Getting out of tricky situations isn't easy. But along the way, I get to hang out with princesses (they never wear their crowns), camel jockeys (literally!) and famous (well at least quasi-famous) people...all for the love of media and travel.
Instagram is now a media monster with well over 300 million members who share upwards of 70 million videos and photos every day.
Brands are flocking to it because it seems that no one pays attention to branded interactions on Facebook and Twitter anymore. Take this little nugget found on Sprout Social:
At 4.21%, Brand Engagement Rates Highest on Instagram
Last spring...analyzed more than 3 million user interactions with more than 2,500 brand posts on seven social networks. Unfortunately those brands achieved less than a 0.1 percent engagement rate on six out of the seven platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.
Instagram posts, however, generated a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent. That means the app delivered brands 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter. Let’s look at a real life example of this difference.
This week, Red Bull posted a photo of Lindsey Vonn on both Facebook and Instagram. Currently, the brand’s 45 million Facebook fans had liked the photo just about 20,000 times, while its 2.2 million Instagram followers had liked the photo nearly 70,000 times.
Now the fun part.
Artist Simona Bonafini reimagined Disney Instagram accounts for our favorite princesses and characters if they grew up in our world saturated by social media. Selfies, hookups, lunches and more. Here's her take (click to enlarge any image)...
I've shown you how to make it at a media party, how to drink like a Mad Man, and even how to get your client to push away from the hosted bar after walking the red carpet. But, have you ever wondered how people drink beer across the globe? I can be your tour guide. Today is is International Beer Day, a "holiday" celebrated in 50 countries across six continents that has three declared purposes:
To gather with friends and enjoy the taste of beer.
To celebrate those responsible for brewing and serving beer.
To unite the world under the banner of beer, by celebrating the beers of all nations together on a single day.
In honor of International Beer Day, here are eight global toasts to help you become a jet-setting beer ambassador. Cheers!
I've never done a #TBT, aka Throwback Thursday. Gosh, I feel so old.
Tobacco has long been a fascination of mine. When I was growing up in the mid-70s, every magazine seemed to have a super cool cigarette ad with gorgeous, dynamic women and manly men. I learned that since the late 1700s, when the first tobacco advertisement appeared, tobacco manufacturers have been pioneers of advertising and marketing, revolutionizing the American way of doing business in the process.
It was hard to do any real research without the Internet and reference materials as a kid in the seventies, but I was obsessed to find out out the geniuses behind these campaigns. They were magic. Familiar. Aspiring. I mean, even Santa smoked for a while (and apparently they were easy on his throat). They gave me a taste of diversity and gender balance. They even introduced a certain sexiness usually reserved for the forbidden pages of Playboy.
I remember the buzz when President Nixon signed the measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television around 1971 (yes, it was still buzzing a couple of years later, and yes, I am old...). My brothers in the broadcast industry lost $220 Million in ad revenue. The last commercial on US television was a Virginia Slims ad which aired January 1, 1971 at 11:59 PM on The Tonight Show. The ad featured model Veronica Hamel who was later seen on Hill St. Blues.
The Marlboro Man was in full glory by the middle of the decade and the magazine was the king of alcohol and tobacco ads. He was in every major magazine, in seemingly every Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, along with dozens of other magazines.
Originally he was the Marlboro Cowboy who was created for Philip Morris by Chicago ad agency Leo Burnett. At the time, Marlboro held one quarter of 1% of the American market. Today, they own over 35% of the same market. I want to be that guy who develops genius like this. I guess there is still time.
Those guys turned out to be Philip Morris brand manager John Landry, along with Leo Burnett Creative Director Hal Weinstein and ad exec Don Tennant. Landry saw the brilliance of the Burnett team and wound up dominating Tobacco Mountain for decades. A New York Times article on Virginia Slim titled "WHY THEY STRETCHED THE SLIMS" is an amazing look inside the world of cigarette advertising.
Yet, I digress...
As I alluded above, the biggest-selling cigarettes of all time, Marlboros, were once were a minor brand, marketed toward women. Marlboro's motto actually was "Mild as May" and their filters were red, to not show lipstick stains. Camels were king. But changes were happening that would make America Marlboro Country.
