The end result was a single called “Is There Anybody Out There?” that is available for a free download from Coke. Aside from being an amazingly creative campaign idea, this could spark more brands to consider a new form of co-creation where consumers are invited not to create content themselves, but to be the spark for professionals to create content. In a sense, this is no different than real life where artists often take their inspiration from their fans.

Though Coke’s efforts have cause some to raise valid criticism about whether the campaign can be considered all that successful since the views and audience seems small by Coke standards, sometimes the most forward thinking ideas aren’t the ones which go viral right away. To me, the real power of this campaign is that it imagines a world where brands can help connect people with the artists they love in a way that empowers them to contribute to what the artists are creating.

Inspiration as a form of co-creation is not just a great marketing concept, but one which offers musicians and even filmmakers a new way to engage their audience on a deeper level and also get better ideas and inspiration to make their work better.  The only downside is that it leaves a lot of people to thank from the Grammy/Oscars stage …

Originally published on the Influential Marketing Blog

The animated live wallpaper app features a snow globe. The Google Mobile Ads Blog offers more details. “Coke’s live wallpaper takes the user into this snowglobe experience.”

“You can visit scenes from the video and tilt your phone to move the characters, just like Santa. Shaking your phone twirls the snow around, turning your Android phone into the snowglobe Santa interacts with in the holiday commercial!”

Coke said it will be promoting the wallpaper app via mobile display advertising campaign on the AdMob network.

Google (#4) saw a 36 percent increase in value over last year, bringing the brand closer to rival Microsoft (#3). HP (#10) enters the top 10 for the first time, having increased brand value under a new business model and brand platform. For the 11th year straight, Coca-Cola (#1) retains its top spot as the number one ranked brand on the list.

Technology brands continue to lead the pack, with IBM (#2), Microsoft (#3), Google (#4), Intel (#7), and HP (#10) earning top rankings. Apple (#17) increased brand value 37% through carefully controlled messaging and an endless wave of buzz surrounding new product launches.

Despite a challenging year, HP made smart additions to its product portfolio and swiftly expanded the HP brand to protect its ranking on the list. With 32% brand value growth, BlackBerry (#54) remains the most popular smartphone for business users, despite pressure from Apple as it edges into the corporate world.

“2010 was the beginning of a long road back towards economic recovery,” said Jez Frampton, group chief executive at Interbrand.

“From real-time customer feedback through social media to increased transparency about corporate citizenship, brands were faced with a profound change in the way they relate to customers and demonstrate their relevance and value. Despite this new paradigm of brand management, the advantages of building a solid brand remain the same.”
 

Carol Kruse, Vice President of Global Interactive Marketing, first told Tim Bradshaw at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, "The amount of impressions in such a short period of time around our whole World Cup campaign, to me it was a phenomenal time."  Which was a reference to 86 million impressions in 24 hours, if you’re curious.

Kruse then continued, "It made this emotional connection at the time, it was great."  And that observation stems from the fact Coke saw an engagement rate of six percent when a rate of 0.2 percent is more typical.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to call Promoted Trends a complete success, because no one knows how much Coke paid for its Promoted Trend.  Those big numbers wouldn’t be bargains if the price was high enough.

The Promoted Trends platform appears to have gotten off to a great start, though.  An endorsement like Kruse’s in fact sounds like something Twitter should have paid for.

Count on seeing a lot of other companies try to follow Coke’s lead, then, perhaps to the point that Twitter will be able to raise its rates (whatever they are) and make even more money.

Eduardo Llach saw how well a branded keyword strategy worked in the context of global beverage giant, Coca-Cola. The chief marketing officer of SearchRev said not enough brands follow Coke’s example.

After optimizing for a brand keyword campaign, Llach said conversion rates and click-throughs increased. This happens because the campaign closes the loop on marketing to an audience through its various methods.

Coke is a high-profile example of this, with some of their terms going to American Idol, or for Heidi Klum’s awareness promotion of women’s heart health at the Oscars. Advertising inspires an act by visitors, Llach said.

