I hope 2009 is a great year for all of us.

Sairis Group and Activate team up to deliver an exciting new Quicksilver branded mobile game for the launch of Quicksilver’s new flagship store in Tokyo. The Quicksilver surfing game uses the latest patented Mobiactions mobile interactive video and voice response (IVVR) technology where users can “dial in” and immediately be immersed in a surfing game where they can move around on the wave and pick up prizes using their phone keypad.

“With the advent of advertising in mobile games, consumers are now interacting with brands in a more engaging and meaningful way – something which youth marketers have found it increasingly tricky to do.” says Tim Smith of Sairis Group.

“Now we can enable advertisers like Quicksilver to engage consumers in a new and exciting manner, giving the consumer a unique and fun experience whilst at the same time the brand is remembered as an entertaining innovator”.

“In terms of memorability and value of experience this branded gaming concept far outranks simple web based, IM or SMS promotions.” says Gerald Gentemann of Activate.

“It is a totally non-invasive method of engagement, and we can provide a brand with an interactive experience that their consumer chooses to partake in. With over 100 million mobile phone users in Japan alone, we provide a key touch-point for a brand and literally put them in the hands of their target consumer.” says Tyron Giuliani, co-founder of Activate K.K.

The MobiActions patented platform seamlessly integrates synchronous call-to-action based game play, providing high levels of customer-brand engagement across multiple channels including mobile, PC and in-store. The experience is 100% “in call” and requires no downloads or additional applications on the handset.

The platform may be extended across any number of media, thus providing a 360 degree approach to brand campaigns. Users may experience the action on PC, mobile and in-store. At each point of contact usage statistics are gathered.

MobiActions also provides incentives to the customer since the ‘wins’ may be easily converted to in-store premiums. This makes it an ideal platform to enhance any loyalty or premium marketing program.

Mobiactions is built around specially integrated components and features the VEEDIA® Flash Gateway as one of the core systems. Sairis Group is an authorized reseller for VEEDIA® in Asia and Oceania.

The VEEDIA® The Flash 3G Video Gateway is a platform that permits mobile users to access Adobe Flash-based web applications with video and multimedia content by simply placing a standard video call from any 3G or SIP device. This means users can access live streaming webcams, pre-recorded and interactive video, games, animations and more. No WAP portal or installation is necessary.

While everyone is compiling their resolutions and focusing on all the things that they will “do” in 2009, I am putting together my “to don’t” list. These are the behaviors and actions I will hopefully stay away from in the new year. So, in 2009 I will NOT:

Set unrealistic or unfair expectations of myself. Say, “yes” to everything without first assessing the emotional, professional, personal, karmic ROI.

Solely focus on short-term benefits unless it is a pathway to accomplishing long-term goals.

Get complacent.

Count on anything before it is a reality.

Forget to network because it often benefits someone other than myself.

Stop critically thinking, and refrain from always shooting holes in others’ ideas.

Lose sight of the fact that I can replace my job but not my family.

Stress!

I am sure there are more,,,any thoughts?

Here’s “Wordplay,” the first TV ad from newly crowned Pepsi shop TBWAChiatDay. The animated montage features feel-good messages (“love,” “optimism,” “joy”) with the brand’s spanking new logo taking the place of the letter “O.” Also on display: Happy colors and upbeat music, the latter in the form of the jangle-pop anthem “Energy” by The Apples in Stereo. And the words “Happy 2009″ appear in different languages.

It’s all aimed at millennials. The commercial works the whole “let’s have a positive new year!” routine a bit too hard. It’s a lot like the beverage itself: Sweet and slightly elevating at first (owing to the caffeine, in the case of the drink), but a bit too syrupy overall and liable to leave behind a bitter aftertaste.

Now don’t get me wrong; the spot isn’t actively bad. It’s just uninspired and, to extend the cola metaphor, despite its peppy visuals and soundtrack, perhaps a tad flat…let me rephrase that, after 48 years with BBDO and great advertising this is more than a tad flat, it is boring.

