Hot Tomali has received 2 national honours at the Advertising and Design Club of Canada’s 2011 Directions Awards. The event was held at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Koemer Hall in Toronto, Ontario on November 3. Canada’s longest running advertising awards show, ADCC’s awards began in 1949 and have been going strong ever since.

The two awards received by Hot Tomali were:

Advertising Broadcast Radio Campaign Gold: “Freeze the Moment” for 7-Eleven’s Slurpee
Advertising Posters Campaign Merit: “Abracadabera/Hasta La Vista/Bye Bye” for Seicoat

View the ADCC Directions Winners online

Our peel-away graffiti for Seicoat won an award for Advertising/Non-Traditional advertising in Applied Arts Magazine. With over two decades of awards experience, the Applied Arts Awards are one of the industry’s most prestigious national recognitions for the Canadian advertising and design community.

View Seicoat Work

In my last blog post we saw that there were conflicting reports circling the Internet about the results (or supposed lack thereof) for the Old Spice Man campaign. This seemed impossible given the buzz that the campaign was generating, and sure enough time and research revealed that the campaign actually generated a dramatic spike in sales and market share.

What gets me is the fact that so many people, including those who you think would be highly credible sources, got it wrong. Check out this apparent retraction from Time magazine’s article “Old Spice’s Viral Ads Got Attention, Not Sales”:

Update: We might have been a little too specific with the sales stats. Though Red Zone After Hours sales went down, overall body wash sales actually went up 107 percent, according to PRWeek. Good — we hope this means more Mustafa in our lives.

And it’s not as if Time was alone in misreporting the facts either. Many other major publications dropped the ball as well, including MSNBC, Yahoo, Bnet, etc.

Here was Yahoo’s retraction:

Update: A representative for the Old Spice ad campaign clarifies the sales trend and goal of the “Old Spice Man” commercials as follows: “[The] campaign is for Old Spice Body Wash overall, not specific to just Red Zone After Hours which just happens to be the body wash bottle used in the TV spots….Since the Smell Like A Man, Man campaign broke in February, Old Spice has month over month strengthened its market position and is now the number one brand of body wash and anti-perspirant/deodorant in both sales and volume with growth in the high single/double digits.”

Where did these false campaign results originate? In the old world of journalism, heads would roll if facts weren’t properly researched and double checked. We need look no further than Dan Rather’s firing for going to air with a report about President Bush’s military service without properly vetting his facts.

In a social media driven environment the media is desperate to break a story first. No one wants to be the last one out the door with a story, and you are not only competing with other news outlets, you’re competing with 190,000,000 Twitter users. Given the fact that more and more people are looking at Twitter or Facebook for their news, are trusted journalists now compromising their own standards and integrity just to stay competitive? Would they rather publish a story with half the facts than risk being late to market?

The decline in standards of journalism is only magnified in social media, because not only do you have one or two sources publishing inaccurate information, but you also have millions of people taking it as their own and spreading it to the rest of the world.

By design, social media is about sharing. To be active in the community, you need to contribute. This leads to a lot of links and re-tweets of information that people happen across, and think may be relevant to their social media circle. We now rely on our peers as trusted news sources.

On a professional level, information sourcing is very apparent in the marketing industry. The pass-it-on approach is often used as a tool to promote one’s stature in the social media sphere. As most social media “feeds” quickly refresh, pushing posts down the pages faster than you can say “Facebook”, many individuals are going beyond sharing, and taking on the duty of Social Media Aggregator. These individuals are social media mavens that use a shock and awe approach to their sharing. These people literally spend hours a day sourcing the Web in search for breaking news, insightful articles, and obscure facts only to quickly re-post it themselves with a small bit of commentary so that they can leverage in on the story.

It’s basically digital Gonzo journalism. An amazing ad campaign could break in Brazil and five minutes later you’d have 20,000 people sharing the news link while offering their own two cents. Next thing you know those bloggers and tweeters are now being indexed in Google as references that are attached to the campaign, and their opinions become part of the conversation.

It’s unavoidable that brands are going to have their marketing messages regurgitated through the Web. There’s not much you can do if the media, or a blogger, wants to weigh in on your story, and you can rest assured that someone will screw up the details or portray their opinion as fact.

