This morning, when I was totally working and not watching YouTube videos, I stumbled across an ad that immediately caught my attention. If you’re a fan of the NBC show Parks and Recreation, it should catch your attention too. The distinguishable voice of Parks and Rec’s Ron Swanson, played by Chicago-area native Nick Offerman, describes five types of girlfriends that are hard to keep up with. The idea is that Axe shower gel provides you with the invigorating ingredients you need to keep up with your demanding girlfriend.

The humor is dead-on for the intended audience, Offerman makes the perfect spokesman, and while exaggerated, I’m sure many men out there can relate to these situations. I can’t speak for the product itself but I’m sure they perform admirably amongst men’s body washes; meaning they make you smell less like a gym bag and more like a decent human being. As for their revitalizing properties, I’m a little skeptical.

Here is a link to the playlist with the five minute-long spots for each type of girlfriend (there’s a few other spots mixed in): sporty girl, flirty girl, high maintenance girl, party girl, and brainy girl. Embedded below is the minute-long spot for “Sporty Girl” which has one of the best lines of all the commercials.

“Nothing says I love you like breaking the bridge of another man’s nose. Now hit the showers…and claim your trophy”.

This may sound like an odd question, but you’ll understand after seeing this new campaign from O.B. Tampons.  Admittedly, I am not in their target market, so my opinion matters little if at all.  But I am very interested in knowing how women feel about the delivery of this message.

To be clear, the fact that O.B. Tampons has a “green” angle in their advertising is great.  It’s unique.  It’s beneficial to not only the buyer, but to all of us.  Even a guy like me can appreciate that.  But I think they’ve gone a little overboard here in an effort to go viral.  They forgot that just because you can do or say something, doesn’t mean you should.  And if you’re not sure or if you have any doubt, do it in a small way first to see the reaction.  Well, O.B. either was sure and had no doubt, or they are closing their eyes and hoping for the best as  they’ve gone all out — long form video, Facebook page, links to petitions, etc.  We’ll probably see some print ads too.

This video starts out nicely, with a beautiful ocean shot that has us all going “ahhh”.  Right when you start to feel like it’s heading toward a standard “save the world” pitch, it switches gears — completely.  While I wouldn’t say I was uncomfortable watching this spot, I would say that I was close enough to uncomfortable to be distracted from the point.  The main selling proposition was a minor player, an after thought.  And that’s a shame, because a message like that deserves to be front and center.

Take a look and let us know how you see this.  At this posting, there were only 258 views.  You can also see what they’re doing on Facebook with this at this link.

QR codes facilitate a direct link between traditional and online media, and when QR codes are strategically targeted within a marketing plan, the cross in marketing mediums can result in successful goal conversions.

Something to consider: If consumers take the time to scan a QR code and land on a page that does not pertain to them, they leave and become a lost opportunity! One landing page can’t cater to an entire potential market, and having a dozen QR codes on one ad doesn’t appeal to any market. QR codes with a single landing page are great when they are placed in front of targeted, captive audiences, but what if there is a broad potential market?

A company called Kimtag might be able to help. The London-based company is a mobile compatible connection hub that allows users to create custom index pages containing all of their online media outlets.

Once consumers scan the single QR code, they land on the Kimtag index for that business and can choose how they would like to interact. Those invested in Twitter can navigate to the Twitter page, people who want more information can head to the company’s FAQ page, and so on. Consumers can even tap on the companies contact information to initiate Google maps, call, or e-mail them.

Any other information or landing page can be easily programmed into the Kimtag index. Plus, and this part is important, so I’ll boldface it: Kimtags are free to create and fully customizable. Play around with it and don’t worry about being charged.

The key concept is allowing a broad market to be reached through one QR code or link, and letting each individual choose how they would like to interact with the brand. One QR code, unlimited connection capabilities.

Meet Michael Dubin, real-life CEO of recently-funded Dollar Shave Club. The premise: for as little as a dollar per month, get your razors shipped to your home. Great idea, right? That alone would likely have been enough to secure funding. But just to be safe, DSC threw in this startup launch video, which is just about the greatest thing ever.

The lesson? Have fun with your product, and if there’s room to ease up and maybe not take it so seriously, then by all means do it.

The Chevy Volt isn’t selling. It’s not because it looks boring. It’s not because of a battery fire incident. Perhaps it’s because of some political maneuvering. But most likely, it’s GM’s unbelievably confusing and intentionally anti-persuasive advertising.

