Bonjus Popsicle ad billboard- Click to zoom in

This series by Bonjus really relates to the senses, with the great slice representations my mouth waters every time I see them. Undoubtedly they are one of my favorite ads of the summer.

I would sure like to see the digital strategy and the ROI behind all of these. Facebook has indeed become the new political landscape in Lebanon.

Everyone is up to stirring a revolution these days, or at least, trying to juice out the buzz out of them towards their gain.

I’ve showed you previously an example of Irhal’s response to the Egyptian revolution.

This new example tries to echo a recent political rally here in Beirut, re-purposing it to promote their event. My Eyeballs, being used to political slogans all around were definitely caught up to read on. Nevetherless, I do not believe it added to the event’s exposure or made more impact compared to Forward’s usual print materials / ads.

What do you think?

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For revolutions I am interested in, I advise checking out Ontornet’s amazing efforts for advocating for faster internet in Lebanon.

My travel bug is growing worse and worse every day. My biological clock just knows that it is supposed to be somewhere half way across the world…

And passing by the above billboard by Beirut Duty Free Every day, evermore tingles my consumerism and desire to travel…

How do you deal with your travel bug?

Bala Nom - Kaffi 3a Platinum.

While putting up this billboard costs a small fortune, Platinum, have not put much into the design and copy of this ad. And yet it is a cute example of Naive advertising, just as naive art is considered a great form of art. And as it is, I would not be surprised if the ad proved to be a money turner for the business.

This is the perfect timing for the campaign as expats are returning to Lebanon for the summer and touring around it, sadly leaving more than just their footsteps in the sand.

The concept may be a bit Deja Vu and yet it does not miss the point, still instantaneously projecting the message and (hopefully) embedding it into your consciousness.

You know that I am a big sucker for this type of social and environmental ads and I am loving that this is being done to preserve Lebanon. Luckily enough, I got lost on the road ( still getting used to the trek from new place so this is happening often) and saw this great ad on a unipole but could not snap it. Then, as the all knowing google did not have it in its digital reign, I emailed the Ministry of Environment and the UNDP and both responded and were very helpful. Big Thanks for that.

A special thanks to MS. Rola Khazen, Senior Marketing Advisor at UNDP for providing the images and giving me the below background stats regarding the campaign.

• The campaign was launched by the Minister of environment on June 4,2010, in the press syndicate. Ragheb Alameh was present because he is a goodwill ambassador. In addition to all the press.
• The campaign consisted of TV and radio spots, 5 bus wraps, Digital panels of Pikasso, magazines and dailies as well a unipole on the airport highway.
• The campaign will last as long as the media place it because  they are free of charge and it is up to the media to decide how much they put it depending on their availability.

NOW I am hoping for:

- more action driven campaigns in the future, from corporate entities.

- more exposure for such campaigns online ( as you can see above no online digital agencies were involved in the campaign)

- the ads will appear throughout Beirut and Lebanon, not just at the edge of the city

- Tweet me if you spot the add somewhere else, I only saw it that one time when I got lost on the old airport road, and today in Executive Magazine

Today I got a very pleasant surprise in my inbox, which I wanted to share with all of you out there looking for a job in Social Media Marketing & Online Community Building in Lebanon. It’s Time to celebrate!

Anyway below the job description for this job, and follow the link to apply:

+ Social Media Marketing Director

DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage the corporate division social media strategy and execution.
• Coordinate with internal team, to execute the strategy.
• Create, facilitate, and participate effectively and authentically in key conversations about the company on blogs and other online social media channels.
• Develop and execute a blogging communication strategy, including:
  • Become accessible to the blogging community
  • Manage responses to negative and positive feedback
  • Generate buzz and interest in various forms of digital media such as online videos, blog posts, news articles, images, and more
  • Monitor and analyze social media trends for company brand
  • Develop, execute and manage the online content to drive organic search engine ranking
  • Create and maintain visible Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg accounts and other social media profiles.
  • Report on the effectiveness of social site placement and conversations on the web.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Marketing experience in a direct-to-consumer organization
• Social media experience Deep familiarity with social media, viral and word of mouth online marketing practices.
• Excellent consulting, writing, editing, and communication skills, including an engaging written voice.
• Experienced builder and executer of online social media strategies.
• Experience moderating group discussions and managing community leaders.
• Bachelors degree in Communications, PR, English, Marketing or other related field.
• Excellent consulting, writing, editing, and communication skills, including an engaging written voice.

The visual is AMAZING and spot on. So far this is the only visual I have been able to find related to this specific campaign, below is an image from an earlier campaign they did. What I would LOVE to see in the future is how would they tackle the issue of Arguileh second hand smoke, an issue not covered so far in any campaign, although it is a very serious issue in Lebanon.