In the early 1950s, when the first reports linking smoking to lung cancer came out, some smokers felt betrayed by the established brands. Unable to quit altogether, some retaliated by switching brands. The Philip Morris Co. saw an opportunity to improve Marlboro's pathetic market share. It didn't take Tennant long to figure out that Marlboro's previous ad campaigns ignored at least half the potential market. And what would make this woman's cigarette more manly? Well, in a word: men. And the rest is advertising history.
After the TV ban you would have thought that the smoking would have gone down. It was quite the opposite. Gideon Doron's 1979 article, How Smoking Increased When TV Advertising of Cigarettes Was Banned, took us behind the curtain and showed us how such a thing could happen. Quite intriguing.
Regardless of how much the world has tried to stop the tobacco industry, they continue to thrive. So, without further ado, here's a #TBT with a gallery of ads from days past.
It only took three years, but my movie "Black Hand" is set to premiere in South Korea. The thriller I penned (and was later translated by the great Byeon Hye-joo) has a wonderful cast including Han Go-eun who goes a bit haywire after her new hand she had surgically attached provides some eerie drama. Not for the weak of heart. Maybe a Grand Bell Award (aka Daejong Film Award) is in my future.
Okay, so where am I?
There is no truth to the rumor I am in South Korea attending the premiere of Black Hand. AND, I may or may not be in working on my next pieces of advertising so that my next Emmy submissions are top notch.
What I can tell you is that I may have detoured through Pamplona, Spain for the running of the bulls, aka the Las Fiestas de San Fermin. There's something you feel in the soul when you hear the rustling of the crowd eager to soak in the testosterone cloud emitted from the raging bulls. You feel an aura around you, as if you were part of the herd. A day in Pamplona does nothing but help you on your journey towards inner chi.
Those that know me will know that I've long said to my best buddy Charles that we are simply on a vision quest...just trying to find a place in the circle. The running is definitely part of the grand quest. It's also one of the world's most dangerous spectacles (and also one of the true parties left on this planet). To succeed you must avoid being gored. You must also be three things: Cautious. Sober. Fast.
That being said, you cannot be afraid of the bulls. I refuse to be. After all, there are scarier clients in the boardroom after a bad advertising campaign that cost millions. When I find myself in the herd's center, I feel a sublime safety. "How is that possible?", you ask... When you are are part of the herd, the bulls are somehow united with your being. They sense you are part of the herd, running with them every step of the way. I despise those "daredevils" that need to put their hands on them, pushing, hitting or grabbing them. That went they get defensive. That's when the fire burns deep inside these magnificent creature. True runners know this truth: Never touch the bulls.
THE VIRGIN RUN
I remember my first run. I was shut out the previous time I went because I was in advertising executive mode -- at the hotel awaiting my continental breakfast and a private sedan ride to the run. That was definitely not a recipe for success. I couldn't even get close enough to take a picture of the bulls let alone run with them. The next time was different. I decided to stay up all night and be in prime position near the arena. I nodded off in a restaurant doorway only to be shoo'ed away by the local police and general treated like a vagabond. I mean do they know who I am?
I jokingly thought I was a kinda of big deal, ala Ron Burgundy. I learned pretty quick that the bulls are the only big deal in Pamplona. In my 3am haze, I staggered to the Hemingway statue.
Hemingway Aside #1: This is definitely one off the oddest statues I have ever seen. The full-bearded depiction of the literary giant shows him in his stoic glory, the bust meticulously finished and polished. Then, they took this beautiful bust and dumped it onto a mess of a concrete block as if the money for the project ran out. Strange indeed.
Hemingway Aside #2: His work was the fodder of inspiration. Do you remember the books we were assigned to read? The Count of Monte Cristo, the Three Musketeers and the like? Yawnsville. Hemingway’s work was relatable and adventurous: old fishermen and soldiers and street fighters. You wanted to write like him. And you did, until you found your own style. He once wrote, “There is nothing better than to be shot at and missed.” What could sum up a grand adventure better than that?!