This isn’t about whether the car is green or not. I’m speaking purely from frustration over what I believe is an advertising campaign designed to cripple the sale of a product. I’m not suggesting the Chevy Volt ads are weak. I’m not suggesting they were put together by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. I’m suggesting that the creative direction that was given to their ads was meant to do two things:

1. Convince the public, shareholders (which, post-bailout, also include the American public) and government officials that GM is indeed trying to promote the Chevy Volt
2. Hobble sales through confusing advertising that does not effectively persuade a consumer to purchase a Chevy Volt, much the same way a political party will muddy the water on an issue until people tune out

Yesterday, the Detroit News reported that GM sold about 7,700 Volts last year, far below their target of 10,000. During the bailout process, GM had originally told congress and the American public they expected to sell a whopping 45,000 this year — but now they are gearing down production to match the (supposed) lagging demand.

Meanwhile, last year Nissan sold about 9,700 of their all-electric Leafs. They expect that number to double this year, perhaps in part because of their competent advertising campaign.

Maybe it’s because some decision-makers at GM didn’t ever really want to build the Volt. What would make me think that? Well, their latest ad would. In this likely expensive spot, a manufacturing line somberly proceeds through a worn-down Detroit community more like a funeral procession than a parade of hope and change.

It’s grimly titled, this isn’t just the car we wanted to build, it’s the car we had to build.

Before it was built, in 2008 the Chevy Volt was sold to the American public as the savior for GM. We bailed GM out in part because we were told they could build a vehicle for the future — one that will have high demand, help lessen impact on the environment and decrease our dependency on foreign oil.

GM’s other ad features a befuddled Chevy Volt onwer taking a potty break at a gas station and being harassed about his purchase by a loudmouth kid and his even more abrasive father.

…and, in this upcoming weekend’s pre-released 2012 Super Bowl spot, some poorly rendered CGI aliens also harass a Chevy owner. At least the spot isn’t depressing.

So why does GM want the Chevy Volt to fail? I don’t know, but this 1996 nuclear holocaust-inspired ad for the now defunct EV-1 suggests a deep level of internal conflict over the existence of an electric car.

Malls and big box stores are getting smarter. But will the public and politicians view it as acceptable or an invasion of privacy?

Privacy is a funny thing. We all say we want it — but we’re also willing to quickly give it up if we believe it’s in our best interest (think national security) or if we don’t really understand how we’re giving it up (think Facebook and Google).

Website analytical tools have long been able to track visitors as they click through menus, products and pages. Full disclosure: tracking website visitor and social media behavior are some of the things at which we excel. Based on click-through data, we’re able to find how visitors move through a site and what they’re interested in based on the patterns of breadcrumbs they leave. This information is important. It makes better websites, better user experiences and, of course, helps increase sales.

But if you have a brick-and-mortar store you’ve had to rely on surveys, eye-witness accounts and inventory and purchase data. That is until now. Companies like Beemedia, RetailNext and Path Intelligence have invented technologies to learn about shopper behavior in real-world pedestrian environments.

Anonymous data collected from the paths people walk through their environment can provide a wealth usable information — just as it does online. For example, tracking how people respond to sale signs and banners during an event (ie. how effective they are at causing a shopper to visit a particular display or area) can help create more effective advertising and promotional tools. It can help tell a manager where to deploy sales associates, what products to highlight and which to remove. It can even help reduce inventory shrinkage (products lost through deterioration, obsolescence, pilferage, theft, and/or waste.)

The technology to track pedestrian behavior works in different ways. Beemedia offers free wi-fi — and uses the signals they receive to anonymously triangulate wireless devices. RetailNext uses advanced software to monitor existing in-store security camera video, as they do for Family Dollar. Path Intelligence’s FootPath technology uses anonymous cell phone signals. This past holiday season several malls began testing Path Intelligence’s FootPath technology, but after being installed only one day, the experiments were suspended following privacy concerns from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Real-life retail tracking is coming — and the necessary results it will provide will not only translate into profits for stores but also better shopping experiences for visitors.

We’re sure this has happened to you—you are browsing a retail site and considering making a purchase. For example’s sake, let’s say you are looking for a new hat. You have found one you think you like at Hats R Us, but you want to wait until tomorrow to make your final decision so you leave the site. Then, you move on to check the news on your favorite news site. And behold—a Hats R Us ad shows up on the front page. The same thing happens later in the day when you visit a completely different site to check the weather. Is this a sign that you and the hat are meant to be? Or is this just smart marketing?

