It’s how you feel

The Guardian are carrying a video of Jon Mitchel, UK sales director for Spotify (the free music streaming service), who says that later this year they aim to introduce mood-targeted advertising.

Targeting by mood is so much more powerful than by simply targeting by demographics. Your mood dictates what you’re likely to be intrested in and what you’re likely to be not interested. People are multi-faceted. They like different things, and want different things at different times. What’s been difficult so far is working out what they might be interested in and when.

That’s why I like Ifeel (by Andy Whitlock). It’s a user generated google maps mash-up that shows you places to go and things to do based on your mood. Filtering by mood is a very powerful way to get at what you really want. Much more interesting than a guidebook.

Now all advertisers and brands need to do is to start thinking more contextually about all the times, places and touch points when they’re likely to make the best connection with people and then try and target them there, rather than aiming at all ABC1 women over 50 who live in the home counties. The brands that crack this will be the winners of the future.

Computer Tan

Computer Tan is a campaign by Skcin to raise awareness of the dangers of skin cancer.

The viral has had a lot of hits and has driven a lot of traffic to the microsite so it seem like people were suckered by it.

It is well executed and seems like a great execution for the target audience – people who think that there is a quick fix for a tan are very likely to be sucked in by this and are probably the kind of people who end up bright red on a beach in Spain.

But a couple of things niggle.

Why isn’t the mobile app ready for the campaign? Brand Republic say that this is a limited campaign before a big reveal – though their cover has been blown by an article in the Sun. So why isn’t an app ready for the 2 week campaign window? This would have been a great hook and a good way to get the message out there, especially if you could send it on to a friend. This just seems sloppy.

Secondly, the video on the microsite took ages to load and I’m on a fast connection. Annoying.

Thirdly, how did this tiny, unknown charity get to work with a big agency and get loads of (presumibly free) media space? Having worked for a small organisation I know how difficult it is to make an noise and get impact. This is just envy though!