Beneful Encourages Play with Interactive Billboard

We here at The Merz Group are dog lovers.  So it’s no surprise that when we heard about a new interactive billboard campaign for Beneful that lets you play with virtual dogs, we were pretty excited.

The “Come Play With Me” campaign can be found in five cities across the US, including one in New York City’s Columbus Circle subway station near Central Park, and is designed to promote Beneful’s brand messaging on the importance of play.

As people walk by the 64-foot long digital billboard, virtual dogs are assigned to run up and follow them in an attempt to initiate play.  Users can choose to customize their new friend (color, size, tail, fur, etc.) and play a game of virtual fetch using technology similar to that of an Xbox Kinect.

I’m not sure about you, but if I came across this billboard in a subway station I would miss every train.

Check out the video below to see how the billboard was made.

Pepsi Looks to Reignite Brand with
New “Live for Now” Campaign

After their flagship brand suffered an “embarrassing slip” to the No. 3 soda brand behind Coke and Diet Coke, Brad Jakemen, President-Global Enjoyment and Chief Creative Officer of PepsiCo, decided that the Pepsi brand did not need to be reinvented, just reignited with a new tagline that reflected Pepsi’s brand promise. According to Jakemen, “Coke is about the status quo, while Pepsi is all about living for the moment right now.  This naturally led us to the new…campaign and tagline.” PepsiCo’s new campaign for the Pepsi Brand, “Live for Now” debuted globally on May 7th.

The new campaign will, according to PepsiCo’s press release, invite and inspire Pepsi fans to live each moment to the fullest through a breadth of global, pop-culture platforms, including relationships with music and entertainment brand evangelists, digital innovation, epic events and unique partnerships. Jakemen expects to learn how Pepsi behaves as a brand through the new campaign, which debuted its first commercial featuring Nicki Minaj in early May.

What do you think of Pepsi’s new brand campaign? Do you think this new direction will be what the brand needs to begin fighting back in the cola wars against Coke and Diet Coke?  Check out the “Live for Now” commercial with Nicki Minaj below, and let us know in our comments section what you think!

Maurice Sendak:
06/10/28 – 05/08/12

I don’t believe I’ve ever been more enamored with a book in my whole life, as I have been with “Where the Wild Things Are.”

The death of Maurice Sendak, will permanently leave a hole in the children’s book industry along with most twenty-somethings that grew up loving the book.

Maybe you weren’t thrilled with the movie, maybe you could care less about the book. However there is one undeniable fact: Sendak has changed the world.

Having lived through the Great Depression, The Holocaust, and many other unsettling times, his books often showed us the “not so pretty” side to fantasy. In interviews he shared his crude and aloof attitude, he seemed to be a tortured soul.

I wonder, in comparison to so many successful artists, authors and entertainers, does greatness and such a curse go hand in hand? Does one have to be so internally conflicted to be great at what one does?

There is a quote, from the movie “Little Miss Sunshine,” when Steve Carell’s character is talking about Marcel Proust and what the author had learned throughout his life: “…it’s all those years he suffered, those were the best years of his life, ’cause they made him who he was.” I can only hope that all the years of suffering in Sendak’s life had caused him to look back and think the same.

Burger King Pulls Out Celebrity Guns
in New Campaign

After severing ties with Crispin Porter & Bogusky (CP+B) last month, Burger King’s new ad campaign is taking the brand in a completely different direction. As New York agency Mother takes over the account, BK shifts from targeting an über niche market, to targeting everyone.

In the 7+ years that CP+B was BK’s agency of record, they rolled out quite a few campaigns. You may remember The Subservient Chicken, one of the earliest and most successful examples of viral marketing. How about the Whopper Challenge, where Facebookers were encouraged to “de-friend” their friends in exchange for a free Whopper. And of course, we will never, ever, forget the creepy, plastic-masked King that will haunt our dreams for years to come. While some of these campaigns were successful, none of them seemed to work for the Burger King.

The agency switch was due, in part, to losing its spot as the #2 fast food chain to Wendy’s late last year. In its new campaign, BK is moving away from the obscure, hipster-ish ads and messaging that CP+B was pushing. New ads will follow in the footsteps of McDonald’s and Wendy’s, promoting healthier options on the BK menu such as smoothies and salads. With new direction from Mother, BK is looking to target a broader market. How better to accomplish this goal than enlisting a roster of celebrities? Big name celebs have been called to action, such as Jay Leno, David Beckham, Salma Hayek, Steven Tyler, just to name a few.

So far, the reaction to these ads has been predominately positive. Only time will tell if this rebranding strategy will work for Burger King, or if this campaign will just be another mismatch.

