To promote Red Bull Soapbox Denver at Red Rocks, which went down October 25, 2008, I took The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (a crew of fun, creative college kids from the South Dakota School of Mines that competed in and won Red Bull Soapbox Providence the year before) to Mt. Rushmore for a little training and a lot of tomfoolery in July. 

First, they hit the gym hard. Real hard. Then, after we shut down highway that runs past Rushmore, they raced the winning craft from Soapbox Rhode Island (a giant calculator called “The Numerator”) down it numerous times to gear up for the race in Denver.

Nestle has developed the Seinfeld (a show about nothing) of websites for Kit Kat, and appropriately named it  www.thefirstworldwidewebsitewerenothinghappens.com.

Visitors to the site are asked to do, um, well,  nothing, which ties in very well to the Kit Kat slogan: “Have a break.” (Not sure what happened to “Gimmee a Break”).

A break from what? From all the avtivities, obligations and distractions that flash as the site is loading.

The best part of this site? The fine print at the bottom of the page. Being funny for the sake of being funny in your marketing or advertising is one thing (think beer ads), but tying your humor directly to your product or message is harder to do and when done, often not done on target. 

Nestle manages to pull it off well here.

Have you ever wanted something so bad you were willing to bike 900 miles through the Rocky Mountains to get it? Me too.

I should preface this article by saying that is it really geared toward people working in marketing and/or advertising, and more specifically, for those with creative roles within those two industries. Having said that, if you’re a bead maker looking for your dream job and need some inspiration, I don’t want to exclude you so read on. All I ask for in return is a hemp anklet.

My dream job. That’s exactly what I was looking for when I applied to Red Bull a few years ago.

This job was mine I told myself. “This is I ME.” I knew it. But I didn’t want to just convince Red Bull to interview me. I wanted to convince the company that it would be complete lunacy not to hire me.

So I hatched a plan – I would create an “experiential application” of sorts. I would bike from Phoenix, AZ to Denver, CO for a job interview with Red Bull.

At the time, I wrote on my blog:

When I told a friend I was planning on doing this, he asked me, “Why?” I responded by saying,

“Because nobody else has.”

I like to think of myself as a thinker. I’m a big idea guy who likes to scale down plans, not up. When I heard about the job opening for which I applied, I knew I was going to have to do something different to get noticed. I have a friend who works there. I had heard how progressive Red Bull was. They hadn’t managed to hold the majority share of the energy drink market while hundreds of competitors came and went by sticking to the principles in Branding 101.

Red Bull is a fun, creatively bold company that thinks outside the box, even though no one who works there would use the cliché’ “think outside the box” because to do so would be thinking inside the box.

It’s a company that thinks differently. A lot differently. I knew I had to, too.

Sure, I could fly there. My resume is probably good enough to get me an interview without pulling this stunt. But this isn’t a stunt. It’s a lesson in branding. Only in this case I’m the product.

And this isn’t Jojo the Clown’s Energy Drink. It’s Red Bull – the Yankees of energy drinks, minus the overpaid pitchers. I could tell the hiring manager what makes me a dynamic, adventure-minded maverick who loves a good challenge and thrives on orchestrating big ideas, or I could show them.

I’m going to show them.”

I lept into action. I sent the hiring manager a letter asking him to remove the job posting from Red Bull’s website because I was biking to Denver to claim it.

I created the website BiketotheBull.com (no longer live) to document the experience. I made sure the hiring manager found out about so he knew I was serious.

I bought a touring bike and started training and planning. I didn’t know if the hiring manager would hold me to my pledge, but in the event that he did, I wanted to make sure my quads didn’t fall off somewhere near Moab, Utah.

My “experiential application” worked. I scored an interview with Red Bull. I wasn’t asked to bike to it, which was both mildly disappointing and breathtakingly relieving at the same time.

At the end of the interview process, I was offered the job. My dream job.

As far as mannequins go, I think their creepiness factor lies somewhere between clowns and barn owls. Following that, I’ve never understood why they’re used to sell clothing. To me, that’s like trying to sell a set of tires by putting them on a rusted out, window-less, white creeper van whose recently-paroled driver smells like tuna fish and cat pee.

But that’s just me.

All I’m saying is this: I’ve bought clothes because they’ve looked good in a magazine, on a wall or on a friend, but I’ve never bought them because they’ve looked good on fiberglass pseudo-humans.

Having said that, if you’re going to use them to sell clothes, you might as well acknowledge their creepiness factor and run with it, as Harvey Nichols did in its holiday sale, where mannequins are posed in protective positions because they are scared of the rush.

I love this campaign. Not just because it’s fun, but because it’s so damn simple. And therein lies the beauty. As marketers and advertisers, we spend exorbitant amounts of energy trying to invent the uninvented. As members of the creative class, we take honor in fashioning ideas of out thin air, or dust.

But as Harvey Nichols proves, sometimes the best ideas are there: they just need to be repositioned.

I’ve always wanted to sit in on a greeting card company’s annual business planning meeting. I think it would go something like this:

Ted: “OK, everyone, let’s get to work. I want to spend the next two hours really focusing on how we can make a big splash in 2009. Let’s get creative. How can we stand out?”

