Simply Zesty » Advertising – Simply Zesty

Sweden Promote Innovative Safe Sex Through QR Codes & Love Making App

Quinton O'Reilly — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:01:15 +0000

There’s been some innovative campaigns to promote safe sex among young people and this is a clever way of engaging with an audience.

To help promote safe sex in Stockholm and increase awareness, Swedish Agency Ester decided to hand out 50,000 condoms, each with a QR code to young adults aged between 20 – 30 years old. When you scan the QR code, it would direct people towards a love making app that you could install on your smartphone.

As the name suggests, the app is designed to be used during lovemaking, reminding you to put on a condom first before beginning. When you do, it measures factors such as sound, duration and rhythm during each act. When you’re finished, you create your profile and it would aggregate your stats with everyone else who uploaded theirs, where you can compare and contrast.

But the real genius was that Ester compiled the statistics gathered during each session and compiled a list of results which they then posted up around the city. So people found out how many people in the area had sex during the weekend, or that dog owners are louder than cat owners. Adapting a lighthearted approach for a usually serious subject created further awareness of the campaign and convinced more people to practise safe sex.

The campaign ran during the summer months with over 5,900 different graphs registered during that time period. You feel that if the campaign had a wider reach then the number of people participating would have been much higher but it’s an unique way of approachign what’s usually a difficult campaign to get young people to engage with so hats off to them.

How to run an effective social advertising campaign

Lauren Fisher — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 08:09:08 +0000

Advertising is becoming more social across all areas, including TV, billboards, banner ads and print, as well as new online formats. There are many examples of high profile social advertising campaigns, utilising innovative digital technology alongside mechanics such as Facebook Connect to bring this to the next level. But social advertising is open to all advertisers, no matter what your budget. By developing a smart ad campaign, you can integrate your activities with social media to get more bang for your buck and make your one hit of an ad last longer, by creating a community that you can talk to again and again. Below are some top tips for creating a social ad campaign, both offline and online.

Use the right platform

When you say social advertising, most people think of Facebook. While this is an excellent platform for running a social ad campaign, it’s not always the right place to focus your advertising efforts. Advertising on Facebook is becoming more expensive as an increasing amount of brands turn to it to market their product and attract fans to their page. It’s not the only platform for running a social ad campaign however. LinkedIn opened up their site to advertisers last year, through a self-serve ad platform that allows you to target people according to a number of different demographics. If you’re focused on b2b specifically it represents an excellent opportunity to reach people, though the benefit doesn’t end there. Consider structuring your LinkedIn campaign similar to how you would on Facebook. Instead of trying to drive people away from LinkedIn and towards your site, you could see better results by running ads to your LinkedIn group for example, where you can grow members and develop a longer-term relationship with your target customers.

You can also look to emerging social networks and tools for more cost-effective advertising where you could benefit from lower costs and higher visibility among users. There are some great examples of this on platforms like Foursquare, which was slow to attract brands’ attention but has become the focus of many successful ad campaigns in the U.S. particularly. The History Channel ran a promotion on there through a branded channel that featured tips to users when they checked into historical locations :

Through this campaign they achieved over 200,000 followers on their page, and excellent brand association. The beauty of a campaign like this is that you don’t need much in the way of technical or design ability to run it effectively, just a good understanding of social media marketing and new platforms people are experimenting with. You can achieve even more focused results by focusing on niche platforms, such as sponsorship of topic-specific forums or mobile apps, where you might not get the reach that you would through Facebook, but you’re getting in front of the right people consistently.

Mix the media

A social advertising campaign doesn’t necessarily have to start online, but can be implemented across a range of ad formats online and offline. Social advertising works well when it fits in with a complete advertising and marketing strategy, as opposed to standing on its own. So if you really want to build the fans on your Facebook Page you don’t have to restrict this to Facebook ads alone. You’ll achieve better cut through of your social media activities, if you take the ad campaign off of social media and make it fit as part a consistent ad campaign. Here you have an important decision to make. If you try and push people equally to your website as well as your social media profile, you risk mixing the messages and leaving people confused. Decide which is the right platform for the particular product or campaign and focus on this through the ad.