If you have any interest in e-tailing, e-marketing, marketing technology or fashion, check this out. An article in last Friday’s edition of Women’s Wear Daily (WWD)—the must-read daily newspaper of the fashion industry—announced that Polo Ralph Lauren is about to embark on selling its products through cell phones (presumably in the U.S.).

“Taking its philosophy of “merchan-tainment” to a new level, Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. is breaking into mobile commerce — m-commerce — incorporating technology that allows shoppers to buy Polo merchandise from their cell phones.

To realize this, the company is incorporating Quick Response Technology codes in its ads, mailers and store windows, which potential shoppers can scan and download on their camera phones. Once scanned, the site m.ralphlauren.com allows a mobile phone user to enter the world of Ralph Lauren — not just by offering the limited edition 2008 U.S. Open collection, classic polo and oxford shirts, chinos, and even the Ricky bag, but also with exclusive video content and a style guide.”

A bit further on, the article goes on to say that “Polo is the first luxury retailer to tap into the QR technology, which is already popular in Asia and Europe.”

As the piece is written, readers could be forgiven for assuming that Ralph Lauren is somehow out in front of other luxury brands when it comes to cell phone e-tailing and technology adoption. But truth be told, here in Japan, a number of luxury brands have been operating cell phone commerce sites for some time. Open any of Japan’s top fashion magazines this month and you’ll see that Gucci is using QR codes prominently in its advertising right now—and is using a customized code design, the latest trend amongst design sensitive brands.

If you’re new to QR codes, they (and other emerging technologies), can be used by marketers in a number of ground-breaking ways. To see how they’re being leveraged as powerful marketing tools in Japan, read this Japan Marketing News article from early 2007.

AMC is teaming with the A.T. Cross Co. for an integrated marketing partnership involving its drama series “Mad Men.”

“Mad Men,” is AMC’s first original drama series and was created by Matthew Weiner, an Emmy winner for executive producing and writing “The Sopranos.” “Men” is set in New York in 1960 and revolves around the ruthlessly competitive men and women working on Madison Avenue.

The AMC partnership with A.T. Cross includes product integration and co-branded campaigns on-air, online and in more than 200 stores where Cross pens are sold. “This series offers a unique opportunity to showcase iconic brands like Cross in a compelling, entertainment environment,” AMC senior vp marketing Linda Schupack said. “The partnership with Cross provides AMC with the opportunity to build awareness for ‘Mad Men’ throughout their extensive network of stores.”

AMC said that as part of its marketing deal with A.T. Cross, the company’s pens were used on-set and will be placed in episodes throughout the series. AMC also will feature the Cross pen in a customized “Mad Men” vignette and online at amctv.com in a photo gallery section that features art from the show. A poster featuring a character from the series using a Cross pen with the tagline, “Our classic signature pen … A new signature series” will be displayed in more than 200 retail outlets nationwide where Cross pens are sold, AMC said.

FedEx is punting on the 2009 Super Bowl, and the undisputed king of the Big Game — its agency, my former agency, BBDO — will be a lot more on the sidelines this year.

“Now’s not the time,” Steve Pacheco, ad director at Super Bowl stalwart FedEx, wrote on a company blog that the $3 million for a 30-second spot on NBC’s telecast wasn’t a prudent expenditure in tough economic times. “Make no mistake, our advertising presence in 18 Super Bowls since 1989 has strategically allowed FedEx to establish itself as a household name,” Mr. Pacheco wrote. “As a responsible employer of more than 290,000 employees and contractors worldwide, there is a time to justify such an ad spend and a time to step back. … A Super Bowl ad buy is not where we should put dollars at this time.”