Your best defence in social media is a strong offence. You need to monitor and appropriately respond to brand chatter, and ensure that your message is accurate. The best way to stop false information from spreading is to do your own part and seed the truth. Social media is far less forgiving on the strong and silent types. If your brand is achieving any form of success, then you are likely being talked about online. Be sure to be the one to share your story clearly and utilize official channels of PR and corporate communications to reinforce your message.

Lastly, we might want to all take an extra few seconds and read all the facts before we post that next article on Twitter or Facebook. We may not be professional journalists, but we do have to take some responsibility for the information we share.

We could all benefit from taking the ethics code of the Society of Professional Journalists into account before we post information:

• Seek Truth and Report It
• Minimize Harm
• Act Independently
• Be Accountable

Yes, I’m talking about “that” campaign. The one with the spokesperson that we just refer to as the Old Spice Guy. On the bandwagon so far we have several heavy hitters. The Cannes Lions judges awarded it the Grand Prix earlier this summer, making this the industry’s pick as the most groundbreaking work in 2010. Oprah liked it so much she had the star of the ads, Isaiah Mustafa, on her show as a guest. And, the Old Spice YouTube channel is now also the most viewed sponsored channel in YouTube history.

My creative instinct motivated me to write this after I saw opinions that panned the campaign as an over-indulgent art piece without a true sales message. I then subsequently read some similar articles on Bnet and Yahoo, and I felt that this couldn’t be further from the truth. The ads themselves are transforming a category, and helping to convert many males from traditional bar soap to liquid shower gels that many have oft-perceived as being too feminine. The campaign uses an ingenious mix of masculinity, thanks to the use of an ex-NFL wide receiver and “manly” activities such as carpentry, horseback riding, and motorcycling. It also has feminine appeal with a well spoken, rugged, and handsome spokesperson. It’s positioning Old Spice as the product that guys will like, and women will want their guys to have. It’s definitely not my grandfather’s product anymore.

In my world, we are challenged every day with trying to take our clients’ budgets and leverage the hell out of them to gain every possible competitive advantage available to us (Chuck Porter refers to this as making your clients Famous). PR, viral video views, and social media chatter are channels that can be influenced, but not purchased outright. You need to have ingenuity, timing, and of course entertainment factor in order to be successful.

Speaking of successful, I generally hear that getting a million views on YouTube is pretty good for a viral campaign. When a campaign hits 100 million views such as Old Spice has, then we should really sit back and think about the significance of that. For example, I live in Canada, a technically advanced, industrialized nation. The population of Canada is approximately 33.3 million people. By that math, the Old Spice Man has been viewed by the equivalent of every man, woman and child in our entire freakin’ country three times each. Staggering.

Now, I know, I know, that’s all really great but it doesn’t mean that it was a good investment. Advertising is intended to sell product after all, not entertain people, right?

Well, to that I say “yes” we are here to sell products, but if we could sell people something AND provide consumers with a bit of an emotional connection, like say a smile or a laugh at the same time, wouldn’t we be building a better long-term relationship? All too often initial sales numbers get skewed by promotional activities such as coupons or price cuts. Promotions are great, and highly necessary, but we can’t let short-term numbers cloud the long-term success of a deeply seeded viral campaign. Whereas traditional marketing campaign results could be reasonably measured in blocking charts of weeks and months, a viral campaign with 100,000,000 (and growing) followers could take decades to effectively measure as it is so deeply rooted in Internet culture that it will continue to bounce around the “Interwebs” long after the media budget is pulled and the last SKU for that fiscal is measured.

Campaigns with the level of viral reach achieved by the Old Spice Man have already proved that they are effective at drawing viewers. Lots of them. The fact that those videos will continue to propagate is a given. What’s not yet understood is the long term ROI around such an online following.

Before anyone starts throwing sales numbers around, and I have read decent articles covering some campaign metrics here, and here. I’d also like to remind any naysayers that body wash is a product with a relatively long shelf life. Depending on how you purchase it (single bottle vs. multi-packs for example) you could go anywhere from two to six months between purchases. That would dictate that even a highly successful brand campaign is going to take a while to show results at the cash register. And, as I suggested earlier, a campaign like this will likely be providing huge volumes of highly valuable brand impressions for years to come as the viral momentum is simply too great to fade away anytime soon.

