Taco Bell Gets Into Social Media

Digital shop R/GA has picked up the Taco Bell account with a focus on relaunching the fast-food joint’s website and overall Internet presence.

The site has tried to be an entertainment portal for its users, but Taco Bell is looking for a site with a more informative spin focused on its restauarants and instead using social media as a way to further engage with its audience.

The new site and strategy is expected to roll out next year.

From Ad Age: {link no longer active}

“We know more and more of our guests are consuming media online and it’s an important way to connect with people,” he said. Some of these digital-marketing efforts are likely to focus on platforms such as Taco Bell’s lower-calorie Fresco menu, and its Why Pay More value menu.

Video game marketers should see if there s a lesson in Taco Bell’s new philosophy.  Rather than try to build out content and community portals of their own, can video game companies instead use social media as the primary method of engaging with their audience?

Then product websites can get back to focusing on what matters: the actual product.

Bioshock Marketing Team Being Creepy

From Kotaku: {link no longer active}

They sent creepy drawings. Then a record. And now, apparently not getting the memo that the game’s been delayed until 2010, the BioShock 2 marketing team has sent directions about where and when fans need to be on Saturday.

The directions pinpoint ten locations around the world, from The Netherlands to Australia to Jones Beach in New York and Santa Monica Beach, as well as times of when they want people to gather.

The subversive campaign has been going on for a few weeks now and is tied to Bioshock 2’s 2010 release, but we haven’t the foggiest clue of what to expect.  We ll find out after the eighth…unless we ve all been kidnapped by a bunch of Big Daddies.

That just sounds wrong.

The Best Way To Integrate Console Games And iPhone

From Kotaku: {link no longer active}

The app, which can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store as of yesterday, offers Call Of Duty: World At War who take these things seriously on-the-go access to game related news, World At War career stats, leaderboard access and more. That fun statistical data is carried over from the official Call Of Duty: World At War site, should you be a registered player.

iPhone games are all the rage, but Activision is doing something with Apple’s platform that is ostensibly less expensive and potentially more engaging to their audience.

Rather than try and come out with a stripped-down version of their popular Call of Duty games for iPhone (although we expect that announcement any day now), Activision is giving away a free iPhone app that helps players track their stats and the latest COD news using the game s APIs.

It’s all about extending the brand to multiple platforms, and this is a great (and cost-effective) way to do just that without compromising either the game or iPhone experience.

[iPhone Call of Duty app (iTunes link)]

How To Sell Social Network Ads

The difficulty in marketing to sites like Facebook, Myspace and more is the sheer volume of page views and audience these sites have.  It could be extremely difficult to target these audiences effectively, but Business Insider has an interesting case study on one company that s proven successful.

Earlier this year, Huggies sponsored a Moms-only Facebook app called “Circle of Moms.”

But before it did, AppSavvy set expectations for how users would react to the ads. AppSavvy said how many users it expected would interact with Huggies-branded areas of the app.  AppSavvy also set expectations for how many times users would run diapers-related queries within the app after seeing Huggies ads.

Those numbers were the KPIs [Key Performance Indicators].

In the end, the number of clicks into Huggies-sponsored areas of the app and diapers searches exceeded AppSavvy’s expectations. Huggies, as well as its ad agency Mindshare walked away with the notion that hey, maybe social media advertising doesn’t stink after all.

[More case studies at Business Insider]

Twitter Lacks Midas Touch For Advisers

From The Wall Street Journal:

Droves of financial advisers who flocked to the micro-blogging site as a route to new clients haven’t gotten the results they wanted. Others are confronting a host of compliance issues around what advisers can say in such a public arena.

“Twitter seems to be just a bunch of noise, and the type of clientele we want to attract – the typically older, high-net-worth investor – is not going to find me on Twitter,” said Fred Dent, a financial adviser at Raymond James Financial Services Inc. in Mclean, Va., who goes by @dentfred on Twitter.

Consider this a discussion thread based on the fact that financial advisors aren’t singing Twitter’s praises. How about our industry, either in marketing itself or video games in general? How successful do you feel the industry is at adopting Twitter?

Palm Pre Marketing: Creepy But Effective?

We’ve all seen the evening commercials for the Palm Pre, starring a very calm, almost creepy young woman waxing poetic about stop lights and her day.  After watching her for thirty seconds, it s a bit tough to fall asleep because, frankly, she’s a little unsettling.

Click play, if you dare.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.  Creeped out? Then mission accomplished, or so says the creative team behind the commercials.

From Ad Age: {link no longer active} “We weren’t trying to creep people out, but one thing I have learned now in this digital age is people can be as rude as they want as long as they don’t have to look you in the face,” [Gary Koepke, co-founder and executive creative director at Modernista] said. “The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that’s a good thing. Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.”

The old adage is any publicity is good publicity, but does it really pay to try and split your consumer base right down the middle from day one   We’re hyper critical of the ad, as we think the Palm Pre is a great phone, but that commercial shows nothing of its features.On a related note, sales of the Palm Pre are looking to stabilize at around 30K units per week after its hot launch period earlier this year.  By comparison, iPhone sales in Q2 topped an average of 390K per week.

Colbert To Black Eyed Peas: More Ads, Please

Last night on Comedy Centra’s The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert took a look at the latest music video by the Black Eyed Peas and was stunned to see only four product placements.

You missed so many advertunities, mocked Colbert, who highlighted product placements for MAC Cosmetics, HP netbooks, the T-Mobile sidekick, and (what Ad Age points out is probably) a Target logo.

The funny thing is that the latter probably was an actual placement in this video, as the Peas have a deal with Target to cross-promote a special edition of their new album, and, as many probably noticed, this song appears in an ad they did for the retailer.

Watch the video and see what Colbert thinks were missed opportunities for Tollhouse cookies and Sherwin-Williams paints.

{link no longer active}

The Seven Personalities On Facebook

Every year there s a different Internet phenomenon, whether it be YouTube, Twitter or Facebook, so it can be hard to keep up.

Ad Age has a nice column taking a look at Facebook and breaking down the different users that make up the popular social network.  If you feel the need to get a better understanding of who uses this stuff, they pick out seven types of people who are updating their status updates right now.

A sample from Ad Age: {link no longer active}

The Drinker/Eater. We know our food and alcohol supply will forever be in danger with this group at the grill/restaurant/bar. The margaritas at the Concord are unreal! Grilling mahi mahi for the Ms. Half price Peroni at the Princeton (never). Marketer angle: If you’re selling anything that can be ingested, fire away. It just better be good or prepare for your dish to be dissed.

Other personality types include the BraggaBROcious ( Can’t believe I’m hanging with Jay-Z — he’s taller in person! ) and the Honored Parent ( Timmy scored 2 goals! ).

Definitely worth a read if you re targeting the Facebook crowd, though we don t see the Corporate RSS Re-Reader here…