But when a brand already ranks #1 organically, the decision makers may wonder why they should pay for the traffic they already receive for free. Llach suggested buying branded keywords leverages a campaign better.

One interesting point came up when we discussed Coke itself as a branded keyword. With several beverages under the Coca-Cola umbrella, product marketers for Diet Coke, Coke Zero, and Coca-Cola all want the valuable Coke keyword for their campaigns.

That indicates one of the issues facing those who would promote brand keyword buys for their company: who gets to use it? Llach said it takes work from the top marketing executives on down to get everyone lined up for campaigns, and the keyword’s role in them.

This achievement led Steven Starr, the founder and chairman of Revver, to state, “The time and place to be an independent creator is right now, online.  Smart advertisers are financing an online economy that supports these creators, and the top talent will build fortunes.  This is historic: It is the birth of a sustainable art form, and it’s happening before our eyes.”

Doug Bresler, the creator of “Doogtoons,” would probably agree – he tossed some complimentary words into the official press release, and it was his brand that actually received Revver’s one millionth dollar.

Also, let’s not forget the lads at Eepybird – NewTeeVee’s Jackson West reports that they “have earned over $50,000 to date for the nearly 11 million views garnered by the Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments clip.”

So give Revver a cookie for its revenue-sharing achievement, or better yet, a cake with one candle – the company just had its first birthday, as well.

McDonald’s means something to them. Something very special.

Worse, Mickey D’s sort of cheats with carefully engineered smells that trigger pleasure sensors in the brain, colors immediately associated with fatty goodness, reported low levels of butane in the nuggets as preservatives (source on that is Digg.com, so take it for what it’s worth), magical clowns and playgrounds on the premises, and seats crafted to be comfortable for something like exactly 14 minutes – enough time for you to eat and get the hell out of there.

But I’ve digressed. Like I said, this is an article about the power of branding.

Recently, a study on search engines showed that though search results presented to participants were the same, and even though the participants on the whole preferred Google in their daily lives, the majority of them selected Yahoo as the best search engine in the study, effectively choosing a logo over reality.

This seemed to prove my point that branding does indeed have an effect in online marketing, and a effect on the ROI, though many have argued that presence cannot compare to clicks and conversions – a word of caution, though, like a 401(k) branding payoff is not immediate. It is about getting your brand ingrained into the collective psyche, just like McDonald’s has (woefully) blisteringly and effectively done over the past 40 years.

Coke has a similar dominance in taste tests, even though when the brand was absent, participants exhibited no preference.

In this study, as reported by MercuryNews (careful, they’re nosy in San Jose; surprising they don’t ask for a DNA sample on the registration page), kids between 3 and 5 years old were given identical food samples, hamburgers, French fries, chicken nuggets, carrots, and milk. Forty-four percent preferred McDonald’s wrapped carrots.

At home, my stepson doesn’t allow me to buy generic Captain Crunch. Won’t it, swears there’s a difference. As this study illustrates though, a strong brand can altar even the taste buds.

Technology and Marketing Law Blog’s Eric Goldman relays a similar story, except this one involves Dora the Explorer:

We had our own recent first-hand experience with the power of brands over kids. We normally don’t shop in the "traditional" grocery stores like Safeway; the vast bulk of our grocery dollars go to Trader Joe’s or the farmers’ markets.

However, on a recent vacation, we stopped into a traditional grocery store (the Save Mart in Angels Camp), and my 2-year-old daughter Dina went absolutely bonkers.

She’s a fan of Dora the Explorer, and it turns out that there are an amazing number of Dora-branded products available in the traditional grocery store–we as parents had blissfully ignored these products, but they shone like bright beacons to our otherwise unexposed/inexperienced daughter.

Through some disciplined parenting, we escaped with a single Dora-branded pack of yogurt…and a vow never to go back to traditional groceries!

I’ve seen the same thing happen with Disney-branded food.

Ah, well, selling is what has created this country of ours, and it’s doubtful that will change. So the moral of the story, among several, for the online marketer’s purposes, branding is a powerful, powerful agent for the seller. Just look at what the big boys have done with it. 

