In case you've been living under a rock, a few months ago Joseph Jaffe had a bit of a kerfuffle with airline Delta. In preparation for his trip down to Australia, Scott Drummond of Marketing Mag put out the opportunity to ask Joseph a question. Here is what I asked...
Nearly six months ago Sprite ran the Truth Hunters campaign. I blogged about it in February, when it received a fair bit of flack from the Gen Y Marketing Podcast boys and possibly lead to this article about not trusting your advertising agency with digital media by Julian Cole. Well six months later The Long Tail kicks in. Boing Boing ran an article on it a couple of days ago with one of the videos spiking in hits. And while buzz around this campaign increased significantly, Sprite didn't respond in any way. Imagine if they released another video. Or updated the website. Or ran another contest. Social Media doesn't have a short term option....
It's funny how things can change in only a few days. As of Friday night I was in the middle of constructing a six foot high pencil made of wood with the text "www.iwanttoworkatleoburnett.com" inscribed on the side. I had big plans to get this couriered to the Managing Director at Leo Burnett Melbourne and earn myself an interview. My plan was to go in as the naive student and learn, then ideally leverage social media and build a name for myself. But things change. I've decided that these guys aren't going to give me the experience I want. So before I make my next move someone suggested I throw this out to my small, but hopefully passion, audience. I honestly don't expect a response but I hope there's no harm in trying. Can you help me get experience in new or social media? And if anyone wants six planks of wood shaped like a pencil let me know....
I've received a fair bit of flack over my post about the Pimp My Kettle campaign. Apparently I wasn't constructive enough, which admittedly is true but by saying campaigns like this are ruining my career was apparently going too far. Well here is some justification on what a successful social media campaign should look like. Check out Julian's post on The Body Shop. So not only have they established a blog that actually works quite well, they are slowly looking to build up an authentic community. The best part of this, was that after Julian posted that, the author behind the blog commented. Simply using Google alerts this author has created a relationship that has since grown. But it goes one step further. If you were to check out Julian's post on the Pimp My Kettle campaign there is again a comment from The Body Shop. It was actually rather insightful, fits well with the brand and most importantly wouldn't have shown up in Google Alerts. This means that the author is regularly checking out Julian's blog, continuing to build this relationship. And that's how social media campaigns should work. Building relationships by providing value. Not creating false communities around passions that don't exist that will die in three months anyway. So while this is all new and we are still learning our way around, some rules and guidelines have already been set. Ignoring them does hurt my career and gives me every right to bag your shitty campaign if it deserves it....
Further to my previous post on our reliance on social media, I conducted a small experiment of my own. Changing my birthday on Facebook to yesterday instead of September 9th, I was surprised at how many people gave me birthday wishes, on both Facebook and in person. Not only were these just my friends, but my Friends too. Of all my friends and Friends, only a few questioned the date. Would things have been different a few years ago?...
If one of today's marketers doesn't pull off a decent social media campaign soon they are going to kill, or at least hurt, this highly potential channel. This leaves tomorrow's marketers in a very bad place. Case in point is Fantastic Noodles Pimp My Kettle. I made a conscious decision last year to ensure my blog refrained from slamming campaigns as much as possible. But this is worth an exception. The official page comes up fourth on a Google search. Furthermore, the page is a Ning. