Summary. Creative, fun, inspiring, and funny advertising is much more likely to get watched, and in today’s society of online social networking, these are the ads that will go viral and have the farthest reach.

Such ads also provide the additional public service of offering a source of entertainment and inspiration. Below are some videos from the FeedThePig.org campaign being promoted by the Ad Council. ResourcesForLife.com is an Ad Council media partner.

“Royal Family”

“Armored Car”

“Chase”

Behind the Scenes. The video below shows the history and background of the FeedThePig.org campaign.

Summary. When a non-profit organization engages in social action, we think of it as activism. When a business engages with society through advertising, we simply call it marketing. Yet, activists exist in all areas of society including companies and they are leveraging their positions to impact the world in positive ways.

Among the leadership of Liberty Mutual there apparently are some people who had the brilliant idea of using advertising as a carrier signal for delivering a positive social message. For example, in radio broadcasting, it’s possible to send an HD FM radio signal with music that also includes embedded data that can provide information about the current song such as artist and song title. In the same way, advertising can tell the public about a product or service, while at the same time conveying a message that is designed to have a positive impact on society.

The Responsibility Project. Liberty Mutual has launched an initiative called The Responsibility Project. Below are videos from their advertising campaign about living responsibly. The general theme is that people who see acts of kindness, generosity, caring, giving, and responsibility, will feel compelled to do the same. What’s really powerful about this advertising campaign is that it offers an almost documentary presentation of the world from a God’s-eye-viewproint in showing how kindness can spread quickly. It’s alarming to realize that stress and unpleasantness can spread just as quickly. The multiplayer effect depicted in these videos demonstrates the impact that each person has in the world.

Summary. The Mormon Church recently launched a new promotional high definition video campaign that conveys the diversity and individuality among its members. These videos and others are featured on the Mormon Message YouTube channel. This is presumably a reaction to an increasing insularism in mainstream secular society and a culture-shift toward more online experiences and social interactions.

Review. Advertising is like a good book, and to be effective, it needs to capture the viewer immediately from the beginning to compete with other sources vying for attention. These videos are well done, and should effectively convey a positive portrayal of everyday Mormons to help address any public image of Mormons being extremely religious, sectarian, or unrelatable. The videos are fun and inviting. The format of the videos is for each person to describe who they are and what they do, without really mentioning religion until the very end when they conclude the video with the statement “… and I’m a mormon.”

Application. You can imagine these videos being part of any promotional campaign for a product, service, company, cause, or organization. The template is exceptional. Step #1: Find interesting people. Step #2: Make very high quality colorful videos of each person telling their story. Step #3: Conclude the video with the person endorsing whatever it is  you’re trying to promote. These videos could have just as easily concluded with “… and I wear Nike” or “… and I use an Apple computer.”

Background. The Mormon Church has long had a strong web-presence with the LDS.org and Mormon.org websites. The Mormon.org website offers expanded profiles of Mormons with inspiring stories about everyday people. Below are sample videos from the campaign.

Summary. To be most effective, advertising must be engaging, entertaining, interesting, and inspiring.

The Québec City and Area Tourism Department recently produced a spectacular high definition video with areal flyovers and panoramic vistas combined with an uplifting music score. It’s possibly one of the most impressive tourism videos ever produced.

Summary. Businesses often make decisions based on what produces the most revenue, rather than what’s in the customer’s best interest. If instead, they would make customer experience the bottom line rather than profits their goal, they would ultimately gain both. Putting people over profits benefits everyone.

Website advertising is an example of this phenomenon. Most advertising slows down websites, clogs up the Internet, creates a possible conflict of interest, and exposes site visitors to potential viruses and security risks. It’s also an annoyance.

Fully aware of these drawbacks, some websites and online social networks allow users to pay a premium monthly fee to have advertising removed.

This is similar to paying a premium for foods that have the unhealthy ingredients not put in by the manufacturer.

