Friday, November 09, 2007

Ahora los padres podrán controlar el tiempo que los chicos juegan en la Xbox 360

Microsoft anunció el lanzamiento del Family Timer, que permitirá establecer límites diarios y semanales al uso de la consola de videojuegos. Cuando el jugador está por sobrepasarlos, el aparato emite una advertencia y, momentos después, se apaga. La herramienta podrá descargarse a partir de diciembre desde Internet

Llegó la solución para los padres que están cansados de ver a sus hijos horas y horas jugando a los videojuegos. Con Family Timer podrán programar cuánto tiempo quieren que los más pequeños usen la consola Xbox 360.El lanzamiento de la herramienta fue anunciado por Microsoft. Desde la compañía explicaron que puede configurarse para establecer tanto límites diarios como semanales.¿Cómo funciona? Cuando el jugador está a punto de sobrepasar el límite establecido, la consola lanza una advertencia, momentos después, se apaga automáticamente.

Para diseñar la herramienta la compañía se basó en encuestas que arrojaron que el 90% de los padres entrevistados restringen –o al menos lo intentan- el tiempo que sus hijos pasan con los videojuegos. Además, la novedad cuenta con el apoyo de la National PTA, que es la organización de padres y profesores más grande de Estados Unidos. Family Timer podrá descargarse a comienzos de diciembre desde Xbox Live, el servicio de Internet de la consola.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Wal-Mart Wants to Carry Its Christmas Ads Beyond Price

By STUART ELLIOTT and MICHAEL BARBARO

HE possibility that consumers will hesitate to spend for the holidays is worrying retailers as the Christmas shopping season gets under way. Wal-Mart, the nation’s No. 1 merchant, is starting its big holiday advertising campaign today with an upbeat appeal that seeks to elevate saving money from a necessity to a virtue.

Wal-Mart’s campaign, “Save money. Live better,” will try to focus on the spirit of the holidays as much as on low prices.

The goal of the campaign, by the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, is to promote low prices as a means rather than an end — less Scrooge and more Tiny Tim.


For instance, in one commercial, the question, “What will you do with your savings?” is answered by showing a grinning boy riding a bicycle with a big red gift bow atop the handlebars.

A print advertisement presents a house and yard ablaze with Christmas lights. “With great holiday decorations at unbeatable prices,” the headline says, “we’ve got two words for you: backup generator.”

In another commercial, a wife raves about the “incredible” price she paid for a Toshiba HD-DVD player she bought her husband. “All I know is that Christmas is going to be a very, very good day,” she says, smiling.

Another print ad, decorated with a ribbon-bedecked ornament labeled “For every wish,” shows gold jewelry; the prices are displayed near each earring, bracelet and necklace. “We make it affordable to have a heart of gold,” the headline declares.

The goal is to persuade budget-minded consumers that “the more you save, the more Christmas you can give,” said Stephen Quinn, chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores in Bentonville, Ark.

“The core statement of our holiday program is that you can save money if you shop at Wal-Mart,” he added, but to “find more positive and more emotionally connective ways” to express it beyond prosaic appeals to buy stuff cheap.

This is the first holiday campaign for Martin, an agency best known for its humorous Geico insurance campaigns, featuring offbeat characters like geckos and cavemen. The work for Wal-Mart is more mainstream in its approach, reflecting the retailer’s heartland roots.

Martin took over in January as the creative agency for Wal-Mart’s general advertising account, with spending each year estimated at close to $600 million. There are also holiday ads aimed at Hispanic consumers, created by López Negrete Communications; black consumers, from GlobalHue; and Asian-Americans, from the IW Group, another Interpublic agency.

The results of the campaign will be closely watched, because how Wal-Mart fares at Christmas could foretell the health of the American retail economy as shoppers struggle with rising energy prices and falling home values.

“Tough times are actually a good time for Wal-Mart,” Tom Schoewe, chief financial officer, said during a meeting with Wall Street analysts last week, because “our customers care a lot about price and value.”

