"Plain Folks" (Variation)

Non-Celebrities on the Web, Seeming to Make Non-Pitches
By PATRICIA WINTERS LAURO \ The New York Times | January 30, 2007

THE commercials are rambling musings by the comedian Demetri Martin that seem to have little to do with the product, Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system.

Yet Microsoft is tickled with its campaign featuring Mr. Martin. And the same goes for Nissan, which hired a little-known comic to live in a Sentra last fall and blog about it. And for Pepsi, which is in its third year of featuring a changing cast of comedians — many unfamiliar to the general public — in its commercials and on a Web site for its Sierra Mist lemon-lime soft drink.

And then there’s the pitchman for the Apple Macintosh, John Hodgman, the author and humorist previously best known for a computer column on the Web site of the literary journal McSweeney’s.

Call them emerging talents or just offbeat characters. Whatever the description, marketers are turning to unusual, often little-known personalities who offer the kind of novelty and freshness that young people might blog about, link to and comment on in chats: in other words, make viral on the Internet.

Compared with Jay Leno, whose mass celebrity Microsoft tapped at the news conference introducing its Windows 95 operating system, Demetri Martin is not exactly a household name. And that’s exactly the point, said Tommy Means, co-founder of Mekanism, the San Francisco agency hired to create a campaign aimed at the 18- to 30-year-olds who populate online communities.

“This audience is highly influential,” said Mr. Means. “The general population take their cues from what the online buzz is discovering.”

Along with Microsoft’s ad agency, McCann Erickson, a unit of the Interpublic Group, Mr. Martin and Mekanism developed a Web site (clearification.com) that offers a series of “webisodes,” or stories told in short video clips. Microsoft also sponsored a performance tour for Mr. Martin and his Comedy Central special, which was shown last night. The agencies produced commercials specifically for that TV special.

“We wanted something very special for this audience; something very low key,” said Brian Marr, Microsoft group marketing manager for Windows Vista. “This is an audience that is very cautious about marketing.”

Microsoft liked Mr. Martin’s in-the-know humor, but was also drawn to his built-in digital audience. His page on MySpace.com lists more than 80,000 friends.

News of the clearification.com site was released in e-mail messages to influential blogs like laughingsquid.com and on video sites like YouTube.com. The site also lets visitors sign up for an alert to notify them when the latest webisode is released.

There is no direct pitch for Microsoft or Windows Vista on the site, but there is, as it turns out, a connection between Mr. Martin’s meandering commercials and Windows Vista.
“Windows Vista’s brand promise is that it’s easier; it brings clarity to life. He took that idea and made a very funny series,” Mr. Marr said. “Here’s a guy who is cluttered in his life and finds clarity. That’s the whole idea of clearification.”

Mr. Marr said the campaign with Mr. Martin was not related to the media blitz Microsoft plans for the introduction of Windows Vista today, but played an important role in linking the brand to influential people.

Nissan North America used the idea of hiring a little-known comedian, Marc Horowitz, to live in a 2007 Sentra for a week and blog about it to underscore its advertising theme: “The next generation Sentra. You could pretty much live in it.”

The idea was to get mentioned in Web conversations, and the metrics show it worked, said Stephen Kerho, Nissan’s director of interactive marketing and media. Mr. Horowitz’s exploits were tracked on more than 270 message boards, for example, and video clips of his antics were viewed 50,000 times during the first four weeks after its introduction last fall. Visits to the corporate Web site that originated in its Sentra section doubled in the last quarter.

“It had an extremely high level of engagement, that you can’t get in a 30-second spot alone,” Mr. Kerho said. “It’s a great model for us for other campaigns.”
That’s not to say 30-second spots are dead. Sierra Mist’s campaign, which includes a troupe of lesser-known comedians, has been blogged about and chatted about as well. Among its popular spots was one set at an airport, with Kathy Griffin, the comedian and actress, as a security official who makes funny noises with her mouth every time her wand gets near a Sierra Mist bottle.

“At the heart and soul, the chemistry was the key,” said Bill Bruce, chief creative officer at BBDO New York. “The goal was to create little 30-second TV shows, if you will, to try to change the paradigm of commercial interruption. The idea is that these are episodes.”

Still, with all these new faces, is the era of celebrity advertising waning? Sierra Mist’s maker, Pepsi, whose ads have featured Beyoncé Knowles and Britney Spears among others, thinks not.

“I absolutely do not think the celebrity era of advertising is gone; consumers remain fascinated with celebrities,” said Frank Cooper, vice president of marketing for flavored carbonated drinks at Pepsi. “What there isn’t is a blanket rule. The idea is to deliver something with depth and substance.”