The website WAYN.com (Where Are You Now), is a social network similar to Facebook that offers a VIP premium membership for $120 per year ($10 per month). One of the VIP benefits includes the ability to turn off advertising:

As a VIP, you have the option of turning off the standard advertising banners which speeds up the site and improves the user experience.

If website owners know that advertising slows down the site and degrades user experience, then why do they put so much of it on their websites? The answer is probably a combination of things, but mostly due to greed, ignorance, and a lack of creativity. Increasing ads makes a site so unpleasant and ineffective to use that most website visitors will never return. The equity and value of a website and brand can be destroyed through poor advertising decisions.

Advertising Alternatives. Below are some alternatives to traditional website advertising. It’s important to remember that it’s legally required to disclose when you are promoting a product or service in exchange for compensation, so there should be some mention of this in such cases.

• Announcements, Articles, and Reviews. Rather than simply placing a small advertisement on your site, why not consider writing a thoughtful review of a new company and their products or services. A full article provides more information to visitors.
• Funny Videos. Some advertising is quite clever, funny, and entertaining. A page (like a channel) on your website could feature some of these funny videos.
• Links. Some advertisers will pay for simple links on your site. These can be unobtrusive and don’t reduce site performance.
• Online Store. A page (like a store) on your website could features all of the affiliate links to products and services you promote.
• Promote Your Business. What is your business? Rather than looking for ways to make money promoting someone else’s products or services, consider how you can promote your own product or service. If you’re a blogger without any product or service to sell, and want to make money off your website, consider partnering with a friend or someone you know who wants to promote what they sell. Even as a blogger, you can monetize your writing and research by offering expanded writings and research documents as inexpensive ebooks.
• Static Ads. Advertisements that are static images with affiliate links or links directly to websites of paid advertisers can at least be more strategically placed and may be less disruptive to website performance than animated ads that are fed by affiliate programs.

Summary. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert host what are referred to as fake news shows. Surprisingly, today’s fake news is more honest than some “real” news sources. Legitimate news websites such as MSNBC Newsweek are displaying what could be perceived as legitimate news stories, but are really advertisements.

The links take you to other websites that appear to be legitimate news journalism websites, but are really paid advertising websites. The official looking “News 8 Consumer Report” logo above is an example of a fake logo used by these advertising websites.

Above: Misleading advertisement found on Newsweek website disguised as "Breaking News"

According to the Federal Trade Commission, advertising must be marked as advertising so as not to mislead consumers. One example on the Newsweek website is a clear violation of this. Pictured here is what is depicted as being “Breaking News” on the Newsweek website.

However, it’s simply an unmarked advertisement that takes you to a fake news website called the Memphis Gazette with fake news reports about consumer electronics that all lead to an online auction website.

Most legitimate websites reject advertising which simulates editorial content, or they demand that ads be clearly marked.

Here is an excerpt from the Washington Post Media Advertising Terms & Conditions:

5. All advertising copy that might be mistaken by a reader as news, feature or other non-advertising materials must be clearly marked “advertisement”. In the event such copy is not clearly marked, the “advertisement” notation will be added by The Washington Post. [source]

Unfortunately, Newsweek doesn’t seem to hold itself to such standards as the Washington Post. At the bottom of this page is a gallery of some images captured today from the Newsweek website and subsequent pages linked from the Newsweek website.

MSNBC and Newsweek are receiving advertising revenue as a result of these fake ads. You’ll notice the fake news links in the right hand column of the Newsweek story. Because the Newsweek page is being viewed from a computer in Iowa City, the advertising is localized to Iowa City. The stories aren’t really pertinent to Iowa City.

The first fake news link suggests that 1,000 Honda Civics will be auctioned away for $1732 in Iowa City. If you click this link,  you are taken to what appears to be the website of a newspaper called the Memphis Gazette. The name is fake. It only contains more information about the auction site that is really being advertised through these fake news reports.

The second fake news link, also presenting itself as being local Iowa City news, is about $24 Apple iPad sales on the same auction website. A click on this link takes you to the News 8 Consumer Report web page. Also a fake news website. It even refers to money that can be saved by “Iowa moms” — again trying to personalize and localize the fake news story.

