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Detailed on an official page created by Ogilvy Brazil, the Huggies TweetPee is a small, connected device that attaches to the front of a baby’s diaper and alerts a parent when the baby wets the diaper and needs a change. Using a small humidity sensor, the TweetPee constantly monitors humidity levels and fires off a tweet notification to a linked smartphone in case of an accident.

A few of the messages sent from the TweetPee include phrases like “Time to Change,” “Oops, Did a few drops,” and “Everything OK here.” 

Beyond helping parents keep their kid dry and comfortable, this baby gear can also keep track of how many diapers will be needed for the upcoming month based on past habits. 

At this time, the Huggies TweetPee is being test marketed to Brazilian customers, but The Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the owner of the Huggies brand, hasn’t announced any plans to roll out the TweetPee in North America. In addition, Ogilvy Brazil hasn’t announced the availability of the TweetPee sensor or the price on the device. (ad agency charlotte)

We were very excited to spend some time with Martin Lindstrom recently discussing a potential new engagment for a regional retailer. Martin is providing his retail and branding expertise and experience to the client, and, hopefully, birdsong gregory will have the opportunity to bring the brand to life online, at the shelf, and at every relevant touch point in between.

If you've never read any of Martin's books or heard him speak, make it a priority. His pioneering research in neuromarketing and the role that sensory stimlulation plays in a retail environment has had a strong influence on our agency's work (e.g., the world's first scented billboard)

Martin is a Danish author and a Time Magazine Influential 100 Honoree, whose books include Buyology - Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Brandwashed - Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, and Brand Sense - Sensory Secrets Behind the Stuff We Buy.

Major consumer brands have been using various neuromarketing techniques for years, but most have been reluctant to talk about that activity. The idea of measuring a consumer’s subconscious preferences has always felt a bit Orwellian, but companies are now coming clean in their efforts to go beyond the (often) glib responses of qualitative research to gain a better understanding of what's really going in our minds when we interact with brands and their advertising.

According to Millward Brown, a global agency specializing in brand and consumer research, this year’s commitment from Unilever and Coca-Cola represents the largest-scale adoption of facial coding technology in the industry to date.

The facial platform uses proprietary software to interpret viewers’ facial expressions to gauge how viewers feel about the ads they see. “Facial analysis adds depth to our understanding and builds on our validated metrics to delivery new insights in an easily applied and cost-effective way,” Graham Page, head of Millward’s neuroscience practice said.

Millward, which says it’s used the facial analysis on over 400 advertising research projects, expects to see great growth in the use of this technology this year.

Millward doesn’t only use the facial analysis to gauge effectiveness – results are also compared with survey responses to help marketers better craft and target campaigns.

Besides targeting ads, shopper marketing agencies are also looking to get their hands on facial recognition technology built into TVs to monitor television ratings and get a sense of how many people are watching ads at any particular time, as well as how they are emotionally responsive to them. 

While the technologies used in these projects don’t involve actual measurements of brain waves or activity, the commitment of major brands to the importance of measuring subconscious preferences is significant for the neuromarketing business as a whole – and a trend our Charlotte marketing agency is closely watching.

Brands are always on the lookout for the next trend to surf. The only problem is they tend to be late to the game.

Scope has apparently figured out that bacon is trending higher than smoke from a grease fire. In an a very thoughtful attempt at an April Fool’s joke (this new product was "launched" on April 1 of this year), the mouthwash brand released a commercial for its new product: Scope Bacon, bacon flavored mouthwash. How refreshing. Here's a link to the microsite

It’s a move that’s sure to get attention. (Our ad agency in Charlotte is writing about it, after all.) But Procter & Gable brand wins few points for originality. After all, the makers of Bacon Salt for years have cornered the market on fake novelty product. They’ve rolled out everything from bacon chapstick to bacon lube over the last couple years. There are all kinds of bacon products from others, like bacon shaving cream, bacon-scented candles, bacon flavored condoms. Now Scope wants in on the bacon action.