The Iconic Quaker gets a Makeover

When perusing the cereal aisle of the grocery store, you may (or may not) notice the subtle differences in a big time brand. If you look closely, you will see that the Quaker on the Quaker Oats box seems a little slimmer.

With more and more consumers opting for healthier choices, the trend towards an active, health-conscious lifestyle only continues to grow. According to Patrick Rowell, Director of Strategy at Quaker’s brand design agency Hornell Anderson, people associate oatmeal with “energy and healthy choices.” I suppose the portly Quaker man that is the face of the brand didn’t match this description.

It appears that the refurbished Quaker has lost his double chin, thinned out his face, had his hair trimmed, and hit the tanning booth. The differences are not noticeable if you’re not looking for them, which is exactly how Hornell wanted them to be. While changing the face of a 134-year-old brand can be detrimental, these modest retouches should not affect the integrity of the brand.

See the changes for yourself below (old logo on left, new logo on right). We’re interested to hear your thoughts, so leave us your comments!

Stock Photos Gone Amiss

As a Branding Agency, we spend a good amount of time searching online stock photo libraries for the perfect image for a project. In our search efforts, we almost always stumble across a rather odd photo and think to ourselves: “who would ever want to buy this?” Which is why we can appreciate the humor in the “Awkward Stock Photos” Tumblr page, that features stock photos that are so awkward they are simply unusable.

Big thanks to Mashable, for bringing this amazing page to our attention. Here are some of our favorites, but check out the Tumblr page here.

Kickstarting Creativity Through Collective Funding

Funding a startup project can be difficult, but Kickstarter is here to help. According to their website, “Kickstarter is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.”

Although the site is not about investment or lending (projects are 100% owned and operated by their creators), “backers” as they are called, are offered unique rewards for different levels of pledging. For example, if you wanted to make a pledge towards a band recording a CD, you may receive a copy of the finished CD with a $20 pledge, or even an autographed copy with a $50 pledge.

In addition, each project has a target monetary goal as well as a time limit to raise the funds needed. If the goal is not met within the timeframe then no money changes hands.

The website first caught my attention when I saw an article on Brandchannel about an e-paper watch called Pebble that has become the most successful project on Kickstarter to date. As of this writing, they have over 30,600 backers pledging more than $4.4 million. Their original goal was $100,000.

Check out Pebble’s Kickstarter page and watch this short video about the creators’ vision below.

100 Years Later: A “Titanic” Anniversary

Books, documentaries, museum exhibits, memorial cruises, dinners and one extensive collection of artifacts auctioned off.  These are just some of the many ways that people all across the world commemorated the 100^th anniversary of Titanic’s fateful voyage.

Having been interested in the Titanic for years, I too have been intrigued by the flurry of media surrounding its centenary.  I purchased two new books, saw Titanic The Musical at a local high school and plan on reliving my teenage years later this week when I see Titanic in 3D.  And if I ever get the chance to visit Belfast, Northern Ireland, one of my first stops will be the newly opened Titanic Belfast museum.  According to its website:

“Titanic Belfast^® extends over nine galleries, with multiple dimensions to the exhibition, drawing together special effects, dark rides, full-scale reconstructions and innovative interactive features to explore the Titanic story in a fresh and insightful way; from her conception in Belfast in the early 1900s, through her construction and launch, to her infamous maiden voyage and catastrophic demise. The journey goes beyond the aftermath of the sinking, to the discovery of the wreck and continues into the present day with a live undersea exploration centre.”

Even the building was built to resemble the ship.

Night shot from titanicbelfast.com

With such a rich history and so much public interest, the story of the Titanic is sure to live on for centuries more to come.

Florida Marlins Make the Move to Miami

With baseball season in full swing, the former Florida Marlins have debuted the season as the Miami Marlins. Along with a new stadium, the team introduced their new logo and uniforms to mixed reviews back in November.

The overall move was a bid to boost attendance and switching from Florida to Miami was a way for the team to embrace the city that they love. As far as the new logo, owner Jeffrey Loria explains, “We are the red-orange, of the breathtaking Miami sunsets and the citrus industry. The blue of the sky and the sea. And the yellow of the beautiful Miami sunshine.”

Check out the new logo below and let us know what you think.

Are You A Brand Expert?

Want to put your branding knowledge to the test? Take a look at Andrew Miller’s “Brand Spirit” Tumbler page. Every day for 100 days, Miller is painting one object white, and challenging us to guess which brand it is. What’s the point of this experiment? To see how far the visual branding of a product really goes. See if you can guess which 3 brands are shown below, and check out the rest here: brandspirit.tumblr.com