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ICYMI: Allstate’s Mayhem is a slam dunk in March Madness
Ask and ye shall receive. Although I know you all have already seen it on YouTube, I’m adding the Mayhem “Slam Dunk” and “Cleaning Lady” spots.
But this is the last Mayhem post. I swear. Again.
Hardly their best effort. But this one’s not bad …
At the time of this writing each clip had about 90,000 views. I have no idea what was happening on the Facebook page because I’m not on Facebook right now.
FLASHBACK: MUCHO MAYHEM FUN CIRCA 2011-2012
UPDATE 5-31-2012: Allstate is updating its YouTube channel, and some videos are working and some are not. I’m trying to update the links as soon as Allstate reposts them. Thank you for your patience.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post reflects my interest as a marketing student in advertising and social media marketing. The opinions expressed here are mine and in no way reflect the opinions of my employers.
We all saw this coming, didn’t we? New Mayhem for March Madness. I think the NCAA fans are too preoccupied by the season: At the time of this writing, this clip, posted on YouTube on March 16, had only 1,827 views. At 8:11 p.m. March 17, the clip was not yet posted on the Mayhem Facebook page. However, the “Guard Dog” clip, which was posted to YouTube on March 14, the same day it was posted on the Facebook page, has 35,508 views; 5,106 people “like” the video on Facebook, 266 people have commented, and it has been shared 2,232 times.
FROM JULY 2011: A roundup of 2011 Mayhem commercials
How to Leave Facebook 101: A Beginner’s Guide
Facebook has been the hugest time suck I’ve ever experienced. I haven’t even watched TV in months, I feel like I never have time to do the things I should be doing, and I get antsy if I can’t check it at least a few times a day.
~ Anonymous friend
Have you seen enough cat pictures? Tired of all the privacy leaks? Or do you just want to recoup the time that you lose captivated by people you don’t really even like?
You want to take a Facebook break, but you’re not sure how. A report published Feb. 5 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows 61% of Facebook users have taken a break from using the social networking site at some point. If so many people can take a Facebook break, then why not you?
But leaving Facebook? Yes, it sounds insane. To hear some folks considering it, the idea of leaving Facebook is akin to leaving Earth. If you can’t bring yourself to deactivate your account right away, you can ease yourself into a Facebook break by limiting your interaction with the site.
A great starting point is the notifications. Do you really want to know when a friend-of-a-friend’s Aunt Lulu comments on a puppy photo you commented on in 2010? You don’t need a text message or email about that. If you look through the notifications, you’ll see that you can live without a lot of them.
Of course, you’ll want to be notified about friend requests, but more important: you want to be notified when you’ve been tagged in a photo or a post. You don’t want the idiot friend who doesn’t follow the What-Stays-In-Vegas Rule to tag you in the pics of the fur bikini mechanical bull riding contest that you won in 2006.
If you want to further limit your Facebook interactions, delete the app from your phone. You’ll be amazed at how freeing this is. No badges, no buzzes. You’ll find your phone is plenty entertaining without it.
After you have limited the notifications and deleted the app, you’ll probably feel like something’s missing — like you’re not wearing pants. That will pass. You’ll soon find a sense of calm and quiet. At this point, you might find deactivating your account isn’t so hard. Try just one week. At the end of that week, see how you feel. You may be surprised to find you feel relieved.
Why would I feel relieved?
Because you wouldn’t constantly be responding to a website.
Let’s face it: Social media carries an obligation. If we’re logged on, we are required to respond. It’s like if you’re at a party, you’re required to interact. Facebook is a 24/7/365 party. And sometimes you need to leave the party.
That’s not to say that you can never go back. But when you do, you’ll probably have a different perspective about what you share and with whom you’re sharing. This is healthy. We need to revisit how we interact on social media from time to time so that the sites — Facebook, Twitter, Google+ — don’t completely legislate what we share, how we share it and with whom we share. Taking a break from Facebook (or any social media) allows us to step back from the maddening crowd and think for ourselves — without the coercion of an unapologetic algorithm or the noise of a 24/7/365 party.
EARLIER: How Lady Gaga helped me get off Facebook
Williams-Sonoma: eCommerce giant?
The Wall Street Journal‘s Corporate Intelligence blog has a post on Williams-Sonoma‘s flourishing eCommerce business, which has some surprising numbers.
From the article by Joan Solsman:
Over the years, Williams-Sonoma parlayed its catalog background to incubate one of the most thriving marriages of online and in-store selling in retail. E-commerce was 37% of net revenue last year in the fourth quarter.
Wow.
Thirty-seven percent of net revenue is nothing to sneeze at. But I still think of Williams-Sonoma as a catalog company with products that I can’t afford. Maybe this perception has something to do with the catalog’s pretentious copy.
EARLIER: Order up, peasants
REWIND: J’adore, tu adores: Charlize Theron for Dior’s J’adore
ED’S NOTE: This post was originally published December 2011. It reflects my interest as a marketing student in advertising, search-engine optimization, and viral marketing. No agencies or products are endorsed. The opinions expressed here are mine and in no way reflect the opinions of my employers.