And this can even work more specifically. Let’s say in the above example, you were looking for a cowboy hat for that square dance you were planning to attend. You spent a lot of time on Hats R Us in the Western section—and so all the ads that show up are specifically cowboy themed. The Hats R Us truly has your number, and after seeing the ads multiple times, you are more likely to remember and revisit their site when it comes time to make your purchase.

We call this an orchestrated fate for you and the hat. And whether you are a retail vendor, looking to increase appointments or registrations, building an eList, or simply branding, this gentle nudging of people who have visited your site is something we can help you accomplish.

Let’s say you are a hospital, and you have a lot of visitors to the cardiology section of your website. Visitors come, browse for information, but don’t always fill out eList sign up forms, make appointments, or take an action. You don’t have to end your visibility with them when they leave your site. We can help you program your site pages so that if a visitor has been to those pages, when they are browsing other sites your ads recognize that this person has been to your site, and are more likely to display. When it comes time to make an appointment, you are more likely to come to mind—or it’s possible that seeing your ad will push them to revisit and take a next step.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of how we accomplish this, here are the basics: within your website, we tag pages with a special code. Then we program your ads to recognize that code even after you leave the site. We can tag your entire site, or specific pages within your site to make the ads more targeted (like in the cowboy hat and cardiology examples above).

This benefits you, since your relationship with the consumer doesn’t have to end when they leave your site. And your consumers are happy, since they know you know what they want. And when their cowboy hat arrives, they can be pleased that fate brought them together.

A problem advertisers sometimes have is finding the most cost effective way to publicize a product. What we often forget is that if it’s good enough, people get the word out on their own. A couple recent (and humorous) examples would be Old Spice and Allstate, but as much as I love to laugh, I’d say an ad that can instill goosebumps is even more likely to stick with me.

There are few who can make me react this way in just one minute’s time. Really, the only one who immediately comes to mind is Google. But I can now add Chevrolet to the list after viewing the best one minute ad I’ve seen all year.

We learned last week that this event was not staged, that Herb did in fact get his beloved Impala back after 20 years and seven owners, but the authenticity is apparent even without that information, isn’t it? Herb’s family knows how important the car was to him. It was more than a car, it was the memories that came with it.

Even Tim Allen, the new voice of Chevrolet, was given a supporting role as the family was allowed to tell the story in their own voices. The only time we hear Allen’s voice is at the very end, when he gives us the slogan.

Kudos to Chevy for making an authentic, touching, subdued, and shareable ad in just one minute’s time.

One of the biggest questions we get from our clients when we are creating a new campaign for them is “Why should I buy a $250-$550 photo when I can get one for $30-$100 that is just as good?” Ever since the invention of stock photography sites, clients just can’t understand why some photos are just so darn expensive!

Since the recession hit, we designers have spent countless hours searching through cheap stock photography sites for clients. Sometimes sites like this are good because they offer us photography at a price that is affordable. This is great when you have a really small budget, but what if you don’t? Should you give in and buy the more expensive photos? The answer is yes. Here are my 4 reasons why…from a designer’s point of view.

Reason 1 – Cheap Stock Photography Can Cheapen Your Brand
If you’ve ever heard the phrase “You get what you pay for,” you heard right. There is no such thing as a good cheap photo – there’s a reason it’s cheap. Most of the photos found on these inexpensive photography sites have a cheesy, unprofessional look to them. If you’re building a web site for a hospital or bank, you probably don’t want that cheesy photo to be the first thing people see. Clients connect what they see visually with how they think of your brand. That’s why advertising is an effective and important part of your business. If you are trying to build a serious and reputable brand, you probably want a photo that shows that as well.

Photos on a cheaper stock photography site are usually submitted by amateur photographers who are just trying to make some side money. These photographers do not have the training or experience that a professional who is submitting their work to a more reputable site does. That means the quality of their work and their eye for creative and interesting shots is most likely not where it needs to be to make your brand really stand out from the crowd.

Reason 2 – The Cheaper The Photo, The More Likely Someone Else Will Use It
Back in the day, there was no such thing as stock photo sites. That meant that whenever a business needed to do a brochure and they wanted photos, they had to hire a photographer to take these images for them. The advantage of this type of photography was that no one else in the world would be using those photos for advertising, except you.

