Product (RED) Invades Canada, Storms Metro
May 23rd, 2007 by Michael Kwan
Through my work with Mobile Magazine, I learned that Rogers Wireless would be picking up the RED MOTOKRZR and I also found out that Rogers would start to offer My5, a service similar to T-Mobile’s MyFaves. What I didn’t know was how quickly the advertising campaign would begin.
In today’s yesterday’s the May 22nd edition of Metro, a free daily newspaper distributed here in Vancouver, Motorola took out not one, not two, but no fewer than FIVE full page ads telling people to do the right thing and buy the new Motorola KRZR K1. More specifically, they’re encouraging Canadians to buy the version associated with Product RED, an initiative headed by U2′s Bono to help fight AIDS in Africa.
It’s clearly a for-profit organization, but at the same time, they are donating significant amounts of money to the Global Fund. Motorola will be sending US$8.50 for every RED Motorola KRZR sold in Canada.
This isn’t the first time that a Product RED, er, product has been made available to Canadians. You can get a RED Apple iPod nano, for example. I haven’t seen them here, but I hear that The Gap also has a line of clothing for this cause. I’m not sure if it was ever sold in Canada, but was also a RED Motorola RAZR and SLVR.
But getting back on track, the Metro was bombarded with red pages on Tuesday. There were the five full-page ads, including a complete wrap-around the newspaper, as well as banner ads running on the bottom of eight pages. All in all, I’d estimate that Motorola took up a solid 10% of the entire issue. On the one hand, you might think that the Metro donated this advertising space because it’s for a worthy cause — fighting AIDS in Africa — but because Product (RED) is a for-profit brand, you have to assume that Motorola had ulterior motives. It’s not like they’re making no money from selling these cell phones. That and if the ad space was provided for free, there would surely be some sort of proud declaration on the part of the Metro.
I took a bunch of pictures of the ad space. Bear in mind that the Metro is only about 20 pages long in total. Here’s a link to eight pages featuring Product RED advertising.
Did any other Canadian newspapers get bombarded with RED advertising?
Filed under Arts and Entertainment, Technology.
That Gap advertising campaign was considered a flop by financial standards. They made the clothing too expensive…who the hell wants to spend that much on Gap clothes!? If I’m spending $400, I’m not going to want to do it there. They actually made very little off that campaign.
I don’t see this one making much either. They’re only offering one phone and well…I wouldn’t want to have the same phone as a lot of other people.
I too saw the ads in the Metro….one thing’s for sure…They were prominent. I was walking by a bus stnad..and there’s this sea of red on the ground and i saw a bunch of people pick up the paper of the ground just to see what it was about !!
May you can get one and place a plate of food beside it…like the rest of your posts.