Next Day Traffic

This is from a couple of years ago, but it’s a great video nonetheless.

And you thought those people that set up a room full of dominos to knock over were amazing… believe it or not, just unbelievable!! 

When the ad was pitched to senior executives, they signed off on it immediately without any hesitation – including the costs. There are six, and only six, hand-made Honda Accords in the world. To the horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make this film. 

There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film. Everything you see really happened in real time, exactly as you see it. The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn’t work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again. 

The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was over, they were ready to change professions. The film cost six million dollars and took three months to complete including full engineering of the sequence. 

In addition, it is two minutes long so every time Honda airs the film on British television, they’re shelling out enough dough to keep any one of us in clover for a lifetime. However, it is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in Internet history. Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in “free viewings” (Honda isn’t paying a dime to have you watch this commercial!). 

Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp and complete Honda Accord) is parts from those two cars. The voice-over is Garrison Keillor. When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten. 

They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real… oh no J. And how about those funky windshield wipers…?? On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically… as soon as they become wet. It looks a bit weird in the commercial. 

At cost of $6.2 million for 90-sec commercial, this is world’s costliest ad and hands down winner in the world of ads

A little bit of Honda optimism in the form of a short animated film created by Wieden + Kennedy London. This will be used in dealerships and trade shows to support the launch of the Honda Environment Brand campaign.

You tell me. Read the article below and decide for yourself.

MAMMA MIA!
GOOF COST DOMINO’S 11,000 PIZZAS

Stumbled-upon online ‘bailout’ promotion
turns into pizza-palooza

CINCINNATI – “Bailout” was the magic word as Domino’s had to give away thousands of free pizzas because someone stumbled on an online promotion the company scrapped.

Free pizza deal was tasty accident; Domino’s honors a giveaway it really didn’t intend to offer

Michelle Imsicke isn’t one to turn down free food.

Still, an offer from Domino’s Pizza for a free medium pie did make her pause for a moment – but only a moment.

“I heard of them doing things like this, giving discounts, but a free one shocked me,” said Imsicke, 38, of Harrison. “But I said, ‘If they are doing it, I’m going to grab one.’”

Imsicke got her free pizza, as did many others throughout Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky this week. But no one should have.

In December, Domino’s created an online-only promotion for a free pizza using the codeword “bailout,” but it never got the green light, said Tim McIntyre, Domino’s vice president of communications. “It had never technically been activated, but we hadn’t turned it off, either.”

Monday night, an “enterprising customer” discovered the deal (by apparently typing “bailout” into a Domino’s promo code window and found out it was good for a free medium pizza) and spread it on the Internet, McIntyre said. By the time it was shut down at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, nearly 11,000 pizzas were given away.

“I started getting calls at about 10 a.m. from managers asking what was going on. I said I had no idea,” said John Glass, owner of 14 Domino’s franchises in the region. “I called corporate, they had no idea at the time. No one seemed to have any idea, everyone was scrambling. It all kind of snowballed.”

Glass thinks he was hit harder than anyone else in the area, since he owns all the Domino’s near college campuses. In total, he thinks he gave away 600 to 700 pizzas.

Corporate promises to reimburse every store.

Local coupon guru Heather Tenney of www.littlemissknowitall.net, Cincinnati’s top coupon site, wasn’t surprised. She believes the promotion was first discovered around 8:30 p.m. Monday at www.slickdeals.net, and it would have come here instantly.

“Something like that would go viral very quickly and Cincinnati is very quick on the deals spectrum,” she said. “Cincinnati is just one of those cities where people don’t mind using coupons.”

There could be a silver lining, Glass said. He’s hoping, in addition to the publicity Domino’s basked in Tuesday, it also gave customers a chance to experience the relatively new online ordering system.

It might have worked.

“When I was working full time, we ordered online at LaRosa’s. You had to go through more hoops to order a pizza,” Imsicke said. “This was a lot faster, a lot easier.”

