Giant Balloons Company

The Utah Office of Tourism has launched a new campaign, created by Struck, that highlights the state’s five national parks: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches.

The new campaign, which breaks today and includes broadcast, print, outdoor and digital, hopes to establish the Utah National Park circuit as a can’t-miss adventure and offers visitors the tools they need to plan their own Mighty Five adventure. An online planning site helps create custom Mighty Five itineraries from 3-10 days in length.

Of the campaign, Utah Office of Tourism managing Director Vicki Varela said, “Utah’s diverse landscapes can make it challenging to create a tourism campaign that accurately represents the unbelievable experiences you can have here. But The Mighty Five does a tremendous job of showcasing what makes Utah so magnificent and how easy it is to pack it all into one vacation.”

Quite compelling work. It makes me want to go to Utah.

StrawberryFrog India has crafted the “Ask” movement for the e2o – an electric car by India’s leading auto company, Mahindra. The movement was launched on Monday with a digital film and social media campaign. It portrays ‘asking questions’ as a way of ushering in a better future. “Ask” resonates with India’s increasingly bold, assertive and demanding youth. It reflects Mahindra’s commitment to ask tough questions and enable higher standards.

The 90-second film features people asking urgent questions about life, society and the environment, using a “rising hand” as a visual motif to denote questions. It ends with a call to participate in the movement on www.mahindrae2o.com

Of the campaign for the e2o, B Karthik, corporate brand management, Mahindra & Mahindra, said, “All of humanity’s achievements can be traced to a question that someone has asked. Be it Newton’s discovery or Einstein’s creation, it’s all come about through a question. So we’ve joined this ‘Ask’ bandwagon. We want to engage all stakeholders in co-creating the future.”

This Brazilian Dove Men + Care Shampoo from Ogilvy & Mather puts a spin on the whole slo-mo lustrous hair thing we so often see in women’s shampoo commercials. In the ad, some poor guy has used women’s shampoo and it’s giving him that “women’s hair commercial” thing.

The ad brilliantly highlights every last flip, twist and cranial maneuver seen in many women’s shampoo commercials. Even as the man races home to wash his hair with the right shampoo, we are treated to even mor slo mo “women’s hair commercial” goodness.

At this year’s Art Directors Club Awards, held April 2-4 in Miami Beach, design heavyweights of the world will square off against one another in the Adobe-sponsored event entitled Secret Walls: A Live Digital X Physical Art battle on Creative Cloud.

Each team will gather together their creative tools and face off in a live art competition. Two teams will use Adobe Creative Cloud to create live art pieces in front of an audience.

Check out all the festival details here and register.

U.S. businesses spend more than $300 billion on advertising each year, but only about 15% of that is spent on online advertising. The other quarter trillion dollars is spent each year not to drive a click but to drive a store visit or a phone call – tens of billions of phone calls each year from U.S. consumers to businesses. And that number is growing by billions of calls each year due to the growth of mobile search and the ubiquity of mobile phones, which results in consumers being connected wherever they are.

These developments have increased the importance of call marketing for advertisers. So, for businesses that talk to their customers on the phone, call tracking is now an essential capability. It allows marketers to properly attribute calls and marketing campaigns to a lead source, providing essential business intelligence.

Call tracking is a technology that is decades old, and it has long been a key component of campaigns involving call centers. Businesses want those calls because they convert into customers at a much higher rate than Internet clicks and also at a higher average order value. But they only want high-quality calls because it costs them several dollars each time they answer the phone. So, for businesses that are looking to fully capitalize on the value of call marketing campaigns, lead attribution is merely a starting point. Call marketing automation is the key to truly unlocking the value of a call marketing campaign.

There is some confusion about what constitutes call marketing automation in the industry, with some initially believing that call tracking and call marketing automation are one and the same. However, call marketing automation is a much more comprehensive approach, of which call tracking is just a single component. The right call marketing automation solution delivers complete campaign management, clear attribution and practical analytics in one end-to-end solution and makes it easy to seamlessly integrate with the solutions marketers already use.

With call marketing automation, many more elements are involved, including quality filtering and routing calls with IVR technology. This enables businesses to ensure that only qualified leads reach call centers and are routed locally, allowing marketers to successfully manage resources and maximize ROI.

Many companies include call filtering and routing processes in their phone marketing campaigns, but most have not yet integrated these processes into their call tracking systems, which ideally include detailed analytics that support lead scoring and campaign optimization. Those who track, analyze and optimize calls are ahead of the game, but there is an even better way to extract the most value from the campaign through call marketing automation. The next step for the savvy marketer is to generate more of the most valuable calls through syndication.

With syndication, marketers can establish complementary partnerships and increase distribution, using a syndication provider’s technology to bundle and distribute offers with their existing platform. With the right provider, this process doesn’t require IT support (and the budget hit that entails). Marketing operations can easily and quickly accomplish syndication using intuitive tools.