In September, Martin introduced a theme for Wal-Mart that is intended to reclaim the retailer’s reputation as middle America’s favorite discounter while adding uplifting sentiment to the sales pitch.

The result — “Save money. Live better” — appears in most of the holiday campaign, which will include television, magazines, newspaper circulars, ads on Web sites and signs in stores. It supplants the more bargain-focused slogans Wal-Mart has used in previous years, which included “Always low prices.”

The “save money” part of the theme “is in the DNA of Wal-Mart; it’s why it was created,” said Steve Bassett, creative director at Martin.

The “live better” part is intended to offer “a great promise,” he added, beyond “we’re having a big blowout sale.”

That is particularly important for Christmas, Mr. Bassett said, when consumers want to be “celebratory” rather than to dutifully count pennies.

“One of the pillars of the work is, ‘Let’s express joy,’” he added. “We want people to come away with, ‘Wow, it’s going to be a great Christmas this year, and Wal-Mart will be part of that for my family.’”

Wal-Mart’s holiday marketing tactics have varied widely from one year to the next. This is a reflection of its recent struggle to determine whether it ought to concentrate on its traditional blue-collar customers or woo more affluent shoppers.

In 2003, Wal-Mart cut toy prices so deeply it set off a price war with Toys “R” Us and KB Toys, which sent KB Toys into bankruptcy. The next year, Wal-Mart went lighter on the cutbacks, hurting sales.

In 2006, the theme of the holiday campaign was “Be bright,” as Wal-Mart sought to stimulate sales of more expensive merchandise like designer sheets.

But sales slumped, so price cuts, which Wal-Mart calls rollbacks, quickly returned, creating an uneven tone.

“We had been experimenting a lot,” Mr. Quinn said. “The experimentation process is over.”


“We’ve hit a groove on what our core positioning is,” he said, but because “people already know Wal-Mart is a place to save, we’re trying to make sure there is an emotional connection and not just an empty promise of ‘Save, save, save.’”

For Christmas, the campaign will express the thought this way, Mr. Quinn said: “It’s great to save money, but the feeling you get giving the bike the kid wants is the payoff.”

A commercial for Hispanic shoppers makes that point by showing how the low price on a doll lets a mother also buy clothes for the doll, he said, “rather than saying, ‘You’ll save two dollars here, a buck fifty there.’”

Whether shoppers speak Spanish, English or Esperanto, Wal-Mart needs a big Christmas.

Despite record sales and earnings, Wall Street is worried about the company. Sales at Wal-Mart stores open at least a year, a crucial yardstick in retailing, have risen but at a steadily falling rate — from an average of 3.6 percent a month in 2005 to 2.1 percent in 2006 to 1.5 percent so far this year.

A plan by Wal-Mart to use big-name brands and rock-bottom prices to lure customers has worked in the electronics and grocery departments, but it has so far failed in the home and apparel sections of the stores.

“Clearly, we’re on a longer-term path to ‘fix’ those businesses,” Mr. Quinn said, adding that for the holiday season there will be an emphasis on “a lot of basics: fleece, jackets, hats.”

For those who like decorating their homes for the holidays, Wal-Mart will for the first time operate themed Christmas shops, Mr. Quinn said. In many stores, they will be in the lawn and garden departments.

The special shops will also stock Christmas toys, video games and foods.

The shops are another example of how Wal-Mart is seeking to offer shoppers “higher-touch” experiences than before, Mr. Quinn said, and help them “get into the Christmas spirit” instead of coming to Wal-Mart to trudge the aisles for bargains.

The focus on well-known brands in electronics will continue for the coming Christmas, Mr. Quinn said, listing names like Sony and Toshiba. In the commercial about the Toshiba DVD player, the wife says the price was so low that “even for Wal-Mart, I was surprised.”

In a study released this week by BDO Seidman, 73 percent of the chief marketing officers at retailers said discounting and promotions would be more common this holiday season than last year. And 54 percent said sales would be flat compared with the 2006 holiday season.