Well, times have changed. Now, anyone can get a stock photo downloaded from the internet in ten minutes or less. If you are a big hospital, do you want your advertising campaign to be built around images off a cheaper stock photography site that anyone can afford? Your campaign that you spent all that money on will not look so original if the guy down the street is using the same image for his small business.

Reason 3 – The Cheaper The Photo, The Less Specific They Will Be
Sometimes, when we’re building a campaign for a client, they want to see certain types of photos/demographics. Usually, this is not a problem to find when you are searching for photos on a more reputable stock photography site. These sites specialize in stock photography. That means that they use actual data and figure out what items are searched for most frequently and therefore do more photo shoots of these things.

Not only do they monitor what people are searching, they also know the rules and regulations of advertising. They know that in printed pieces and online you need a certain number of each type of demographic, therefore they offer this type of photography.

On the contrary, a cheaper site won’t offer as many images that fit your needs because most of their images are added at random by amateur photographers. This means that they are most likely not photos that have been taken as part of a shoot and also that they do not offer a wide range of demographics – therefore making it harder to find what you’re looking for.

Reason 4 – Series Photos Are Important
Generally, photos that are part of a series are the best photos to use for a campaign. Why? Well, they are all the same. They are a bunch of photos that all have a similar theme and were taken at the same time. Because of this, they will have the same kind of lighting, colors, and types of people.

This might not sound important, but it is.

On a cheaper site, you might be able to find one image here and another there that are of people who are 55 and older and gardening, but they will most likely be different gardens, different kinds of daylight, different people, etc. And what if you really like the style of that one image because you feel it fits your brand the best, but you can’t find any other images that look like it? Sadly, you’re pretty much out of luck. Contrary to some people’s beliefs, Photoshop can only do so much. You can’t always make images look the same, no matter how hard you might try.

Professional stock photography sites, on the other hand, offer series photos which come from a specific photo shoot. That means all of the images in the series were taken during the same shoot and have the same kind of lighting, people, etc. If you like one image from the series and feel that it fits the look and feel you are going for, then it is easy to find images that match and are of similar quality.

Instead of thinking of the internet as a way to cut back on quality and get things for cheap, we should be grateful that we are offered such an easy solution for great photography. You can get the quality of the images you would have received back in the day right at your desktop, without having a photo shoot. Back in the day, people had to pay upwards of $3,500 for a photo shoot every time they needed new photos for a brochure – and that didn’t include the cost of renting a helicopter, make-up artist, talent, and whatever else you needed. Now, you can even buy images according to the size you need! And that, my friends, is amazing.

I hope it’s more evident now why paying more for photography is a little extra dough. The recession has been hard for everyone, but we’ve all become so caught up in a penny pinching mentality that we have sacrificed quality in the process. As the economy takes a turn and things become better again, I hope we will not see ourselves clinging to bad habits just because we know we can save money. It’s important to go back to your roots and pay more attention to what that photo is saying about your brand instead of focusing on the cash.

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the massive impact Steve Jobs has had on the computing world since the news spread over Twitter and Facebook about his passing. I haven’t heard many talk about the quantum impact he’s had on our world as a whole. I’ll explain.

Steve Jobs is a rare individual — rare on a Jeffersonian scale. His push to make computers simpler, cleaner and more efficient began with a design that included a monitor and CPU all-in-one. The stout little original Macintosh Classic, with it’s unique graphical user interface (GUI), was a completely different way of looking at how we interacted with computers and how they fit into our lives. I learned design on a Mac Classic before there was anyone who could teach me about it.

Of course Jobs has had an impact on how computers function. I believe his impact extends beyond that into how we function. He’s impacted how we interact with each other. How we access information. How we learn. And that’s where his impact begins to compound on itself and grow exponentially — in a word, his impact becomes quantum.

Jobs heads up Apple, a company which creates tools that creative people use to create other things. Most creatives design, build, educate and inspire others from the the drawing table that is our Apple computers. From writers to designers to architects to chemists — so many of us start on a common platform which for so long seemed a little rogue — like an outsider’s alternative choice and even a physical identity (are you a Mac or a PC?).

It may sounds obvious, but to me it’s quite profound. For a creative, a computer is like a violin. It can be an object of beauty by itself, but in the right hands becomes a tool to create something amazing. A feeling. A desire. Something that can last a moment (like a website) or something that can last forever (a concept that takes hold of our collective imagination).

Many of us are remembering Steve Jobs today. For me, the best way I can remember Steve Jobs is to keep creating and inspiring others. That’s quantum.