That news — along with the fact that BBDO has lost prolific Super Bowl advertiser Pepsi in the U.S. to fellow Omnicom agencies TBWA/Chiat/Day and Arnell Group — leaves the onetime MVP agency of Super Bowl advertising prepping only half the spots it did last year. BBDO will produce only three commercials for Super Bowl XLIII, down from six commercials produced for the 2008 Super Bowl, seven in 2007 and five in 2006. BBDO’s only spots for the 2009 Super Bowl will be a 60-second commercial for the National Football League, a 30-second for Monster.com, and one more of undetermined length for NBC parent General Electric Co. (The game is being broadcast on NBC on Feb. 1.)

It’s a surprising development for my old agency that over the years has produced a steady stream of memorable Super Bowl ads not only for Pepsi and FedEx, but for Visa, Pizza Hut, Frito-Lay, Gillette, Charles Schwab and more.

A BBDO spokeswoman referred calls to FedEx regarding the shipping company’s decision not to advertise during the Super Bowl. Asked about the agency being down to just three commercials during the game, the spokeswoman declined to comment.

I think it’s a blow to BBDO’s DNA. It’s who they are. BBDO, they were the king of the Super Bowl.
BBDO would be preparing the day after the Super Bowl for next year’s Super Bowl. I wonder if they will be back or has a combination of the economy and interactive web advertising killed the big TV buys forever.

Pepsi ads created by BBDO have won six of the 20 USA Today Ad Meter polls, in which readers judge and critique the Super Bowl’s commercials. But the agency hasn’t won the crown since a 1998 Pepsi spot featuring a sky-surfer and a goose. Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser or Bud Light — handled by Omnicom sibling DDB — has won every year since.
BBDO created some eight and a half minutes of spots for the game as recently as Super Bowl XXXV in 2001 for Pepsi, Visa, Pizza Hut and Frito-Lay, which included the rollout of the “Joy of Pepsi” campaign.

In 1997, the agency persuaded Muhammad Ali to appear in a spot for Pizza Hut that would air during the 1998 Super Bowl, introducing the fast-food chain’s new pizza, “The Greatest.” Mr. Ali’s nickname was “The Greatest of All-Time.” The spot was produced with plenty of time to go before the big game, but Pizza Hut officials decided at the eleventh hour to postpone the launch of “The Greatest” and continue marketing “The Edge.” BBDO started on Dec. 15, 1997, to produce a spot featuring “The Edge,” and had it done in time for the Jan. 26, 1998 Super Bowl.

For that same Super Bowl, BBDO produced a spot for FedEx entitled “Apology.” The commercial featured no sound or pictures, only color bars and text — which told viewers they should be seeing an advertisement for a fictional company, but the company’s ad agency used another shipping company, and the ad never arrived.

“I was born under unusual circumstances.”

Those opening words, spoken in voice-over narration by Brad Pitt, who plays the title character in David Fincher’s much anticipated—and already much heralded—new film, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” make a perfectly understated introduction to the stoical Button, but also to the epic movie in which Fincher has framed him.

Among the unusual circumstances surrounding the making of the film is that film figured so little in it. Although nearly every major Hollywood movie of this size and budget is still made on film, “Button,” except for some high-speed and underwater sequences, was shot digitally on high-definition Thomson Viper cameras directly to hard drive, without ever touching tape, then captured into Final Cut Pro for editing.

Shooting this way allowed Fincher to bring film-like resolution to the screen without surrendering the speed and flexibility he could only achieve by building his movie entirely from data. And because Fincher had used the same workflow to create his critically acclaimed previous film “Zodiac,” he was confident that it could be ratcheted up to meet the even greater narrative, technical, and logistical challenges of “Button.”

If David Fincher believes he can pull it off I would always believe him…I used Fincher three times when he was a TV commercial director for Levi’s and Coca-Cola. The last spot was during the same time he discovered the script for Se7en. I knew I was probably using him the last time for TV.

Early critical reaction to the film suggests he was certainly right. “Button,” which opens Christmas Day, has been nominated for five Golden Globe awards; shortlisted by nearly every credible Oscar handicapper; and touted by at least one critic—who was moved to call it early—as “one of the best films of the decade.”