Use video

If you’re really interested in building a social ad campaign, I strongly believe that video should be a central part of this. Consumption of online video is increasing and it represents a fantastic opportunity to bring your ad to life. Make no mistkae that static advertising is dead. People want ads that are alive, bringing entertainment and exciting content to our day to day browsing online. The numbers alone speak for themselves. Official results published from a video measurement tool shows that 26.9 million people in the UK streamed video in April either at home or at work. And while these video viewing figures don’t focus on branded video exclusively, it shows how video viewing is becoming one of the most popular activities online.

For brands, this represents an opportunity and a challenge. The issue of course is that you’re not going to be the first brand to run an online video ad – advertisers have been doing this for years now. But the opportunity lies in the fact that brands now must act as entertainers. It’s time to have a bit of fun, laugh at yourself, and find ways to shock your viewers. Good content alone however won’t bring your video to life online. Don’t underestimate how much work you’ll need to put into distribution and seeding, with ad campaigns specific to video, running on Youtube for example.

Make it social for a reason

It’s difficult to see an ad on TV or print now, that doesn’t have a blue ‘f’ or ‘t’ running along the bottom. The advertiser here wants to to alert people to the social media presence of the brand and make use of some extra space to throw in a bit of social. But the impact on the viewer is minimal. What exactly are we meant to do with these logos? With no call to action or even url given, the benefit of these social logos is negligible. The strongest ads that incorporate social, do this for a reason. It’s either the sole focus of the ad, or the ad promotes a next step of doing something on Facebook, Twitter etc.. in return for a reward such as additional content or an offer. Again, this doesn’t have to be about developing fancy technology or digital formats, but smart use of existing social technologies can go far. This was shown last year when fans were invited to ‘check in’ to special billboards advertising Chery Cole’s new album, for the chance to win tickets to the live X Factor show :

This incorporated a real call to action and a very clear reason for interacting through social media. You knew what you were going to get out of it and it also added something extra to the experience of the ad. It wasn’t just walking past the billboard and the message is lost, but the user experience continued on.

Don’t expect it to be free

Although social media advertising is currently very cost-effective due to the ability to target people closely and less competition from other advertisers, many brands expect this to almost work for free. If you really want your social ad campaign to perform and drive results, you need to invest money as well as time. Your social ad budget can work incredibly well for you, if you are willing to put the budget up in the first place that gives it a chance to succeed. Far too often brands dip their toe in with social media, find they don’t get the reach that they would through an ad in the newspaper and decide to leave it alone. To really develop a strong social ad campaign, make sure you’re putting it high up enough in the ad plan to allow it to achieve the results you want it to. By investing significantly in social advertising, you can also build up data that will allow you to optimise your current campaign and improve subsequent ones. With a very small test budget you can’t accurately see how the ad can really perform and the real results you can achieve.

Incredibly Smart McDonald’s Campaign Gives Away Free Money

Niall Harbison — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:30:28 +0000

Mcdonald’s didn’t grow to become and internationally known brand without having a brilliant marketing department and their latest campaign from Canada shows just how creative they are. The promotion was around their $1 drinks and involved a giant ice sculpture embedded with over $4000 dollar coins in the shape of the iconic golden arches. The sculpture was then assembled in the center of Alberta in a prominent area and left there for users to enjoy as they saw fit. As you can see from the video plenty of families, children and even the odd dog got involved in trying to free the money and the feature would have provided a huge emotional attachment to the brand for many. Even though this is a small local campaign there is no doubt that this video will get featured all over the world on marketing blogs and that is the market that Mcdonalds will be aiming for with this particular stunt. These stunts are simple enough to put together and the big international brands like Coke have made them a trademark and it is easy to see why. Who doesn’t like getting some free money even if you do have to chip it out of a massive piece of ice!!

Use of transparent walls the focus for clever Mercedes safety campaign

Quinton O'Reilly — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:20:29 +0000

Accurately putting the idea to people about how complex safety systems work in traffic is never easy but an innovative method was devised by the agency Jung von Matt to showcase Mercedes-Benz’s safety features for their new cars.

The campaign’s aim was to highlight their PRE-SAFE precrash system so to explain the principal behind it, they decided to use technology to make a busy traffic intersection safer.

To do this, Mercedes-Benz set up a special billboard on a street corner in Hamburg, Germany. The billboards projected the image from a video camera which allowed people to look around the corner, creating the effect of a transparent wall. Therefore motorists and cyclists could now see potential hazards sooner and give them more reactionary time to avoid them, lessening the risk of a potential accident.