To help jump-start the holiday shopping season, Wal-Mart announced yesterday that it would offer door-buster discounts three weeks before they traditionally appear. Five popular products, including a laptop for $350, will go on sale at 8 a.m. tomorrow rather than the day after Thanksgiving.

Wal-Mart said there would be additional door-busters on Nov. 23.

The holiday campaign will appear on TV networks like ABC, ABC Family, CBS, CMT, CW, Discovery, E!, ESPN, HGTV, Lifetime, NBC, Nick at Nite, TBS, TLC, TNT and USA. The publications to carry the print ads include Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Parade, People and Redbook.

Starbucks, PepsiCo Bring 'Subopera' to Shanghai

By James T. Areddy
A feel-good film about a girl from the Chinese countryside who moves to the big city to discover love, blogging and Starbucks will premier this month in an unusual venue: Shanghai's subway.

"A Sunny Day," is scheduled to play exclusively on thousands of high-tech flat screen monitors on Shanghai's subway cars and station platforms.

[Subway]
Girl meets boy and Starbucks in 'A Sunny Day,' to be shown in installments

Tailored for an audience of 2.2 million who cram onto China's biggest underground railway each day, the full-length feature film will be shown in daily segments of a few minutes each over 40 weekdays, soap-opera style. Subtitles in Chinese will help commuters follow the dialogue over the subway noise, and multiple daily rebroadcasts and tie-ins on the Internet are designed to ensure no one misses any of the cliffhangers.

Instead of an ordinary film, the so-called "subopera" is a blend of drama and advertising. A venture between Starbucks Coffee Co. and PepsiCo Inc. financed and helped produce the drama as part of a campaign that kicks off today in Shanghai to introduce bottled frappuccino drinks to the Chinese market.

"It's quite unique and demonstrates a departure from conventional marketing," says Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman. The coffee company hasn't traditionally advertised, Mr. Schultz says, adding that a soap opera can be effective since it creates "real entertainment for our customers and along the way there is a complementary message." PepsiCo, which will bottle and distribute the Starbucks-branded drinks, referred questions to Starbucks

The film has a clear commercial bent. In some shots, the mermaid from the Starbucks logo gets as much face-time as the movie's big turnstile draw, Huang Xiao Ming, a 29-year-old pop star who is so well known he is sometimes called China's Justin Timberlake.

Still, "A Sunny Day" is no infomercial. Mr. Huang's character "CC" is a struggling musician who strums his guitar for coins in the subway, and falls for big-hearted Sunny, who is trying to get over the death of a boyfriend and fit into a new job.

During the shooting on a recent Sunday, as a gaggle of teenage women sneaked onto the set, Mr. Huang described the subway a "fashionable, very modern" venue that will appeal to a trendy audience.

Subways around the world have long featured visual distractions. A century ago, platforms were showcases for art, like the swank metro stations in Paris. In the 1970s, spray paint enlivened the dank and dangerous New York subway, and in the 1980s, the late Keith Haring helped make graffiti a respected art form with projects like "Studio in the Subway."

This year, the Berlin subway's 1.5 million daily passengers were the judges in a weeklong festival of 90-second, silent films called "Going Underground."

Advertisers are also pressing beneath the streets. Sidetrack Technologies Inc. of Winnipeg and New York-based Submedia LLC place light-board advertising in subway tunnels in several cities around the world, giving riders the motion-picture like effect of seeing a flipbook.

China's $20 billion advertising industry is increasingly adopting the global trend toward marketing disguised as entertainment. In addition to Hollywood-style product placements in TV shows and movies, a rapidly expanding segment is directed at an emerging middle class during the workday hours with slickly crafted TV-style ads in taxis, airplanes and even elevators.

Advertising beats boredom, says industry pioneer Jason Jiang, chairman and founder of Focus Media Holding Ltd., a Shanghai company that puts TV ads into elevators.