The study was conducted by researchers at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. The researchers copied results from four different search engines: Google, MSN Live Search, Yahoo! and one they developed specifically for the study.

They took those results, combined them to make identical results for four queries: "camping Mexico," "laser removal," "manufactured home," and "techno music." Despite that the results were identical, the study participants picked Yahoo! as the most relevant, with Google and MSN (in third again, it would seem) trailing behind.

The in-house non-branded engine the researchers created did the worst, rated 10 percent below average.

"Given that there was no difference in the results, all of the search engines should have had the exact same score," said Jim Jansen, assistant professor and lead researcher. "Some emotional branding is having an effect here."

The results mirror a study conducted in 2004 that compared participants cola preferences. In that study, brain scans revealed that when participants knew which cola (Coke or Pepsi) they were drinking, the regions of the brain associated with memory and cultural influences were activated, and affected their preferences.

"[T]here are visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous systems of humans that consume the drinks," the researchers concluded.

They also found that, when brands were known, Coke was cola of choice, trouncing Pepsi, whose brand had no influence. 

The contest is simple: design a new Coke machine for Second Life. The execution of the challenge, however, is the unique factor that bears mentioning.

Submissions will require entrants to visit the MySpace and YouTube pages that Coke has set up for the contest, which in essence, implements a socially integrated marketing strategy that many have predicted would be the next big promotional movement by the major brands.

As for the details of the contest itself, here’s what Coke has to say:

[T]hrow away the box, your expectations and interpretations of what a Coke machine is. Think expansively about the possibilities for having fun and being part of a great experience.

Show us your best ideas – what do you wish you could do or see in Second Life? Do not limit yourself to your own abilities to create objects inside of Second Life – find any way to express your idea and get it to us. Let us and the developers of Millions of US help you make them real in Second Life.

It’s a brilliant move for Coke, actually. Not only is the company getting the benefit of such broad social advertising, but they are also contracting out future marketing efforts to the very people they are trying to reach. What better way to give people what they want than to let them actually design the product.

Now if Coke would only bring back Max Headroom as a Second Life avatar. That would be the pièce de résistance of their venture into virtual worlds and social marketing. 

The ad is covered in a thick layer of irony, informing its target market that the Times is the "ultimate guide to global travel," advising on:

Where to Stay; Where to Eat; What to Do; When to Go

It appeared above an article posted on the travel section of GridSkipper.com, a Gawker Media site. The article was titled "New York Coke Bars."

If you’re the temperance-minded, you may already be wondering what’s wrong with Coca-Cola, or the soda-jerk joints that serve it. That association would be quickly displaced upon seeing the graphic accompanying the article featuring a mirror with a powder line and a rolled-up dollar bill. 

It becomes clear this is a guide to "some of the city’s favorite indoor skiing," sponsored by the New York Times. And if you, the cokehead reader, know any blow-friendly bars that Amanda Kludt, the writer of the piece, forgot to mention, be sure to let GridSkipper know.

Just make sure it hasn’t been mentioned in the comments section. Commentator "Wasp vs. Stryper" was appalled at the list’s incompleteness, reminding Kludt of The Annex, The Dark Room, 200 Orchard, 205, The Box, and Thor, all of which can be expected to be raided next week.

Regardless of the ironic hilarity of it, it seems doubtful that the NYT would openly endorse public cocaine use – unless there’s an editorial I’ve missed. The Village Voice, maybe, High Times, but the NY Times, established paper of record for the greatest city on Earth and most widely-respected news organization anywhere?

Though contextual advertising is most definitely the future in this industry, and a huge organization like the Times can absorb accidental associations, smaller, more sensitive advertisers would probably be quite upset having their priceless brand names associated with the urban nightclub drug subculture.

So, needless to say, but it’s going to be said anyway, artificial intelligence has a ways to go yet before it can recognize certain moral and cultural nuances with enough skill to choose which ads are appropriate. Google says they’ve gotten quite good at this.

Doubleclick, the digital advertiser the NYT went through for this placement, apparently has some problem solving to address – even if artificial intelligence is really, really hard.