Super Bowl Ads Fetch Top Dollar Again, A Little Controversy Thrown in ... No extra Charge.

Once again this year the asking price for a Super Bowl 30 second spot is in the stratosphere. While down slightly from last year’s average of $3 million, this years average of between $2.6 – $2.8 million is still the most expensive advertising on television. A far cry from Super Bowl I in 1967 when the Kansas City Chiefs faced the Green Bay Packers and the cost of a 30 second commercial was just $37,500.  The claim by CBS that a Super Bowl spot captures a larger audience than 250 regular TV commercials must be a good selling point, because inventory is almost sold out with beer giant Anheuser- Busch buying the most, at a five full minutes worth.

Long the playing field of only big auto, insurance and beverage marketers, a surprising entry onto this year’s roster is a spot from Dr. James Dobson’s Focus On The Family. Some controversy surrounding a spot from Audi has been filling the social media space and there is always speculation as to which ad will be the funniest or capture the most water cooler conversation on Monday.

Here is the ad schedule so far and a  list of spending and audience stats  from the first to most recent Super Bowl.

• Anheuser-Busch InBev
  • Bud Light Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Light
  • Bud Light Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Stranded
  • Bud Light Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Book Club
  • Bud Light Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Voice Box
  • Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Bridge
  • Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Payment
  • Michelob ULTRA Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Little Bumps (Lance Armstrong)
  • SELECT 55 Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Ice Bottle
• Audi Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Boost Mobile Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Bridgestone Super Bowl Commercials 2010
  • Bridgestone Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Whale of a Tale
  • Bridgestone Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Your Tires or Your Life
• CareerBuilder Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Census Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Coca-Cola Super Bowl Commercials 2010
  • Coke Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Hard Times (The Simpsons)
  • Coke Super Bowl Commercial 2010 Sleepwalker
• Denny’s Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Diamond Foods Pop Secret Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Dodge Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Doritos Super Bowl Commercials 2010
• Dove Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Dr Pepper Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• EA Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• E-Trade Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Flo TV Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Focus On The Family Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• GoDaddy Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• HomeAway Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• HP Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Hyundai Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Intel Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• kgb Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Kia Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Miller High Life Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Monster Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Motorola Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Snickers Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Teleflora Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• tru TV Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Universal Orlando Harry Potter Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Vizio Super Bowl Commercial 2010
• Volkswagen Super Bowl Commercial 2010

[Via http://mediacorpdrtv.wordpress.com]

Getgo wins Audi competition

Getgo Probe Tools

Well what an exciting week!

Getgoglasgow, which is the design collective of the two Masters courses at the Glasgow school of art (Design Innovation and European design) won the Audi Sustain our Nation competition and £10000 for the community we worked with.

We’ve been working with an area in Maryhill Glasgow called Wyndford to develop a sustainable social enterprise for their community.  The project has been tough, with some great highs, and almighty lows.

For the group, it was a challenging project.  This demanded a new role of the designer away from the solo author to the co-creator.  We made it really clear at the beginning of the project to work with people rather than for them.

View this document on Scribd

The winning project was Green Gorillaz, a way to bring back community spirit and the community voice, using offline and online message boards, linked up  by residents.  We created some seed groups which will house events and see knowledge transferred across generations.  It stems from the closure of their primary schools last year, and a real loss of community.  They had come together to fight the decision, so we knew there were passionate local champs.  We wanted to harness this and turn that energy into something positive.

But credit should go to everyone involved in the project, there were three projects developed from the same process. We held co-creation workshops with residents and stakeholders to generate ideas to take forward, but made sure at all points we were transparent and open about our process, returning to the community regularly to work with them again and develop proposals.

If design education should learn anything from this, is that building relationships takes time, and if projects like this are to be handed to students, proper training in community work, sustainable thinking and an understanding of ethics should be taught.  We’ve struggled with the competition and institute deadlines.  For example, after handing in the first three projects, we had to wait to see whether any had made it through to the regional finals.  At this point, we decided as a collective to carry all of them on anyway, even though none might be taken forward.

Anyway, we’re down at the RSA on the 17th February to represent a ‘developed’ concept (we’re working to make it real and it starts tomorrow with a football pitch party at 10am where we’ll be feeding back to the community), and hopefully we can win another £10000 for Wyndford.

