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Marketing Interests

The hint ad I was referring to…

This is what got me curious about Hint water. The tour bus always goes by everyday, and for awhile I just kept noticing the ad and how eye-catching it was.

On a related note, today I also tried the cucumber flavor of Hint…and let me just say, it’s strange. I personally don’t see the appeal of drinking cucumbler-flavored water; I actually ended up pouring out the rest of the drink since I felt queasy from the thought. I think I’ll stick to the fruity flavors from now on.

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Marketing Interests My San Francisco Chronicles

Lindt Gold Bunny Promotion at Union Square.


I was working the hot dog stand on Saturday and had some time during the middle of the day to walk around Union Square on my lunch break. I noticed there was a guy walking around in a chef’s outfit, handing out samples of some sort. There was a huge promotion for Lindt Gold Bunny going on; they had a huge inflatable of the Gold Bunny on the Square, and they also had this cute Smart Cart (in the picture) parked in front of Macy’s.

I ended up taking two samples and tried them out. Pretty good chocolates, but I wasn’t sure if the Bunny was supposed to have a filling like the Truffles from Lindt. I think I was more fascinated with the Smart Car more than the chocolates/samples….I mean, look at how cute the car looks with the bunny ears! Quite a cute concept indeed.

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Marketing Interests

Super Bowl Commercials Recap.

Good game last night with the Giants beating out the Patriots. Like I mentioned before, I am not a fan of football really, but I watched the last half hour or so since I noticed the game went past 6:30 PST. What an upset! But life goes on, right?

Anyway, I did avidly watch all the commercials that were playing. I attempted to also log onto the websites in the commercials to see what was up with the sites. GoDaddy’s commercial was dumb, in my opinion. It was weak and just didn’t have an appeal to it. I have heard others say how the SalesGenie commercials were leaning towards stereotypes/racist slurs, and I guess I would have to agree a little bit. I don’t really get the point of SalesGenie.com anyway actually.

The Audi commercial confused me a lot, but probably because it made a movie reference that I was not familiar with. Really nice website though. The commercials that made me laugh and stuck out to me were the Pepsi and Bud commercials. Diet Pepsi Max was funny with all the sleeping/dozing people…well done with that one. The Bud commercials were just clever and memorable for me as a consumer.

Careerbuilder commercials were also funny, although I felt like the first one (the woman and the heart one) was a little gross. The Coke and Etrade commercials were also fun, although the baby in Etrade was creepy.

I guess if I had to choose just one commercial that was well executed, it would be this one:

It was intriguing with the parade blowups seeming to be fighting for the Coke. Well done!

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Marketing Interests

Wendy’s new ad campaign.

Just read over this at NY Times’ “TV Decoder” Blog about the new advertising campaign that Wendy’s is coming out with next week. I bet for those who are in the US would recognise the more recent Wendy’s ads–the ones where there are men wearing the bright red Wendy’s wigs and people are cheering madly for them.

One in particular that comes to my mind is the one where all this old footage of women with men’s faces pasted over them screaming, yelling fanatically–in the end, we all find out that the people were all fanatic over the Baconator sign and a guy wearing the Wendy’s wig one of the sandwiches. Look below:

To be honest, I never saw the appeal in these commercials, but after reading the TV Decoder blog entry, it makes sense: this campaign was aimed more towards the male demographic. Seems that the company decided that the campaign was alienating other demographics. Now they’re turning to another campaign where their tagline is “It’s waaay better than fast food, it’s Wendy’s.” I watched a few of the clips on the TV Decoder page, and the ads seem a lot different from the previous campaign–I can’t tell whether that’s good or bad. These ads hit the emotions in a different way–a little more information is reiterated, and the Wendy’s logo is now animated. I wonder how this approach will affect restaurant sales.

My opinion on the new campaign: After watching the commercials through once, they seem a little bland. Maybe it’s because I’m comparing these new commercials with the previous campaign. Still, I feel like with this new approach that the commercials may sink into the background with other commercials of similar nature–nothing about the commercials really stand out to me.

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Marketing Interests

You & Us

Here’s another commercial with great piano music in the background. The Lexus Hybrids commercial reminded me of the UBS commercials with the piano in the background. I was talking about the Lexus Hybrids commercial with my friend last night, and she said that the way the music is composed draws people in. It’s so calm, yet in some way rather haunting, adding some suspense into the air.

I remember watching this UBS commercial on CNN last year and every time it played I would stop what I was doing and watch the commercial.