Four Brands Enter The Ring, One URL Leaves

Here's an interesting tact in getting folks to your microsite: the unfinished print ad.

Perhaps taking a page from the original Infiniti campaign, Hyundai does not feature any of its cars in their new print advertising. They even left out half of the copy, which cuts off mid-sentence, mid-paragraph, though they manage to bodyslam BMW, Honda and Toyota. To finish reading it, you have to head on over to a microsite with the unbranded URL of think-about-it.com.

Over at the site, you'll be hard-pressed to find any images of Hyundais there either. Need to see one? Check out one of the two commercials in the Safety section to see what one looks like.

Here, Go to Somebody Else's Website

Name me one client that wants to spend their advertising budget on creating print that drives consumers to other companies' websites. Okay, you got me: Perrier. "Show Me Perrier" is basically a "site-of-the-day" website centered around several themes: crazier, riskier, heavier, etc. Each print ad in this campaign showcases one of these theme, and gives each its own URL. On top of that, Perrier allowed its logo to be mussed with, even reducing their own name to a much smaller font size.

Does this campaign hold water? Can't say, but it's sure selling it. According to Perrier, it "increased sales more than 10%, driving revenue past $100 million for the first time since 1989."

Can You Back The Smack?

ESPN realizes even the most intense sports nuts won't sit on the couch glued to the TV all day long. So they created a Fantasy Football League. And instead of just doing an interactive banner campaign to promote it, they included print in their media buy. The result: "their website scored a 48% increase in total number of unique registrants, exceeding all pre-campaign goals."

Kicking Asphalt and Making Names

Buzz Saw Grinder? That's just the action star name given to me by the name generator at Mini Cooper's Hammer and Coop site. There you'll also find several webisodes that answer the question: what if Knight Rider was filmed in the '70s? An extensive integrated campaign was launched to promote this site: from appearances in Second Life to videos on YouTube, from movie trailers in 1900 theaters to fashion spreads in Rolling Stone. Oh, and a print campaign that doesn't think it's a print campaign, including a movie poster and an autographed pix with the URL posted on the back.

Ultimate Driving-to-Web Experience

Before there was Hammer & Coop, there was The Hire. This innovated effort, created for BMW (Mini Cooper's parent company), shifted the way people viewed online films. Produced some years ago, BMW Films won numerous awards and had over 100 million film views. That year, BMW sales increased by 12.5% , surpassing the 200,000 mark for the first time in its history. What's funny is that this all came about when BMW had no new car to promote but still wanted to do a branding effort. The print effort, besides a faux movie poster, included a comic book mini series published by Dark Horse.

URL's are in Fashion Now

Thumb through Vogue or Elle and you'll see dozens upon dozens of fashion ads, half of which feature no URL. The other half, however, do, even if they only lead to their manufactuers' sites and not to distinctive interactive experiences (which is what this blog is about). But I do feel the need to quickly touch upon this growing trend of URL's as headlines.

The urban clothesmaker, Encye, is taking a schizoid approach to its print campaign. One ad typically features a model, Encye's logo and a URL underneath it. In another magazine, you can find the same exact ad, only sans URL. Go figure. Fluevog shoes, on the other hand, uses only their URL. No headline, no logo, no nothing except for the URL. Unlike the two above, Urban Outfitters don't even bother showing any clothing. Just some mood photography and oh, a great big honkin' URL.

Tennis Anyone?

To promote their new digital sound projectors, Yamaha created a simple video to demonstrate what they call "multi-channel surround sound enjoyment". And since sound waves are invisible, they showed a guy being pelted by dozens of tennis balls instead. Now this video (and another one featuring bats) could have just languished on their site (and of course, YouTube). But Yamaha decided to use print to turn people's heads and get them to view the demo.

Tag, You're It.

Formerly known as Right Guard Body Spray, P&G sought to stimulate [pun intended] sales by retagging [pun intended] it Tag, and doing advertising similar to Axe, all the way down to its "warnings". Axe has won numerous awards for its integrated efforts. Now Tag is trying as well. Well, to create integrated campaigns, at least. This ad directs men to a specially created site where they can apply to be testees [pun intended].

