The Brief: In Korea, consumers gladly pay $5US to proudly carry a simple cup of coffee. This behavior is rooted in the perception that a higher price means better quality. This has helped Korea become Starbuck’s sixth largest market worldwide. To successfully launch the McCafe Coffee Brand, we had to focus on transforming people’s perceptions and change their coffee buying behavior. We had to convince people that they no longer have to pay a premium to drink premium coffee. The Solution: We filmed real people in real test situations to show how strongly peer-pressure and price perceptions affect people’s decisions. These spots were placed on a micro-site (McCafe.co.kr) where we asked consumers to rethink their coffee purchase habits and “Make the Smart Choice. This rallying cry was also communicated in an aggressive out-of-home campaign where we targeted the competition with boards, bus panels, subway stations, and shelter placements that were in close proximity to Starbucks and Coffee Bean stores. The message? “Forget the Star and Bean – Make the Smart Choice.” The Results: Consumer response has been very positive as bloggers, journalists, and industry websites have all been talking about the McCafe brand. In fact, the film executions have been ranked among the top ten most viewed on a local industry website. However, the greatest result has been the strong growth in coffee sales. Within two weeks of launch, initial client data has shown a 52% increase vs. the same period a year ago!

First there was Whopper Freakout, the award-winning webfilm by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky documenting actual customer reactions to the Whopper's removal from the menu in a U.S. store. Now, Burger King is surprising Brazilian customers by putting their faces on Whopper packaging in WhopperFace, part of a campaign to demonstrate the chains burgers truly are made to order for each customer. In the video, Burger King uses a hidden camera to snap customers' photos and then prints them on their Whopper wrapper. Customers react with a variety of surprise, delight and even dismay. According to Ads of the World, the campaign was created by Ogilvy of Brazil. The video already is attracting worldwide attention, with several fans posting the video on YouTube, one of which has earned nearly 25,000 hits in just three days.

The fast food company trialled the range last year as part of a drive to expand its offering to young people.

The range comprises four different flavours – Oreo, Strawberry Shortcake, Maltesers and Caramel Crunch.

The creative idea for the ad is based around love, specifically expressed as "You never forget your first Krushem".

The TV ad, which breaks tonight, articulates this idea using teenaged characters checking out their ultimate crush and set to the tune of the 'Can't Take My Eyes Off of You'.

It is being supported by a large format outdoor campaign.

This summer, Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) is taking aim at the Me Generation, launching frappuccinos that customers can design themselves. While that sounds like a nice innovation, its ability to perk up Starbucks' revenue remains to be seen.

Although the coffee giant is known for its vast array of customizable coffee drinks (as anybody who's ever stood in line listening to someone else rattle off a long, long list of drink attributes can attest), Starbucks' icy frappuccino drinks were previously only available in six predetermined flavors.

McDonald's, aiming to become a destination for buying beverages, has used dollar-drink promotions in summers past, with most markets opting to sell large sweet tea for a buck last year. But the franchisees say the fast-food chain is making a greater effort this year to get more markets—which have the final say on any offer—to sell all fountain drinks for $1.

McDonald's also wants the $1 drink promotions to run 150 days, starting after Memorial Day, up from 100 days in prior

Nice insight driven brand ad about how everyone has their own way of enjoying thie McDs

The steaming superlite - nice ambient promo again form Mcds Vancouver

Couldn't resist to share this. Who needs an art director, when you have trees? Lots of quietly impressive ideas from this UK Based Artist.

Tim Knowles

Ever find yourself glazing over when confronted with a 30 page slide show of bar graphs, figures, pie graphs and spider graphs, making the uninteresting dull and laborious.

This tends to be the primary function of quantitative analysis, up until now. Over at informationisbeautiful.net David McCandless presents all kinds of information in a way that makes facts and figures interesting and frankly, beautiful again.

There are certainly lessons here that can be learned about making information digestible in order for it to be memorable, rather than just dull. In a society that is in dire need of a clear analysis of all our global issues, David is a bit like the Wizard of Oz.

An example of this is his analysis of Drug deaths versus news reported deaths caused by the drug. Goes to show, don't believe everything you read.

For those of you who don't know about TED.com, shame on you. It's a great inspirational source of many people from different areas talking freely on their specialised topics.

This one from AD Guru Rory Sutherland is as eye opening as you would expect, as he discusses perceived value of products and the role advertisers play in shaping the way we (as consumers) behave together as a culture at whole.

I particularly like his idea of placebo education...

Sure you can Johnny!

Genuis or desparate? Not sure which, but at least it's giving these bugs some role to play!

The games company which brought the world the highly controversial 'Grand Theft Auto' series of video games, seems to be piggybacking the Movember charity for a little cross promotion for it's upcoming game, which seems to feature a rather moustached general.

With the Movember initiative, participants have to grow a full head of lip-hair in just one month (November - Get it), while getting sponsored doing so. Rockstar then encourages it's fans to send in photographs of their achievement for possible immortality by becoming an In-Game character.

What's especially interesting about this, is the competition itself and that a Video Game Company is associating itself with a 'Grow a Mustache' event. Goes to show you that the demographic is shifting towards men who can actually muster a mustache, rather than just fluff.

Also, for Rockstar it seems this is achieved very simply with 1 Static Web page and a donation to the charity of their choice. In this case The Movember Charity

Jonathon Ive, the Apple Designer, talks about 'the design process'

This one might take a little explaining, as it is the new urban phenomena which seems slightly confusing to me, but lets try to understand it.

MEME - Pronounced as in CREAM

Wikipedia describes it like this.
The British scientist Richard Dawkins introduced the word "meme" in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a basis for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, beliefs (notably religious beliefs), clothing fashion, and the technology of building arches.

A better way to describe it is an interaction between people of similar (and specific) interests, or an 'in-joke', probably one that most people won't get.

This is the most basic of descriptions, and definitions vary, but it is becoming the terminology used to describe a wide variety of social interacts.

Lets start here. This is a real product














CLICK HERE TO SEE IT'S MEME'S




These are MEME cakes





































If you don't 'get them', then that is the very nature of a MEME. There is lots more to see on this topic, just google MEME.

Cultural shift, or superfluous descriptor as validation for creation of @£$%? Only time will tell...

Some interesting little facts worth knowing here, set to some rather humdrum music

From the New York Times: "The discount retail chain Daffy's staged live performances over the weekend at the Ziegfeld Theater in Midtown Manhattan before screenings of the new film Amelia. In a campaign by Johannes Leonardo in New York, dancers acted out how shoppers try on clothes in what was called Fitting Dance."