Scope, through its agency Publicis Kaplan Thaler, is encouraging people to spread the word about it using the hashtag #scopebacon. It’s a pretty standard example of a brand associating itself with slash poking fun at a kitschy cultural trend, but it works coming from a big brand that you wouldn’t necessarily think has a sense of humor. Mouthwash isn’t the sexiest or most entertaining or products. But just add bacon and voila.

Heck. We hope you have, but if you've never given this excellent mix of genres and smooth transitions a listen, you definitely should. It's not in iTunes. Rather, you have to go to their website and open up a stream. At our Charlotte ad agency, we spend a LOT of time sitting quietly in front of a computers either designing or researching, and a mellow, aurally interesting flow of tunes is indispensable to the quality of our office life (a couple of Rocketfish wireless speakers help ensure high fidelity).

Plus, the DJ's speak French and have a sugary, über-cool tone of voice and style.

FIP (originally France Inter Paris) is a French radio network, founded in 1971 as part of the Radio France group. The concept behind FIP has scarcely changed since its founding: continuous music interrupted only for traffic updates, occasional announcements about forthcoming events, and a short news broadcast at 10 minutes before the hour, but no advertising.

FIP's programming is an eclectic mix of musical genres: chanson, classical, film music, jazz, rock, world music and more, but with careful attention paid to smooth and unobtrusive transition from item to item. FIP is one of the few stations in the world to transmit this type of programming around the clock. The broadcasts are presented live from 7 am to 11 pm, after which a computer replays a selection of the music broadcast earlier in the day.

The station was founded in 1971 by Jean Garetto and Pierre Codou, both week-end presenters at France Inter. It was broadcast from Paris on 514 m (585 kHz) medium wave, hence its original name of France Inter Paris 514. 

You don't have to be a boutique shopper marketing agency like birdsong gregory to understand the marketing power of well-designed packaging. Not only does packaging have a longer shelf life (pun intended) than an advertising campaign or promotions program. There is no other consumer facing media that creates such a powerful one-on-one experience. From the time a shopper notices your brand on the shelf and then buys it, stores it, and (re)uses it, they have formed an indelibly physical relationship.

Fact: you can renovate or launch new packaging for less than 10-25% of the total cost to produce a TV spot or run a big print ad campaign.

Which is why brand strategies are now being built from the package outward and successful brand managers and designers increasingly understand the value of starting with the package first. In a major shift in the shopper marketing universe, brand expression is now centering in the package design and using that design to architect all other brand touch points.

As part of the 2013 HOW Design Conference, this year's Dieline Package Design Conference will help package designers will discover how to gain recognition and respect by articulating what design means to a brand.

Now in its 3rd year, The Dieline Package Design Conference has become the leading design conference focused solely on the package design industry and package designers. The Dieline Package Design Conference is an extension of TheDieline.com, the popular design blog and the world’s most visited website on package design. 

We hope some other Charlotte advertising agencies will be able to attend HOW Design Live, which takes place June 22-26, 2013 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. It consists of four design conferences: HOW Design Conference, InHOWSE Managers Conference, Creative Freelancers Conference, and The Dieline Package Design Conference. More than 3,800 design professionals together will gather for training, professional development and networking with peers at this annual event produced by F+W Media, publishers of HOW Magazine and Print.

I don’t buy 10 cartons of Yoplait because I can’t (won’t) eat 10 cartons of yogurt before they go bad. I’m lucky if I can eat my way to the bottom of one carton. So when my local Food Lion has a great deal on yogurt, I tend to pass. From a shopper marketing perspective however, such outlier behavior is generally atypical of how middle America reacts to a ten for $10.

Using buying patterns detected from loyalty cards, receipts, and other research, grocery chains are searching for the multiples sweet spot. For example, Kroger currently has lemonade, socks and Kroger gummi bears candy on sale at 10 for $10. And, to the chagrin of right-brained finger counters everywhere, the old gimmick — buy one, get one free — has been expanded to include some pricing equations based on complex NASA-inpsired algorithms – or at least it appears so to my mathematical challenged mind.

