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.