The right syndication partner allows marketers to move beyond call tracking and effectively manage operations on a single, easy-to-use platform, growing their business through call marketing automation. A comprehensive solution should include the following elements:

Pay-per-call campaign creation and management
Comprehensive call tracking, including keyword, traffic source and other metrics
Click-to-call capabilities
Call analytics and real-time reporting
True comprehensive ROI optimization
Search keyword call services

This type of solution can be efficiently delivered via cloud technology, enabling the marketer to maintain complete control of the campaign at their fingertips, in real time. It includes call tracking, but that is just one of several elements, including quality filtering and routing, detailed analytics and, most importantly, distribution syndication to generate more valuable calls.

In today’s competitive environment, marketers must find new ways to improve ROI and drive qualified leads to their business. A call marketing automation strategy can be the ideal approach. Marketers who value phone calls and want to grow their business should move beyond call tracking and generate the maximum return on their call marketing investment with call marketing automation.

This guest post was written by Jason Spievak, CEO of RingRevenue

A marketer’s job is to make something interesting. That’s easy enough when you work for Red Bull, but what if your client is a soap company? Or a data-storage firm? Not exactly riveting. Let’s face it, some industries are naturally a little more exciting than others. But the best marketing can make anything compelling, even something you never thought would resonate strongly with your audience.

Before you let a boring industry dictate the tone of an otherwise exciting company or write off, check out this abbreviated list of five companies that put an edgy spin on seemingly boring industries. For the full catalogue, download the free ebook 16 Companies from “Boring” Industries Creating Remarkable Content.

1) Old Spice

This company has been competing in the soap and deodorant market for 75 years now. Hey, quit yawning! Though the word ‘old’ is half of their name, this brand has really gotten spicy with their marketing in the past few years. Everyone remembers the 2010 ‘Old Spice guy’. He quickly became the face of the brand thanks to witty commercials that people today are still watch (‘The Man Your Man Can Smell Like‘ has nearly 45 million views). This year, Old Spice is giving the soap industry an even sillier spin with their new mascot, Mr. Wolfdog, who already has a slew of popular videos, banners, and social posts.

Video: http://youtu.be/owGykVbfgUE

Banner:

2) Dropbox

What could be more exciting than a cloud-based storage platform? Just about anything. Dropbox launched in 2008 as a file sharing platform in the cloud and has since gained traction in the market by being easy-to-use and…charming. The company doesn’t go overboard with its marketing or try to be an exhilarating product that it’s not. Instead, Dropbox has communicated its products’ ease-of-use with simple but cute design across marketing channels. From their error page to a sleek infographic, Dropbox knows how to create a fun experience in a dull market.

Error page:

Infographic: https://www.dropbox.com/brasil

3) Charmin

“One time I threw a toilet paper-themed party”, said nobody ever. Toilet paper is a commodity. There’s nothing notable about toilet paper. Not only is it boring, it can be a little gross. The toilet paper brand, Charmin, can’t be associate with either of those adjectives. Charmin’s marketing is cute, playful, and sometimes cozy thanks to their cuddly bear mascots. The brand’s social media presence and images make going to the bathroom fun. Now, I can throw a party celebrating that.

4) ZenDesk

Customer service software isn’t exactly riveting. But it can be smooth, easy, and even peaceful. ZenDesk puts a joyful face on customer service- literally. The company uses a giggly Buddha character as their mascot across collateral online and offline. You can’t see this cheery face and not feel a little more…well, zen. Their website features great design and valuable content from their blog to their webinars. ZenDesk is not shy in creating remarkable content across the board.

Website:

Blog:

5) RSNA

How many kids have you met that say when they want to be an astronaut or a fireman when they grow up? How many have said they want to work for the Radiology Society of North America (RSNA)? Radiology somehow just doesn’t sound as glamorous. The RSNA has found a playful way to engage followers on social media by staying on top of what’s hot. The RSNA posted their own take on the viral Harlem Shake video and jumped on the Superbowl power outage with a funny quip via Facebook (see below).

Harlem Shake video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOr5SZjc5xk&feature=share

Superbowl FB post:

Whether you sell fertilizer or soap, taking a risk in your marketing content can separate you from the pack. The bland, boring pack. Want to see some more risk-takers? Check out HubSpot’s free ebook below or visit our blog for more non-boring (we promise) marketing content.

This guest post was written by Hannah Fleishman who works in Media Relations at marketing software company HubSpot, which has a special partnering program for marketing agencies. Find her on Twitter @hbfleishman.

Apart from the fact a Speedo just isn’t built to properly support or contain a real man, wearing one in a hottub full of bikini-clad babes and acting like your dad is, well, just not a good way to roll.

That scenario, along with two others, is the latest effort from Mentos and tells guys, “Don’t Become Your Dad.” So yea, don’t snap your Speedo and slap baby powder on yourself when leaving the huttub, don’t refuse a ride with two hot chicks and don’t ever be that idiot who exclaims in the middle of a quiet library, “how about a phone that just makes phone calls?”