Dale: “What if we sold really big cards.”

Ted: “We already sell big cards. Everyone does.”

Dale: “No, I mean really big. Like twice as big as they are now. Or thee times. Can we do three times?”

Ted: “I like where your head is at Dale, but keep thinking. No idea is a bad idea.”

Susan: “What if the card was blank. Like, the inside and the outside?

Ted: “Both the inside and the outside?”

Susan: “Right. It gives the card giver total freedom to customize the whole card, not just the inside.”

Jill: “I like that.”

”Roger: “Yeah, me too.”

Ted: “Hold on guys. What we’re talking about just sounds like a piece of paper.”

Susan: “But it’s thicker. And already folded.”

Ted: “Anyone else have some ideas they would like to share?”

Wayne: “OK, what if we created anti-cards?”

Ted: “What’s that?”

Wayne: “It’s like a greeting card, but the message inside is an insult, like ‘Hope you get worse soon.’”

Susan: “OK, Wayne, you’re just pissed that Kate broke up with you.”

Wayne: “No I’m not.”

Susan: “You totally are.”

Ted: “Hey everyone. Let’s focus. Wayne, I do like the thought. I just don’t know if we want to create a greeting card cards for people that are pissed. We’ll run it by R&D though.”

Wouldn’t it be cool if Wayne suggested  The ____ Cards?

It was only a matter of time before the suits turned Improv Everywhere’s famous “frozen” stunt in Grand Central Station

into what can only be described as a “mass ad:”

I don’t like it. But not because it’s a rip off. That happens all the time – in marketing, in advertising, in music, in technology. Even Shakespeare is alleged to have ripped off fellow writers. The airwaves of the commercial music industry is filled with re-sampled tracks. Hell, have the exercises I do at the gym are of those I saw other people doing.

Imitation may be the best form of flattery, but it’s also really, really convenient, and especially helpful when it’s 4:30 p.m. and all you’ve got down on paper is  white space the size of the Great Plains.

“Borrowing” is even a kinder word to use than imitation, so let’s roll with that. There is beauty is borrowing a concept and making it better, but I don’t think T-Mobile succeeded in doing so.

I don’t know if there was a tie-in to the brand on-site, or if this video was produced and then the company added “Life’s for Sharing” and its logo and then posted it on YouTube.

If the stunt was tied into a new 6G camera T-Mobile was bundling with featured phones, then well, that’s better. That makes more sense to me, because as you notice, a large percentage of people not in on the stunt pull out their camera phones.

That would be kind of cool.

But the stunt is just about T-Mobile. So really, what the company is saying is, “Creativity is awesome. We’re creative. We’re awesome. Use T-Mobile.”

That’s not good enough for me, because if you swap out T-Mobile for “Randy’s Burger Shack,” and pass out a few bacon double cheeseburgers at the Liverpool Street Station, you don’t lose anything.

Would Randy’s ad be any better? No? But keep in mind, Randy dropped out of college, drinks vodka out of plasic bottles and just put next month’s rent down on red. There’s less expected of him.

Creativity doesn’t just stop at the concept. It has to continue on through the delivery of that concept. Otherwise, the brand or product isn’t packaged quite right.

Now, if this ”mass ad” had been for a local dance studio, well, I would have loved it.

While on Facebook today, I found myself clicking on an ad (those that run along the right hand side) because it was my cup of tea, or perhaps more appropriately, my can of Red Bull. I remember thinking, “How the hell does Facebook know I love “Lykke Li?”

Then, without thinking, I clicked on “More Ads” and found myself legimately interested in eight of them.

“This is how effective advertising should be,” I thought.

Granted, Facebook doesn’t always get it right. No matter how hard it tries, it cannot succeed in convincing me that I am pregnant and confused. Maybe confused. But not pregnant.

I’ll step away from Facebook because this isn’t meant to be a comment on the social networking site’s advertising formula. It’s meant to be a comment on how advertising’s landscape is changing, as in, before there was dirt and now there is grass. And mountains. And babbling rivers.  And flocks of songbirds that sing Lykke Li.

I know, I know.  It can’t be changing that much, can it? I mean, call the 30-second spot a dinosaur, but at worst, it’s a durable one whose claws and teeth still allow it to rake in money. After all, many companies are more than willing to shell out $3 million for a Super Bowl ad.

Enter the filmercial, a “theatrical ad” much longer in length. Filmercials are usually posted on a company’s own website. This means that that although a small percentage of people viewing the filmercial may actually be looking for the product featured in it, 100% of the people are looking for the brand (at least those who viewed the video on the site – versus those who viewed it virally).

I can’t remember the last time I watched en entire 30-second ad without interruption. Oh, I may hear the opening dialogue, but that is always drowned out when I pick up my cell phone, stare down at my laptop, let the dogs out, or well, go to the bathroom.

Yet in the last two hours, I’ve watched two Nike filmercials, one featuring Lebron James

and one featuring Kobe Bryant

from start to finish. I didn’t do anything else. I just sat here. Watching. I screened three calls, ignored the sound of dogs paws against the door, and held it.

After finishing watching the Kobe filmercial, I couldn’t help but thinking, “I wonder if he could break a dinosaur’s legs.”