Another Planning Blog…

Superb use of Wogan. And can some people please vote UK – France is currently way ahead!!!

There’s good, there’s great… then there’s almost 8 million views in 8 days. Genius. Watch it again or, if you’re lucky enough, enjoy it for the first time.

Then go to the YouTube channel and watch more…

Cool piece of entertainment from Nike… Really nice.

Animated film on incentivising your workforce, building purpose, and loads more good stuff.

It’s ten minutes, but it’s worth it.

Another lost iPhone, another glimpse into the near future…

What if your marketing strategy was to “lose iPhones” (or any other piece of tech), in order to seed interest and get awareness up pre-launch?

It would be a smart, cheap route to get PR coverage and you’d get huge awareness amongst the people most likely to be your first purchasers.

You’d have to act enraged… and in the news today, we’ve found out that “Court documents in the case of the lost iPhone prototype have been unsealed, revealing that Apple itself asked for the search warrant of an online journalist’s home.” suggesting that they are suitably pissed-off by the event.

On the one hand, it strikes me as ludicrous, because Apple’s real strategy is to design the most stunning, usable technology, then to go to every length to ensure that the launch is as eagerly anticipated as possible.

Yet, what if the leaks have always proved useful – only going to build even more interest? Would you prompt some?

To be honest, I don’t believe the theory, I just like the idea.

The shame is that another manufacturer can’t use this trick. But I don’t think many would have the following that results in big money being paid to see a new prototype. Maybe it’s because they’re all so desperately seeding everything in the hope they can drive interest? Maybe it’s because the products aren’t held in high enough esteem? Maybe they just haven’t tried…

Maybe only Apple could do it?

Great new spot from Toyota. It’s been out for a little bit, so apologies if you’ve seen it already. But what a great way to hit a minivan/people carrier positioning.

I wrote a brief years ago for the Toyota Previa that wasn’t as good as this, but was similar – it was trying to position a minivan as a symbol of virility for men – the thought being you shouldn’t be ashamed of driving a car that takes a lot of children. It just means you’re a man who produced a lot of children. Trying to take head-on the “that’s not the sort of car I want to end up in – it’s a symbol of being a man subsumed by his family.” And I think they’ve nailed that with this ad…

There’s a YouTube channel and a Facebook page to round out the social connection. As well as a link to a landing page on the Toyota site that brings in the car info and options… digging into the YouTube channel, I’m not loving the other content as much, but then it’s harder-working and they did get me to have a look, so it does the job it needs to.

Lovely thinking, lovely execution. Does it go far enough, though?

Grab the accompanying presentation to get the definitions.

Thanks to an APG Invite, I just discovered Dave Trott’s blog. And it’s a good ‘un. This piece on creativity particularly caught my attention because it’s so spot-on. The excerpt above only gives you a glimpse – read the whole thing… here. And think about attending the APG evening talk – looks set to be time well spent…

While you’re there, make sure you read this entry too – it’s hysterically funny as well as useful thinking.