These visuals are part of a campaign lauched by the Lebanese Public Health Ministry in collaboration with al Azem Wal Saade association. So far I have only seen these in a magazine, although the tobacco control website said the campaign will be across all media channels starting June, but we’re not here to talk about that.

Let me know what you think, and read other posts I have written about the smoking ban.

Lesson #1: Your audience is ever more demanding!

TRUE STORY:

While watching the first football game of the World Cup:

- my father in Law: Damn this transmission has degraded, before they used to show the name of the player who has the ball and info about him, zoom into the player’s faces more when they replay, replay the goals better…

- my brother in law: Dad, this is on Playstation 2, not in ‘the real’  Fifa

Yes, we are getting more spoiled with new multimedia technologies, traditional media have to provide more information rich data, better interactivity options and more sharing opportunities. In short we want to be better informed and more involved and we expect you to do something about it!

Lesson #2: The Stakeholders Expect You to React FAST!

A day into world cup and everyone is complaining about these darn Vuvuzela’s. Three days into the world Cup and Germany filters out Vuvuzela noises to spare the fans. A couple days more Britain Joins and people start petitioning for banning the Vuvuzela( with over 300,000 fans on facebook and counting) . Add a couple of days and an app that adds vuvuzela noises to sites that filter them is created following the de-vuvuzelaing applets!

Needless to say, your clients will expect the same response rates from you!

Lesson #3: Do not forget about unexploited niches

For instant, women  have to suffer while their prince charming enjoys row after row of football matches day in day out for a whooole month.   So while everyone is gold mining the idea of the big flat screens to display the World Cup, why don’t you capitalize on the opposite – making your place a haven for football haters?

This Le Mall ad may be an attempt at just what I’m talking about, but I hate the fact that it belittles women. As a woman  I would not identify with it and will consider it an attempt to trick me into going to Le Mall and being stuck watching football, rather than showing me a clear exit path  – The “learn about football so people do not make fun of you” message VERSUS  the ” while he is watching football break loose and shop” message I would like to hear.

So you see, there is a real propitious niche there, that your competitors are not exploring. And let us not forget about children, where do people with children leave kids to go watch the games? You say grandparents, I say create a replacement product…There are a millions of ideas and campaigns buried in unrealized consumer demand in your market too-  Be creative, we’re expecting no less!

My personal favorites in this regard is the above Macy Gray video clip and this great post by Maya Zankoul.

Lesson #4: Shamelessly exploit trends?

I am not even gonna go into the myriad of brilliant and so and so ads, campaigns and offers linked to the world cup. Yes it is a good tactic. Yes, it will help you not stay behind, but if you truely wanna innovate, go back to point 3.

Lesson #5: We are watching You, and we have everything ON RECORD!

One of the first big time fxxx-ups in this world cup was the British Goalkeeper giving a slip to the ball, right after catching it. Man, it was a media circus at my in-law’s house. With the whole family lividly replaying his walk of shame and lively commenting how his career is over. And all of this replicated across millions of households in reaction to a slip of a man who by default can not catch all the balls shot at him. So Imagine what your Stakeholders will do if YOU slip up!

Have you learned any new marketing lessons from the world cup, let me know!?

Today, IVY was giving dating advice on twitter and asking people for feedback on her make a move rose giveaway and planning a tweetup dinner.

Yesterday, at the table, we sat arguing for around 20 minutes whether IVY is real or not.

The whole week before, people were passionately interacting with IVY on twitter…

Two weeks ago, Ivy registered to attend a tweetup and blogged about it.

And the truth of the matter is that we shouldn’t care if IVY is real or not. We should be happy that companies have finally understood the language of digital natives and is creating campaigns that resonate and interact with us, as well as the other poor mere mortals. After EXOTICA’s  unexciting Different Christmas campaign, that even failed to point us to the blog on their billboards, Leo Burnett, Exotica’s ad agency,  reviewed all of its mistakes and came up with something with a phenomenal snowball effect. Yes, as I said before my friends, social media marketing is sparking to life in the middle east and you are either with us, or eaten by the competition.

Things to learn from Exotica’s IvySays Project.

1- Give and you shall receive

The IVY we have come to know and love is a giver. She started by giving us dating advise, which though we may not all apply, but we all loved and we felt compelled single people everywhere felt compelled to try out Ivy’s moves and then… Ivy slipped a rose into our hands and made it all the more easier. Think about your clients, think about what they need. And even if you are B2B business, think: Do your they need education, help, comfort, care, empowerment? All of us do, don’t we? Now how can you use all that your expertise to help them, regardless of your product?

