always get at least 5 minutes of injury time at the end of any game at Old Trafford. This timely tweet poked fun whilst celebrating Sir Alex’s career.

Paddy Power in true satirical style suggested it was a great time to be a Liverpudlian with this outdoor execution

KitKat posted this on Facebook playing homage to Sir Alex’s legendary post match ‘debriefs’ with his players. The Sun also chose to use the hairdryer analogy for their front page.

And Mars rearranged their well known strapline

If you’ve seen any other flashes of Fergie Genius let us know.

Reserva in Brazil and Kents Meats in the U.S. have both been victims of theft (or attempted theft) and then used it to their advantage by repurposing the CCTV footage as ads.

Nutella have now followed suit with a print ad displaying the various headlines about the theft they’ve suffered and it’s a big theft. In Germany thieves stole 5 tons of the nutty spread. Daniel in our Singapore office spotted this one and we love the fact that they’ve turned it into a participation idea. They are inviting people to tell them what they would do with Nuetella via the hashtag #5tonsofNutella.

Read about the theft here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305791/Five-tonnes-Nutella-stolen-German-thieves.html

Thanks to daniel for the spot

Pre-trending ! Is it the latest  buzz world in the world of real-time? Digitas’ BrandLive and The Huffington Post are developing a real-time newsroom for brands that uses a Huffington Post algorithm to predict trending news and potential memes before they happen. Arianna Huffington in Manhatten yesterday positioned it as:

“We are delighted to be partnering with Digitas to harness the power of real-time tools to help brands tell their stories and build relationships while using social media to deepen connections with consumers and the impact brands can have on our lives”

Ad Age reported from the Digitas New Front presentation on Thursday that Travis Donovan, Huffington Post’s executive products editor, said “the partnership will allow brands to submit branded content and have it published in just two hours, maximizing their chances of jumping on a new subject while it’s hot. Stories will range from “Twitter length” text to slideshows to longer videos.”

There will be an area on the Huffington Posts homepage titled Partner Content where the branded content will sit. The content itself  will be created by either brands or BrandLive’s creative team .

Find out more about New Fronts here