Cobra Beer Helps U.K. Drinkers Discover New India

Cobra’s “Splendidly Indian” campaign represents the vibrancy of life in India, specifically Mumbai, to sell a British-made beer in the U.K.

Karan Bilimoria, an Indian immigrant to the U.K., launched the brand in 1989 and sold a majority stake to Molson Coors Brewing Co. in 2009. That led to a bigger marketing budget and the aim of becoming a top-10 U.K. beer brand. Brewed in Burton-on-Trent, U.K., Cobra is an increasingly popular choice in Britain’s South Asian restaurants.

Developed by Beattie McGuinness Bungay, the TV campaign broke this month and is supported by a YouTube channel and Facebook brand timeline.

The spot takes viewers on a fictional train journey that exposes the cool side of India as passengers wait for the beer trolley to bring them a fresh Cobra. Built on the growing familiarity with Indian imagery, brought to Western viewers by movies like “Darjeeling Limited,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” the ad suggests the excitement of a subcontinental journey, minus the stress and confusion. Helping the good times roll, a relaxed brewmaster revels in socializing with passengers and savoring the quality of his own creation. Just like the beer, he is “superbly smooth.” (www.adage.com)

Supercuts

More and more advertisers are using under-the-radar musical acts to burnish their own credentials, and now Supercuts is jumping on the bandwagon with “Rock the Cut,” a pun-riddled integrated push by ad agency Element 79 that likens the hair-salon chain’s stylists to aspiring rock stars—or something. The TV work, which the client describes as “documentary style” but feels more like testimonials, pairs indie acts like four-piece Vintage Trouble with Supercuts employees, and shows the artists alternately performing songs and chatting about how awesome their Supercuts haircuts are—endorsements echoed by the stylists, who go on about how awesome the Supercuts haircuts they provided are. “You have a pride in the way you step out into public, especially when you have a good haircut,” says Ty Taylor, Vintage Trouble’s frontman, in one of the 60-second spots below. “You’re going to leave looking like a rock star,” Supercuts hairdresser Diana reassures the camera.

Tying music, which tends to be inherently image conscious, into advertising for a salon chain isn’t as much of a stretch as it might be for other categories (hardware or laundry detergent, for example). But Supercuts’ mass-market status, and the gung-ho praise from the artists, makes the campaign feel like a more blatant than usual grab for authenticity—the instinct that drives most big advertisers’ interest in indie music. (Brands get to pretend they’re edgier than they actually are, while bands get cash and exposure.)

Beyond the broadcast component, Supercuts is diving deeper into the niches of obscure acts with an online hub featuring tracks and bios from more than 600 artists in a range of genres; four custom channels on Clear Channel-owned Internet music service iHeartRadio; and concert promotions through Live Nation. The featured bands are tasked with promoting the brand on major social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare and Pinterest, which means Supercuts’ marketing tentacles are even further entwined in the musicians’ relationships with their audiences—molding fundamentally countercultural artists into a small army of corporate endorsers. (www.adweek.com)

Dodgers Sold at Auction

Basketball legend Magic Johnson led a group that won an auction for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team Tuesday night, marking the final chapter in a soap-opera-style saga for the legendary franchise.

With a bid of $2.15 billion, including the surrounding land, Mr. Johnson, controlling partner Mark Walter and partners Peter Guber, Stan Kasten, Bobby Patton and Todd Boehly beat out a group of some of the wealthiest businessmen in the country to land a team that is one of Major League Baseball’s flagship franchises. The sales figure shatters the previous record sales price for a U.S. sports franchise, Steve Ross’s purchase of the Miami Dolphins for $1.1 billion three years ago.

But buying the Dodgers now comes with a unique opportunity to launch a potentially lucrative regional sports network in the country’s second-largest market, or sign a new local broadcast deal with the current broadcaster, News Corp.’s Fox unit, which has already offered the team a 17-year extension valued at nearly $3 billion. (News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal).

The sales process was led by Blackstone LP, the New York-based investment advisory firm, which held the auction Tuesday evening, just hours after Major League Baseball approved three finalists in the bidding, allowing current owner Frank McCourt to accept the highest and best offer. (www.wsj.com)

Get a Deal and a Reward, Just by Using Your Card

GIVEN that the market for daily deals is saturated with offers from Web sites like Groupon, flash sale sites like Gilt.com and credit card companies offering cash back and airline miles, it might appear that small businesses are raking in profits from customers seduced by such great deals.

Not so, says Tom Beecher, president and chief executive of Cartera Commerce, a company that specializes in what are known as card-linked offers — part daily deal, part card reward program. (www.nytimes.com)

Strong Brands Built Through Trust, Then Action

According to Harris Interactive’s most recent massive EquiTrend Study (which measures the equity of more than 1,500 brands across just about every possible category) nearly every top scorer shared those two commonalities: that people had good feelings toward them and they encouraged people to take an action toward purchase.