2-Engage and you shall be engaged

Before IVY got to her first post, she got a twitter account and after that, she did not just re-tweet her own posts, she replied to people, she talked to them, shared her opinions on outside issues, gave them advice and encouragement. There was no pushing her message or asking for anything for herself. That is why, when IVY asked questions she got enormous feedback, even from those who were in doubt about her true identity. And that is value you will not be able to leverage unless you create a genuine online persona [not to be confused with a retweet bot].

3-Go where they go, do what they do!

Ivy blogged about various creeks and corners in Beirut, be in Kayan, Greedy Goose or Le Grey, and that is what made her connect and resonate with her audience. Ivy did not blog about flowers she blogged about fashion, make-up, glamor, plastic surgery, national pride, chocolate- SUGAR, SPICE and EVERYTHING NICE – and we all like nice things.  Then again, she went to twitter to reach digital natives and, mind you,  she even guest blogged and re-blogged it on her own site. Did IVY ask girls to go to EXOTICA to get the flowers? No, they went out to  the most up and coming place – Gemmayze, Achrafieh and Hamra. The only thing that could’ve been done differently would be  giving out roses all around Lebanon, and not just Beirut.

4-Empower and you shall be empowered

Even if they did not comment, retweet or send emails, thought they actively do, with every dating tip IVY empowered ladies to take actions. Girls, being the gossip machines they are, would discuss it – which means GOING VIRAL offline. And then again with every rose given out to a guy Exotica created a positive sentiment, that is teh first step to along lasting relationship, not with the guy, but with the brand. And come 2011 I expect more girls to send out flowers to beau’s, and now, not because they[roses] are free, but because it makes them feel good. And this is the golden key to any successful brand. And did I mention the publicity, Ivy’s campaign is getting from mainstream media?

5-Going against the current and bringing the currents together

There are two stakeholders in any relationship – MAN & WOMAN. Exotica’s outdoors visuals empowered men, by teasing them with images of women they could have had in 2o09 if only they were brave enough. While Ivy, took a less traditional approach, and she looked to empower women. Mind you, women are not traditionally the ones we think first of when we think about selling flowers, right? But then again, I have seen countless times flowers being delivered to men at our offices from girlfriends, wives or wanna-bes. And then again, think of it, if a girl gives a guy one rose before valentine, and the guy likes the girl, on Valentine he will get her no less than a bouquet and what will his 1st choice be? Certainly EXOTICA. So you see, by bringing people together and spreading love Exotica may actually have record sales on February 14.

Finally,  I want to congratulate Exotica on the Brilliant Initiative and hope that IVY , whoever she is, continues blogging even after February 14, otherwise the digital natives all around, both those who think IVY is Real and Fake, will feel beguiled and disappointed.

Googling I found this song called IVY SAYS, I wonder if it had anything to do with the origin of the campaign.

Patrick is a dream guest blogger, he is someone a host blogger can only dream of. And as promised, he has made a come back and is answering all your questions about blog advertising. Also don’t forget to check out Patrick’s latest project the Gift Cheat Sheet,  that is available for free download, and follow him on twitter.

How can I manually install an advertisement banner on my side bar?

If you have the banner already, figure out its size and then paste this code on your widget bar which will endorse the ad (fields marked in blue needs to be modified accordingly):

<a href=”http://www.yourlink.com”> <img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-2647″ title=”Advertising” src=”http://projektcyan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ad.gif” alt=”My First Ad” width=”160″ height=”607″ /></a>

Some definitions:

Þ      <a href> This is the redirection link. You need to replace “www.yourlink.com” with the appropriate redirection link (the link the user will be redirected to when he click on the ad).

Þ      <title> This is the title of your ad (you can delete this if you like).

Þ      <src> This is the URL of the location of the ad (the image on the internet), you need to replace that with the one for your ad.

Þ      <alt> This is the ALT field, whatever you write here will be shown as a tooltip when the user mouse over the advert. You can also remove delete this field if you do not want a text to appear.

Þ      <weidht and height> You need to replace these field with the right sizes depending on your ad.

Of course they are other codes that can embed an ad, but this is what I use. Some other codes can embed Meta Tags in your add for more efficient SEO results.

Can the ad be animated?

Yes ads can be animated; you can place GIF or SWF (flash) or even FLV videos on your blog as ads. You can also place interactive flash ads, for instance on mouse over a sound can be played or the ad expands to a bigger size to play a video, endless stuff you can do!

Does BuySellAds work in the Middle East?

It works anywhere as long as you have a PayPal account. They pay via PayPal or cheque (by post) or bank account transfers.

Just tried adbrite.com, but unfortunately their ad generator code has Javascript in it, but wordpress.com doesn’t allow JavaScript. Are there ad websites that use code without JS?

Yes free wordpress.com blogs will not understand Java and they do not have plug-ins that do. You need to upgrade to a self-hosted blog so that you can benefeit from that and a lot of other things.

