New Year

Well, as you all may have noticed, I haven't updated this blog very often lately. I feel a bit sad about not having the time to do it, due to my daytime work, and also due to my weekly commuting between Stockholm and Göteborg.

I will not make any new year's resolutions about posting more often though. LoveEvent will live on, but more quietly and not so actively, waiting for better times. Times more suitable for me to pick this up again...

I'd like to end this year by writing a short post about two companies who I have written a lot about this past year: ICA and A Non Smoking Generation, who now have a campaign together.

Read more on A Non Smoking Generation's blog, or at ICA's facebook page.

(My older posts about A Non Smoking Generation and ICA.)

Until next time; Happy New Year and I wish you alla 2011 full of energy and new opportunities!

F**king brilliant commercial

Yeah, well, I'm sorry for swearing, but this is the best commercial I've seen in a loooong time! A friend of mine shared it on FB today, but the video has been uploaded on YouTube since the end of August. My only regret is that I haven't seen it until now.

I'm not going to spoil it for you, so just enjoy! :)

The "missing" video from ComHem

I have had a few very busy weeks working on my "daytime" job, with Glacéau vitaminwater, but I found the video I blogged about a few weeks ago, from ComHem. It's funny, but unfortunately only in Swedish. Enjoy! :)



And check out someone who used ComHem's song, but the real TV intro's:

My other posts about ComHem.

And again....

I just have to blog about this ICA commercial. In my opinion, ICA keep making hit after hit after hit. This time they "copy" the commercial for Gina Tricot, a clothes retailer. The TV commercial was released in the same day as the news that Gina Tricot's model for the last 7 years, Pernielle Holmboe, is being replaced with Brasilian model Emanuela de Paula.

There are different voices to be heard about the commercial. Many think that the agency behind ICA's commercials, King, is making it easy for themselves, parodising everything. I on the other hand, find the commercials funny. So what if they are "just" parodies? They get attention and people adore the ICA "family". Why not credit the agency for that?

Judit & Judit are late?

Today I saw a very funny TV commercial from ComHem. It featured Judit & Judit in various movies and TV shows, advertising TV "On demand". I liked the commercial, and decided to blog about it (check out my previous post about ComHem's Judit & Judit here.)

Though, I was a bit surprised to find that the commercial can't be found anywhere on the internet. I googled, and checked ComHem's YouTube channel, but didn't find anything. I was a bit annoyed. In my mind, if you release a TV commercial, why not release it in social media at the same time as well? I decided to call Judit & Judit (since they are the spokespersons for ComHem's customer service ;). I talked to a nice boy who didn't know much, just that the TV commercials were released today, and if I didn't find it on YouTube, ComHem probably hadn't had time to upload it there. He suggested me to take a look on ComHem's web site (which I already had of course) but he said he wasn't sure the commercial could be found there. Quite disappointing actually.

The picture in this post is from comhem.se, so apparently there was a launch event held in Stockholm, but then, even more so, why not follow up with a YouTube upload?

So, instead of a blog post about a funny (possibly viral) commercial, it resulted in a blog post about Judit & Judit being late with their uploads. Or am I wrong? Is there maybe a strategy behind this? Please enlighten me! :)

ICA does it again :)

ICA have come up with a new TV commercial, making a parody out of a Swedish video blogger (Amanda) who is quite "popular" on YouTube. Some like her blog, and some find her posts being quite meaningless. Anyway, many have heard of her, and many will certainly find ICA's commercial hilarious (as I did). Unfortunately, both clips are only in Swedish, but I am pretty sure the ICA one will become a viral video soon...

Check out one of the "original" clips from Amanda's Youtube channel.

And here is ICA's commercial:

My previous blog posts about ICA.

Be a hero!

In Sweden, if you own a TV, it is mandatory to pay a fee for public TV and radio. There are two commercial-free public service TV channels that are bascially run by the government. The money is used to produce and purchase TV shows, and the news are (supposedly) objective.

The problem is that many people don't pay. It is kind of hard for Radiotjänst, as the name of the company that handles payments is, to check every home for a TV. So, they make commercials in order to get people to pay. They have previously run a few fun campaigns, including the popular "En snigel på ögat" (A snail on the eye) and Hembesök (House Call), and now they have a new one out.

Picture/logo from radiotjanst.se.

I saw a link on Facebook, from one of my friends. I clicked it and was redirected to a (Swedish) movie, where a woman, in an international press conference, asks how we can be sure that what we see on TV is real, and how we can be sure that even the little voices get heard. She explained it was due to one person, a hero, and she opens en envelope with a photo of my friends dog. You then see people all over the world cheering for the Swedish hero, and more photos of the dog, in different crowds, beeing hailed as a hero. I was amused, and curious, until the end of the movie, because it wasn't until then that it was revealed that why this dog was a hero was because it paid it's TV fee! So, the whole site, where you an upload a photo of yourself (or of your dog) and become a hero, is a campaign for the Swedish TV fee.

Ok, so the idea is maybe not new, but I like it nontheless, and here is my Hero movie (and yes, we do pay pour fee... ;) and here you can be a hero!