Domino’s is unlucky – or lucky, depending on the way it’s viewed – the whole thing didn’t happen Wednesday, said Catherine Deaton, 33, of Fort Wright, who happily fed her kids free pizza Tuesday.

“I would have thought it was an April Fool’s joke,” she said.

BOTTOM LINE:
Dominos set up a free pizza password at their website.
A BLOGGER found out, shared the info, and a few hours later…
11,000 free pizzas were given away.

Word spread fast enough in ONE NIGHT for Domino’s to end up giving away THOUSANDS of FREE pizzas – costing the company, oh, about $100,000.

ALL BECAUSE SOMEONE ”STUMBLED” ACROSS AN ONLINE PROMOTION.

CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW HIGH THE NUMBER COULD HAVE GONE IF THE COUPON HAD ACTUALLY BEEN “PROMOTED” ON THE INTERNET?

So, Does the Internet Really Work?
Call the Marketing Dept at Domino’s and ask them the $100,000 Question!

Automotive Advertising - Making Chevrolet Cool Again

One thing Washington may not be looking at from GM is what they have done in the last 24 months with their product. Take a look at Chevrolet and think back to theChevrolet advertising strategies of the 1980’s & 1990’s, when the mission and goal was making the product look like a young person’s car. The phrase that Mike Strong has taught me through the years was – “this was a time when the very top executives from GM told us, your job in Regional / DMA marketing was to make Chevrolet Cool Again.”

You look at the steps they have taken with the 2010 Camaro. GM did not follow what it had done with Pontiac and it’s bringing back of the GTO as a low cost substitute by rebadging and rebranding another product. Chevy cut right to the heart of the muscle car thread and made the 2010 Camaro look as aggressive as the muscle cars that made it such a success in the first place.

1969 Camaro Convertible

1971 Camaro SS

1977 Camaro Z28

1983 Camaro

2002 Camaro

2002 Camaro Convertible

2010 Camaro

See article below:

Chevrolet’s Camaro is poised for success

Revived vehicle is most successful of the neo-classic pony cars

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29978094/

Every dealer in America comments that their hybrid customers are “a different breed” – this is one of the funnier ads comparing Toyota, Hyundai and Nissan.

Kind of makes you wonder where Honda is in the equation.

Chevrolet is the winner with 
5 of the Top 20 most researched used vehicles 
through Autotrader, and notice – 3 of the top 5 are trucks… 

1. Ford F150
2. Chevrolet Silverado
3. Ford Mustang
4. Honda Accord
5. Dodge Ram 1500
6. Infiniti G35/G37
7. Honda Civic
8. Ford F250
9. Chevrolet Tahoe
10. Jeep Grand Cherokee
11. Jeep Wrangler
12. Nissan Altima
13. Ford Explorer
14. Audi A4
15. Toyota Tacoma
16. Chevrolet Silverado 2500
17. Toyota Camry
18. Chevrolet Corvette
19. Dodge Ram 2500
20. Chevrolet Impala

Toyota Dealer Advertising

Top Picks must meet criteria in three areas:

1. Road tests- Vehicles must rank at or near the top of their categories in overall road-test score, which includes more than 50 individual tests and evaluations.
2. Reliability- Each must have an average or better predicted-reliability rating, which is based on the problems Consumer Reports subscribers reported for more than 1.4 million vehicles in the latest Annual Auto Survey.
3. Safety- Top Picks must perform adequately in overall safety if tested by the government or the insurance industry.  In addition, each must offer vehicle stability control (VSC), a proven lifesaving safety feature, as standard equipment or as a readily available option.

The best all-around Toyotas, in their category, chosen as  “Top Picks” for 2009 include:

• BEST GREEN CAR- TOYOTA PRIUS (6th year in a row!)

• BEST SMALL SUV- TOYOTA RAV4 (3rd year in a row!)

• BEST MIDSIZE SUV- TOYOTA HIGHLANDER

• BEST MINIVAN- TOYOTA SIENNA

As we have come to expect, Toyota models placed extremely high in the Consumer Reports testing. Their latest results yielded data from over 1.4 million responders.