What’s In This Issue?
The Portuguese "Bank" That Holds Handpainted Tiles
In the Portuguese city of Porto, city officials have been collecting lost and damaged azulejos (painted ceramic tiles) for more than 25 years and storing them in a "Bank of Materials." The bank loans out tiles to building owners to help them match the façade and offers the city a clever method for maintaining the historical beauty of the city.
Emma Thompson: It's Not Enough For Women To Be BadAsses
"Women now invent the weapons and shoot the weapons and are tough and not allowed to cry,” Thompson says in this wide ranging interview. “We skipped from being in the kitchen to being in the tank, and there’s nothing in between. So we still have failed to explore and bring to the screen what being a woman is.” It's a much needed perspective in a world that sometimes seems to have overcorrected to Fierce Femininity at the expense of all other personalities.
How Burger King Launched the Mobile Ad Campaign Of The Year
If there is one thing I'm a fan of when it comes to marketing, it's a challenger brand strategy. We are employing the same thing this week at BookExpo to launch our Non-Obvious Guide Series.
Though it's hard to consider Burger King a "challenger" considering their own dominance, it turns out they have about half as many locations across the US at McDonald's. In this clever campaign they use this fact to their advantage and combine technology with creativity in a beautiful way to promote their "Secret Whopper" offer for 1 cent when you order within the geofenced area of a McDonald's location.
Even if you're not working with the kind of budget they were, there are plenty of things to learn from this campaign, including how to integrate messages across channels, how to actually get your lawyers to work for you instead of killing ideas early and perhaps most importantly ... how to win by using your competitors advantage against them. Great strategy and even better execution.