The campaign succeeded not only because it explained a complicated product but also because it made traffic safer. It also received recognition when it won a Silver Outdoor Lion at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity back in June.

The next trend in social media marketing – realtime advertising

Lauren Fisher — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:25:57 +0000

Advertising is becoming increasingly social, as more and more innovative ad formats arrive that utilise social technologies and build a bridge between users and social platforms. Quite how far this can go remains to be seen, as it’s an area that’s developing at an incredible rate, but it seems the future lies in realtime advertising. Brands are beginning to experiment with this unique ad format, often choosing to advertise their social media following or social conversations above their own websites. A new ad format has emerged that shows how realtime advertising can be used effectively for brands, through a unique ad for Mrs Meyers – a cleaning brand in the U.S.

Realtime ads in action

The realtime ad for Mrs Meyers was developed by Flite, who create ‘the best ads for the world’s leading brands’. It essentially offered people a completely social experience within the ad itself, without even having to leave the site. The ad displayed a complete social profile for Mrs Meyers online, including their most recent Facebook and Twitter updates, videos and real time conversation on Twitter. The experience happened completely within the ad upon clicking to expand and you can see it in action on Flite’s website :

What you may have noticed is that the social activity on the ad takes up much more space than the actual product image and call to action to ‘Learn more’ which takes you through to their website (You scroll down further through updates in the ad itself). The website plays second fiddle to the engaging, dynamic content displayed through the ad. It has made the ad completely real time and means that different users will be seeing different content depending on when they click on the ad. It’s not a case of building it once and deploying it, but the ad continues to evolve based on realtime conversation. This is an interesting evolution for advertising and it potentially changing the entire concept from being prescriptive, to participatory.

Website vs Facebook

The ad above brings up the question that is starting to become more of an issue for brands and marketers – should you promote your website or your social media profiles? More and more we’re seeing brands invest in advertising and promotions that focus entirely on bringing people over to Facebook, Twitter etc.. with the website not really getting a look in. For many, this is the wrong approach to take and some of the leading brands in social media show how to use your website primarily, with social media coming secondary. As shown in the ad above however, there is a bit of a battle going on between the website and social platforms, with almost too many calls to action. Should you hang out in the ad and click around, or go straight to the website to find out more? Both have their benefits for the user and the brand, but there needs to be a strategy in place for which one you want to prioritise and how this should be optimised. If you present too many options, you risk confusing people, leading to no action at all.

The concept of a social ad presents a further challenge here. It is a toss up between offering something engaging and different to the user, and a clear and direct ad that is focused on the sale or conversion. With social/real time advertising, it becomes much more about what’s happening within the ad itself rather than taking people through to another site. This is where you can pull in new information constantly to make the ad more beneficial both to the advertiser and the consumer.

The complete social graph

What these realtime ads are achieving is a more connected social graph across the internet. It brings the experience of Twitter and Facebook etc. outside of the platforms themselves and allows them to spread across the web, following users wherever they go. There is a potential here for these realtime ads to become even more social, with customised content based on your own social graph. For example the choice of products displayed could depend on your most recent tweets or your Likes on Facebook, to show you the content that you’re more likely to respond to and that you would be more interested in. What it also means is that social media and advertising move closer and closer together, as the social graph becomes something that extends out of social platforms themselves and into more traditional means such as banner ads.

Target in realtime

This fits in with a wider trend in realtime advertising, in the way that users are shown ads as well as the ads themselves. Facebook announced earlier this year that they would be experimenting with realtime ads, which means you can target users on a keyword basis, based on what they’ve just written in a status update. So you could run an ad for a product during a TV show for example, to catch people that are writing about this while the show is on. It makes the entire advertising experience more organic and adaptive, as you are shown content that is relevant to you, when it is relevant to you.

The impact of this is that we will be seeing a lot more targeted ads with a decrease in the amount of ads we’re served that don’t apply to us at all. This has already shifted massively with social advertising as you target on interest and connections, but with realtime this is about to go one step further. What remains to be seen is just how comfortable people are with this, or whether it’s seen as an invasion of privacy.