“They have to be perceived as a brand people trust or are predisposed to take an action. They have to feel positive and want to purchase that product,” Robert Fronk, executive vice president and practice lead for corporate reputation at Harris, tells Marketing Daily. “There are many brands who are frequently seen, but don’t get that action.”

Among the category leaders, many are not surprising. Southwest Airlines in the“Value Airline” category, for instance. Or Honda among automotive manufacturers. Or Coca-Cola among soft drinks. There are a few, however, that thanks to a third factor (familiarity) doesn’t get weighted as heavily, but carries a lot of power behind it. Kayak.com, for instance, scores well in the travel category, despite being not nearly as well-known as an Expedia or Travelocity (or even Orbitz). In the health-oriented not-for-profit category, Stand Up 2 Cancer, scored so well among despite a relatively low familiarity, that it managed to top the category, Fronk says.

Among all of the brands rated, Harris was also able to name 15 brands as those with “staying power,” meaning they had topped their respective categories for the past eight years. Among those brands are: Blue Cross Blue Shield, Coca-Cola, Craftsman, Gatorade, Hallmark Greeting Cards, HBO, Holiday Inn, Life Savers, National Geographic Magazine, Oreos, Sony, Southwest Airlines, Subway, Verizon Wireless and Visa. All of those companies, Fronk says, have done admirable jobs managing their brand reputations and images.

“All of those brands, which are very familiar, are not what you’d call edgy in their categories,” he says. “These brands all share that [feeling that] if you’re seen with the wrapper or the packaging, you’d never be embarrassed.” (www.mediapost.com)

Progressive’s Flo: No To Snooki!

Progressive Insurance is using Flo, the proprietress of the fictive insurance store, to go social about “The Best Day Ever.” The campaign involves a series of posts on the character’s Facebook and Twitter accounts that examine — kind of tongue-in-cheek — ways to have the best possible day, or at least not the worst.

The effort, for which Progressive Insurance partnered with New York-based social-media content publisher and aggregator BuzzFeed, extends an advertisement that Progressive first rolled out last year. The ad has a Progressive store customer — one Jimmy — fantasizing about his best day ever: one spent with Flo on an outdoor expedition involving fishing, cooking out, riding ATVs and the like.

Jon Steinberg, president of BuzzFeed, explains that the effort involves several posts by Flo, the leading one being an animated version of the ad. That is followed by nostalgic posts showing characters from the ‘80s with the implication that going back, if only in your mind, will bring … well, perhaps not Nirvana, but at least enough equanimity to produce a “Best Day Ever.” Steinberg says that the look-back makes sense because nostalgia is also inherently buzzworthy. The “Iconic ’80s Characters That’ll Bring You Back” post has characters like My Little Pony, the ALF alien, Smurfs, and of course, big-hair rock bands and big hair in general.

Another post offers 20 songs that will give you a best day, and the third has 10 ways to have best day ever, a post that also includes spending a day with someone you like (which also features the animated version of the Jimmy/Flo ad) as well as suggestions like swimming in a pool full of puppies, living in a zombie-proof house, and not reading or looking at anything that has anything to do with Snooki. (Which means if you’ve read this, your day is ruined, as is mine.) (www.mediapost.com)

Chevrolet Gets Common Cause With Commonwealth

Chevrolet is hoping to create a lot of efficiencies and build a lot of bridges — both over physical distances, and between big media holding companies — with its decision to give Chevrolet global advertising oversight to a newly formed agency, Commonwealth.

Commonwealth, as the name suggests, is an agency by treaty between an Omnicom agency, San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, and an Interpublic shop, New York-based McCann Erickson Worldwide.

This agency appointment combined with the recent selection of Carat as GM’s agency for its media planning and buying operations is also intended to align with the corporation’s efforts to trim the fat, partly by eliminating redundancy. As global CMO Joel Ewanick explains, global oversight from an advisory board whose membership includes Jeff Goodby, Washington Olivetto (CCO of McCann Worldgroup in Latin America); Linus Karlsson (CCO McCann Erickson in New York and London), and Prasoon Joshi (CEO, McCann Worldgroup, India) means good work from an agency in, say, Colombia, can be applied to other markets, where appropriate. That wasn’t done in the past because each market and agency had its own moat and castle creatively.

“These agency consolidations are expected to create about $2 billion in savings over the next five years, with a portion used to take advantage of key global marketing opportunities and strengthen the focus on our global Chevrolet brand, and a portion hitting the bottom line,” Ewanick said, adding that one of the first tasks for Commonwealth will be dealing with whether or not to keep Chevrolet’s “Chevy Runs Deep” theme. (www.mediapost.com)