Printed advertisement - the new frontier

Printed advertisement is a personal favourite of mine. I actually collect my favourite ones and study them carefully. But what Budweiser did this May, in a unique parternship with Will.I.Am, was beyond my wildest thoughts. 

"Budweiser really is in sync with what we are living at the moment in Brazil. The communication of the brand speaks of optimism and celebration, and the whole country experiences that with all the good that is coming: Olympic Games, World Cup and big events. The song and video of Wiil.I.Am gave life to the brand's positive speech, and we managed to unite two powers with this parternship: the most famous beer in the world and one of the main names of the music industry", explains Manuel Rangel, Brazil's Marketing Manager for Budweiser.

The most valiable brand of beer in the world invited the famous singer/producer to be its embassador in Brazil, perfectly aware of the love of the latter by the tropical country and of his approach to living, very similar to what of Budweiser: "Good Times Are Coming". Besides, since its launch in Brazil, the brand has been always linked with music, sponsoring music festivals and events all over the country.

So their idea or, more accurately, the idea of the Africa agency, which is in charge of all the brand's campaigns, was to record Will.I.Am new song - "Great Times" - into vinyl. But not just a simple vinyl record. No, actually they recorded it into vinyl paper and inserted the ads in the inner sections of the magazines. One could just detach it from the pages and play it in a record player. Simultaneously, the YouTube teaser (which you can see above) was released, getting people's attention.

I applaud the creativity. I think printed ads are getting more and more innovative. But I'm not quite sure of the effectiveness of this particular one.

We are, for a few years now, the mp3 generation. Smaller songs to fit in our 4, 8, 16 ou 130 gb Ipods; we get our songs via Internet (euphemism, I know...) and we only buy CD's when we really like the singer/band. And, most of all, we are Budweiser target group: 18-34 year old consumers. So, I wonder: what's the point of creating a vinyl printed add when we can't 'play' with it?

One can argue that you can always enjoy the printed campaign and then download the song from wherever on the Internet. Again, I ask: what's the point of the printed campaign if, in the end, the target group ends up where it always is: online? On the other hand, in the past couple of years, the cult of the vintage is getting stronger, mainly powered by the fashion industry. Therefore, the probabilities of the individuals of the target group having a record player are a bit higher. But I don't think they would be high enough for this to be a really successful campaign.

Still, this is, like Manuel Rangel said, "the most famous beer in the world", and it's associated with "one of the main names of the music industry". So, regardless of people being able to actually manage to play the record, the campaign will always have some kind of impact. 

And that's the whole point of advertising, isn't it? It doesn't matter if people talk good or bad about it, as long as they talk about it.

Sources:

• http://www.jogaojob.com.br/

Ana Nascimento

Opera is for the old!

We talked about how cultures are evolving, how nothing is static and that, with evolution, also our values and habits may change. Uniformly, a culture begins to be identified with other features. So far, so good.

Technology couldn’t come in a more perfect time: in a little time space, with the advent of the internet and social media platforms, can we imagine our lives without these mediums? Probably we can but, as a famous Portuguese add says, it wouldn’t be the same.

As Erasmus students as ourselves, we see even more the impact of new technologies in our lives: the distance between ourselves and the family and friends back home is less than the actual one; with one click we can see our parents in the screen our talk for hours with our friends through email or instant messaging. We use Facebook to show the pictures and update our statuses as the day goes by, we tweet our new discoveries and adventures the moment we live them, we put on youtube the videos we filmed in that amazing party! Yes, each and every one of us, in and out of our class room, has an online life which is difficult to distance from.

The English National Opera used that reality as a way of getting people's attention for their new opera using this video:

Technology became cultural, a part of what we do and even are. With this simple add, they not only made as think about that online lives of ours, but also gave us this need to see more, learn more about it, go and see the opera so we can actually see which dangers are those they are talking about. And they just showed what we do on the internet but refuse to do in real life (and even despise the ones who dare to do it).

As simple as that.


Besides, practicaly all young people has in their minds the idea that opera is for elder ones. With just one video, the English National Opera show that an opera can be about anything at all, even Facebook or Twitter! And what theme can be as captivating to youngsters as technology? In the end, they picked up a current theme, wrote an opera about it and now they want young people to go and watch how fun the opera can be.


I certainly became curious!




Inês Maria