Ad+Critique


 * Online Ad Critique**

Overall Strategy: Social media campaign through Facebook, and partnering with a music label (Modular) URL to ad: [|http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages&tid=1665042822853#!/Pringles]
 * Product: Pringles (Australia)**
 * Advertising Agency:** Mediacom
 * Target Audience:** Youths, Party animals

Pringles was finding it hard to connect with their consumers and high prices. So they wanted to find a way to reach out to their target audience. Instead of the normal campaigns they were doing on television, their advertising agency, Mediacom suggested a different approach by shifting the entire advertising budget into social-media where they could directly talk to their target audience, being the youth.

Mediacom did a bit of research to get to know their Australian Youth consumers and determine their passion and interests. They came to realize that music and friendship are universally important to young Australians. Mediacom’s strategy was to initiate interaction among the youth and for the brand to sell through word-of-mouth. In order to do this, Mediacom had to live in the world of Youth. To successfully infiltrate their world, Mediacom partnered with Modular, an Australian music label that was up coming in various genres in order to start a dialogue with their consumers. Their cool and edgy brand image made them an ideal strategic partner for Pringles. In addition to that, they created a social-media campaign via Facebook, the most highly used social media site across the world.

To launch the campaign, weekly demo targeted as units ran on Facebook, targeting 3.2 million users, making them become Fans of Pringles. Soon, the Pringles Australia Fan-Page became like a new online community. Fans were able to interact with Pringles through features such as sharing, entering promotions, commenting, and expressing opinions. This proved to be an excellent tool of advertising as this is one of the best ways to reach young consumers of today as the youth is obsessed with social media that is an important part of their lives. The Facebook fan page is so interactive that people are allowed to leave their comments about that they think about the product and how good or bad it is and Pringles is able to see what people actually expect from their product, and how they can improve it according to consumer needs. Facebook also gives one the option of suggesting pages to friends, so that they can also like the pages and become a part of this community and this way they can spread to as many people as possible across networks. The more the likes and clicks on the page, the more Pringles gains. Also, many young adults now by default, log onto Facebook as soon as they happen to switch on their desktops or laptops. People are addicted to social networking, and therefore it is a good medium for a campaign.

Further, to drive the youth’s imaginations, Mediacom produced a ‘bespoke video party application.’ Under this application, the user was given the option to select a venue, a Modular band and 100 friends they would invite to their dream party A flash-clip of their ultimate party video was posted on their profile and used as a party invitation they could share with friends. This spread like a viral across any networks on Facebook.

This Facebook fan page was a success in creating a two-way dialogue with Mediacom’s Pringles advocates, which created a great source of invaluable consumer insights. This entire campaign had changed the perception of Pringles brand from being boring and irrelevant to becoming fun, young and involved. Also, Pringles Australia fan-page is the no. 1 Facebook Fan-Page in Australia with an astonishing 266,000 fans. This campaign was successful in spreading the word for the Pringles brand across the Facebook world, delivering the message to millions and millions of people from all across the globe. The sales took a massive leap (200% increase) within just a couple of weeks. Therefore, I think that this campaign proved to be a powerful and effective sales-driving tool for Pringles.

I found the Facebook Fan-Page for Pringles when I was trying to find a friend by typing out her name on the search bar on Facebook. Hence I researched more about it.

**URL to ad:** []
 * Product: Guitar Hero 2**
 * Advertising Agnecy:** MindShare
 * Target Audience:** Youths, video gamers, music fans
 * Overall Strategy:** Promotion with MTV, viral films on various sites on the Internet

The idea was to generate awareness and excitement among the younger generations such as 16-24 year olds. They also wanted to show the fun aspect of the new game. With the target demographic being 16-24 year olds, the advertisers were aware of the fact that this group consisted of an extremely media literate audience. In order to make the campaign create a big buzz around the product, they had to come up with something unusual, something more than just a 30 second spot in the television commercials.

MindShare initiated a promotion with MTV across Europe where people had the chance to win a trip to the Gibson studios. In addition, they also had the chance to win a signed Gibson Guitar from Gene Simmons (Rock star).

Further to the campaign, MindShare wanted more than just MTV’s reach. They created five viral video clips, roughly between 20 seconds to 2 minutes, and uploaded them onto user generated sites such as Youtube and Google video, as well as specific gamer public relations sites. Most of the video clips were linked from a number of blogs, gamer websites, etc. These viral video clips were made clickable so that it would lead straight to the online competition where they could try their luck to win the trip/autograph. This is a good way of targeting the audience of 16-24 year olds, as nowadays, they are less reachable with traditional media and more embracing of a digital lifestyle. Youngsters go online before making a decision to buy any products to look at the reviews and launch videos, etc., especially when it comes to games as they are tech savvy. If they find something interesting they would even share the video with their friends. Also, some people leave comments under videos on Goggle and Youtube, telling the potential viewers what they think about the product or the ad. If good reviews happen to outcome the bad, then more people who view it would be more inclined to buy the product for themselves.

The campaign delivered 26,620,000 impacts on air and 37,722 competition entrants were received within 3 weeks. The viral piece proved to be the most popular destination from the MTV/Guitar Hero 2 micro site. Clearly, by looking at the above statistics, one would say that the campaign was effective.The cost of executing an online campaign is miniscule when compared with television, print, or outdoor advertising. However, it still is more effective in reaching its target audience and making an impact on their purchasing behaviour.

I came across this ad on television while watching a TV show.

Sources: [] []