Morning Update: Sony finally kills Betamax; Alibaba throws variety show; Big Mac jingle
Campaign: Harvey Nichols aims to stamp out ‘gift face’ with Christmas campaign
Created by Adam & Eve/DDB, the 60-second spot features a young woman desperately trying to maintain her “gift face” – a forced expression of happiness – as she opens a series of presents from her family. The film ends with the tagline “Avoid #GiftFace. Give Harvey Nichols.”
The online ad was copywritten by Jo Cresswell and art directed by Sian Coole at Adam & Eve/DDB. It is part of an integrated campaign that includes print, in-store activation and digital.
Digiday: Straight from the “That still exists?” file comes this: Sony is killing the Betamax.
Collectors will have until March 2016, when Sony said it will stop manufacturing and selling the video cassettes.That’s 14 years after Sony last sold a compatible player making today’s news a surprise that Sony even sold the product.
Before there was the HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray war, there was the Betamax versus VHS battle. Sony introduced the Betamax in 1975 to much fanfare. Its fortunes quickly dwindled a year later when its Japanese rival JVC rolled out the VHS and delivered a blow because it was cheaper, lighter and contained more storage. Those two simple facts have widely been cited (though reasonable people disagree) as the reason the porn industry went with VHS technology. And where porn goes, so go the rest of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0ZekprRmf8
AdWeek: How Johnsonville and Uber Got Grandmas in Little Car-Houses to Deliver Sausages in Chicago
If you saw three little houses screaming down the Dan Ryan expressway in Chicago on Sunday, being pulled by pickup trucks, with real Italian grandmas on board, ready to deliver sausages—well, that was a Johnsonville ad campaign.
The sausage maker teamed up with Uber for the “Sausage Nonnas” stunt, which featured the Italian grandmas—known as “nonnas”—delivering free homemade sausage meals to Chicagoans who requested delivery through the Uber app. Users could select a “Nonnas” option on the Uber home screen and track their delivery as the tiny house icon neared.
AdAge: Alibaba Is Transforming Its E-Commerce Fest Into Actual Entertainment
Chinese internet giant Alibaba is usually associated with e-commerce, but it’s also moving into movies and entertainment. So it’s logical that Alibaba brought a show business aspect to its massive annual 24-hour online shopping festival this year. To kick off the sales, it hosted a celebrity-filled 3½ hour TV variety show featuring boy bands, divas, shiny costumes, magic tricks, banter and cameos by Daniel Craig and Kevin Spacey.
Alibaba Group’s markdown event, known as Double 11 or Singles’ Day, started at midnight and tallied up $3.9 billion in sales in the first hour. That’s more than the $2.65 billion Adobe says was spent during all of Cyber Monday last year. And it’s also about double what Alibaba logged in the same time period last year, which bodes well for consumer spending at a moment when brands are worried about China’s slowing economy. More than 10,000 international brands are taking part in the sale, including Procter & Gamble, Burberry, Apple, Nike and Macy’s.
Alibaba’s variety program aired online and on a popular satellite TV station before the start of shopping at midnight. The show was directed by top moviemaker Feng Xiao Gang and starred an onslaught of mostly Chinese celebrities. Online, scalpers sold tickets for seats in the audience for up to $785.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Zr4n0nhXY
Mumbrella Asia: McDonald’s runs contest for Malaysians to Dubsmash their own version of Big Mac jingle
McDonald’s is running a competition in Malaysia for fans of the brand to create a new version of a long-running jingle for the Big Mac using the video messaging app Dubsmash.
To enter, participants need to submit their version of the Big Mac Chant, a song about the ingredients in the famous burger, on Instagram accompanied by the #samasamaBigMac hashtag. Dubsmash enables the user to lip sync over audio clips.
