penta water primed to relaunch the brand

When I was a kid I remember marveling at people who would pay money to buy bottled water. It just didn’t make sense to me that people would shell out for otherwise free water simply because it was in a bottle. You could put it in a bottle yourself if you wanted!

I still don’t really get it, especially after revelations that much of the bottled water market is tap water in attractive packaging, though I do buy Poland Spring once in while.

When one of my friends started telling me about this new bottled water Penta, which is around $45 a case (compared to $4.99 on deal for Poland Spring), I thought that he was completely crazy.

Apparently, Penta is specifically engineered as ultra-purified antioxidant water with no additives that hydrates better and provides better antioxidant benefits than even antioxidant fortified water because of some scientifically-proven process. At $45 a case it better.

Circle One of Norwalk, CT is, as reported in Brandweek, currently completing the $4 million campaign that will be the brand’s biggest to date.

Even though functional waters are hot right now, Circle One has their work cut out for them. The high price point, intangible benefits and the fact that Coke and Pepsi are throwing their weight into the segment (which is good in some ways because it builds the category, but bad for obvious reasons) make it a challenging time to relaunch the brand.

At least they already have one brand loyalist in my crazy buddy and he isn’t shy in singing Penta’s praises.

It’s a start.

circle one sends up schick

Schick is launching (yawn) another one of the consumer generated contests where they are asking people to upload videos of themselves, the brand, blah, blah, blah. Just as predictable as the concept is the fact that they are not supporting it, at least at this point, with any awareness-building vehicles.

I base this on the press release, which listed no additional support, and the fact that, as of my checking it this evening, the initial video to announce the promotion, which has been posted for a week, has a mere 38,000 views. For all of the money they surely spent on this site, one expects that they had planned for wider reach.

Someone, somewhere, is sitting in a cube wondering why the promotion hasn’t taken off virally the way that they expected it to. And a blogger, here at the Daily (Ad) Biz or maybe over at the Toad Stool, is telling them again that they really out to allocate some space in their budget for more traditional advertising tactics that could be used, say, to tell consumers about the contest, tell them why they should check it out and direct them to the site.

At any rate, Schick’s press release to AdPulp announcing the program was filled with legalese and typed (r)’s meant to represent the registered trademark symbol – a simply fabulous piece of corporate communication. Upon receipt of the press release, AdPulp announced their own consumer generated contest: the first agency to find a way to take the mickey out of Schick (r) and their legalese and get adpulp.com worked into a video would get fifteen minutes of fame and a link on AdPulp.

Norwalk, CT agency Circle One rose to the challenge:

The video is certainly rough around the edges, but it was done in only thirty minutes and, having worked on a shaving account earlier in my career, I appreciated the focus on confidence and mojo and close shave – the talking points of any brand and any razor.

Classic.

bird’s eye won’t win an award, but will sell veggies

It’s really fun and glamorous to do advertising on big brands with big budgets, to do advertising on passion products (the products that Tangerine Toad calls “Prom King Brands” because they are the ones that consumers want to align with), to do work that appeals to the cool, hip and tech-savvy.

Apple Computer springs to mind as an example. So does Absolut. BMW for a car enthusiast.

What does not get any advertising professional’s heart pumping is a brand like Bird’s Eye Foods, maker of frozen vegetables. The consumer of frozen vegetables is either a young family or an older couple. They don’t really want a viral video or a big-budget ad campaign. They see frozen vegetables as a way to provide mealtime solutions for themselves or their family, and they choose frozen because it is convenient. The most successful way to sell the product is to show it and show consumers how to use it to make their meals better.

There is a reason that frozen food makers rarely do work that walks off with creative awards.

But it’s not always about winning at Cannes. Good work builds the brand and drives consumer action – and if your consumers aren’t driven by the type of work or react to the specific tactic that wins you a Gold Lion, the smart marketer does something different. Maybe it’s not as flashy, but effective (in terms of brand building and sales) isn’t always flashy.

Going back to Bird’s Eye, the brand has launched the World of Bird’s Eye program that is an online destination resource for meals that a consumer can go to every day or every week for meal solutions:

New recipes will be featured at the site each week, a downloadable recipe widget will be available and it acts as a platform for promotional overlays that the brand may run.

Again, this idea and creative won’t wow the Art Director’s Club of New York…but it doesn’t have to. All it needs to do is offer a solution for Susie, mother of two, from Des Moines who has a bag of frozen broccoli and some thawed chicken and needs something new to cook. As long as that solution builds the brand and incents purchase, making it work for the fictional Susie and others like her will do the job.

Awards be damned.

Creative is by ad agency Circle One and development is by Clever Method.

adomatica’s cool weekly feature

The blog Adomatica, which is a more Austin and interactive-centric look at the ad business, has a feature that I really like. It’s called “Who’s Watching Who” and is a list of agencies that have read the blog or contacted the blogger in the last week:

Too bad the idea has already been done, otherwise I am well tempted to copy it.

It’s a great idea because not only does it give a little bit of institutional credibility to his blog – immediately I thought “wow, people from Crispin and GSD&M are reading his blog” – and a little bit of interest – I also though “hey, did someone from the same Circle One that contacted me contact him, weird” – but it gives the company that contacts him a good bit of SEO as well.

A fair trade, especially with Tribble Ad Agency out there ready to pounce on any agency that drops the ball on SEO.