Things of Internet: The best 'demonstration ads' I've seen
Hello and thank you for opening this email in the midst of a long weekend. I know I was to do part 2 of my predictions, but I haven’t had time to think properly, so will do that next week.
For now - something sweet from the archives.
I’m a big fan of ‘demonstration’ advertising done right. You know, testing your product’s claimed USP to the max - often to jaw-dropping or hilarious effect. Some of my favourites below.
Getty Images: 873 images that say a story
This is my all-time favourite. Getty made a full short film - using just its stock images. It's a simple but touching story. Brilliantly edited and researched - it took 6 months to get this done.
BlendTec: Will It Blend?
You can't talk about demonstration advertising on digital without talking about Blendtec's crazy series, where the CEO tries to destroy all kinds of things. It might seem destructive and wasteful, but it's shockingly effective - if this mixie can turn an iPhone into smithereens, it shouldn't have a problem with your smoothie. Full series here.
BMW's Walls
It's one thing to say you have great steering and control. It's another to get a stunt driver to do this.
As part of the same series, they got the same car to do a donut stunt on a Helipad.
Other favourites
The Volvo Trucks - van Damme stunt was essentially a product demo (stability), and those of a certain vintage might remember this Amaron - chicken leg ad from over 2 decades ago.
I like these examples because they don't go the airy-fairy route: If they say they're the fastest, they demonstrate it. Emotional adjectives like fun, youthful, best customer service etc are slightly dodgier - but can be done. Here's KLM demonstrating the latter.
I'm sure there are other examples - I remember there was some car brand touting its toughness and instead of macho imagery, chose to throw the car off a building (unscathed). If you can think of any, let me know!
It's worth thinking about for your next brand campaign: If you use a functional adjective to describe your product - how can you best showcase it?
By the way: I'm launching a mini-course for NGOs
I've taught and know a bit of digital. Dharmaraj aka NGOWallah knows a LOT about non-profits and has worked for several. Together, we've put together a weekend course in September with the basics of digital marketing. We realise non-profits have different requirements / resources compared to brands and need different strategies. We've tailored this to be as specific to NGOs as we can.
If you work in - or know someone who does - an NGO, do consider this. It's just ₹1000. Details here.
The updates section
Instagram is seeing an exodus of users pissed off with its recent TikTokification.
YouTube is more popular than TikTok among teens. So in a way, Google's social media dreams are... Kinda realised?
Whatsapp has some new privacy updates and there's a big one for those who've been dying to exit some groups!
Brace for much advertising this festive season.
Jio is building its own marketplace.
And all Indian telcos are betting on gamers.
Nykaa acquires LBB, and Amazon is buying iRobot (the maker of the Roomba).
Amazon and Walmart's ad revenues continue to grow.
After wrecking advertising for Meta, Apple is now going and building its own Demand Side Platform (AdTechSpeak for "we're gonna sell lots of ads and building infra for it now").
Meta is making new chatbots and initial experiments seem to be going ok (kudos to the company for trying something as risky, given the trust deficit especially among media).
The CHIPS act came into law in the US, meaning that country's going to be making more semiconductors to reduce reliance on other countries (especially the geopolitically-embroiled Taiwan and the looming threat from China).
Samsung is killing it with smartphones, and its ultra expensive foldables are doing better than ever.
300+ employees of TikTok / Bytedance used to work for Chinese state media - and some still do. Woops!
It's hard to take anything in crypto seriously these days. Thankfully, WazirX and Binance are here to help. Just check this brilliant paragraph out:
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, said on Friday it doesn’t own India-based platform WazirX despite disclosing the acquisition two and a half years ago in a move that has baffled industry players, including the Indian firm that insists the purchase did take place.
The reads section
A really good read on how the economic crisis is forcing marketers to re-evaluate online spends (and sometimes not seeing any change in business at all). Takeaway: Spend, but track results.
A good read on the booming casual gaming market in India.
Indian brands are becoming more confident of flaunting their origin abroad.
The age of algorithmic anxiety - terrific New Yorker longread.
How football got NFTs wrong ("Treat your fans like fans. Don’t treat them like consumers."). Also, fun to see an American publication struggle between 'soccer' and 'football'.
Recommendation: Curated Commons
My friend and general-peddler-of-sagacity Subbu runs an excellent newsletter where he curates reads from technology, business and culture. It's free, and is into its 100th edition this week. If you like Things of Internet, I guarantee you will love what he does. Subscribe here.
Binge-Read!
Fast Company's list of most creative people in business. Terrific profiles of entrepreneurs, creators, policymakers and more.
Brilliant campaign: Heinz using DALL-E
Heinz has been doing the "ketchup = Heinz" playbook for a while now (remember the drawing campaign?), so it was only natural to see them ask the powerful AI tool what it thought. The results are unsurprising.
Bonus: A nice read about sauces in India, from the fantastic long-read-a-week website FiftyTwo.
Tweets 'n' threads
This is an absolutely crazy thread.
And well, here's a strange SEO win.
See you next week!
And have a happy long weekend. Or, well, a good week - depending on when you see this.
Chuck
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