Long In Development

Since it was first published by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1922, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” the story of a man who is born in his 80s and ages in reverse, has alternately teased Hollywood and scared it away. Not low on the list of discouragements was the technical challenge of showing a character convincingly morph from a newborn nonagenarian to a senescent infant over the span of nearly a century. But in the 1980s, the idea of making “Button” was again making the rounds in Hollywood.

It was about then that a young special effects assistant named David Fincher first saw a “Button” script floating around George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic, where he worked. He saw another promising “Button” script in the early 90s, as he was building his reputation as a groundbreaking director of music videos (Madonna, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith) and as a budding film director, but he passed to pursue the edgy features (“Se7en”; “The Game”; “Fight Club”) that would win him significant fan attention and critical acclaim. But when in 2003 he saw a third iteration of the script, this time by Oscar winning screenwriter Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump”), Fincher was smitten.

“I’d never read the short story,” says Fincher. “I’d read a great script around 1992, but I didn’t think it was makeable. Then twelve years later it was rewritten by Eric Roth, a guy I have a lot of respect for. It was a beautiful, beautiful story, and I thought, ‘This would make an amazing movie.’”

As It Is Rewritten

Roth’s script, which he revised again before production, takes nothing more from the original Fitzgerald story than the central conceit. Besides moving the story from Baltimore to New Orleans, he introduced a framing device in which a young woman, Caroline (Julia Ormond), reads aloud from Benjamin’s diary to her elderly mother Daisy (Cate Blanchett), who is dying in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina approaches.

The diary details the story of Benjamin, born in New Orleans in 1918 on the last day of World War I as his mother dies in delivery. Abandoned by his wealthy father on the steps of a New Orleans retirement home, he is taken in and raised by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), the caretaker. As a bespectacled 70-year-old child he first meets Daisy Miller, age 5; as a 60-year-old teenager he signs on to a tugboat to see the world; in his 50-year-old equivalency he travels to Russia and an affair with a diplomat’s wife (Tilda Swinton); in his “forties” he reunites with Daisy (Cate Blanchett), now 20, in New York. And in what Fincher calls the “sweet spot,” where their ages have aligned, they fall in love and marry, even as time works to pull them out of alignment again.

Fincher’s account of what drew him to the script suggests that there is enough darkness mixed with light in the film to satisfy even fans drawn to the director’s signature noir. “The greatest love stories are always measured against the specter of death,” he says. “I liked how love and death were actually inexorably intertwined in this.”

On Location

On location in New Orleans, and then later in Montreal, Fincher—famously efficient on set—and DP Claudio Miranda shot in 4:4:4 RGB DPX format with Viper digital cameras and a minimal camera crew of “no more than five people.”

“Shooting is no fun because it’s just heartbreaking compromise,” says Fincher. But shooting in high-def digital helped keep the compromises in check. “The thing I love about HD is that I can see what things are really going to look like. I want to be able to look at the monitor and confidently say, ‘OK, we’re done with that.’ I don’t want to think I like what I see and then be disappointed by tomorrow’s dailies.”

Each day’s shooting was meticulously planned and rehearsed, and the mandate was to keep everything as naturalistic and realistic as possible to ground the essential truths of the story.

Fincher’s Japanese Coke TVC

Post-production supervisor Peter Mavromates explains how digital acquisition complemented Fincher’s shooting style:

“People talk a lot about the number of takes, but what actually defines David’s style is how many different camera angles he uses. If there were a quotient that measured angles per scene, David’s would be very high compared to other filmmakers. So it’s very liberating for him to be able to shoot those angles and not have to sweat the whole lab cost thing.”

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Don’t panic.

The earth will keep spinning on its axis and marketers of all stripes will need to communicate and persuade customers and prospects. Focus on the basic issues in your business. Invest extra time and energy to find new ways to conceive, craft and transmit messages that better differentiate and more clearly communicate the value and the urgency of your brand.

