Canuckflack

Shhh. Can you hear that? It’s the sound of David Ogilvy, hooked up to a turbine in the grave, generating enough power to light Six Flags over Georgia.

Almost two thirds of procurement directors questioned in a survey by spend management company Ariba said their marketing departments were �suspicious� of their activities, while 20% claimed they had been accused of interfering in client relationships. (MediaWeek)

Effective experiential/guerilla/street marketing depends upon the surprise and amusement of the general public. An imaginative campaign will draw the grudging admiration of a shopper, pedestrian and possible consumer, even if they are normally irritated by what they perceive as over-the-top marketing efforts.

I have to think the growing practice of building buzz by telling reporters about your impending “surprise” marketing tactic will eventually cause consumer skepticism to grow, and make this marketing genre backfire.

Sometimes an integrated marketing campaign isn’t worth it – especially when all you plan to do is flash people.

Outside Grand Central Terminal tomorrow, for example, six men and women will advertise a New York Health and Racquet Club class by spending hours flashing their underwear at strangers, who may notice that the club logo and “Booty Call,” the name of the class, appear on the garment.

“Our street team will be going around and mooning the message to the masses,” said Darren Paul, managing partner at Night Agency in New York, which organized the event. (NYT)

Come on – the least the agency could have done to earn the commission is hire J.Lo impersonators. Or RuPaul impersonators. Or RuPaul, I hear she needs the work.

A DJ for the British Classic Gold digital radio station has been suspended for repeatedly straying from the approved playlist. The Guardian got their hands on some internal emails:

We shouldn’t be playing Cliff Richard,” [Program manager Paul] Baker wrote in an email sent on Tuesday. “As I said on Monday, we might carry out research on him, but for now we have a policy decision that he doesn’t match our brand values, he’s not on the playlist, and you must stop playing him.”

“Requests is [sic] not an excuse,” he added.

An unrepentant [Tony] Blackburn read out the email at around 8.20am this morning then tore it up live on air, threw it in the bin and played two Cliff Richard tracks back to back, thought to be We Don’t Talk Any More (.mov)and Living Doll.(.mov)

And here for you, the dedicated Sir Cliff Richard fan, is the secret of his Dick Clark-like eternal tan and taut skin. (RealAudio)

How can you measure the impact of your blog? When do you really know that your astute and incisive analysis is really having an effect on people? Paul Wells, of Macleans magazine, knows:

This is the edgiest campaign I’ve ever seen, with the possible exception of the 1995 referendum. The other day I was walking up Bank St. and some guy leaned out of a minivan and shouted, “Your blog sucks!”

Despite the enormous up-fronts for the major networks, advertisers continue to scramble to find alternate vehicles to promote their brands and products. While we know what ad sales staff will do for a buck, some creatives appear quite willing to make room on tabletops, in kitchen cupboards and in carports – for an extra cheque or two.

Steve Martin, for example, set his novel Shopgirl in the Beverly Hills outlet of Saks Fifth Avenue. Now being produced as a film, Shopgirl is set in Neiman Marcus.

For Martin, the tweak to his artistic integrity appears to have been relatively painless. As his book climbed the bestseller lists, he said: “I wrote a novel this year called Shopgirl, and several producers came to me and wanted to turn it into a movie. And I said: ‘If you think you’re going to take this book and change it around, and Hollywoodise it . . . that’s going to cost you’.”

Some marketing execs, though, seem to wonder why they should pay for the cow if they’re getting the milk for free.

“We never pay for placement,” says Jeff Bell, marketing chief for the Chrysler and Jeep marques. “We call it brand casting.”

DaimlerChrysler won thousands of media hits for their Crossfire after it was “cast” in the finale of the Apprentice. The cost? A few free cars.

Today, the FT discusses the relative value of different placements on television and in film.

Apparently, the BBC wasn’t fully briefed on how to handle Presidents hawking their new biography. Ask probing questions, but don’t push too far, you know?

Former US president Bill Clinton lost his temper during a BBC interview after being repeatedly asked if he was genuine in voicing regret over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton, revving up a publicity campaign ahead of the release Tuesday of his memoirs, bristled at relentless questioning about the affair with the White House intern by veteran BBC interviewer David Dimbleby, according to British newspapers …

“As outbursts go, it is not just some flash that is over in an instant. It is something substantial and sustained,” said a BBC executive who viewed the interview, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The week of June 28, I’ll be running a series of posts providing PR and Marketing advice for Camp Directors. They’ll follow the same vein as my “PR for Santa” series last December.

It was twenty years ago this summer that Labatt changed the drinking habits of Canadians by introducing a longer-necked beer bottle with a twist-off cap. With the careful control of production, marketing and advertising, Labatt also managed to knock constant competitor Molson on its heels.

The latest salvo in an intense war with Molson for market share, the twist-off cap was a ground-breaking innovation in a national market just getting used to long-necked bottles. This was a secret product that had been developed, advertising produced and factories retooled, over a year: Molson could not be allowed to piggyback on Labatt’s work, especially through the beer-heavy summer months.

Labatt’s management counted upon deception to win the battle: a new ad for Labatt Lite was broadcast in Alberta, touting the benefits of a new, longer-necked bottle. At the same time, Labatt bought a million tall bottles – without a twist-off.

Molson, judging that Labatt was making a longer-necked bottle the marketing innovation of the summer (remember – Canada was still a land wedded to the stubby), bought millions of bottles – without a twist-off.

Naturally, they were non-plussed when a new version of the Labatt Lite ad ran in Alberta, one that began with a traditional bottle opener shooting off the screen and closed with the bottle being opened with the twist of a wrist.

“They deked us and we fell for it,” said Molson’s Norm Seagram, then president of Molson’s Alberta operations. “It was beautifully executed and it worked perfectly.”(From Paul Brent’s Lager Heads)