https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwh1INne97Q
Ad Week: IBM’s Watson talks love and loss with Bob Dylan in advertising’s oddest pairing
Most of us know IBM’s Watson as a threat to humanity’s dominance of Jeopardy and the AI successor to a machine that similarly dethroned chessmaster Garry Kasparov.
But now Watson wants to show us his more warm and chatty side, and he’s starting (oddly enough) by sitting down with the likes of Bob Dylan and Ken Jennings, the supercomputer’s trivia-spouting archenemy.
In its new campaign, anchored by 30-second spots for IBM’s new cognitive computer consulting unit, Watson is shown talking with a guitar-wielding Dylan.
The Guardian: Paddy Power’s ‘Immigrants jump in the back’ lorry stunt to be censured
A marketing stunt by the bookmaker Paddy Power that made light of the immigrant crisis in Calais will be severely censured by advertising watchdogs for causing offence “merely to attract attention”.
A number of people are believed to have complained to the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI), under whose jurisdiction the Dublin-based company falls, following the one-off advertising campaign in July.
Digiday: Grading Upvoted, reddit’s big media push
Reddit is venturing into the news business, but it’s not taking its community with it.
Upvoted, which launched yesterday, is reddit’s attempt at sourcing the best of its community via original content and even original reporting.
It’s meant to be a more welcoming counterpart to the untamed, unfiltered reddit community, home to regular tantrums that haven’t done wonders for reddit on the business side. Reddit, which has launched its own podcast and a handful of apps, is making a long overdue play to be a media company, not just community and content source for other publishers.
Ad Age: Who’s winning the battle between paid and earned media?
There are two basic weapons in the battle for online attention: creativity and technology.
Ever since the advent of the remote control, audiences have tried to banish ads, and ad blocking is making the battle between a marketer and its target audience even more pitched.
Given this dilemma, do advertisers shore up their efforts through technology, essentially force-feeding their message to the audience? Or do they double down on creative in hopes of catching the audience’s attention?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3&v=OqU2_yJEgok
Creativity Online: Grab the tissues as Grandpa moves on in this touching Cheerios spot
Cheerios has been producing some beautiful ads about family life recently, and its latest is no exception. You’ll well up as a grandfather leaves his home and neighborhood, driven off by his daughter to somewhere new as the “For Rent” sign goes up.
As she tries to convince him how much he’ll love his new room, you get the sense of dread that he’ll soon be surrounded by the sterile, cold walls of a nursing home.
Campaign: Post Office sponsors Bauer Media radio stations for year-long campaign
Bauer Media has agreed a year-long partnership with the Post Office which will see three radio station sponsorships as the core of a multi-platform campaign.
The campaign, which launched this week, is to promote how the Post Office helps customers get life’s important things done.
The creative will target consumers when they are thinking about day-to-day tasks and demonstrating how the Post Office is best placed to support making these tasks easier.
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I like the IBM ads, just don’t know what they are selling to me.
Put Tom Baker in front of Watson – that would be hilarious.
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Even odder when you consider Bob Dylan has Jewish roots and IBM have been accused of supporting the Holocaust by supplying computational machines to Nazi Germany.
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