Living Social Tackle Groupon With Innovative London Cab Campaign

Niall Harbison — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:19:32 +0000

Living Social who run daily deals but are not as well known as Groupon are having to come up with lots of creative ways of getting their message out in order to get people interested in their deals site. One thing they are not short of is a large marketing budget and their latest campaign using a London Cab to have a little fun was a great way of getting the message out there. Not only was the cab fully branded with their logos on the outside but when normal passengers entered the car were told that they could either continue to their normal destination or spin a set of virtual dice to be sent to a new location where they would get to try one of the daily deals available on the site. Most users were shocked at first and you would have to imagine that there was a lot of video editing done to make sure everybody looked happy and didn’t jump out but the people who did accept the deals all seem to have had a great time doing very random things. The campaign is smart because it gets people using deals that they wouldn’t normally consider and actually enjoying them and probably talking about them to friends and suggesting the site to others.

As seen over on Adverblog

Designer’s homemade Windows phone adverts lands him Microsoft job

Quinton O'Reilly — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:00:03 +0000

We’ve seen examples of people adapting new ways to stand out from the pack in their chosen profession and showcase their skills off to a wide number of people. Now we can add another person to the list, graphic designer Brandon Foy, who impressed Windows with his homemade Windows phone adverts.

Back in February, when he was a post-graduate intern at Full Sail University in Florida, Foy decided to create a homemade advert showcasing the features for Windows Phone 7. The advert was well received by obtaining 150,000 views and impressed the people at Mircosoft so much that they invited Foy to Mix 2011 in Las Vegas where he unveiled a second homemade advert.

Windows Phone has said that if the video reached 200,000 views, they would turn it into a national advert. So far, it has only reached 118,000 views but Foy has benefited from his work as he was hired as a UX designer at Microsoft. It’s easy to see why Microsoft were so impressed as to hire him, the videos are stylish; make the phone look fun and sleek while showcasing the numerous features the phone has; justifying Microsoft’s decision.

Brilliant Social Media Campaign For Marmite In New Zealand – Video Case Study

Niall Harbison — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:25:40 +0000

Ogilvy New Zealand have just shared a campaign case study for their big international promotion around Marmite. In case you don’t know Marmite it is a type of spread that people around the world either love or hate and this campaign was all about getting the passionate people involved with the brand for a large worldwide campaign. The idea was that with so many New Zealanders living as Ex Pats all over the world you could enter a competition to get flown home for free. Nearly 5000 people took part in the competition with many going to huge effort to sing songs and record videos as part of their entry before it was opened up to the general public to vote with another 15,000 then taking part. The campaign apparently generated over $650,000 in free advertising and media and got the entire country as well as Kiwis all over the world excited about the brand again. Even though this is a brilliant campaign it wouldn’t matter how good it was because I like many others hate Marmite but as you can see in the video plenty of people feel the exact opposite and love the stuff…

Design Concepts Challenge The Way You Think About Alcohol Brands

Niall Harbison — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:55:14 +0000

Most people don’t think about brands all that much yet they affect every single part of their daily lives along with the purchasing decisions we all make. All that advertising alcohol brands do on Facebook and building apps that give away free beer or the racy TV commercials don’t make that much difference do they? It’s all the same stuff at the end of the day and you drink it based on your personal tastes? My ass you do! You drink it because of branding and alcohol companies spend billions every year building their brand and getting you to engage with it which is why these brilliant concept packages from a chap called Jorn Beyer show what things would look like if the playing field were leveled in terms of packaging. Companies spend millions on the design of their bottles and packaging alone so the big question is if you were faced with a shelf full of cartons like this would you stick with the drink you normally have or would you choose something different based on the actual taste and price? If nothing else these photos will get you thinking about just how important branding is in the products we consume on a daily basis.

350,000 Post Its Used To Create Beautiful Animation For Brazilian Marketing Campaign

Niall Harbison — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:12:32 +0000

We normally save all the beautiful marketing videos and case studies for over on Simply Viral but this one is so stunningly well made that we thought it deserved a special place here. This creation is called the Power Of Love and it is a very social marketing campaign for A Brazilian shoe company called Melissa that prompted users to write messages on all of the post its. The campaign took 25 animators 5 months to create and used 350,000 different colored Post Its and was all done to celebrate the launch of their new flagship store in San Paolo, More than 30,000 people left messages on the post its making this an incredibly social piece of marketing and there are also countless fan videos on Youtube which captured the magic. The video hasn’t really been picked up by the big mainstream blogs yet and only has 150,000 views but you can be sure it will after today and this video should explode in to the millions of views and I really hope it does after all the hard work and effort that has clearly gone in to this stunning creation. The only downside to all the attention they are about to get is nobody outside of Brazil has ever heard of Melissa shoes or will ever buy them.