Most grocery shoppers make a list before going to the store, according to two recent studies,  In one, Acosta Sales and Marketing, which advises clients like Nestlé on pricing, found that 84 percent of shoppers make a list, 23 percent make fewer grocery trips than a year ago, and that, over all, shoppers are spending less per trip than a year ago.

Then, throw unemployment, rising gas prices and more expensive food into an already meager stew, and you get consumers who have become extremely value driven, budget minded, list minded, less impulsive, and very deal oriented. So in order to get someone to buy something that wasn’t on their list (or more of what was), grocers need incentives to nudge shoppers outside their typical behavior. And it’s working.

Well advertised, relevant multiples push customers a little higher than their typical purchase rate. People tend to buy the amount, or buy in increments, that are advertised – ten boxes of tortellini for $10, for example. According to John T. Gourville, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School who studies pricing strategies, even though shoppers usually do not have to buy the suggested amount to get the discount, they do anyway. “It is all about the power of suggestion,” he said. Ad agency Charlotte.

I don't know about you, but the buzz around birdsong gregory yesterday was all about the season premiere of Game Of Thrones. The show was pretty good. But these ads that HBO did in the New York Times? Way better. We're so used to seeing images fly across our computer screens, we've practically become immune to digital ads. But it's a print ad! In a newspaper! And it's really eye-catching.

It's a good thing the spread beneath the dragon is full of fake stories, because we wouldn't want read them anyway. Nice job HBO.

If the clear expression of good ideas was easy, our Charlotte ad agency would go out of business. Here are some great tips from David Ogilvy on how not to sound like a pretensious, bloviating fool.

"People who think well, write well."

It's a wearable computer with a head-mounted display (HMD) being developed by Google in the Project Glass research and development project that displays information in a smartphone-like hands-free format that can interact with the Internet via natural language voice commands. While the frames do not currently have lenses fitted to them, Google is considering partnering with sunglass retailers such as Ray-Ban, and may also open retail stores to allow customers to try on the device. The Explorer Edition cannot be used by people who wear prescription glasses, but Google has confirmed that Glass will eventually work with frames and lenses that match the wearer's prescription; the glasses will be modular and therefore possibly attachable to normal prescription glasses

Wearable computing is not a new idea, but Google's enormous bank account and can-do attitude means Project Glass could well be the first product to do significant numbers.

The core of Google Glass is its tiny prism display which sits not in your eyeline, but a little above it. You can see what is on the display by glancing up. The glasses also have an embedded camera, microphone, GPS and, reportedly, use bone induction to give you sound.

Voice control is used to control the device; you say "ok glass" to get a range of options including taking pictures, videos, send messages using speech to text, 'hang out' with people or get directions to somewhere. You access these options by saying them out loud.

Most of this functionality is self explanatory; hang out is Google's video conferencing technology and allows you to talk to a people over web cam, and stream them what you are seeing and the directions use Google Maps and the inbuilt GPS to help you find your way.

The results are displayed on the prism - essentially putting data into your view like a head up display (HUD). It's potentially incredibly handy. Also rather nifty is the potential for automatic voice and speech recognition.

People are already developing some rather cool apps for Google Glass – including one that allows you to identify your friends in a crowd, and another that allows you to dictate an email.

And at this year’s SXSW conference in Austin (which, unfortunatley, our Charlotte ad agency wasn't able to attend this year), Google revealed a number of apps it's developing, including a New York Times app that will provide a headline, byline, and image to the tiny screen embedded in the Google Glass lens.

