What is TED

“Mark your calendars, TEDx Tirana is happening in May 3.” You probably read or heard this line, especially if you already “liked” TEDx Tirana Official on Facebook. The organizing team of TEDx Tirana is currently going to different universities in the capital in order to explain the purpose of TED and the mission behind it. For those who do not have a chance to participate in one of those presentations, we decided to provide you here with some hints about TED and its history.

At the heart of TED is one line “Ideas worth spreading.” TED is a non-profit devoted to spreading valuable ideas in the form of short talks. TEDx, on the other side, was crated as an addition to TED in order to support initiatives by independent organizers who wanted to bring the TED experience closer to their communities. TED talks cover a great variety of topics from business to science to global and social issues.       

How did it all start?

TED’s history dates back in 1984 when Richard Saul Wurman's observed the powerful combination of technology, entertainment and design. The first TED included a demo of the compact disc, the e-book and cutting-edge 3D graphics from Lucasfilm, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines using his developing theory of fractal geometry. Eventually TED Conference became an annual event in Monterey, California. At that time it served as a way to present inventions.

With time, TED experienced different changes that contributed to its growth in scope and content. Now TED and TEDx are considered as global communities that give an opportunity to people from all disciplines to share the ideas that are worth sharing, make them available to others and thus encourage and motivate discussion.

Hopefully, this helped you get a better understanding of TED. Next time we will share more about TEDx Tirana initiative. Until then, continue following the recent developments on the official Facebook page and …Happy Easter! J

Where does the money go?

Image from seoconsulting.nl

“Advertising” has been the key word in my posts and I have explored it from different aspects. I have written about funny, bad and creative ads; compared advertising in TV to advertising in social networks or talked about the social benefits from advertising etc. This time I will explore the word “advertising” in a more data-oriented way and provide some hints about the platforms companies use for their advertising purposes.

According to a research conducted by Econsultancy.com, based on responses from business representatives, resulted that businesses spend most of their "social advertising budgets" on Facebook-41%. While, according to the responses from ad agencies’ representative, the percentage is even higher: 53% of clients’ total spending on advertising goes to Facebook. On the other hand, companies spend only 18% on LinkedIn and less on Twitter (only 17%). The rest goes to other social platforms.

Regarding the types of social advertising please refer to the picture below:

As it can be understood from the graph above, the best advertising tool among all social networks is considered to be Facebook. Newsfeed ads are actually much more preferred from advertisers when compared to LinkedIn ads or Promoted Tweets.

There is a reason why Facebook rules the social advertising world (as of now).  The reason is, because it offers a platform where creating ads is fairly simple and flexible; targeting is easy and can be done taking many factors into consideration (such as gender, age, geographical area, education, etc.); it can reach a large proportion of the world population (think about 1.3 billion users of Facebook). And, above all, ads on Facebook are not that extremely costly since the platform is still underutilized.  Moreover, the platform keeps expanding its operation further. Think about the acquisitions made by Facebook: Instagram and WhatsApp. These factors have a great impact on the whole social media world and eventually impact the advertising strategies of different businesses.

There is a major question that arises from this analysis. Will the distribution of advertising spending in different platforms change, and if so, how long will that take?

Socially Responsible Advertising

Among creative ads this week, there is one which I find very appealing. Therefore, I decided to dedicate this post to this ad in particular and to social responsibility advertising in general.

“Manifesto-Texting while driving video” is a powerful ad that was launched by the U.S. Department of transportation as a law enforcement crackdown to combat distracted driving. At the core of this ad is the line “U drive. U text. U pay.” The word “pay” in this case serves to describe the fatalities of distracted driving and also the fact that within the new law, a citizen gets fined in case he/she is texting while driving.

The ad itself sends a strong message and the visuals are appealing especially at the moment when the crash immediately “erased” the smile from that protagonists’ face only because she was driving distracted. 

Picture from adsoftheworld.com

It is interesting to see that many of the ads that raise awareness about social problems or issues are created not only by independent organizations, but also by big companies too. In a time when it is becoming a must for companies to promote environmental friendly initiatives, many of them are following such path. The purpose behind social responsibility advertising differs. It might be either for the purpose of doing such an ad in order to gain some positive customer associations with the brand, or because the company might really care about the cause. In the end, what really matters is that something is being done to generate awareness for these issues and some of these ads are indeed appealing and effective.