So, for anyone out there with a bad case of creative-phobia, hear this: you cannot measure the ROI of a successful viral campaign in weeks or months. This isn’t a TV campaign that has an off switch. Using traditional media measurements to map out the ROI of a viral campaign is like comparing an airplane to a spaceship. In traditional media (the airplane) you only got carried as far as your budget could take you and then you came in for a landing. In the online world (spaceship) you need enough budget to break the stratosphere, and seed the campaign in the community—once you do that, your concept is free from the gravitational pulls of a traditional budget, and it starts to build its own momentum.

Facebook is widely lauded as one of the most successful websites of our time. It has approximately 500,000,000 stated users. For a campaign to reach an estimated 20% of those people online in under a year is amazing. To do it for a campaign selling soap is even more amazing. My hat is off to the team at W+K and the Old Spice Man for the amazing job they’ve done to date. Keep it up.

And hey, @oldspice, feel free to drop us a line at @HotTomali. Canadians like body wash too.

Things are Changing

For agencies these days, it’s all about digital, and it’s all about business. Any Creatives in the conference must have been muttering, “Where are the ads?” as speaker after speaker focused on the need for agencies to engage customers online. It’s not that the great creative idea doesn’t matter, but it is now inextricable within the online media capabilities. As Tom Martin of Converse Digital stated, “The industry needs people who speak advertising like a native yet are fluent in digital.” Social Media was front and centre; not in a buzz word way, but in successful examples that are grounding some new marketing principles. Eric Ryan, the founder of Method, had a great perspective on this: “Every brand in social media should have a social message.” And Michael McSunas recognized the spread of expertise that is evolving in social media marketing when he questioned, “Do young people understand how to market through social media? Or do they just understand how to use the platform?”

Agencies are now about the business. Literally. Eric Ryan had seven years of experience in advertising with high-end consumer brands before deciding he should apply his marketing excellence to his own brand, and started the incredibly successful Method home care products. Kenny Tomlin, founder and CEO of Rockfish (the winner of Ad Age 2009 Agency of the Year), has a goal of 50% of agency revenues coming from branded companies they create, marketing technology they licence to clients, and joint business ventures. This model of agencies marketing their own companies and systems really shows a client that the agency knows how to make business happen. We were particularly excited to see this model succeeding, as Hot Tomali has been developing its own products for years with the HotCMS content management system, our retail training platform, and our business partnership with Cientis in creating a physicians community for electronic medical records systems evaluation.

Things are Staying the Same

Agencies have always had a role in advancing their clients’ marketing knowledge. Not since Mad Men times, though, has this been so important with the shifts to digital marketing. As Tom Martin stated, “A small agency is there to guide clients through this new digital age.” And what hasn’t changed is the desire of agencies to play a bigger role in the strategy layer of marketing: “Too much tactics and we all turn into machines.”

Most significantly, the biggest thing not to change was agencies’ desire to do great work for their clients. It was an enriching experience to be in a room where job #1 is to help clients connect better with their customers. Through every speaker, and every discussion thread, this objective was obvious.

And in the end, it seems none of us could come up with a better moniker than “small agency” as Ad Age has defined it. “Independent”, “Nimble”, “Way Better”, were bandied about as replacement for “Small”, but we left with the creative challenge of branding ourselves. Regardless, I think we all agree with the conference lunch sponsor when they stated:

“Where is it written that brilliant ideas only come from big places? That’s right. Nowhere. And we know it. … We know that really great thinking can happen anywhere people have brains to think with. And since that’s just as likely to be your shop as it is any other, why shouldn’t you have the same shot at online success?”

I’ll raise a New Orleans Hurricane drink to that.

So it’s safe to say that we’re super clever. But we don’t want all the spotlight. Besides, our eyes are sensitive to light.

Hopefully yours aren’t. And hopefully, you’re not against the idea of winning $5,000, Slurpees for a year, and potential TV stardom to go along with that spotlight. If you don’t, well, you’re just lying to yourself and you will go to hell. Oh, there is a hell. We’ve been there. There’s no soap there. And if there’s anything worse than a liar, it’s a stinker. So be true to yourself and get involved. Visit slurpee.ca for the who, what, where, when, how, and sometimes why of our FREEZE THE MOMENT contest. (Like we said, we’re super duper clever — why else would we throw a duper in there?)