Which one pays better between AdSense and Third Party Marketplace? I know it depends on the ad, but do you have any idea of the average?

In Theory, AdSense pays the least. Some of the third party market places like BuyAndSell.com allows you to put ur own prices to some slots, but ur prices got to be competitive with others like you (millions of others) so you cannot really put high prices otherwise people wont purchase your slots.

At what daily visitor count did u introduce ads, what would u advise new bloggers re-that?

It really depends, some clients would be interested if you get 5000 hits a day, and others will not even consider you with such Impressions. But in my opinion, if you get about 1000 unique visitors daily, you can easily start renting ad slots if you do it right.

I started with about 1000+- unique daily visits which translated to over 3500 hits per day.

Note: Unique Visitors is different from Hits. Meaning if today I visit your blog 10 times, it will count as 1 Unique visit + 10 Hits, accordingly.

Also don’t worry about not getting a lot of comments, as long as you have high stats it can make it up one for another. But some clients prefer to advertise in blogs that are very active in terms of comments and discussions. This is when your negotiation / convincing skills kicks in

How much money did it make you at the start?

At first I was giving away all my spaces for free to attract potential clients and pitch the prices with something concrete, it stayed like that for 5 or 6 months. Now I sell some spaces for $100 up to $500 per month per space, depends on the size and location of the ad. I also have Google AdSense banners and one or two from BuySellAds.com which I only look at every 2 or 3 months.

How much has the revenue changed over time?

It increased, and its increasing time over time. I am now selling space for almost double the price for what I used to sell 2 years ago. Also the more popular your blog gets the more demand you will get = the higher you can charge.

Could one live from blog ads, in the Middle East?

Not at the moment no, sometimes you get empty spaces for a month or 2 = no income so it’s a bit risky, unless your blog is really really popular. But in USA for example, some people quit their jobs and became full time bloggers, earning their lives from advertising / sponsorships revenues.

But as I said in the post earlier, advertising in blogs is becoming more and more popular and more accepted, specially in the Middle East, so soon enough I think it would be possible to make a living out of your blogs (yes, I think you need more then one blog for that).

Daily / Weekly effort (in Hrs) for managing ads?

I deal with each case as it comes along. When I get an email or a call from a client who wants to advertise I send them the rate card and take it from there.

Usually when the ad is placed, I just keep track of its schedule through a Word or Excel sheet and its usually not for another month till its up for renewal. So in theory, for me it’s a monthly effort, to place an ad it takes 10 minutes and so to replace / remove one.

I try to sell my spaces for monthly or quarterly or yearly contracts only. Easier to maintain and run that way.

How about in-text advertising?

I don’t personally like it and don’t recommend it really.

Note: in-text advertising basically works by turning some of the words on your blog into hyperlinks, the words are chosen randomly, for example the word CAR will become a special hyperlink and when you mouse over it will display a small advert in a tooltip format which can also redirect you to an advert.

Just stay away of these, you can’t monitor the type of ads and revenues are rubbish. If you still want to try it, these are some links: http://www.kontera.com/ and http://www.infolinks.com/

What other advertising methods I can use on my blog?

There are ads that you can inject in the videos you post on your blog, this is something I might actually consider using. You need the WordTube plug-in for that. You can read more about it all here: http://alexrabe.de/wordpress-plugins/wordtube/

How much do I charge?

It’s really up to you, you know better. It also depends on your blog’s stats. Please refer to the post or to some of the questions above for more info..

Will advertising bring more traffic?

I don’t think it would. It might in some way or another but I don’t see how it could bring more traffic to a blog. Traffic bring advertising, not the other way around I think

And Since Patrick is a saint, I am sure that if you leave additional questions in the comment section, he will explain more.

I found this little beauty in last month’s Executive Magazine. I am half certain that I have seen this concept before in some design handbook, but one must admit its interactive and very effective!

After you take off the business card you, the message reads:

“If not you can remain in a business of wasted opportunities where clients complain which will lead to your employees resigning. You won’t get any bonuses. You wide will stop hosting dinner parties. You will sell the Chalet, the sports car and the golf kit. then before you know it your family will be living on discount coupons.”

The only thing that I don’t like is that it does not convey the fact that Terra Biz is part of Terra Net and the services they offer are internet related.

If you’ve seen any of its predecessors , tell me!

Impressive animation that ‘speaks’ to you without words conveying the message – CCTV is aware of everything ! Even if you have a very slow connection, WATCH IT & tell me what you think!

[vimeo 6794856]

CCTV Ink TV Commercial – Directed by Niko Tziopanos from Troublemakers.tv on Vimeo.

[Found VIA: Creativeroots]