why put manny pacquiao in a bad light? a caricature of pinoy weakness?

in ads, a lot of effort is put into making the talents, most specially celebrities to look in the best possible light. ad agencies hire professional make up artists, costume designers and the best cameramen to make sure the talents look good on screen. directors are very particular to make sure that aside from making sure the storyboard is delivered, the talent should also look good. some celebrities even make it part of the their contract that their preferred make-up artist are hired for tv ads they appear in.


clients choose talents in their ads, specially celebrities, because they bring something good to the ad and the product. use a well loved celebrity and they expect sales to go up.

so why did vitwater make manny pacquiao look bad in their ad?

shell philippines' 24/7 consumer promo program

well, yes we gas up at shell. and we noticed that shell runs back-to-back consumer promotions. that is strange.

the marketing idea behind consumer promotions is to pump up volume sales and market share over non-promoted months. consumer promos will either get new users to try the product and/or get current users to increase their purchase. getting a bump on those hopefully will enable to retain and convert new users into regular users and build loyalty among current users.

what is the point then of conducting consumer promotions 24/7?

first, how do you assess the success of the promos you conduct? all months are promoted, there is no way to determine one promo was able or unable to push up sales and market share.

the marketing expense will be extremely high. consumer promotions are expensive to conduct. having a consumer promotion 24/7 means the product margins will be lower.

instead of conducting consumer promos 24/7, i would instead take that marketing expense and lower down the gas prices of their products. oil products as anyone know is very price sensitive. consumers actually know exactly how much they paid for it the last time they filled up their vehicles with gas. lowering the price of gasoline we think is the most effective way to lure in new users and increase purchase of regular users.

shell and the other big 2 oil companies, petron and caltex are in direct competition with smaller oil retailers. the small oil retailers are always able to under-cut the big 3's pricing. the big 3 know that if their gas station is beside or near any one of the small oil retailers, they will need to keep their prices as low as possible as they know not doing that will mean consumers will move to the small players.

moving the consumer promo expense to lowering the retail price of their products will allow shell to better compete with these small retailers. but i will do a little more than just lowering the gas prices, i will do something more creative and more attention grabbing than just doing a universal price decrease. i would treat the price reduction like a consumer promotion but will be creative in implementing it so that it gets the most attention and surge they need.

what can these creative ways be? that is next here in WAWAM!

apple releases 4 new "get a mac" tv ads

Apple "Get a Mac" ad: Biohazard Suit

This ad features PC in a Biohazard suit, and he explains that he is wearing it because PC viruses and malware have tippled in the last year, with estimates that 20,000 new ones discovered every day.



Legal Copy

In this ad, PC begins talking about the benefits of using a PC and as he talks the bottom of the (and eventually entire) screen fill up with the traditional small print legal info like what you may be use to seeing on a car or product ad. While the text isn't easy to read on a computer (PC or Mac) MacJournals was able to use a HD TV and has a copy of the entire small print available. It is worth pointing out that several items mentioned in the fine print, also apply to Apple computers.





Time Traveler

The next ad has PC in 2009 stepping into a time machine and headed for the year 2150 to see if the issues with a PC are ever resolved and if it becomes as stable as a Mac. When PC arrives in the future and begins to ask future PC questions, future PC freezes up.






Stacks

The fourth ad has PC going through thousands of photos looking for pictures of a friend and asks "what other way is there to do it". Mac responds talking about the facial recognition features available in iLife (iPhoto) which Mac adds in is included for free on every new Mac.

