The brand-new marketing campaign for online marketplace giant eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) continues the company's tradition of promoting its popular merchandise-matchmaker service in bigger-than-life fashion.
If you weren't won over by the "Power of All of Us" pitch or the song-and-dance extravaganzas to the butchered tune of Frank Sinatra's "My Way," the new campaign may actually work for you. I know that I had never been a fan of the company's over-the-top ads, but at least this time the company's aim is clever and true.
You can see the ad in its own dedicated site. The original clip starts off with a pair of investors concocting a giant version of the word "it" in red, green and yellow. A press conference and mania follow as everyone wants "it," from a pair of kids wrestling for the word in the back of a minivan to an envious friend admiring his buddy's latest "it" model. The creators wind up on wacky international talk shows promoting "it," and the ad concludes, nicely, with a guy receiving "it" in an eBay box and his wife asking him what "it" is.
Taking the virtual lead from others like Best Buy (NYSE:BBY), Mitsubishi, and Burger King, which have concocted interactive ad campaigns with standalone sites, the "What Is it?" site offers additional footage and allows visitors to customize their own "it" in patterns and colors beyond the bright eBay logo's spectrum.
The ad illustrates that "it" can be anything, fom an Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPod to a Palm (NASDAQ:PALM) Treo smartphone, from an electric guitar to a new television set. Pitching eBay as the place to find anything and everything isn't entirely new. However, the company's clever, effective approach adds a little self-effacing humor, as the "it" creators feel uncomfortable with all of the global attention.
Coming off a quarter that marked the company's second straight period of accelerating growth in its once-languishing domestic business, eBay seems to have a winning ad campaign as it heads into the holiday shopping season.
One can argue that eBay doesn't need to market itself. Everyone knows eBay. However, with the company continuing to push into overseas markets and ready to absorb its acquisition of Skype, these campaigns are important in ensuring that eBay never loses its home market as it looks to try to duplicate its flagship model's success elsewhere.
That's why, in so many ways, "it" just works.
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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a satisfied eBay user -- with the 151 positive feedback recs to show for it. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. eBay, Palm, and Best Buy are Motley Fool Stock Advisor picks. The Fool has a disclosure policy . He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