In the words of John Gray yesterday,

“bloody good for u……bunnets in the air !……mon the weegies “

[Via http://sarahdrummond.wordpress.com]

Audi S3 Sportback

Achtung! Be sure to move over when seeing this in your rear view mirror

The guys from Ingolstadt have been working very hard the past couple of years to ensure an unparalleled product for the Audi enthusiast. It’s no surprise then that the new S3 Sportback is nothing short of astonishing. Few cars hold a reputation as menacing as the Audi S3, with its alluring proportions and its hallmark Quattro system. The S3’s new design – DRL headlights on its front-end, rounded off by a bold, black front grill – gives it an unmistakeable road presence. These trademark features culminate in a malevolent glare that strikes fear into other road-users.
It employs the same 2-litre FSI motor found in the GTI but its been equipped with an array of upgraded components that guarantees a power output of 195kW and 350Nm, encouraging the S3 to obliterate the 0-100km/h mark in 5.8 seconds.
But it’s not just the impressive credentials that makes it a desired chunk of sheet metal, its the S-line exclusivity of owning a vehicle that comes in at a base price of R400 500.

Is that an Avant? The four doors and larger backside make it an ideal family carrier

Having an S3 is a like having your own personal Cobra rollercoaster – it handles like it’s on rails, it churns your stomach and makes you grind your teeth and, best of all, you get to ride it everyday.

C02 emissions: 201.0 g/km

0-100 km/h: 5.8 seconds

Top speed: 250km/h

[Via http://aaronborrill.wordpress.com]

Transmedia - Global Examples (Part 2)

In the world of branding, transmedia has still only played a relatively small part, though with huge potential. The foremost question that has to be put forward to brand managers is whether their brand has a story to tell. In current times though, however big the power of storytelling might be, brand managers are just not inclined to the idea of storytelling for their brands. Nor are they willing to take the risk of putting the baton in the hands of the consumer. They are more interested in selling their product rather than selling the concept of the product. Nevertheless, whenever a brand has a great story to tell, transmedia integration can really add value and radically change the ROI dynamics of the campaign

The best example of transmedia storytelling to date has been the art of the heist for the launch of the Audi A3. In 2006, Audi came up with a revolutionary ad campaign to promote its latest model in the A series. Call it alternate reality, call it transmedia storytelling but the Art of the Heist is termed as the biggest experiential marketing campaign in history. 45mn impressions and more than 500,000 consumers added their version of the story to make a gigantic plot for the original narrative.

A night before the biggest autoshow in America, where the Audi A3 was supposed to make its first appearance, the car gets stolen from the event. Security cameras showed the burglars break a window and drive the car away. This was the start of a 3 month campaign which led consumers to follow bits and pieces of the puzzle in various mediums, none of them totally giving it away. The story was littered with sub plots and random leakages of information led to an infinite combination of solutions that a consumer could reach depending on the mediums they had come in contact with. The events happened in real time so not only could the audience watch the myriad of information related to the heist flowing in, they could also influence it in the smallest possible way. The whole campaign felt like an online movie, where the audience could choose their level of involvement.

From a famous and wanted Art collector, to a renowned game developer to a master thief, the characters added depth to the campaign. The attention to detail was meticulous and hence people kept guessing whether this was a game or for real. Careful attention was given to the authenticity of the information being seeded into the campaign. The hard core audience who were running background checks or delving deeper to find more info to solve the mystery always met with information backed by authentic data. The companies being mentioned in blogs and discussed in communities actually existed. Those companies already existed in the yellow pages with complete legitimate addresses and phone numbers. Ads for those companies had already been posted in magazines and newspapers well before the start of the campaign to build realness for the campaign. Backdated emails, photos, documents, maps and plans of the heist, telephone conversations, text messages and video logs were being revealed at opportune times through the mediums most suitable for their delivery and as the campaign progressed, the complex web of information made sure that the audience had several if not infinite possibilities to choose from.

