IP telephony solutions, from desktop to cellular applications, can be a dry subject, but in broadband video advertising for Avaya, they come alive with verve and humor seldom seen in IP telephony advertising.
“One of the things management emphasizes is the importance of not dropping calls. They say when we drop calls, it’s like dropping a person,” one of the spots begins. Then, employees are dropped throughout the spot, first on the office floor, later on a staircase, until finally the narrator is picked up by another employee and carried to safety.
“When you think about how much time and frustration is spent on office phone difficulties, it really makes sense to use a phone that minimizes those pain points,” said Al Patton, R/GA New York copy director. “With ‘Dropping Calls,’ we wanted to bring these pain points to life in a way that hadn’t been done before, and show how Avaya’s one-X Deskphone Edition can actually improve productivity by eliminating office phone difficulties.”
The campaign, which includes 11 clips for a variety of Avaya products, provides a “quick, easy and humorous way to look at various features across all our solutions,” said Renee Rodgers, Avaya’s director of interactive marketing.
The spots are geared to end users instead of decision makers “as a quick way to highlight the functionality to a broad audience,” Rodgers said. “We position it to end users because they influence buying decisions. Salespeople on the road see the ability they get with our IP solutions and they go back to their team and say, ‘We really need it.’ It’s an effective way to influence decisions.”
The spots can be seen at Avaya.com and Google Video. “Even though Google is consumer focused, it’s a way to get to end users,” Rodgers said. “Google wants to expand to b2b and they have a business section they’re starting to develop.” Avaya plans to play the videos at YouTube within the next few weeks.
“Dropping Calls” as well as two other spots in the campaign–“Parents” and “Not a Sharer” — were directed by @radical.media‘s Zack & JC (directing team Zack Resnicoff & J.C. Khoury) and shot in HD with film lenses. On-screen graphics and compositing were handled in-house at R/GA. The videos were created for the Web with broadcast quality standards, so they could be repurposed for other media, including TV, video billboards and handheld devices, according to R/GA’s director of production, digital studio Steve Ford. The videos were shot at Avaya’s Basking Ridge, NJ location with a cast selected by R/GA and @radical.media.
The campaign, called Snapshots, launched October, 2005, and is frequently updated with two new spots every quarter, Rodgers said.
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More