North Carolina Craft beer followers already pour into our state because of its reputation as the South’s premier beer destination, with more breweries than any state south of Pennsylvania (73 and counting). In April, there’s another reason to imbibe: the state’s inaugural North Carolina Beer Month. Destinations across North Carolina are creating special month-long craft beer promotions for April 2013. Lodging packages, gourmet prix fixe menus, special pairings, classes and chef dinners will be part of this first-time promotion created by the North Carolina Division of Tourism and NC Brewer’s Guild.Among the highlights is the Hickory Hops festival on April 20, with 40-plus breweries, music and the Carolinas Championship of Beers.

Our Charlotte ad agency has been bubbling about this fact for a while – that North Carolina’s craft beer scene is thriving and has become a leading destination for beer travelers. To celebrate this fact and to deepen our state's passion for fermented beverages, NC Beer Month will celebrate ales, lagers, porters and stouts (and possibly ciders) with specialty brewery tours, tastings and travel packages, from coastal villages to urban metropolises to plow-to-pint mountain towns.

Also, some of our local brewers like NoDa Brewing and Birdsong Brewery are participating in this historic event, so make sure you come out and sample the goods in April.

Anyone? Because prior to the late 1980's, it was called "Downtown." Which makes sense, since (everywhere but in Charlotte) the term "Uptown" refers to a spatial relationship between different parts of a city center. Commonly, the uptown neighborhood or neighborhoods, separated from a city's lower or central business district, may often be residential, sometimes with particularly upscale or fashionable connotation. In New York, for example, you have a Downtown, a Midtown, and an Uptown. But not in the Queen City ... 

There's much confusion brought about by the use of the terms "Uptown" and "Downtown" for Charlotte's center city area, since these terms don't reference different areas of town and are thus interchangeable. Personally, I still call it Downtown for the same reason I call "Bank of American Stadium" Panthers Stadium. I don't like to have my vocabulary manipulated by Charlotte advertising agencies and politicians (ironic, I know).

Prior to the mid-late 1980s, the term "Downtown" was used by residents, media and city leaders for ...well...downtown. During the 1980s, however, a massive campaign was launched to revamp the seedy image of the downtown area and the term "Uptown" was introduced to the general public. On February 14, 1987, the Charlotte Observer began using the term "Uptown" as a way to promote a more positive upbeat image of the center city area, and (in a rather Orwellian twist) schools were provided with "historical" documents justifying use of the term to teach to students (e.g. a barely noticed proclamation designating central shopping and business district as Uptown Charlotte by City of Charlotte Mayor John M. Belk on September 23, 1974).

Cola snakes, lemon gummy hearts, strange chalky hard candies tasting mainly of salt, bi-color gummies that seem to claim medicinal properties, yogurt-covered candies, squishy fruit gumdrops with strange menthol undertastes. 

Recently a couple of members of our Charlotte ad agency were in NYC and stumbled across this blindingly white retail space in the West Village with its rainbow of products. Sockerbit is a Scandinavian sweet shop in NYC's West Village known for its delectable selection of traditional smågodis (little candies) and its pristine, rainbow-lined interior. The shop – whose name literally translates to "lump of sugar" – was opened in 2010 by Stefan Ernberg and his wife, Florence Baras. Specializing in all things sweet and Swedish – with foodstuffs and toys from neighboring Denmark as well – Sockerbit carries more than 149 different candies priced by the pound. All of their candies are naturally colored and free of genetically modified ingredients and trans fats. "Usually there are more adults in here than kids," says Baras. "Our candies may look like other candy, but once people try them they can taste the difference."

At birdsong gregory, we spend a fair amount of time devising new ways to boost creativity, encourage collaboration, and limit the inherent stress in our Charlotte ad agency.

One easy solution? Bring in the dogs.

According to a preliminary investigation published in March in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Business, employees who bring their dog to the office can cap the amount of stress experienced during the day, and improve job satisfaction for not just themselves but for their coworkers.