In what is a nice break from the nearly insufferable, panic-inducing holiday ads of the season, EDITED 11-30-2012 Prime-time viewers are getting an eyeful of glamour, thanks to Dior’s J’adore ”film” by Jean-Jacques Annaud, that features the always-gorgeous Charlize Theron, and co-stars such greats as Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe.
The commercial, which was filmed in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles, isn’t new; it was released in early September. However, it’s getting airtime this holiday shopping season, as it should, because the spot easily and smartly appeals to both sexes: the women who want to be Charlize Theron, and the husbands and boyfriends who want to be with Charlize Theron.
What caught my attention was the music that propelled the viewer through the couture-show setting: 2009′s Heavy Cross by Gossip — with Beth Ditto‘s punk princess vocals and Brace Paine’s hypnotic bass riff — was compelling enough to make me grab my iPhone and Shazam it. (I have since played this song to death.)
At the time of this writing, this clip on YouTube had 1,211,325 views, 4,404 likes, 84 dislikes, and 474 comments.
From the YouTube comments:
I have a theory, each of the girls represent a perfume:
Grace Kelly (Miss Dior Cherie)
Marlene Dietrich (Hypnotic Poison)
Marilyn Monroe (Dior Addict or J’adore)
Charlize Theron (J’adore obviously)<3 Dior!
~ franzchick66,
YouTube member
Nice theory, franzchick66. I can’t afford to smell that good, so I’ll have to take your word.
The subscribers to Dior’s YouTube channel are active and enthusiastic about the “films.” I’ll readily admit that I know nothing about couture, but even so, I still remember Dior’s 2007 smokin’ hot, 30-second “film” that has Charlize striding through a mansion, elegantly disrobing as only she can to Marvin Gaye’s 1978 Funky Space Reincarnation.
And that, kids, is what they call an impression.
About the Dior Channel
(As of Dec. 13, 2011)
- Total Upload Views: 3,535,200
- Joined: Oct. 14, 2005
- Subscribers: 7,288
Smarter marketing: In the bag
You know you’re Starbucks when your customers return to buy merchandise just so they can take home the cute bags.
RELATED: Starbucks for the home. All the taste; none of the ‘experience.’
Happy Thanksgiving, peasants, from Williams-Sonoma
In case you missed it last week, Dead Spin deconstructed the Williams-Sonoma holiday catalog for the likes of me: we the people who don’t cook, won’t cook and don’t understand the need for potato gloves.
Click the photo to read the pure genius by Drew Magary.
Warning: Language not suitable for reading around the holiday table.
Allstate’s Mayhem: A study in car maintenance
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post reflects my interest as a marketing student in advertising and social media marketing. The opinions expressed here are mine and in no way reflect the opinions of my employers. No agencies or products are endorsed.
You know you need new wiper blades, so why don’t you take 10 minutes to replace them?
It’s an irritating task that we never do when we’re supposed to, and the ad folks for Allstate (Nasdaq: ALL) know this. So in a new 30-second ad, posted on YouTube on Sept. 26, Allstate’s Mayhem is our worn-out wiper blades that leave us defenseless against the torrential downpour we’re guaranteed to encounter just hours after we say to ourselves, “I need new wiper blades.”
Worn-out wiper blades represent a self-imposed risk we take when we procrastinate, a mark of our stupidity — not necessarily Mayhem in its truest form.
But when we look at the Mayhem ads with a more critical eye, we see they’re funny and engaging, but nothing that happens is really devastating. A kitchen fire is kinda funny. A dryer fire? Hilarious. And really, who among us doesn’t love it when a drunk football fan runs in front of our car? No, Mayhem isn’t that ominous, which is why the character Dean Winters portrays is a great product character: He sells insurance that is supposed to help us when shit happens — without making us fear the possibilities of kitchen and dryer fires, or bad referees who run screaming from the stadium.
You all know this stuff, and it’s obvious that I do. That’s why this is my last post on the Mayhem character. What began as a roundup of clever ads that caught my gnat-size attention evolved into an experiment in search-engine optimization that ultimately hijacked this blog and its theme: I ended up focusing solely on funny advertisements, and even then, I wasn’t able to write about them as critically or in-depth as I would have liked. As it happens, my time is to blog is very limited these days, and I can’t spend it writing about Mayhem. I’m grateful to Allstate and the users of YouTube (and Facebook) for all of your support, but it’s past time for me to focus on other campaigns, other marketing elements. (That last part is code for: I’m ready to geek out over product packaging and placement! Who’s with me?)
That said, I’ll conclude this post like I’ve concluded the other Mayhem posts, with a nod to Mayhem’s popularity: At 6:30 p.m., about five hours after it was posted on Facebook, the video had 8747 likes 232 comments, and 773 shares.The timestamp on YouTube says the video was posted Sept. 26, 2012; as of 6:30 p.m. Sept. 27, there were 341 views, 0 likes and 0 comments — but it was early still.
