What better way for a furniture manufacturer to promote its products than to let people use them? That’s what IKEA has been doing in Europe in the past few months.

In November, IKEA hosted a sleepover in its Essex store in response to a Facebook group called “I wanna have a sleepover in IKEA,” which has almost 100,000 fans. IKEA made their dreams come true and, through a contest, invited 100 of these fans to spend one night in its store and treated them to goodie bags, midnight snacks, hot chocolate, massages and manicures, and even a midnight movie and bedtime story read by Sam Faiers from The Only Way Is Essex. (Sounds like my type of evening.) The experience included a sleep expert and was designed to help educate people on how to get a great nights sleep, well, in addition to the fact that 100 people had an entire IKEA store just for themselves for an entire night. I wonder if they were allowed to make purchases.

The second example is still in the making, but IKEA fully furnished a 54-square-meter home (about 177′) for six people to live in, in the middle of a Parisian metro. From January 9th to the 14th the apartment in the Auber metro station in France’s capital will be home for these six individuals and frequenters will get a glimpse into the daily routines of five of their fellow Parisians. The project is called “The IKEA Apartment – 54 Square-Meter Ideas to Life” and aims to highlight how IKEA furniture is compatible with small spaces.

These are two great examples of listening and responding to customer, connecting the online and offline worlds and, most importantly, turning fans into advocates by allowing them to experience the brand instead of just bombarding them with meaningless messages. Sounds like XXI century marketing.

‘Tis the season for holiday advertising. Most of the advertising is retail. Most of it is fairly predictable. How many biggest sales of the season can there be?

A friend sent a link to this ad created by St Matthews-in-the-City Church in New Zealand. Its honest portrayal of real emotions was refreshing after seeing too many contrived jewelry store commercials. (Who has money for a diamond necklace the day of signing on a new house? People who shop at Tiffany? Maybe. But Kay? Come on.)

One of the things that makes this ad remarkable is it takes something familiar and makes you see it in a slightly different, deeper way – a hallmark of great advertising.

No one really knows a lot about Mary. Many of us have heard her story what feels like a million times. But in all the telling and retelling, it still doesn’t feel like we have any sense of what she was like as a person. What we do know makes her seem different and distant. She lived over 2,000 years ago in a country many of us have never even visited. Where’s the common ground?

This ad succeeds because it overcomes differences and finds a common link that connects women throughout the world and history. Any woman who sees this ad, especially those who have experienced a Clearblue Easy moment, can imagine what she’s thinking and empathize with her. I’m going to be someone’s mom? It’s freaky. It’s overwhelming. It totally rocks your world. And we see all that in her expression.

The use of the pregnancy test in this ad doesn’t so much make her seem modern as it makes her emotions feel timeless and universal. The years, cultural differences, distance and unknowns melt away, and we are in that moment with her.

The outdoor board has no copy. It doesn’t need it. It’s just a simple visual solution that, in mere moments, makes an emotional connection with the viewer. And that’s what great ads do. They uncover a universal
human truth. They find common ground. They make us feel something real and true.

Now, if only someone could tell that to Kay…

Yesterday Nick wrote about the cultish behavior of the Green Bay Packers’ fans and how every company in the world aspires to motivate such behavior, yet very few do because they don’t have strong brands.

I think it’s more than just a strong brand, it’s about the experience. Sport teams with cult-like following reach such status because they provided shared experiences. They bring people together. They create communities.

If you think about all such sport teams (Barcelona, Liverpool, Olympique de Marseille, Green Bay Packers, <insert another football/basketball/baseball/cricket team here>), most of them bear the name of the location in which the team was started. That’s not just because it was an easy solution to a difficult problem (naming a team), but because sport teams are one of the pillars of each one of these communities and always have been. Something very few brands can and want to be. However, that’s not to say that companies can’t achieve such cult-like following. Apple and Patagonia have done it.

Last week Simon Jenkins from The Guardian wrote about the rise of the experience economy and shared some incredible numbers about the music, live comedy, politics, museums and galleries. People are spending more and more time doing things, going places, meeting people IRL, which provides two great opportunities for brands who want to become part of people’s lives instead of just push messages.

Opportunity number one is an obvious marketing lesson from sport teams: create experiences that bring people together.

