Masterful Advertising

I'm sure we've all had days when we've considered having everyone that works in marketing rounded up into a large pen and shot. On rare other days, such as today however, I might let them off with a light hanging, and then some tea and biscuits. Why this sudden orgy of generosity? Well, sometimes, they really do get it right.

Hopefully you've all by now seen this masterpiece from Cadbury's:



The impressive point here, isn't that it's just a cool advert, and well shot. It isn't that the fact it's so 'out of the box' that everyone remembers that crazy gorilla. It isn't even that this is something that grips the viewer and sometimes draws more attention than the program it interrupted. The really amazing thing about this advert is that everyone I've spoken to doesn't think of it as 'that gorilla ad', but as 'the Dairy Milk ad'. I'm not entirely sure how they've done it, but they've managed to make a really cool advert which everyone still associates with the product.

The viral response to this advert was massive too, with spoofs and clones popping up everywhere. Viral marketing is something I see attempted a lot, but often fails - mostly, I think, because someone actually started a campaign with the idea of making it viral. Just because someone came up with the buzzword 'viral' doesn't mean it's something you can force. The internet is a fickle place that can be swayed by the most obscure things, and that can ignore the most big budget flashy things there are. Just make a great product and advert, and hope for the best - don't try and force some kind of following or set of spoofs.

The second thing I wanted to bring your attention to was a recent Natalie Dee comic, which has probably generated more traffic to her site than anything else - and she's already very popular with tons of great cartoons and t-shirts. It even worked on me, because I'm blogging about it, and giving her some more links:



Just brilliant.