The 10 best digital bus shelter adverts

Quinton O'Reilly — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:39:35 +0000

Public transport is the method of choice for any major city, more and more take trains and buses as they make their daily commute to work. Because of this, shelters are a prime spot for advertisers due to the amount of traffic (pun not intended) that filter through these services every day.

The majority of adverts are simply posters yet there are always inspired ideas out there that show a willingness to think outside the box and do something different to catch people’s attention. Here are what we feel are the top ten digital adverts ever to feature in a bus shelter.

Domestic violence – Amnesty international

Where: Hamburg, Germany

Portraying its message in a very literal sense, the first image shows a scene of a husband attacking his wife. Yet when someone begins to look at the advert, an eye tracking camera, installed over the image notices this and after a brief delay changes the image accordingly. The new image shows the couple smiling and cheerful, emphasising the tagline “It happens when nobody is watching.”

Interactive touch screens – LGE

Where: London, Manchester and Glasgow

To coincide with the launch of LGE’s new Chocolate handsets, touchscreens were installed in five shelters in London Manchester and Glasgow. The bus shelters featured information about their new products as well as trailers for James Cameron’s film Avatar, which was due for release at the time.

Only use electricity when you need it – Osram

Where: Cape Town, South Africa

The world’s largest energy saving light bulb manufacturers wanted to spread the message “Only use electricity when you need it” and so devised this simple but effective campaign. The shelter itself is dark but when someone sits down on its bench, the entire shelter lights up. The advert educates users by example about how easy it is to save energy and to switch off appliances when not used.

Big Brother 2008 – Channel TEN

Where: Perth, Austraila

An unusual advert as it engages people not by imagery but through mobile phones. Bluetooth transmitters were installed across twenty bus shelters across Perth.

Once Bluetooth users were within range of the advert, they would get an anonymous text message telling them that they are being watched with the details of whatever bus stop they were at. A second text would be sent to them 30-40 seconds later revealing the purpose behind the text advertising the show.

Weighing scales – Fitness First

Where: Amsterdam, Holland

Anyone commuters waiting for a bus could sit down on the bench and see their measured weight on the Fitness First advert beside them. Whether they were successful in using guilt to get people to join their health club has yet to be revealed.

Community gaming: Yahoo!

Where: San Francisco

While one example on this list has had touch screen on display, Yahoo went one step further with touch screens and introduced Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby to twenty different bus shelters, allowing commuters to play against other commuters at a different bus stop.

The service had four different games to play which were updated in real time with various neighbourhoods competing against each other. There were no prizes for winning but they made for a fun distraction for commuters on their way to work.

Vitamin water recharge – Glaceau

Where: Boston, New York, Chicago & Los Angeles

Installed by agency Crispin Porter & Boqusky, this ad allows commuters to recharge their phones, iPods or other mobile with three USB ports. The ports are located in the image of the drink, allowing you to recharge your batteries (literally) in the hope that you’ll later purchase the product so that you’ll recharge your batteries (metaphorically).

Digital thermometers – Norwegian Air Shuttle and Barnes, Catmur & Friends, Auckland

Where: Norway and New Zealand

In a bid to tempt people to use their services or, depending on how you view these campaigns, cruelly tease them, both Norwegian Air Shuttle and Barnes, Catmur & Friends Auckland set up electronic thermometers during the winter in bus shelters to inform commuters what the day’s temperature was.

If the sight of seeing temperatures in the minus figures didn’t depress them, below it had info saying that they should check out their services to escape to somewhere warmer.

New Zealanders suffered a worse fate by being informed about what the temperature was in Fiji.

Steaming hot coffee – McDonald’s

Where: Vancouver, Canada

Technically not a digital advert but is still an interesting way of catching the attention of commuters . To try and entice members of the public to avail of their free coffee offer during breakfast, McDonalds installed a steam machine into their bus shelter ad which activated every so often. The steam would emit from the image of a McDonalds coffee which would reveal their message.