If you click on the links from these fake news websites, you’ll discover the SwipeAuctions.com website which promises to use the highest levels of integrity in their auctions. How can a consumer trust a website that is deceptive in their advertising practices to be honest in their business dealings?

As always, buyer beware.

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Image Gallery. Click an image below to view it in full size. Click the back button on your browser to return to this page. Note that the images below are page images and not interactive web pages so the links won’t work. Because some websites have content and advertising that is constantly changing, we took screen shots of these pages.

Summary. Consumers who are content and happy are less likely to buy things they don’t need. For this reason, numerous industries depend on creating and maintaining a sense of dissatisfaction and hopelessness.

People who are dissatisfied with life are more likely to turn to consumerism, eating, gambling, shopping, or sensory altering products such as alcohol, caffeine, or tobacco. Many advertisements try to build upon a general feeling of dissatisfaction in the consumer with statements such as, “Are you sick and tired of….” The product or service being sold is the remedy for the consumer’s frustration.

Unfortunately, this is like toxic dumping of negativity into our society. People begin to have a negative, sarcastic, pessimistic, and critical outlook upon the world and life in general. This, of course, it good for pharmaceutical companies selling drugs to make people feel better about how horrible the world is.

Summary. AT&T recently launched a colorful and creative advertising campaign using painted hands to represent familiar images from various countries around the world where they offer mobile phone and data coverage. A series of these photos is found below.

“Companies and organizations, through integrity, creativity, inspiration, best practices, and green mindfulness, are increasingly gaining a large voluntary base of growing support.

Rather than paying for advertising, they get word of mouse and word of mouth advertising for free. Read about our Free Advertising Program to learn more.

I’d like to think this trend will increase making it almost impossible for businesses to survive that are unethical or doing things that harm the planet.

I get a chuckle when I see Apple products getting what probably is free product placement in all kinds of print advertising, television, and movies. It’s hard to compete with that.” ~ Gregory Johnson

AT&T Painted Hands Photos. Click any image for a larger view.

Summary. Companies and organizations have always depended on word of mouth advertising.

With the increase of people using email and online social networks, word of mouth advertising is increasingly being replaced by something referred to as word of mouse advertising. There’s soon to be a book that name.

Today, just a click of the mouse (on Facebook for example) can notify hundreds of people that you just joined a group or cause you believe in, or you became a fan of some organization or company you like.

Understanding the People Telling People Paradigm. The best way to generate word of mouth/se advertising is to provide a product or service that is so exceptional, people just want to tell others about it. A secondary method of generating word of mouth enthusiasm for a product or service is to have an advertising campaign that is so funny or inspirational people want to tell others. Read about our free advertising program to learn more.

Paying People to Tell People.When a product or service doesn’t inspire people to talk, and advertising is bland, companies sometimes turn to paying their customers to tell others since they probably wouldn’t do so on their own without compensation. So, while it’s nice to reward customers for telling others, there can be negative connotations to this. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission now requires bloggers to disclose any payment (money, product, or service) received from a company that is being reviewed on the blog. Read our advertising disclosure statement to learn more about this.

Activism Implications. Word of mouth/se marketing and promotion has benefits for those involved in activism. The primary motivation for socially contentious people is their passion for the cause(s) they believe in. In the same way people are motivated to tell others about a quality product or service, they are motivated to tall others about a cause or issue they feel strongly about. Inspiring, creative, and/or funny commercials are a good way to get people talking even more. Read about our free advertising programto learn more.

Summary. In 2010, Pepsi launched the Pepsi Refresh Project and their Refresh Everything campaign using an inspirational music video featuring the song One Tribe by Will.i.am.

The Refresh Everything campaign was established to offer grants to small charities that might not otherwise receive funding.

This is an example of how an advertising campaign can be merged with philanthropy.

Advertisements that are uplifting are more likely to get promoted at the grass roots level by friends telling friends through social networks.

Video. The video of the advertisement is below.