[Subway]
Shanghai commuters watch an NFL promotion on monitors in the subway.

Shanghai's 12-year-old underground has a network of 4,000 flat-screen monitors designed as an emergency broadcasting network. But mostly, the screens show information, from train arrival times to short clips of soccer highlights, runway models, entertainment news and advertising. Marketers pay to run ads or programs, but until now, they have been very short, lasting about a minute. Terms for "A Sunny Day" have not been disclosed.

The system works like a high-tech closed-circuit TV network, and includes frequently updated news, train information and other messages. Each time a subway train pulls into one of Shanghai's 95 stations, new video updates are instantly relayed by Wi-Fi to an on-board server that broadcasts them to monitors in the cars. A closely held Shanghai company, Digital Media Group Co., developed the subway broadcasting system and runs it in several Chinese cities, typically in partnership with the local transit authority.

In one current campaign, a National Football League "two minute drill" offers game highlights and a quiz that can be answered using mobile phones messages. In another subway promotion, J.D. Power and Associates ran automobile quality ratings.

The multimillion-dollar production of "A Sunny Day" is the brainchild of Thomas G. Tsao, a co-founder of Shanghai venture capital firm Gobi Partners Inc., which owns a chunk of DMG.

Once he sold his "subopera" idea to Starbucks and Pepsi, their marketing people re-tuned the original storyline, toning down sexiness and fitting in mostly subtle Starbucks placements. "Everything we did was very natural to the story," Mr. Tsao says.

Sunny, played by the relatively unknown Liao Jun Jia , moves to the city after her boyfriend dies. During her subway commute, she often does good deeds. Soon, Mr. Huang's character, CC, spots Sunny in a Starbucks and has the barista deliver a bottled drink to her table. As their romance blossoms, an old girlfriend of Mr. Huang's enters the picture -- and bangs shoulders with Sunny.

On the set, no one forgets the sponsor. During the filming one day, just as the crew went silent to start shooting a scene, Mr. Huang noticed that he didn't have a cup in front of him and abruptly shouted: "MY coffee?" A production assistant rushed a Starbucks mug in front of him, and the director yelled ACTION!"

The actors say that to connect with an audience that will be watching on small screens in a swaying subway, they kept dialogue and movement to a minimum. In one shot, Sunny slowly twists a bottle filled with water and guppies - to reveal the Starbucks "Mocha" label.

"It's a new medium," says Director John Xiao Qi. A film with strong elements of a commercial isn't a compromise, he reasons, as "It's easier for the audience to accept the message because of the setting."

nuevo comercial de Ipod hecho por un estudiante

El 5 de septiembre de este año Apple lanzó el ipod touch, que se beneficia de la tecnología utilizada en el iphone para darle al cliente una interfaz libre de botones. El lanzamiento se acompaño de una campaña de publicidad que pregona que no es sólo un ipod, pero tampoco un iphone, haciendo patente la dificultad de mercadear un producto que de manera clara se encuentra entre dos marcas muy fuertes.

Es por eso que la nueva estrategia de Apple me sorprende tanto, según fuentes en el New York Times la agencia de Apple, TBWA/Chiat/Day llama a Nick Haley creador de un comercial posteado en youtube para el ipod touch con el fin de "comprar" su idea. La odisea lleva al joven a Los Angeles California para la sesión de grabación y entrega del anuncio.

Las dos versiones son muy similares y da gusto ver que se respetó el espíritu creativo del original. Es una muestra de lo que se puede lograr con la ayuda del contenido generado por los usuarios (CGC) siempre y cuando los anunciantes estén atentos a los que sucede entre sus propios consumidores. Cómo nota personal, puedo decir que el comercial me parece bueno y punto, nada especial, su valor principal está en su origen. Este ejemplo se suma a muchos casos de éxito que comienzan como una idea viral y terminan por convertirse en mainstream.