Footnote: Hembesök (House Call) actually won the Guldägget award for best film. Guldägget (The Golden Egg) is a competition hosted by The Swedish Association of Communication Agencies, an organisation for independent companies active in the business area of advertising. Here is a previous post about Guldägget.

ComHem <3 YouTube

ComHem, a Swedish internet and TV supplier, have made the coolest commercial viral video ever! ComHem's spokes persons are Judit & Judit, two middle aged women (twins?). Anyway, the latest commercial features popular YouTube clips, but with Judit & Judit acting out in the clips instead. The commercial is hilarious if you are interested in viral videos and their spread, and if you have spent some time on YouTube, you have probably already seen most of the original clips...

The video is, according to ComHem, a tribute to everyone contributing to the internet, making it what it is. Check out ComHem's campaign site (in Swedish). Here is a link to the English version of the commercial, and if you want to compare Judit & Judit's clips with the original clips, I suggest you try this YouTube link.

And I'm guessing this will become a bit of a viral video itself, since it has been played over 240 000 times since it was uploaded on the 28th of October. ;)

Commercials

The blog has had lot's of posts about weddings lately, and not so much about advertising and viral videos, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite commercials/viral videos. This commercial for Volkswagen was never aired in Sweden, but it is hilarious! Enjoy!

Swedish Guerrilla Marketing blog (My Quest)

Yay! I found this blog: Icke-traditionella medier (translates: non-traditional media) that has posts about, yes, you guessed; non-traditional media, such as guerrilla marketing and ambient media. The blog is in Swedish, but contains lot's of pictures and film clips. It's hosted by a communication agency in Malmö; Crowd, and from what I can read on their webpage, they do quite a lot of guerrilla marketing campaigns. Me like!

Well, Crowd did a mini campaign together with one of my favourite agencies; Miami. It was during Eventdagarna, a Swedish fair for, amongst others, event agencies. The fair had the subject of "Event Marketing", and neither Crowd nor Miami attended. They sprayed water logos on and around the fair area, stating "Guerrilla and ambient are not events", in order to make a statement that they would have liked to have representatives from guerrilla agencies there, and that maybe the fair should not have been called Eventdagarna (The Event Days). Read an article about the campaign, from Dagens Media here.

I do agree that guerrilla and ambient are not events, BUT I do firmly believe that you might need to incorporate many different parts of different media in order to get a campaign that reaches your target group to a full extent. It is normally not enought to just buy an ad in a magazine or newspaper, you need to follow up with TV, maybe radio, a few events and maybe som attention-creating guerrilla actions.

Virality Communication

Virality Communication is a Swedish communication agency. Their blog shows different viral phenomena all over the world (and of course also some of the stuff the agency did for clients...)

A nice "viral" inspiration!

Speaking of viral marketing...

YouTube can lead to many hours of fun, and if you, like I, enjoy Starwars, this YouTube-clip is quite hilarious!

Oh, and today LoveEvent blog is featured at Mastercom blog, check out this post!

Sheep

My life seems to be revolving around sheep.

-A few weeks ago I posted a link to one of my favourite Youtube viral videos: LED Sheep.

-Everywhere around me is a commercial from Tele2, a mobile company who use sheep to tell how cheap they are (a stupid Swedish word-joke).

-And today I stumbled over a very interesting online marketing blog by Tara Hunt: ::HorsePigCow::. She has two very interesting blog posts (here and here) that discuss what makes someone want to interact and work with someone else ("going from transaction to interaction"), all illustrated by "throwing a sheep". I like the comparison, and I am also a bit amazed about what influence Facebook has on marketing terms, because I'm guessing this will catch on...

Me, a few years ago, with the sweetest lamb.

And just for the sake of it: sheep at Wiki ;)

Swedish Communication Agency

Stumbled over a Swedish Communication Agency: Hallvarsson & Halvarsson. Their Online Media department runs this blog, blogging about online media, PR, and how companies can take up more space online, and how they should use social media. Also about viral videos, Twitter, Facebook, marketing campaigns and more. Interesting, but only in Swedish.

Viral video, LED Sheep

Uploaded on YouTube on the 16th of March (about a week ago) and already viewed more than 2 million times, this amusing video (which seems to be a commercial for Samsung LED TVs) has had a huge impact. It would be really interesting to see how much the traffic has increased on Samsungs website during the last week...

Viral Video Marketing

Check out this blog post, about Viral Marketing. Mike Laurie (who is a digital planner at JPMH Integrated Marketing Communications) has, on JPMH's blog Ship's Biscuit, tried to identify different patterns within viral video marketing, videos mostly posted on YouTube or forwarded by email, by someone who might do it for fun, or maybe even by a company wanting to market themselves. If you are "smart" enough to get your brand name into one of these viral videos, you have got yourself some "free" marketing. I discover new and interesting stuff on the internet all the time, and I intend to write more about this phenomena.
I haven't checked out the full article/post yet but I will sure do!

BTW; I got the tip from Seth Godin's blog, of course ;)