Don’t Get Distracted.

The economy is in a free fall. Most of us hope Obama knows more than we do. We pray that he and all those new appointees have a really good plan. He might.

But whatever he’s got up his sleeve won’t make things better on January 22nd. So focus on the stuff you can affect yourselves. Ignore things you have no control over. We all have to assume the notion that most things are out of our control so we have to use our time and energy wisely to impact the handful of things we actually can exert control over; mostly ourselves. Take a short-term focus. Cover each month’s bills. Take one step forward after the next. Try to ignore the daily doomsday screeching and then endless warnings that the sky is falling down.

Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.

Great relationships are forged in adversity. Now is the time to stick close to your clients and your people. Mine and harness the energy, the goodwill, the advocacy, the insights and the ideas that often go unexploited during the normal course of business. Invest in each other. Hold up your value proposition to a 360 SWOT analysis. Find new and better ways to reach out your customers.

Don’t Ignore Your Network.

Social networking demonstrates that we are linked together. We are navigating this crisis together. So leverage your connections. Reach out to others. Ask questions, share ideas and share resources. The whole is stronger than the sum of the parts, so leverage the whole. Remember that the value of a network expands exponentially with use. An unused network degrades rapidly.

Don’t Bring Coupons to a Party.

Social media is evolving, emerging and morphing everyday. You wouldn’t come to a party at my house and pass out coupons. We’d think you were rude and gross. Facebook, MySpace and others are the digital online equivalents of that party. Understand the media and enter cautiously recognizing that the brand is NOT in control, consumers are. Take your cues from them and respect their sensibilities.

Don’t Stop Experimenting.

We are in the “wild west” phase of social, mobile and online video media. There are no ideas that are too crazy especially since our technologists are inventing, extending and mashing up new things daily. The recession makes these platforms and the creative content to fuel them affordable and measurable. So get below your competitor’s radar and play around with images, messages and media. Who knows maybe your “wild” idea will become the new “best practices”?

Don’t Ignore Mobile Media.

The new generation of Blackberries and the iPhone are important steps on the evolutionary path toward a single multi-purpose device that combines, integrates, synchronizes and aggregates computers, the Internet, telephony, credit and debit cards, digital photography, and who knows what could be next. And while it might take a few years for the number of daily users to reach hundreds of millions, this phenomenon will be upon us before you know what hit you. That means NOW is the time to get familiar with mobile media. Begin thinking about the idea of constant access to the Net and constant consumer motion and communication. This development will forever change they way we stimulate brand awareness, preference and purchase and change shopping expectations and behavior in ways we can’t yet predict..

Don’t Write Off Direct Marketing.

When marketing money gets tight, bean counters rule. Direct marketing continues to enjoy great public acceptance, strong ROI, measurability and an under-exposed degree of creativity and inventiveness. Direct mail, DRTV, telemarketing and other DM tactics are proven result-getters which can be pulsed or turned off, and on at will. Expect smart marketers to default to direct marketing and look for smart DM players to do well in hard times.

Don’t Forget to Measure What Matters.

Most marketing is assessed two ways. We measure effectiveness in returning profitable business results and we count efficiency in terms of the value received compared to the cost, usually expressed in some form of ROI calculation. There are millions of other distracting and partially relevant things to count, sort and calculate. But in a recession focus on two simple questions; “How much profitable new business did this drive?” and “Was it worth it?”

Don’t Abandon Customer Satisfaction.

Acquiring new customers costs a multiple of delighting and retaining existing ones. In tough times you need the efficiency of happy customers referring their friends. Focus on customer service. Talk to customers. Listen to them too. Solicit their ideas and feedback. Institute loyalty and reward programs. Do whatever you can to encourage them to buy more. Emphasize customer service and include the voice of your customer in your product and marketing plans.