EARLIER: A roundup of 2011 Mayhem commercials
AGENCY: Leo Burnett, the agency that brought us product characters such as the Marlboro Man, Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam.
Toyota Venza girl angry about Triscuits
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post reflects my interest in advertising as a marketing student. No agencies or products are endorsed. The opinions expressed here are mine and in no way reflect the opinions of my employers.
Our heroine from the Toyota Venza commercial can be seen in the new Triscuits commercial.
That’s all I have to say about that right now because I have to go to dinner.
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RELATED: Toyota Venza Girl plugs eBay
EARLIER: Toyota Venza Girl on Yahoo!
EARLIER: More on the girl in Toyota Venza commercial
EVEN EARLIER: Toyota Venza: ‘That’s not a real puppy’
RELATED: How Lady Gaga helped me get off Facebook
Allstate’s Mayhem: A quick case study in bad DIY
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post reflects my interest as a marketing student in advertising and social media marketing. The opinions expressed here are mine and in no way reflect the opinions of my employers. No agencies or products are endorsed.
Why haven’t we seen this before? In a 15-second clip, posted on YouTube on Aug. 5, Mayhem tries to use an electric buzzsaw. (Phhhht.) At the time of this writing, it had 303 views, 56 likes, and 1 dislike (though I might click the thumbs-down myself.) At 9:48 p.m. Aug. 5, the clip had been posted on the Mayhem Facebook page for about an hour, during which 2,091 people liked the ad, 496 had shared it, and 66 people had commented on it, including Amie who said:
Crushin’ on Mayhem!
No one ever crushed on the Geico lizard, did they?
EARLIER: A roundup of 2011 Mayhem commercials
AGENCY: Leo Burnett, the agency that brought us product characters such as the Marlboro Man, Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam.
Allstate’s Soya La Mala Suerte: Claw game spot
Allstate’s Hispanic counterpart to “Mayhem,” Soya La Mala Suerte, has a new 30-second spot that puts an unlucky driver at the mercy of a child’s toy won in a claw game. (You know, the merciless machines at Chuck E. Cheese and supermarkets that steal your money, hope, and sanity as you try to retrieve a cheap toy with mechanical claw that looks like it’s an artifact found in the depths of medieval torture room.)
What was I saying? Oh, yeah. The kid wins a ball that looks like a black cat. (Oooh! A black cat! They’re bad luck! Get it?!?!) On the way home, the sweet-faced child falls asleep in the back of the minivan, and the black cat ball rolls from his tiny little hand to the floor and then to the driver’s side, where it’s lodged under Dad’s brake pedal.
Can you guess what happens next? Well, try. Or watch the clip if the suspense is killing you.
Soya La Mala Suerte leaves the scene of the accident, cheerfully tossing the black cat ball.
And of course, the ad closes by asking:
¿Estás en buenas manos?
At the time of this writing, the clip on YouTube, posted June 25, had 106 views, 2 likes, and 1 dislike. There were no comments, but it’s early still.
In a previous post on Soya La Mala Suerte, I quoted a YouTube commenter, jackrubyuk, who said, “I like this one; he’s more sinister that the Anglo Mayhem. Subtle.” I don’t speak Spanish, but I can pick up tiny bits of dialog and the visuals do most of the work. Even if you don’t understand the clips’ script, you can still tell a difference comparing the Soya La Mala Suerte spots with the Mayhem series.
The commenter was right: Soya La Mala Suerte is more subtle, more ominous. Dean Winter’s Mayhem (which we all love) is goofier, not quite as scary. All the bad things that Mayhem makes happen certainly suck, but they don’t put the characters in the same grade of danger as the characters in the Soya La Mala Suerte ads.
The Soy La Mala Suerte (“I am Bad Luck”) Facebook page also has a more sinister tone (the threat of the falling air conditioners will certainly strike fear into almost any urban dweller). Even so, the public loves him: At the time of this writing, Soy La Mala Suerte had 124 likes on Facebook. That’s up from 99,284 on Jan. 25, 2012.
EARLIER: Soy La Mala Suerte: Billboard
RELATED: Mayhem is the Sexiest GPS Alive
Who’s J?
I am Jane Q. Public: consumer and citizen. As I go, so goes the nation. Sometimes.
(But really, click the link.)
At work
At play
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No, really, who’s J?
Jacqui Barrineau
Editor. Writer. Consultant.
I'm an editor and writer with certifications in public relations and e-Commerce. I also have a background in information technology. (In another life, I was a systems analyst.)
When I'm not editing copy for USA TODAY, I write an occasional short story or poem. My work has appeared in Calliope and the feminist journal So to Speak, and I'm a regular flash-fiction contributor to Paragraph Planet and Doorknobs & Bodypaint. Also on occasion, I interview editors for The Review Review, a comprehensive guide to literary journals and the people who produce them.
My points-of-view are collected on such esteemed outlets as Wordpress, Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed here and elsewhere are mine, not my employers'.
I live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., with my husband, Trey, our Shetland Sheepdog, and two unhelpful-but-funny cats.