Bluetooth Graffiti – Ecko Clothing

Where: Hamburg, Germany

Promoting Marc Ecko’s clothing range through graffiti, digital canvasses were installed in bus shelters where anyone with a Bluetooth phone could spray their own graffiti with the cursor of their phone.

Are there any that we missed? If so, let us know.

Pitch David Ogivly Mad Men Style In New iPhone App

Niall Harbison — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:51:09 +0000

The one person that everybody looks up to in the world of advertising is David Ogilvy for his vision and the high standards he set for the industry. The great man would just be turning 100 if he was still alive and to celebrate that momentous date Ogilvy have created a simple and fun app that allows you to pitch ideas over your phone to the father of advertising (Which I first spotted here). It’s a simple (and free) app to download and once installed on your phone you simply have to either call of video conference Ogilvy where he then asks you to pitch your idea. It feels very much like a scene from Mad Men and even though you are talking in to a phone to an animated person who has been dead for some time you can feel the pressure start to mount in the room. Ogilvy gives his answer pretty sharpish about your idea and doesn’t hold back if he doesn’t think it is good enough but will quickly embrace you and give you the backing you need if he thinks it is good enough. I love seeing other agencies marketing themselves in creative ways and thinking about themselves in the same was as they would about their clients. The app is simple and will only entertain you for a couple of minutes but getting to pitch to a legend like Ogilvy is well worth it.

Case Study Shows How Bing And Jay-Z Teamed Up To Take On Google

Niall Harbison — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:56:11 +0000

If you are going to take on Google at search then you are going to have to hire some heavy hitters which is exactly what Bing did when they brought in Jay Z and developed this brilliant innovative campaign to help launch his book. The book which was called Decode was seeded out in to the real world one page at a time in a number of innovative ways including on billboards, on the bottom of swimming pools and even wrapped on a car. Fans were able to track down the new pages in the book using Bing maps and clues left within Bing search engines and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The average time spent on the campaign site was a whopping 11 minutes and Jay Z grew his Facebook fans by one million as a result. The promotion helped the book to hit the best sellers list for 19 straight weeks and the campaign had widespread coverage across blogs and traditional media. That was all great for Jay Z but by linking with him and tapping in to a new audience Bing were able to grow their search queries by 11% in just one month and that is the reason why this is an award winning campaign that picked up awards at the Cannes festival last week. It’s a great start by Bing in taking the fight to Google and they are going to need lots more stunts like this if they are to continue grabbing search market share from them.

Coca Cola Are Back With A Beautiful New Feel Good Advert

Niall Harbison — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:48:39 +0000

You don’t become one of the biggest drinks brands in the world and sell billions of bottles of brown sugary water without being brilliant at advertising. Coca Cola constantly get that feel good feeling in to their advertising and this time a campaign from Brazil (Where they seem to be on a big push) just melts your heart and feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. This time Coke are using a group of children in a choir singing a beautiful song all set to a strong narrative about the amount of good things that happen in the world compared to bad things. By the time the advert gets to about 30 seconds you are totally hooked and bought in which opens it up nicely to finish you off in the last screen to come in with the hard sell about Coca Cola. This is actually a translation with the original being in Brazilian but it loses nothing in English and even though it is only on the official Oasis Youtube channel (they wrote the song) you can expect it to be pushed out around the world by Coke soon . Have a look at it and see if you agree that is leaves you with that classic warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside. I’m off to buy a can of Coke because that is what the good people on this planet do! Genius…

Volkswagen Mock iPhone’s Predictive Text In Brilliant New Ads

Niall Harbison — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:01:53 +0000

We’ve all been there on a phone that sends a predictive text with something that you in no way meant to say leading to serious embarrassment. The iPhone is well known for causing many such problems and Volkswagen have tapped in to that brilliantly for a new series of ads that end up sending the wrong messages to people. The are short simple videos that instantly put a smile on your face and get their core message across. You can imagine that these are going to be shared around the web pretty quickly over the coming days. The only concern I would have is how Mr Steve Jobs is going to react to having his iPhone ripped apart in a commercial but I am guessing a brand like Volkswagen would have that well covered off legally in advance. I’ve seen plenty of screen grabs of funny texts that people have been sent by mistake but this is the first time I have seen video used to get the point across and its a great move from Volkswagen. The other bonus is that these ads must have cost about $100 to make each! Perfect for sharing and smart marketing indeed…