Speedo wins a gold medal in PR

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Gary Hall Jr. struck gold at the Olympics in the 50 meter swimming sprint event. A few days later he was fined $5,000 by the swimming federation. Why? Blame it on branding –the wrong branding. Hall wore a robe made with an American flag to the starting blocks of his event. And who’s complaining?

“The real issue is Speedo pays millions and millions and millions of dollars for the U.S. Swim Team to wear Speedo out at the starting blocks,” said Hall. “If they don’t get that exposure, they’re going to raise a stink about it.”

I can understand the paranoia about ambush marketing –the ‘cloak’ was made by boxing sponsor Everlast, Hall’s sponsorand a one-time swimwear manufacturer (really!)—but do you really want the guy wearing your brand to be punished? Can someone please give Speedo a gold medal for stunning PR?

Want to see how Everlast is taunting Speedo? Check out this image of Gary Hall, poolside, wearing Everlast!

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The changing role of Advertising

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

“Advertising is all about having a perfect tan and driving a cool car. It’s all about image.”
”
Glen Hiller, graphic designer, Berkely Springs, WV

This quote has a very odd context, and happens to bear relevance to what I am working on right now –an article for IABC magazine on the changing role of advertising. Laura Ries has agreed to an interview. If you recall her book, (co-authored with her dad, Al Ries) “The fall of advertising and the rise of PR” made some unsettling points about how advertising has been so obsessed with image, that it’s being relegated to an ‘art.’ No different from how painting, when it gave way to photography, continued to live as an art form, losing its communications function.

Incidentally, Hiller is a graphic designer, who was dismissed from his job at a design and ad firm, Octavio Designs, because he protested the Iraq war at a Bush appearance. See article. Why was he dismissed? It offended the ad firm’s client, apparently!

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Olympic Blogs sidestep media ban

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

CNN has limited coverage of the Olympics being barred from Olympic sports venues (NBC has exclusive rights.)

There is rumor that blogging is another form of ‘media’ that is banned in Athens. Journalist Stuart Hughes of the BBC, features some marvelous images from Greece, on his site with a Video Blog here.

Also Scott Goldblatt, a member of the U.S. Olympic swimming team is posting reports here (though he has not updated it since August 2nd!)

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Motomen, donkeys and email

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I have been fascinated by stories popping up around the world of the use of mobile units to bring email and an Internet connection to towns that are off the grid.

This story of ‘motomen’ in Cambodia is just one of them.

I have written about this for an upcoming editorial in LMD, posing the question whether companies may be able to ‘adopt’ villages in remote parts of the country in Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries using mobile Wi-Fi units.

“What if teams of cyclists could be engaged (sponsored, by some corporate benefactor) to ride out to ten small towns a day, spend a few hours circling the community, during which time people without access to cyber café’s connect to the Net?”

An early experiment used a bicycle, as in Yury Gitman’s Magicbike project in the US. So I was really excited to see that a company is actually modelled on this idea. The picture above is off the Web site of First Mile Solutions. As you can see, the mobile internet idea has legs –4 in this case.

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TiVo, eBay and Blogs: Journalism’s new eco-system

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

TiVo_logo

Dan Gilmore’s interview by WIRED magazine last week about Gilmore’s latest book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, available online here, makes a few points that the old media will hang onto –trust, and the ‘code of ethics’ question, now that bloggers are in the news business.

But the real point Gilmore made about the anyone-can-be-a-journalist issue, was the potential for the big media to lose advertising when their readership drops. He cites, eBay, Tivo and Blogs as part of the new eco-system.

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Street Spam and Election Advertising.

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

signs

Len Gutman, fellow IABC chapter member and PR pro, writes about a topic after my heart: Political Spam on our street corners. The article, Sign forests just political poster pollution appears in yesterday’s Arizona Republic.

Like Len, I don’t get it. They have such poor impact, especially when cluttered together. Besides they all look alike, in the standard 3 colors. Brand differentiation? I doubt their campaign folk give it a thought. They follow the same principle of spammers, sometimes planting the same sign twice in one spot. The next time you drive by a vacant lot, take a look at the street spam and tell me if their advertising money is justifiable.

Just for grins, take a look at this sign.

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Preventing ambush marketing at the Olympics

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Coke_flagbearers

Every Olympics, someone tries to ambush the million dollar sponsors.

This time, in Athens, the organizers are making sure Coke, Burger King and other big players don’t get upstaged. See this news report. I grant, they pay big money to be a ‘TOP’ (The Olympic Program) sponsor. In the neighborhood of 272 million Euro. But the brand guardians should guard against stunts that could undermine that reputation.

The article mentions –I thought this was really funny –-being forced to wear your T-shirt inside out, just in case the message was not commercially Kosher.

“Staff will also be on the lookout for T-shirts, hats and bags displaying the unwelcome logos of non-sponsors. Stewards have been trained to detect people who may be wearing merchandise from the sponsors’ rivals in the hope of catching the eyes of television audiences. Those arousing suspicion will be required to wear their T-shirts inside out.”

As Media Culpa, a blog devoted to Media and PR by Swedish blogger Hans Kullin notes,

“I’m sorry, but my soft drink preferences would start to lean slightly away from the word’s #1 brand. This is just not good PR.”

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