No shameless plugs here...

Genuine Interactive was selected as the winner in the Best Use of Video and Real Estate categories for the 2009 MITX Interactive Awards.

The Best Use of Video award was received for the creation of an innovative lead generation video site for 3DVIA. So, our developer friends actually build the site right before your eyes, because it's all about Speed Baby! The objective of the campaign was to generate awareness for the product launches and capture as many email addresses as possible. The goal was 200; we ended up with 1,200 along with unprecedented user engagement stats.

Working with Rattle Advertising, Genuine received the interactive award in the Real Estate category for Fenway Triangle. Making a convincing case for Fenway Triangle as well as raising awareness and generating interest and excitement, required knitting together myriad lifestyle amenities from cultural institutions and green space, to nightlife, restaurants and conveniences. Through extensive original photography and video the resulting site created a compelling real-world sense of place and a distinct personality for the area.

Congratulations to all the winners and more importantly to everyone that participated in the 14th Annual MITX Awards!

A lot of people think that the business card says a lot about who they are, their background and expertise. "Gold inlayed font?! You must be the king of small country. I mean - real gold?!" We wanted our business cards to say more about us than a title and email address - so we created our very own Augmented Reality Business Cards. They are our “Butterfly Effect Business Cards.” They tell who we’ve met more about how we got to the meeting we just had. We think its more interesting than the typical corporate bio. Take a look! Aside from “that guy looks pretty chubby, he should eat more salad.” – let us know what you think.

If you drove an 80’s Chevy Nova in the late 90’s you’ve experienced your share of condescending stares, embarrasing backfires and rejected smog inspections.  But worse than all other digs at your bitchin’ ride were the dozens of smart-ass ad people who told you, “You know, the NOVA didn’t sell well in Latin countries because in Spanish “no va” means “Doesn’t go!  How did Chevy miss that one?!” 

You probably didn’t really care because if you did drive the 80’s Nova in the late 90’s you were a master at not giving a shit.  We could tell by your symetrically ripped stonewashed jeans.

We all love stories of embarrasing mistranslations in the ad world.  I personally love the Coke billboard campaign in China with Co-Ca-Co-La phonetically spelled out which told millions of Chinese to “Bite the Wax Tadpole.”  (Subsequently China has told America to bite THEIR wax tadpole and those of their billion-strong labor force…but that’s another rant.)  And I love the American Airlines [i think] campaign in Brazil touting their new “Rendezvous Lounges” aboard every flight which translated to a mile high brothel on every jet.

I am proud to say that Genuine Interactive’s own L.L. Cool Alex uncovered another potential international naming faux pas for the ages.  A fortune cookie at Cambridge’s own Hong Kong reveals the real meaning of Bing.  Bing in Chinese means Disease.  Awesome.

Maybe the Hong Kong in Cambridge is wrong or maybe Microsoft is telling China to bite their wax tadpoles.  Share your thoughts.  And, if anyone has any other cool international naming stories – please tweet them to #brandtranslations @wearegenuine

 

 

Scan of the actual whistleblower - a fortune from Cambridge's Hong Kong found last week.  The Lucky Numbers claim to be luckier than Google's lucky numbers and more relevant to the searcher.  We'll see who wins that battle.

Whether you call them Buffalo wings, hot wings, chicken wings or just plain wings, they are nothing without the main ingredients: delicious butter and Frank's Red Hot Sauce. As the chart below details, people begin searching, buying, making and consuming buffalo wings during the start of the football season in September. This indulgence reaches a pinnacle in late January just in time for football’s big game.

At some point, brands stopped focusing on CTR’s (Click-Through Rates) for their banner campaigns. Why? The numbers were embarrassingly low. Not to say that awareness isn’t an effective use of display. It very much is. But when it comes pure CTR’s somehow folks are still trying to make those #’s sound good:

Usually its something like this:

Buyer: The banners performed 2X better than expected!!
Brand Manager: That sounds good. Is that good?
B: It is spectacular. We expected a CTR of .0002 percent and you achieved .0004. That is a 100% increase. 100%! Holy god of CTR’s! Imagine if you had a 100% chance of winning the lottery. You’d win right?!?
BM: The lottery?
B: Yes. You would be a flippin’ millionaire.
BM: (Blank Stares.)
B: And, by doubling your expected CTR’s you are a virtual millionaire.
BM: How many people clicked through?
B: Over 12-14 people.
BM: That doesn’t even make sense.
B: I know. I can’t believe it either. 100%!!!

I’ve seen that meeting. I swear. Now, brand managers can dust off the ole’ CTR measure but only if they are producing content in social media that can be disseminated by the consumer. So, if your brand makes it to the WALL of a consumer on Facebook – your brand will enjoy much higher CTR’s and overall awareness measures.

AdWeek writes that a startup called Vitrue has developed an innovative algorithm for measuring CTR’s in social media. Because social media audiences log in at different times you cannot anticipate that every friend in your list sees every item in your wall posts. Vitrue estimates that at any moment about 1/12th of Facebookers are online. Using those measures, CTR’s from wall postings might be measured without the need for decimal points and media buyer smoke and mirrors.

And we’re excited to see companies like Vitrue cracking the code to help us prove that CTR’s can be measured before the decimal and not after.
 
Keep in mind that wall posts with content that the consumer is not asking for (Like your tag line, your slogan, your logo large and spinning) won’t even make it to the wall in the first place. If you give the consumer value, information or entertainment they will carry your brand torch.

Continue to scream at the consumer with a megaphone and eventually they will put in earplugs.