Pontiac Drives Users to Second Life

Pontiac built a place in Second Life on Motorati Island, and not just a dealership. There are race tracks, clothing stores, nightclubs, even a drive-in theater. So the question is, do you only advertise to Second Life residents or reach out to folks in First Life (otherwise known as reality). The answer to this led to the, so far as I know, first ever print ad promoting a virtual place in a virtual world. So far, there have been over 50,000 visitors to the island and over 7,000 virtual Pontiacs sold.

Microsoft - Is That You?

No bullets points.
No stars and snipes.
No system reqs.
No product chart.
No quad-colored flag.
No 3rd party endorsements.
Just pure branding, along with a prominent URL.
Though I have to admit I prefered this other site: www.enchantedoffice.com

Lil Jon Hip-Hoppin' the Oakleys

I have to admit I'm more familiar with the Oakley that shot the ashes off the Kaiser's cigaret (that would be Annie "Little Sure Shot" Oakley"). So that "O" to the right did not register with me, nor did the tiny Oakley name up in the right. However, the ad, with its terse, URL-driven copy, still made me want to see just what the crunk was going on with Lil' Jon's evolution at MySpace.

Nissan's Street Smarter Print Campaign

To promote the "street smarter" Rogue, Nissan created a site called Master The Shift. There, you'll find video interviews with "masters" to help you take your performance to the next level, primarily in fitness, bicycling and running. (Maybe Nissan should've had an expert in proofreading because they mispelled bicycling in their text-based hyperlinked ads.)

The print campaign is too new to judge its effectiveness. But it is worthy to note that it's not just a typical print ad. It comprised a 4-page insert which also promoted the Master The Shift Sweepstakes.

Come on Down to Picturetown

Adweek's Guest Critic, Esther Lee of Euro RSCG, New York: "Unlike historical camera advertising—significant moments captured with well-sculpted hardware—this. ad uses a real-life small town to demonstrate that anyone can take amazing digital pictures with the Nikon D40. By handing out 200 cameras to the townspeople of Georgetown, S.C., Nikon shows the challenges that real people have with cameras and how those armed with the Nikon digital wonder prevail regardless. What I liked even more than the ad itself was the integrated effort with its call to action to visit the online "gallery" of shots."

More Users Finding Lost Jeep Site

Jeep's Geocaching integrated effort began in 2004, and proved to be popular enough to be repeated every year since. The effort, which took about six months to put together, kicked off with advertorial in titles such as Backpacker, Bicycling, Scuba Diving and Men’s Health. This announced the sweepstakes and explained geocaching to readers, while online, Jeep.geocaching.com functioned as the hub of all the program’s activities, and offered prizes, contents and the chance to win a Jeep. The results, according to Jeep, were over 1 million sweepstakes entrants and more than 9 million geocaching accounts logging travel bugs.

A Site to Check in

You open the doors to a high-life, yet raunchy,internet presence called Hotel Campari, and you have mega-star Salma Hayek residing there. You don't just stand by and wait for users to check in; you find every which way to promote it.

So Campari turned to several social networks. On MySpace, they created a profile for a "28 year old female from Milan" nicked-named "Red Passion". Over at YouTube, videos from the site were posted. And on Flickr, lots of Red Passion's photos were posted. Across these sites [going back some months], they got more than 3,000 "friends", 2,500 comments and over 92,000 views. But some issues did arise. Flickr shut down the Red Passion's account over what it perceived as a violation of social network ethical principles.

As it stands, the social networks sent only about 13.5% of the total traffic to Hotel Campari. Apparently, the bulk of the users were led to Hotel Campari by an extensive print campaign, featuring the aforementioned Salma Hayek.

Follow Your URL

New Belgium's, the nation's first fully wind-powered brewery, launched an integrated print and web campaign entitled "Follow Your Folly," featuring people outside the brewery who have found whimsical solutions to environmental sustainability. At the center of the campaign is www.followyourfolly.com, a highly engaging and interactive website that profiles these people and organizations. Each print ad will have a corresponding film launched simultaneously at www.followyourfolly.com, an online storybook that will continue to grow.

