Newcastle - Follow The Money

I love the work that Droga5 has been doing for Newcastle Brown Ale over the past couple years.  Their 'No Bollocks' communications strategy is all underpinned by the idea of 'good beer without the bollocks of traditional beer advertising.'

Their latest effort/stunt is simple.  Follow Newcastle on Twitter to get a check for one millionth of a million dollars, which is actually one dollar.  As they say in the video 'Why endure the unsolicited marketing of other beer brands for free when you could endure Newcastle's unsolicited marketing and get paid.'

The stunt comes from the real desire to get more people on Twitter to follow the brand:

"Basically, the brief from the client was to get people on Twitter to follow us. Our brand's philosophy has always been to do things in the most No Bollocks, no bullsh*t way," Bell says. "We got the budget for the project to get people to follow them and said, 'What if we just gave people money to follow us?' which was pretty much it. There are middlemen places where you can go to get people to follow you, but it's $3 to $8 per follower and we thought, 'Why not just cut out the middleman?'"

While most brands are trying to make an emotional connection with their consumers, I love the straight up transactional nature of this in a way that both makes fun of their competitors and perfectly aligns with the overall 'No Bollocks' theme.

Other Things I Like But Don't Have Time To Write Up - Steinlager, VW, MTN

Steinlager - Be The Artist, Not The Canvas
I love this ad from Steinlager to promote responsible drinking.  Rather than tap into the typical cliches around responsible drinking, it appeals the juvenile, yet common occurrence that can happen when young men get too hammered.


VW - Take On Me
I'm blown away that Take On Me hasn't been used in an Ad before.  VW remakes the classic song to promote their no-charge scheduled maintenance on every new VW.

MTN - The Everywhere Library
Another great example of a brand doing good, in this case the Telco MTN brings books to students across Africa via SMS.


Posted by: Reuben Halper


Posted by: Reuben Halper