Versión por Nick Haley:


Versión final:


Por: Alvaro Rattinger

Video Ads For People Without TVs

TWO MAJOR THEMES IN ANY discussion of online video are advertising and CGM (consumer-generated content, or whatever you want to call it). Some of the questions we're asking: What kind of ads will work best in short-form content? What should these ads look like? And, how are we as marketers going to produce the many different executions necessary for all the geographic, demographic, and use-based targeting that's just around the corner? CGM campaigns run through managed brand communities provide one coming answer.

Well-known examples of CGM ads are big splashy contests like the Superbowl Doritos spot, or failures like the Chevy Tahoe mix-your-own ad ploy. But many smart marketers today are managing (or having managed for them) communities of citizen marketers and brand loyalists, people who are interested in helping out the brands they love -- and these communities are slowly being empowered with video sharing tools. Some of this activity is behind firewalls, some is in the open, and whether you want to call it "advertising" or not, it's often enthusiastic brand content that communicates well to others.

On platforms like Ning and Kickapps, marketers are building spaces where niche audiences of brand lovers share video content about their lives, their creative endeavors, and their brands. And marketers are sharing back, releasing professionally produced insider video, setting up private events, joining the conversation and creating excitement as well as excuses for community members to post more CGM video. And unlike YouTube, marketers have control over what gets posted; though as with blogging, marketers have to have the right voice and tread lightly when it comes to censorship.

But, wait! you say. Who wants to watch a bunch of crappy home videos? Here's where mixing CGM and pro ad content and packaging comes in. Many managed communities give marketers access to the source CGM material. Are you an auto marketer with a new model on tour? Show it off first to community members in your major markets. Encourage them to shoot video and upload it to your site. Pull out the good stuff and edit it together with a clip from the lead engineer or head designer. Do this in each market, and voila! A number of different, low-budget executions you can place wherever video advertising lives. Play the San Francisco clip in San Francisco. Play the design clip for design audiences, the engineer clip for gear-heads. Maybe you luck out and something funny happened during the tour: there's your YouTube viral. This is do-able now.

I don't own a TV. I couldn't care less about the demise of high-dollar :30 spots. If I'm watching short vids on a site like BeBo or Blip.tv, I want to see relevant ads (brand content) that have a similar look and feel to what I'm watching. I want them to be made by people like me, in my city. I want those ads to be user-activated ("bugs" or "tickers") because I want an experience that I can either skip entirely or that draws me in, shows me something I didn't know about a brand. I want an invitation to go deeper, to hear from my peers, and to join the community myself. And I don't think I'm alone.

by Owen Mack.

Daft Punk lanza un video realizado con imágenes tomadas por su público

El dúo francés convocó a que los asistentes a su presentación de agosto en Brooklyn la registren con sus cámaras hogareñas. El clip fue compilado por el director Oliver Gondry y saldrá a la venta junto con el último trabajo del grupo, el próximo 9 de noviembre

BARATO. El video realizado con el aporte de más de 250 espectadores.

Dentro de nueve días estará a la venta el último trabajo Daft Punk que recoge el concierto que el robótico dúo francés brindó el 14 de junio en París. La novedad: incluirá un video realizado con las imágenes enviadas por 250 asistentes a un recital ofrecido en Brooklyn.

Alive 2007 compila grandes éxitos -entre los que se cuentan "Around the World" y "Television Rules the Nation"- y podrá conseguirse en dos versiones. Quienes quieran la más accesible optarán por el CD, que reúne 27 temas. Aquellos que estén dispuestos a invertir un poco más, le agregarán al combo un libro y un disco adicional con otros cuatro temas. Por el mismo precio también llevarán el video de "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".

Para su grabación Thomas Bangalter y Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo no invirtieron en grandes equipos ni en directores de cámara de importante trayectoria. Todo lo contrario. En agosto convocaron a que quienes asistieran a su presentación en Brooklyn llevaran sus MiniDV y la registraran. Las imágenes fueron compiladas en un clip por Oliver Gondry.