Yea, Don’t become your Dad.

What’s a PSA without a good fart joke? That’s the tact BBDO Toronto and the Perlorian Brothers took when they created new work for the Ontario Ministry of Health’s Quit the Denial campaign.

The campaign introduces us to a girl who admits she is a social farter. In the PSA, she claims, “Just because I fart at parties now and then, it doesn’t make me a farter.” Our lass has no trouble at all letting it rip at parties, while dancing or talking to guys. And she has no problem approaches guys to ask, “Do you want to go outside for a fart?”

Of course, the whole approach points out social smoking is as ridiculous as social farting. But who really cares? The ad’s got a cute girl who can squeeze one out on command. And that’s kinda hot. OK, that’s as ridiculous as shaved pubes in the middle of the seventies. But we digress.

Anyway, our cutie is in denial of her wind whipping skills much like many a social smoker when asked, “Do you smoke?” The whole approach is wonderfully juvenile. After all, who doesn’t love a good fart joke every once in a while?

While we knew this was the case for several years now, SXSW Interactive has become a huge event generating conversation the world over. This year’s event generated 1.1 million tweets in 5 five days across 200 countries and 19 languages.

Social media monitoring company Synthesio created an infographic summarizing global social media conversation about the Austin, Texas event. Without surprise, the U.S generated the most (71%) conversation followed by the UK (4.6%) and Canada (4.4%).

Some say SXSW is the new Cannes. In some respects, it is. As the advertising industry moves more towards technology and content solutions versus Super Bowl-style creative solutions, this shift in mentality may make sense. But it will be a very long while before the advertising industry gives up its Rose-filled afternoons on the Carlton Terrace or the massive beach parties that occur every night which, by the way, put even the best parties at SXSW to shame.

But parties are not the primary reason to attend a conference or festival. It’s to connect with people, ideas and technologies that fuel a different sort of creativity. A creativity that results in conception of technologies and content that are of use to consumers who have certain needs and have gone looking for solutions to address those needs.

Of course, that’s not to say “regular” advertising doesn’t attempt to address people’s needs. It does. It’s just far less efficient than technology or content-based solutions.

Everyone has heard of Nike Fuelband. It’s the classic example of technology put to use to create a product that serves the specific needs of a certain set of people. But it’s not an ad. It’s a product. It’s also a product that does a pretty good job advertising the Nike brand name without beating one over the head with an interruptive-style commercial.

Everyone has heard of content marketing marketing. Ever since the original Yahoo was born (and probably before), people have been able to turn to the internet when they have a need. If a brand has well-SEO’d content available to that information seeker, that brand is far more likely to draw that person into its acquisition funnel than a brand that doesn’t.

That, of course, is one of the pillars of inbound marketing; the creation of content that educates, informs and satiates the needs and wants of consumers. It also includes SEO, social media, lead management, lead nurturing, email marketing, marketing automation and more.

The days of Cannes-style industry celebration may be limited. While some slam SXSW for getting too big and promise they won’t be back next year, we think they will. Other wise, they may be stuck alone on the Carlton Terrace drinking Rose and watching the tumbleweeds roll down the Croisette.

However, for SXSW to become the new Cannes, it simply must improve programming. With hundreds of over overlapping panels chosen, mostly, by popular vote resulting in a very high percentage of lame ass flops, the event comes nowhere near the high quality, highly curated content of Cannes. At Cannes, there are far fewer panels but they are of the highest quality and well worth attending either to educate or to inspire.

And inspiration is a powerful thing. Inspiration can lead to the creation of amazing things. And amazing things have a far better chance of influencing people than a better way to get a Highlight of where your friends are.

That said, Cannes places a lot of emphasis on creativity for creativity’s sake. In one sense, that’s not bad. After all, creativity fuels the development of wonderful things that can result in the development of killer products and services. On the other hand, winning a Gold Cannes Lion, in some respects, just means your work was prettier and more “creative” than everyone else’s.

But as we said before, Cannes has killer content that can truly inspire. It’s not just about the awards. In a nutshell, Cannes is a well-oiled machine with a highly specific agenda. SXSW, conversely, is looser, more egalitarian and frenetic. Both styles have their advantages. And disadvantages.

What are your thoughts? Is SXSW the new Cannes?

Conversations about your company and your products happen each and every day, all over the web. For a marketer managing campaigns across all types of media, these real-time consumer conversations can either be a marketer’s dream or your worst nightmare. At the end of the day, you just want marketing programs that work.

Bazaarvoice simplifies social-channel complexity by giving specific examples of ways social can improve marketing efficiency and effectiveness. This insight-packed resource clearly outlines six actionable strategies for leveraging user-generated content to:

• Create word-of-mouth campaigns that drive growth
• Deliver a measurable return on social investments
• Bridge the gap between brands and consumers
• Increase site traffic

Download this report now to see exactly how social drives real results for brands.