In the meantime, watch out for all things Slurpee, as Hot Tomali recently launched the Big Gulp of Slurpee campaigns through TV, three radio spots (Ricardo – Seeeeeeeven, Steven Wright – Priiiizes, and Kip – Mooooooment), CITY-TV IDs, guerrilla stunts, BT Television live stunts, a website and contest, Live 7/11 Remotes, this blog, that blog, and everything in between.

With the goal of simplifying Google’s standard search advertising model, Google announced that they would begin testing a new fixed pricing system, which is a model much more familiar to local businesses.

Essentially, whether you’re a hair salon, car dealership, or restaurant – for a fixed monthly fee, you will be able to place an ad with Google, much like how you would in the Yellow Pages. This is a huge opportunity for any business that isn’t familiar with Google’s current advertising model, which involves bidding for keywords (something that can be quite a complex process).

Along with this new pricing system, Google Voice will allow ads to feature a unique phone number that can be associated with your business. So when a customer see’s your ad and calls you using the unique number provided by Google, you will receive a “This call brought to you by Google” notification, allowing you to track and measure the success of your ads. With Google’s newly simplified system, any local business with limited online advertising knowledge will be able to run fully measurable targeted ads quickly and easily. And if customers are sent directly to your business phone number, your business may not even require a website to advertise with Google.

However, a nice website is still strongly recommended.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYr0GA22vGE

Doesn’t this warrant a call to the local authorities?!?

Cute? Never. Familiar? Definitely. I mean, isn’t this the plot of Child’s Play? Didn’t we learn a little something from murderous boy-doll Chucky? I continue to be baffled by the supposed appeal. I guess some people just can’t resist the lure of fluffy, scented towels.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_UZcbTdivw

Vote for us at www.popvoxawards.com for the sites CanadianEMR and QuitNow & Win – under following categories:

• Best Startup: CanadianEMR (www.canadianemr.ca)
• Best Digital Learning – Technology: CanadianEMR (www.canadianemr.ca)
• Best Do-Gooder: QuitNow & WIN! (www.quitnowandwin.ca)

Not a lot of time left, so please help if you can. Thanks

Hey Everybody – we just released this press release in anticipation of a unique street team campaign we are executing tomorrow. Read below for the details!

Hot Tomali’s Action-Packed Marketing Campaign for Resume Hut Recruits Super Job Candidates

If you’re walking around Vancouver and notice some real-life packaged action figures, blame Hot Tomali Communications (www.hottomali.com), an integrated marketing agency located in Vancouver, B.C. The action-packed professionals are part of a new campaign titled “Job Candidate 2.0″, which promotes the launch of Resume Hut (www.resume-hut.com) who has expanded to Vancouver after operating for 23 years in Victoria. The expansion is part of a larger strategy in which Resume Hut aims to expand across North America over the next five years.

The unique idea for the campaign came as a result of a combination of factors. “When we were approached with the idea of executing a campaign for Resume Hut, we needed to come up with something that was engaging, memorable, and cost-effective,” says Clayton Mitchell, Hot Tomali’s Strategic Planner. “Working with Resume Hut, we started with a complete rebranding including a new logo and the positioning line ‘Position Yourself’. The key insight we extracted during our creative process was that Resume Hut helps you position yourself more effectively for the jobs you want—in a sense, repackaging you.”

Hot Tomali had to contend with the fact that there are many online services that claim to be able to do the same thing that Resume Hut does, but they’re actually quite different. Resume Hut also specializes in services such as interview skills training, job hunting, career coaching, and conflict resolution.

“Not only is the action figure concept applicable to a street team execution, it can also be applied to multiple media channels. We developed a campaign platform that can easily be leveraged in a bus shelter, television ad, and a variety of other media, making it ideal when Resume Hut expands across North America,” says Patrick Chambers, Art Director at Hot Tomali.

The campaign was launched in mid-March and is being strategically placed around Vancouver. The next street team is scheduled to promote Resume Hut at Vancouver’s Career Fair on March 31. Teams will be stationed outside of the Vancouver Convention Centre, between Howe and Burrard on Cordova Street.

View Campaign Photos on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/hottomali