Picture from adsoftheworld.com

So, more and more often there are ads that promote an Eco-friendly strategy are part of companies’ advertising portfolios.  In this context, one creative campaign, which I personally like, is delivered in print from Pizza& Love, a Spanish company. Under the title “Fight for the last slice” (where the slice represents in one case the Amazons, and in another the Arctic) the company has used a very original idea to promote their “go green” strategy to fight for the Arctic and the Amazons.

For more "go green" creative print ads click here. 

Advertising, dance moves and more in this Diesel ad

Picture from fashiondailymag.com

“Dance your way in with Diesel” is the tagline for the latest ad by Diesel jeans. In fact, the video has many functions and purposes (at least this is how I perceive it). Above all, via this interesting and quite interactive video, the purpose of the company is to promote their new “Jogg jeans collection (an ultra-flexible jean-jersey hybrid)”…and most probably show us some famous dances or some innovative moves performed by world-class dancers.

We get a chance to see different models of Diesel’s Jogg collection worn by these dancers, while they perform different dances and every letter from A to Z represents a certain dance or a special move.  So, there is a variety from arabesque, to rumba and others. And what would this video be without a little bit of harlem shake and some twerking? They have it all in this video!

Of course, I guess Diesel wants to show us that we can make those moves, but probably we first need to purchase those Jogg jeans that “allow” us to better show what we’ve got.

In addition to all that, there is one more thing that Diesel wants to achieve through this ad: encourage the audience to participate in the follow up clip they will do. For this reason, in the end of the video, there is an invitation from Diesel to submit your own clip in the suggested sites.

Visuals got the power

Picture from Carte Noire website

When you think that advertising cannot go beyond making food look so tasty and appealing, two different companies introduce some intriguing food ads. For all those people who like to cook, watch others cook or simply enjoy eating good food, here are two ads that will make you want to either go and prepare a nice meal or get something tasty to eat. In my case, it was the second one!  

The first ad is a great piece of work, a result of a collaboration between Wieden+ Kennedy London and the butter company Lurpak. Via this ad a whole kitchen is transformed through powerful visuals into the universe in order to present the new line of oil and butter. Visuals definitively got the power in this ad and AdWeek does not hesitate in describing it as food porn collaboration between Lurpak and W+K.

If you liked that one and you are up for some more, for desert we have “Rose” by Carte Noire, a French coffee company. Not too different from “Lurpak Cook’s Range-Adventure Awaits” in terms of powerful visuals, this ad shows the whole process of making those little pastries. 

In fact, the Carte Noire is very persistent in all ads. You can check their previous work by clicking here.

Feeling hungry now?…Bon Appétit J

Evian is back in Spider-Man style

I guess everybody remembers the famous “Evian baby& me" ad that hit millions of views on YouTube (more than 78 million as of today) and become the most-watched ad on YouTube in 2013.  Almost one year after the release of the successful “Evian Baby& me” ad, Evian is back with a second ad.
  

From Evian official Twitter account: pictures

The music, the moves and the plot are similar to the first ad, but this time everything is presented in Spider-Man style. Evian probably thought that combining two key elements: the successful plot of “Evian baby& me” and the iconic Spider-Man character, the “Amazing baby& me 2” would gain the same level of success. But, that approach is not working quite well. 

Since when the ad was released on April 1, the criticism and negative comments started to increase. I don’t refer only to comments on YouTube or other social media platforms, but also to articles in online magazines.

‘AdWeek’ wonders on the connection that the ad has with Evian water. Another online magazine ‘Marketing’ dedicated an article to the newest ad under the title “Viral Review: Evian's Spider-Man baby ad lacks originality.” At ‘Marketing’ they consider the ad a duplication of “Evian baby& me,” while the only thing that differs is the presence of the super-hero.

So far, the video has almost 5 million views on YouTube. We still have to wait and see how successful it will be and how high will rank among the most memorable ads of 2014. Will Spider-Man be able to help Evian in this task?