Fat Man Wants Bacardi

My subscription to AdAge is becomming addictive. I’m learning a lot about trad ad land and how Emmy nominated megahit Mad Men about Madison Avenue in the 60’s is clearly buying all the ad space in the magazine that comes with the online subscription, or is it the other way around?

In Mad Men, ad men, grope, smoke and screw their clients, but they always create great copy. The rise of social media; blogs, social networks, micro-blogs, online games and all the other things people argue make up social media when not arguing it’s a defunct term, mean the marketing world has changed. One agency can never really provide the best service. Niche, specialist, bespoke, boutique, that’s where it’s at.

There is no doubting the importance of TV spots, hoardings, music promotions and endless endless festival sponsorship, but it’s digital that provides the newest and most interesting challenge. Digital shifts with every month. The web is becomming widgetized. We click ‘add me as friend’ in our chosen social network because verifiable and public numbers of friends has become the new (s)talking.

‘LinkedIn, a popular social networking site among corporate people who exhibit little to no personality, who usually have few to no real friends and who are attracted to the idea of clicking a button to “add friends” rather than living through another socially awkward occurrence of actually getting to know someone at one of those so-boring-you-want-to-kill-yourself cocktail networking receptions.’ (Free-Ass Press)

We don’t want to be served ads in these places, we’re too busy getting good a numbers and working out whose friends we can purloin. American Apparel is the top clothing ad spender online and it’s banners feature scantily clad maybe teens. To engage in these networks you have to disrupt and distract.

Branded entertainment is a buzz meme; Mother Vision originated feature film Somer’s Town, Seth MacFarlane’s new animated comedy series will be distributed through Google AdSense and feature contextual ads, designed by Seth. Bacardi are sponsoring Groove Armada, replacing the trad record label with a clear distilled rum and white label.

Make me love what you give me and I’ll love you back, seems to be the idea. Or in the case of the above examples make me wonder, cry, laugh, cry, dance, pogo, cry. Crying is a common side effect of them all. Laugh until you cry, it’s black n’white and arty so the film is bound to make you cry (I haven’t seen it) and too much rum well…

Just a moment ago AdAge informed me that ‘Bacardi Opens Review of Global Ad Account’ :

‘Bacardi is the world’s biggest rum brand and, with $2.5 billion in 2007 sales, the world’s fourth-biggest distilled spirit brand by retail sales.

The brand spent $35 million on measured media in the U.S. last year, but worldwide spending is said to surpass $100 million. Though handled by a single agency, creative on the Bacardi brand varies by market.’

Aye carumba, $100 million to be spent creatively by WPP Group’s Y&R.

No doubt the digital spend will feature exploding bottles of Bacardi neatly rendered in papervision and residing on sites no one really pays much attention to except the studio that built it who hopes to make it to the front page of the FWA.

Digital needs to be more than about replicating pretty creative on the web. With the web you can do so much more, you can say so much more and you can learn so much more. The credit crunch will mean reduced consumer spending and the need for greater accountability with ad spending. The web does that and for the same price of a TV spot that begins, ‘Peckham on a wet Saturday afternoon…’ you could do something truly innovative online.

I lay claim to the term appvertising, the creation of branded applications (My Starbucks Idea being to date the most successful) and am writing this article to pitch for Fat Man to be Bacardi’s first ‘appvertising agency’. I could send off an email to the CMO, but I’m hoping some in-house marketing guy still waiting for his limited edition boxed set of Mad Men is monitoring the online conversations about their brand and will pause on the title of this piece and direct it to the right person.

If you’re listenning just leave a comment, if you’re not you’d better employ us. Appvertising is the geeks revolting and creative technologists seeing their daily skim through 3000 blogs pay off.

Fat by name but agile by nature, agile in a way I suspect Y&R are not and with 1% of that budget we could create something that engages consumers online, that has longevity and will continue to engage, well into the next financial year. Something that isn’t a microsite or a micro-minded response to what the web is capable of delivering to a brand prepared to innovate.

Bacardi, Fat Man wants you and I haven’t wanted you since I was 17 and lusting after a girl named Charmain (like the toilet roll) at a house party in Hull.

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