According to New Belgium's Chief Branding Officer, Greg Owsley: "The integration of web, print and film creates a highly engaging and visual experience that enables us the opportunity to dive deeper into the stories of our featured partners without the limitations of traditional media."

Tooling for Small Businesses

First there was UPS' whiteboard. Now there's the pegboard. thepegboard.com is a place where small businesses can find helpful articles and tips from Entrepreneur, Fortune, Business 2.0 , Inc. and Fast Co. All put together by UPS. To share this useful resource with small business owners, UPS turned to print in the form of a 1/3 page ad.

Buick Site Picking Up More Consumers

So hey, Buick. Right up there with Lexus atop J.D. Power's Vehicle Dependability Study. But no mention of it in their latest print campaign. Why, we don't even see Tiger Woods driving his Enclave all the way to the bank to cash another endorsement check either. What you will see is an example of unbranded URL as headline. Each print execution features a different URL, but they all lead to the same site, albeit with different intros. drivebeautiful.com/timemachine and drivebeautiful.com/joystick are the two I've seen so far.

Flaunt Your Site

If you got it flaunt it. And apparently that's what Hennessy is doing. On their "Flaunt Your Taste" microsite, Hennessy is offering up some pretty films of pretty people flaunting, imbibing and flaunting some more. And this is all being backed up by an extensive print campaign. There's a one page ad. A double page spread. A six page spread. A little black book inside Black Book. Not to mention outdoor as well. According to Hennessy, the print campaign ran before interactive was even created, and it already generated large numbers of visits.

The print campaign even took a page from BMW's The Hire. Hennessy created a "movie poster" which ran in the New York Times, GQ, Vanity Fair and others. Though maybe somebody was imbibing a little too much when they trafficked it. The internal name for the movie was "The Lost Weekend", taking the name from Billy Wilder's 1945 Oscar-winning drama about a troubled writer's weekend-long alcoholic bender and incarceration in a Bellevue psych ward. Not exactly a healthy association to have with one's cognac. On the site, the Hennessy short was retitled "Le Weekend". But not in time for the movie poster ad which ran with the original title.

This Post Not Approved by Midnight Oil

You have your old school corporate image campaign. See the "Human Element" print campaign for Dow. Somewhere on that page is the URL for their main site. Can't find it? It helps if you have a magnifying glass. Other corporations are a little more enlightened in this era of Web 2.0. Particularly the gas companies. Both Citgo and Chevron have print ads that get out the messages they're supposed to, but also act to drive you to unique URL's. For Citgo, it's thinkaboutoil.org and for Chevron, it's willyoujoinus.com. Shell, on the other hand, uses print to begin a conversation with their consumers before detouring them to the web.

Two Turntables and a URL

Pepsi DJ Division. I'm more into the Coke and JD Division myself. For the past two years or so, Pepsi has showcasing a crew of nine featuring some of the best DJ's around, and then launched a contest to find one more DJ to round it up to an even ten. Now if they ever decide to have an air DJ contest, I'm so there.

How to Get a Buzz

Better jokes have been made about this unbranded campaign for eBay. But that won't stop me from trying. Windorphins sounds like the phrase "win dolph lundgren" after it was put in a trash compactor. (Yeah yeah, don't quit your day job, at least I didn't make a Tim "Dorf" Conway joke.)

Anyway, Adrants has this to say about it: "The campaign wasn't super-imaginative but we're fairly sure it's more successful than a lot of online efforts out there, mainly because eBay advertises outdoor. Which brings up a good point: just because you're running an online campaign doesn't mean you should only advertise over the internet." Amen to that.

Get Globe Probed

Globe Probe. Nope, nothing to do at all with alien visitations. Here, a print ad for Tanqueray Rangpur isn't driving consumers to drink, but instead to a microsite, and then hopefully to drink. It even uses the URL as a headline. Somewhere on this site is a 9 minute video that plays like an extended version of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like A Wolf" only without any New Romantics, leaf wrestling or catchy pop.