vivid shining brands

From Ad Age, a good story about Lisa Bacus, CMO of American Family Insurance and how she's remaking the company's image with a really sound media and creative strategy: Like many advertising categories, insurance marketing was heavy on tactics and price-driven deals but short on branding in 2009. That's where Lisa Bacus, VP-marketing for American Family Insurance, saw an opportunity -- to tell brand-driven stories while her competitors, such as State Farm and Allstate, were driving home the literal value of their packages. Beginning in fall 2009, the insurance marketer and its media agency, Mindshare Entertainment, embarked on its first branded-entertainment strategy, encompassing several integrated entertainment programs with multiple media partners. The first, focused on agent interaction, was led by "In Gayle We Trust," a branded web series for NBC.com (written by Brent Forrester of "The Office") featuring a fictional American Family Insurance a...

From John Tierney, writing in the NY Times today  about which stories in that newspaper get emailed the most: The results are surprising — well, to me, anyway. I would have hypothesized that there are two basic strategies for making the most-e-mailed list. One, which I’ve happily employed, is to write anything about sex. The other, which I’m still working on, is to write an article headlined: “How Your Pet’s  Diet  Threatens Your Marriage, and Why It’s Bush’s Fault.”  Surprising articles, like one about free-range chickens on the streets of New York, were also more likely to be e-mailed — which was a hardly a surprising discovery, of course. But the researchers also kept finding popular articles with a quality that went beyond surprise. “If I went into my classroom dressed up like a pirate, that would be surprising, but it wouldn’t be awe-inspiring,” Dr. Berger said. “An article about square watermelons is surprising, but it doesn’t inspire that awed feeling ...

In one of the most entertaining campaigns in the consumer insurance at the moment, Progressive is looking for an assistant to Flo , the good-humored and hardworking spokesperson for the consumer insurer. Do you have what it takes? A quick review of the competition, through the videos they've submitted, shows that while 99.9% are less charming and articulate than Dick Cheney, more than couple would be hard to beat with their self-avowed zest and zeal for insurance and unique approaches... Now, there seem to be an inordinate number of auditions from New York. Read into that what you will.

There's a reason Tootsie Pop waited nearly forty years to rerun their classic "How many licks..." ad on TV again. Too bad somebody from Tootsie Pop wasn't advising JC Penney, which has decided to run it's very popular "Doghouse" viral video again this year ( from AdAge ): Regardless of whether the  ad critics  liked JC Penney's " Beware of the Doghouse " viral video last year, the masses did. The idea behind the film was that men who gave their wives lame holiday gifts, such as vacuum cleaners, would be dropped down a rabbit hole called the doghouse to be judged by a jury of scathing, scorned wives. The campaign racked up millions of views in its quest to promote JC Penney's jewelry department -- jewelry, of course, being the ticket out of the doghouse. I very much enjoyed the original , even though it was long (why does everybody have so much trouble with good things being longer than stupid things?), but I have to say I was bare...