Yet I digress…
At the foot statue of the statue sits a lovely makeshift bed in the form of a rounded brick slope. I rested there until the dawn’s sun served as my alarm clock. Workers had already secured the barricades about 100 feet away and so I wandered to Telefonica; that's the area where the street widens and it becomes impossible to keep the herd of bulls grouped together. I must say that the locals are nothing short of stunning—both sexes. As a younger Media Guy, my flirt scale was still on 9,000 RPMs and thus I tried my best non-gawking Spanglish on the any young lady who stopped long enough. Some made eyes, some whispered “gringo”, but most just giggled at my one hundred poorly-constructed words of Spanish. Then, panic set in.
The police line came from nowhere, reminiscent of a swarm of locust striking some unsuspecting farmer's crops. The line closed in and pushed everyone up the street and through the first barricade on the first intersection on Estafeta. Everyone scattered from down side streets, through alleys and around building. I was already tired and I hadn't seen a bull yet. My chest ached and then I heard the beacon of hope: the loudspeakers blaring something in multiple languages. I followed the voice like those hypnotized Eloi as they moved towards the Morlock's underground horror pit in The Time Machine.
All at once I was trapped in a sea of humanity. The body-to-body pressure was crushing and it ebbed and flowed in unison with our collective breathing. Dawn had turned into 7:45a and the loudspeaker finally started screaming in English, which turned out to be more startling than the suffocating crowd:
“Bull runners are in danger of great bodily harm—if you fall down, stay down.”
This only charged the crowd as the murmur turned into a roar of great proportions. It took a few moments until the police line broke free and we unraveled up the street. I moved to to La Curva, aka the curve, aka Dead Man’s Corner, aka Hamburger Wall. This was THE SPOT. This is where the herd crashes every morning. The media and photographers hang here, protected from the police with the media badges. My international press card came in handy here as I flashed it liberally to avoid being moved yet again.
A rocket screamed into the sky and was quickly followed by a second. The crowd in the balconies and behind the remaining barricades surged with energy and wild noise. The runners were now in full motion, flowing around the corner and past me creating a breeze. Their expressions ran the full gambit of emotions: Cavalier. Scared. Excited.
The ground began to quake as a the galloping murmur of hooves grew to rumble. The mass of runners poured around the curve dressed in white with red scarves. It was dense and carries a certain stench of sweat and fear. This group was united in terror and each second seemed like hours. Time was grinding to halt and then, it simply froze.
Cartoons like to show the bull staring across at the matador with menacing red eyes. I often laughed at that as a child, but as the massive brown bull streaked around the curve I locked into his eyes. If I were older, my heart surely would have stopped as his red eyes literally put me squarely in his own bullseye. The unforgiving cobblestones could not absorb me or shield me from death. But then a foolish angel intervened. A runner crossed in front of me and took the full force of the lead bull's forehead. As if in slow-motion, the man hovered on a blanket of air above the bull's head as his arms flailed higher above as five other bulls thundered past. The man crashed to the side of me and he scurried towards safety, somehow gaining his feet. A giant white steer basically said "not so fast" as he barreled towards the man plowed through him, its hooves gobbling him up. The high-pitched grown that squeezed from his chest still haunts me today. Somehow he limped away without serious damage.
Two lives saved.
One grand story.
Viva los toros!
AD OF THE WEEK/MONTH/WHATEVER
M&M's Tainted Love Spot
"Our latest commercial shows how irresistible M&M's really are in a way that's part comedy, and part soap opera," says BBDO VP of Marketing Berta de Pablos-Barbier. "We think viewers will have fun with all the twists and turns, and see how it's even more fun to share M&M'S Chocolate Candies versus keeping them all for yourself."
Fittingly, the 80's classic "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell closes out the spot.
WAXY FUN
I couldn't resist sharing this from London's Madame Toussauds - Helen Mirren checking herself out at this week's press conference. Classic!
RIP Roddy Piper
He ruled the squared circle as one of its greatest non-champions. He didn't need a belt to prove his worth. We was the king of the interview and knew how to hit people over the head with a coconut. He taught me how to think on my feet and pour out words in great volume while captivating a room. He is the king of the soliloquy. Long live the king...you will be missed.