Randolph Barker, a dog-loving management professor, monitored the stress levels of employees at a retailing and manufacturing business with a 14-year history of allowing dogs in the workplace. On any given day, the firm would have 20 to 30 dogs and 450 to 550 employees working across a facility about the length of five to seven football fields, Barker says. A sample of 76 employees were studied – some brought their dogs to work, some didn't, and some didn't own dogs. The study found that while everyone started the day with low baseline levels of the stress hormone cortisol, those who didn't bring their dogs to work reported drastically higher levels of stress by the end of the working day.

Dogs have long been deployed for their therapeutic value in rest homes, hospices, shelters, funeral parlors and disaster zones. And in the United States they are permitted in court to help calm witnesses giving potentially traumatizing testimony. So it stands to reason that in a fast-paced, creative environment like a marketing agency, a few friendly canines could help boost morale and imagination. In fact, there could even be a chemical explanation for this effect. Researchers have discovered that interaction between dogs and their owners, even if it's just exchanging glances, can increase the level of oxytocin  the "feelgood" hormone thought to bond breastfeeding mothers and their babies.

When consumers can connect instantly across international borders on social media, does it make sense, from a shopper marketing standpoint, for brands to keep separate identities in different countries?

Doritos doesn't think so, which is why the brand is updating its packaging and logo to give a more consistent look across the 37 countries where the chips are sold. The redesigned bags started hitting stores this week and will be supported by Doritos' first global campaign, called "For the Bold," which is being handled by incumbent ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

Doritos is the world's largest tortilla/corn-chip brand, with 39% market share, according to Euromonitor International. But historically the brand has had a different look and feel across the globe. Before the new design, 25 packaging variations existed. Moving forward, there will be only one.

Simplify, simplify, simplify: one of the main creative imperatives of our Charlotte marketing agency.

Whether at the Friday night Plaza Midwood foodtruck scene, the Southend food truck rally, or Uptown during lunch time, our Charlotte advertising agency loves to sample the cuisine from these roving restaurants. And although the food truck scene is still unfolding here in the Queen City, it's been booming for years in bigger cities like Los Angeles and New York. What's the underlying marketing force behind this trend? 

It's called scarcity marketing

Scarcity marketing involves motivating people to buy something by telling them there is a shortage in what is available and a limited time to act. The goal is to create a sense of urgency through an aggressive call to action; to make people scared that they will not be able to acquire something that they want if they don’t act fast.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the first instance of scarcity marketing, but companies have used the technique for many years. One of the most notable examples of scarcity marketing – the Disney Vault – started during the 1980s. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment began to reissue limited editions of their films and urge consumers to purchase these films before they went back into the “Disney Vault.” Because each Disney film is only for a limited time before it is put in the vault and not made available for several years until it is released again, consumers are driven to act fast when a new video is released. Apple Computer is another company that clearly understands and uses scarcity marketing. And the Cabbage Patch Kids craze makes a poignant example of scarcity marketing from my own childhood.

The primary benefit of using scarcity marketing in your business is being able to position your products as services as a commodity. This drives up the perceived value of what you’re selling, and the fear that it has limited availability makes people act fast to purchase. Scarcity can also present an opportunity to engage your audience in a new way. By creating an interesting background that shares the reason for the scarcity (such as a one-of-a-kind product or special edition that has significant meaning), you can capture and keep the customer’s attention. Lastly, when it’s done effectively, scarcity marketing can also create a cult following – the kind of blind loyalty that makes people wait for days in freezing temperatures to buy the new i-Phone.

This video of a plucky Shetland Pony doing the moonwalk to Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" has become an unlikely YouTube hit, propelling the sponsor,  mobile company UK telecom Three, to international fame.

The video, which has gotten 1.2 million views since it hit YouTube on Feb. 28, shows the cute pony strutting his stuff in the Shetland's breathtaking landscape and then taking a break when a farmer in a tractor pulls up. A caption at the end states "Silly Stuff. It matters."

And to prolong the viral success, the company is floating the hashtag #DancePonyDance and inviting fans to produce their own mashups at ponymixer.com.