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/10517-apple-releases-new-get-a-mac-ads/

iphone 3g: AT&T's success with it and globe's failure at it

we had written extensively in this blog about globe's iphone 3G launch in the philippines. our view was that their launch strategy for the iphone 3G was a blunder, mostly on the the over-pricing strategy they adapted for the iphone 3G. globe over-priced the iphone 3G, in fact they initially wanted to sell it at a higher price than what they eventually sold it.

globe did not adapt the pricing strategy of AT&T in the US where they decided to take a hit on profits trading that off for higher unit sales and higher market share. we said then that globe's pricing strategy may have generated for them high margins but it lost them the opportunity for higher unit sales which could very well have recovered the lower margin per unit they had to take. more importantly, globe lost the opportunity to take market leadership away from smart telecoms.

we said that that it was our view that at the right price point, the iphone 3G will propel globe into market leadership.

looking now at the AT&T launch in the US for the iphone 3G, we think our views then were correct. AT&T sold 17 million of iphone 3G units since launch and has increased their subscriber base and market share. AT&T officials confirm the iphone 3G has been a success for them. it had been so successful that AT&T has been reported to be negotiation with apple to extend their exclusivity contract of being the lone seller of the iphone 3G beyond the contract up to 2011.

that is the kind of market share power that globe missed when they priced the iphone 3G at a ridiculously high level, the opposite strategy AT&T took. globe has been 2nd for such a long time, they should have taken this once in a lifetime opportunity to take leadership from smart telecoms.

AT&T To Apple : Come On, What's Two More Years?
AT&T just won't let go.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal AT&T is pushing Apple to continue the carrier's exclusive rights for the now-iconic iPhone for two more years.


Quoting unnamed sources, the Journal wrote that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is looking to continue AT&T's iPhone exclusivity through 2011. The pair's existing relationship is set to expire this year. AT&T has been the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the U.S. since the 2007 launch of the first-generation iPhone and continued through with the Apple iPhone 3G that was released in 2008.

Apple has been tight-lipped about its future iPhone carrier plans, telling the Journal "we have a great relationship with AT&T."

The iPhone has been a cash cow for AT&T since its 2007 launch—it is estimated that roughly 17 million iPhones have been sold in just two years. In the second half of 2008, AT&T added 4.3 million iPhone subscribers, 40 percent of whom were new customers for AT&T.

read in full here: http://www.crn.com/mobile/216500793;jsessionid=RY0YPPZLBWMZOQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN

AT&T: iPhone Boosting Wireless Margins


By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 4/23/2009 7:27:00 AM

Dallas — AT&T said it activated 1.6 million iPhone 3G devices in the first quarter, up anywhere from 50 percent to 60 percent compared to year-ago activations of 1 million to 1.1 million estimated by the Yankee Group.

“It’s a real win for them,” said Yankee director Carl Howe. The number of activations is “surprising” for a “fairly premium priced product” during the economic downturn, he said.

“It’s still a terrifically selling product for AT&T,” he added, even though the number of activations is down from 1.9 million during the fourth quarter of 2008 and down from 2.4 million during 2008’s third quarter, when sales soared because of the launch of the subsidized 3G version of the iPhone. “You should expect seasonality,” he said.

In the third and fourth quarters of 2008, year-over-year iPhone activations were up 114 percent and 110 percent, respectively. Precise comparisons between first-quarter 2009 and 2008 iPhone activations can’t be made because AT&T hasn’t disclosed the number of iPhone activations during 2008’s first half.

Said AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson, “I am particularly pleased with the success of our iPhone 3G initiative, which has driven strong high-end customer growth and delivered financial benefits ahead of our original outlook.”

The company’s iPhone strategy, combined with operation improvements and reduced churn rates, produced a sequential gain in AT&T’s first-quarter wireless service margins, before amortization and depreciation, the company said.

The margin gain, the company said, in part reflects the higher revenues generated by iPhone subscribers, who spend around 1.6 times more than other postpaid-service subscribers because of their data usage. iPhone users also churn less frequently than other postpaid-service subscribers, AT&T said.