Even though movies, tv series and narratives have been using the services of transmedia to both broaden the horizon and make use of the long tail to extend the effectiveness, Art of the Heist was the first time a brand had taken leverage from this unique concept. More recently the TV series Heroes has taken the idea to a new level. The nbc microsite is the center point or the aggregator of all information related to Heroes. So its not the TV series which is in the middle of it all or leading the story, even though it is still the most powerful way to further the narrative, but it’s the microsite which amalgamates the various parallel stories. Several characters from the movie run live blogs about micro details in the story which don’t have enough place in the 1 hour episode on TV. Meanwhile, elements from the story have a parallel life of their own. For example, the TV series follows a comic book artist who can draw the future and one of the characters figures out his future through the comic book. On the microsite though, the comic book becomes bigger than what it is on TV. Back dated issues of the comic complete the puzzle as to what led to the current issue of the comic revealing the future of the hero. Audiences are pulled into the experience by getting involved and taking the story forward in the comic books. Alternate endings or connecting the thread in the comics to the story on TV are what helps build a community where the story keeps growing and becomes more intricate with every new user added to the mix. There are multiple other parallel plots and sub plots taking place in the form of webisodes which people can forward to their friends. Biographies, history and conspiracy theories related to the characters being revealed only in special radio episodes. Often new characters are added to the mix which never find their way into TV but twist the story in all kinds of tangents on parallel mediums.

in part 3 of this article i will be talking about the Pakistani perspective on transmedia and some pitfalls which need to be avoided if transmedia storytelling has to work for brands

[Via http://metamorphis.wordpress.com]

Assorted grab bag of stuff we like

Happy MLK.

No further commentary necessary, so let’s get right to it.

These would appear to be rather gruesome, but miraculously (judging from the photos), the driver survived.

All photos via tcl.

[Via http://bulgogibrothers.wordpress.com]

Audi Turning To Nvidia Tegra Chipset

If I had $80,000 to spend on a car, I would probably go with an Audi A8. And now I have even more reason to want one since they partnered with Nvidia for their dashboard graphics.

Their Tegra 2 chipset will be installed in all Audi 2011 models — giving a boost to their dashboard graphics and adding the capability to display Google Earth mapping for navigation and point of interest search.

[Via http://digitalization.wordpress.com]

Second Audi e-Tron Concept Appeared in Detroit (photos)

The new version of the Audi e-Tron concept, that first exposed at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, has appeared in Detroit. When looking at the Frankfurt e-Tron a R8 directly comes to care. The Detroit e-Tron is actually 27 cm (10.63 inches) shorter in piece and 12 cm (4.72 inches) narrower and only 1 cm (0.39 shuffle) shorter in height. It has a sickening stress of around 1,350 kg (2976.24 lbs), which is 250 kg (551.16 lbs) excluding than the Frankfurt e-Tron.

Two electric motors drive the front and rear axles. Together they make 150kW (204hp) and 2,650 Nm (1954.54 lb-ft) of torque which can be liberally pied between the wheels as necessary. The car is said to accelerate from 0 – 100km/h in 5.9 seconds and is imperfect to 200km/h (124mph).

Read more (details + photos)!!

The lithium-ion battery employed can be revived in around 11 hours from a household socket when completely evacuate, or in just two hours from a 400V basis. An energy-recovery practice is worn to recoup wasted brake energy when the car’s brakes are useful.

Audi’s sketch partied reserved the trapezoidal definite-edge fencing with two large air intakes. LEADING lighting technology is used for illumination. Instead of foglights however Audi made the headlights to be movable, import they adapt to prevail situations, whether it is great darkness, spit or fog layer the highway. Wheels are 19-shuffle range with a 35-beam project, 235/35 tyres up front and 255/35 tyres at the rear.

Inside, many of the components found in a gasoline-powered car are absent, including components for the transmission. The MMI contact inspired system-broadcast smart phones and can communicate with the driver’s faction call from very long distances.

[Via http://autoworld.wordpress.com]

MinWoo Rushed To The Hospital Due To Car Accident

Lee MinWoo has been rushed to the hospital. This actually happened before the new year came.

He suffered injuries from a car accident and is currently being hospitalized. It happened before Christmas.

The car was driven by a friend and it slipped due to ice and fell five meters off on a cliff on the day before Christmas. Lee sprained his ankle, waist, and neck. He also had symptoms of concussion and is now hospitalized. The Audi that was driven is completely destroyed. Others in the car had far worse injuries in their ribs, spine, etc.

His concert that is supposed to happen on the 16th and 17th might be cancelled. This was supposed to be the last concert before he entered the military. There is no word on when he will be cured.

[Via http://kojaproductions.wordpress.com]