Our Charlotte ad agency is mildly impressed at this bit of clever viral marketing. And it just goes to show that expensive one-to-many broadcast campaigns can't hold a candle in terms of ROI to something like this.

Forget the size zero supermodels – bigger girls can mean bigger profits say researchers.

A new study from Warwick Business School has found that when consumers are blatantly exposed to idealised images of thin, beautiful women those shoppers are more likely to use a defensive coping strategy to boost self-evaluation by denigrating the pictured woman. This can negatively affect the products these models endorse through the transfer of the negative evaluation of the model to the endorsed product.

The female subjects of this study were put through various experiments including being shown magazine pages that contained different ads, one of which was for a vodka. Some women received ads that did not feature an attractive model, other women received ads that had a bikini-clad model on the opposite page to a picture of the vodka (meaning they were subtly exposed to the idealised female image) and the third had the attractive model on a whole page next to the vodka (meaning they were blatantly exposed to the idealised female image).

This study was published Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes and is called Defensive reactions to slim female images in advertising: The moderating role of mode of exposure.

Here is the download info, if you want to read it for yourself. Or, you can let the insightful minds here at our Charlotte ad agency give you the executive summary – and help you make sure your current advertising strategies are helping – and not hurting – your brand.

If you've ever worked in advertising, graphic design, apparel, or dozens of other aesthetically-inspired fields, then you know how important a role the Pantone color system plays. After all, one designer's concept of "taupe" is another's "wheat."

Today, we take this universal system of color for granted, but 50 years ago, it didn't exist. At least not until Laurence Herbert, an employee of the Pantone printing company, created the world's first standardized color reproduction system. Charlotte ad agencies

By the 1970s, Pantone was making more than a million dollars a year in licensing fees, and as the Pantone system spread from the advertising world to textiles to food science, it  has been put to some unexpected uses – like defining the color of a Ben & Jerry’s brownie.

Here's a short article about the origins and global reach Pantone.

The Chrysler Group is bringing to life the advertising theme for its Chrysler brand, “Imported from Detroit,” through an innovative partnership with a coming Broadway show that bears the Detroit-inspired name of one of the most famous brands in music. The commercial above is believed to be the first time that a Broadway show has had such paid national television exposure as it prepares to open in New York. 

This historic partnership unites Chrysler and “Motown: the Musical,” about the musical legacy of Berry Gordy and Motown, the record label he founded that is now owned by the Universal Music Group. The musical, scheduled to open on April 14 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, is the beneficiary of an elaborate promotional initiative by the Chrysler brand that supplements the show’s own efforts to encourage ticket sales. The automaker’s efforts extend beyond the product placement and sponsorship agreements that have become increasingly prevalent on Broadway as theater enters the realm of so-called entertainment marketing with television, movies and video games. Unlike the provisions of many of those deals, the Chrysler name is not being added to a lyric of a Motown song, nor are there plans to park a car in the lobby of the Lunt-Fontanne.

The centerpiece of the Chrysler brand’s support is this broadcast spot that has been running nationally since December, featuring Mr. Gordy riding in a Motown Edition of a Chrysler 300C sedan as the seminal Motown song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” plays on the soundtrack. The commercial, created by a Chrysler Group agency, GlobalHue in Southfield, Mich., begins with Mr. Gordy at the original “Hitsville U.S.A.” Motown headquarters building in Detroit and ends with him arriving at the Lunt-Fontanne and declaring: “We are Motown. And this is what we do.” As Mr. Gordy enters the theater, the Chrysler slogan appears, altered to read “Imported from Motown.” It's great to see the Detroit renaissance take another step forward, although after screening Detropia, the grim post apocalyptic documentary, for our Charlotte marketing agency, it will be a few more years before we open up an office of birdsong gregory in the Motor City.

The Chrysler Group is spending an estimated $6 million to $8 million to promote “Motown: the Musical.” The budget for the ads from the show’s producers, Mr. Gordy, Kevin McCollum and Doug Morris, is estimated at $2 million.