After our “Cause Marketing Gets Bigger. And Smaller.” post from last week, a couple of subsequent examples popped that were worth passing along.
For starters, we mentioned that a number of cause marketing efforts were tapping the wisdom of crowds to generate unorthodox solutions to daunting social problems. PechaKucha, who we’ve profiled before, recently brought together [...]

Last week, Ad Age ran a brief article titled, “The Most Influential Cause Marketing Campaigns.” Much of the list is familiar; we’re all aware of the massive efforts like the Livestrong bracelets and Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. However, some of the campaigns on the list took on a decidedly narrow mission, such as AmEx’s [...]

A: Um, everything. Duh.
eMarketer (via Cone) recently considered this question across a number of different categories (including many of our clients’ industries), and the results are unanimously un-unanimous. The data suggests that consumers want information and entertainment, and incentives, and a forum for feedback, and even marketing in these “new media” spaces. (Demanding, aren’t they?)
While [...]

Brands, are you really confident about the quality of your products and services? Are you certain that you could send your customers into your competitors’ arms, and they’d still come running back to you?
You’d better be. Welcome to the world of Ubiquitous Connoisseurship.
See, there’s a reason we made this trend #1 in our 10 Trends [...]

Maybe it’s because I just cleaned up some pretty significant soy sauce spillage at my desk, but I’m especially receptive to Heinz’s announcement that they’ve just reinvented the ketchup packet. (For the first time in 40 years, no less.)
Citing the old packets as “the bane of our consumers,” especially for those eating on the go, [...]

Is there any segment of the population more vocal than the sports fan?
It seems like anyone who is even minimally interested in a given sport will inevitably claim that they could do a better job of coaching the team, managing the franchise, running the league, or broadcasting the games.
About that last one: it’s time to [...]

We’ve got a sneaking suspicion that our readers will dig these vintage bottle designs created for Schweppes.
Apparently designed for on-premise sales in Australia, you can catch close ups of each bottle at TheDieline.com.

And we’re right. About trend #10 from our 10 Trends for 2010, that is.
It’s as if Coca-Cola read our trend deck, fell in love with the notion of Delighting Consumers with Hidden Surprises, and came up with a guerilla campaign that fits the notion to a T. That notion, of course, warns of a consumer [...]

Ohhh, this is going to be awkward.
See, friend-of-The-Source Kiki Bruner had this longstanding tryst that did not end well. He put everything into the relationship, but got nothing back, and now his temptress is going to be getting all kinds of media attention.
We’re referring to QR codes, of course.
Way back in March of 2007, we [...]

Oh, Axe.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they admittedly do their one thing very, very well.
Take the ad to the right, for example. The print ad (from Uruguay) is for Axe’s line of Day and Night scents, with the tagline “One is suitable for general audiences. The other is not.”
To bring this idea to life, the [...]