In other iPhone-related financial statistics, AT&T said more than 40 percent of the iPhones activated in the first quarter, or about 640,000, were sold to people new to the AT&T wireless network. As a result, iPhone purchasers accounted for about 73 percent of the 875,000 net new postpaid subscriber additions in the quarter. Total net additions, comprising prepaid and postpaid service, hit 1.2 million to bring the carrier’s subscriber base to 78.2 million.

read in full here: http://www.twice.com/article/CA6653635.html

read posts on globe's iphone launch here: http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/search/label/globe

burger king's paris hilton spicy bbq burger tv ad - really hot but for all the wrong reasons

i'm struggling here, don't know what to call this ad is it a WAWAM!, one that has ADS Sindrome?

that is also the problem of this ad. is this ad a car ad? i was desperately waiting for the ad to show the brand name of the ad, peering through the legs of paris hilton trying to get glimpse of the insignia of the car on the hood or the grill of the car.

is this an ad for a car wash soap? those suds are big and abundant and they slide ever so slowly..... on the most important body parts..... of the car, great to clean the car.

or maybe the sponge? that sponge looked real fluffy, soft and oh so unyielding. press and squeeze and responds back to you, a tactile celebration of what is good and oh so awesome in a sponge.

then it occurred to me - this must be the latest paris hilton sex home made video. you know, the type that was taken by an ex-boyfriend that was kept inside that storage space rental that went unpaid, forcing the owners to sell the contents. didn't realize paris had long legs and fully formed with muscles on the best parts of her body. and those poses that hid the best parts of her body but telling us there is more to come under it. we were waiting for it to be shown.

but that did not happen. at the end, it's an ad for burger king's spicy bbq burger.

what the fuck was that?

on my first question - i got it figured out, this ad is both a WAWAM! and has ADS Sindrome. that's hot! not!

whisper sanitary pad's eww image that won't go away

is there a woman out there who would do what kim chiu did to her bf - ride on the shoulder of a man when you have your menstruation and wearing a pad?

this ad says whisper sanitary pad is so good that the bf's shoulders will not have a menstrual stain after moving up and down on his shoulder. and the bf will not smell mesnstrual odor even if his nose is just a few inches away.

really?

3rd microsoft "laptop hunters" - lisa and jackson for $1500

Laptop Hunters $1500 – Lisa and Jackson get a Sony VAIO with just $1500 to spend, Lisa and Jackson find their perfect laptop – a Sony VAIO FW with Blu-ray and a big screen.

microsoft pool out tv ad: Microsoft's latest ad attacks Mac aesthetics, computing power

new ad from microsoft:

whisper sanitary pad's ewwww tv ad with kim chiu & gerard anderson

isper is a sanitary napkin that likes to talk superiority on their dryness claim. it was launched in the philippine market on the basis of claiming it's the sanitary pad that offers dryness. to consumers, that means the pad will not fail and will hold all the wetness the woman has even on heavy days when she is having her menstruation.

i bet they used the word "torture test" a lot in describing this ad when they developed it. that means subjecting the product in torture test situations and coming out as the winner, showing the ability to deliver the promise.

in this case, the promise is dryness even in a torture test situation of the woman who has menstruation agrees to saddle back her man, riding on the shoulders of her man, putting that part of her body where she puts the sanitary pad on.

the torture test situation puts that body part of hers where she wears the sanitary pad in actual physical contact on the guy's neck, being pressed and pushed and within a few inches of the man's nose. apparently, that body part of the woman where the sanitary pad is placed not only leaks but also smells.

kim chiu, a teen popular actress is so confident whisper sanitary pad will succeed in this torture test that gerard anderson another popular teen actor will not smell and will not see menstrual blood on his neck.

WTF was that????? its ewww, double ewww and triple ewww!

i don't think there is a filipina alive today who will EVER, EVER agree to do something like that in real life when she has her period. there is no way a woman will ever do that. even if she uses a dozen whisper sanitary pads on that body part of hers.

this whisper ad is over the edge of sanity and stupidity. i think it succeeds on the torture test idea only in the minds of the ad agency that created it. it fails on believability, empathy and definitely wins on the ewww and ewww factor.

this is a WAWAM!