The Pro Shop

I don’t know if you recall it—a lot of water has gone over the dam since late 2006—but throw your mind back and remember those TV commercials for Quiznos Subs that showed in various ways how superior they were to those of rival sandwich maker Subway. Some of them were professionally produced, man-on-the-street comparison ads from Quiznos itself, showing apparently average folks dissing wimpy subs from Subway for the sponsor’s meatier wares, and specifically its just-launched cheesesteak subs.

Nothing new there, really. But Quiznos upped the ante by tapping into the then-novel user-generated content wave. Specifically, they asked fans to create their own Q. vs. S. spots and upload them to a Web site, www.MeatNoMeat.com. The public were invited to “grab a camera and show us why you think Quiznos is better.” The grand prize: to see your ad air on VH1 and on a jumbo screen in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2006, along with a year’s supply of Quiznos. more

Word came this morning via the Associated Press that PepsiCo will sit on the sidelines during Super Bowl XLIV, for the first time in 23 years. During that time the company has been known for its big-budget commercials featuring big-ticket music stars from Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin to Britney Spears and Will.i.am.

(I hereby confess a lingering fondness for watching the 2008 Justin Timberlake get racked, smacked and sacked by various forms of Pepsi Stuff. That guy can take a flat screen to the forehead like nobody’s business.)



But this year Pepsi is foregoing the big game in favor of a community-based campaign, “Pepsi Refresh Project,” that will launch in January. Instead of paying out millions for seconds of air time, the company will put its resources into social programs proposed by its consumers.

more

Now that we’re safely through both the Thanksgiving eat-athelon and the kickoff of the various shopping seasons, offline and online, you may be ready for a bit of a respite from holiday cheer.

If so, too bad for you, because the “Elf Yourself” season is upon us, courtesy of OfficeMax. And this year, they’re taking that grassroots hit more viral than ever. more

To tell you the truth, I didn’t realize that Starbucks had been just testing its instant-coffee product—excuse me, its “ready-brewed” product—until this past weekend. But apparently the coffee giant had only made its Starbucks Via product available in Seattle and Chicago markets, although I’ve been carrying a few packets around in the bottom of my briefcase for months, the result of a mass sampling campaign last June or July here in the city too good for the Olympic committee.

Sorry. That just slipped out. I’m back in control.

Anyway, I only realized that Via was coming out of test when I saw the ads on Saturday night live along with everyone else. And my first reaction might have been like everyone else’s too: If I’m already in a Starbucks anyway, why would I want a cup of instant/ “ready-brewed” coffee? more

Judging by the enlightened opinion from the dais at last week’s ad;tech conference in Chicago—and by the chatter from the auditorium, show floors and breakout-session hallways—both marketers and agencies are expecting to see sunshine peeking through the economic clouds by the end of this year, and perhaps by the end of the quarter.

No one expects that recovery, if it comes, to bring marketing budgets back to pre-recession growth rates. To beat the weather metaphor to death, no one’s actually buying sunscreen. But they are taking off their hip boots and—carefully, tentatively, in a controlled fashion—seem to be getting back to the business of trying to find and talk to their customers in a fragmented media world. more

Okay, the headline’s an overstatement—but not by much. Microblogging platform Twitter has recently taken action against a promotional idea that went over really well with its current users, to judge by the metrics—but that might, if allowed to propagate, put a major hurt onTwitter’s ability to attract a growing audience, or to monetize those users once they get them.

The promotion in question relied on “hashtags”, those phrases that follow “#” in tweets and that are used to identify a thread, so that users can search for and sort the jumble of disjointed 140-character conversations that can swirl around a topic on Twitter. more