Opportunity number two is about how we use digital platforms. I’ve written before about the power of experiences as it relates to harnessing the social graph. But it can work the other way around as well: using small data, personal data, to amplify and personalize real-world experiences. Think about all the data we share about who we are, who our connections are, what we like, what we buy, where we go, what we do. Google, Facebook, Amazon and our cell phones, the most personal device, probably know more about us than we will ever know. And all the data can be used to amplify our real-world experiences and make them more exciting, more entertaining, more rewarding, more memorable, thus creating stronger emotional connections with brands.

Marketing geniuses may have missed the Green Bay Packers announcement that they were going to begin selling shares of the team again to the public. It hasn’t happened since 1997, when they sold 120,000 shares, raising 24 million dollars which was used to cover stadium renovation costs.

For those that don’t follow the NFL, or those that live under a rock, the Packers are the NFL’s only publicly owned team. Fans own shares of the team.

The new shares of team stock, which went on sale December 6, are $250 dollars per share. In the first 11 minutes of the sale, 1600 orders were placed online. It stands to reason that people would want to own a part of the team they love so much. Who wouldn’t? Green Bay fans are some of the most dedicated fans in the world.

But there’s an interesting paragraph in an article on ABC news’ web site that actually digs into a deeper emotional connection between fan and team that most brands would salivate over. From the article:

“The sale marks the fifth time in the Packers’ 92-year history that the publicly-owned team has offered stock, though it’s really not an investment in the traditional sense. The value doesn’t increase, there are no dividends and it has virtually no resale value. But it does qualify the buy as team owner and conveys voting rights. It also qualifies the holder to attend the annual stockholder meeting at Lambeau each summer before training camp begins. They also get access to a special line of shareholder apparel.”

So, in other words, fans of the team are so dedicated and committed that they are willing to drop 250 bucks on a share of stock that gives you absolutely zero ownership in anything. It’s just a piece of paper that allows you to attend a shareholders meeting. That’s it.

How many brands would love to be in a position to offer their brand evangelists such a thing? The idea of fandom has an air of irrationality about it, but the idea that the Packers can sell pieces of paper to their fans for 250 dollars a pop is the mark of a brand that has a following that goes beyond the loyal to the absolute cultish. It’s what every brand aspires to be, yet so few actually get there. The sale of Packers stock marks the sale of something in which the benefits are 100% emotional and 0% rational. In tough economic times, it’s incredible that people can justify such a purchase. But if you have a brand like the Packers, you can pretty much get fans to do whatever you want.

What do you think? Would you spend 250 dollars on something you really wanted, from a brand you really liked, even though it gave you virtually nothing in return?

I have to admit I was pretty excited when I heard the Fiat was coming to America. It put my “Italian-ness” in full gear (no pun intended). I couldn’t wait to see what the car looked like and, knowing that possibly within the year I would be in the market for a car, I put the Fiat at the top of my list, even sight unseen.

When I saw the car I liked it, even tough maybe it was a little tiny for my taste – but still kept it in my consideration set. There’s an inner battle that goes on when it comes to making a decision to buy a car. First, there are the real world concerns of space and gas mileage and options that you want the car you drive to have. Secondly (and maybe I’m a little shallow, but whatever) I want the car I drive to have an image that is in line with my personality. In other words, for me, the advertising matters.

VW does a great job of portraying the image and features I am interested in. So does Honda. Then I saw the Fiat commercial, and frankly I hardly noticed the car in it at all. Instead all I could see was Jennifer Lopez.

It takes everything in me to not put a question mark at the end of her name.

Jennifer Lopez?

As celebrity endorsements go, this one is a real head scratcher. Her appearance immediately turned me off to the car, and apparently I’m not alone.

Recent reports say the 2011 sales goal of 50,000 units is way off, having only sold 16,000. Workers at the plant have been laid off because demand isn’t there. And now the commercial featuring Jennifer Lopez is under fire because it celebrates her getting back to her “roots” — implying that the streets in the commercial are that of the Bronx. But no, they were filmed in LA.

There has now been a shakeup within the top marketing brass for Fiat as well.

In the old days they used to say Fiat stood for “Fix it again, Tony,” and I can see why the car would want to steer clear of that baggage. But then again to completely ignore the Italian  heritage of the car and the “cool” factor behind Fiat really stumps me. When they introduced the new VW Beetle, one of the charms of the campaign was it’s subtle nods to the car’s storied past. But the marketers behind Fiat have denied the car of it’s truly authentic self and are paying the price. Call me crazy but this Italian car has to be injected with a little bit of Italian-ness.

What do you think? Is J-Lo right for Fiat? Or is she turning you off to a car that identifies itself with a judge on American Idol?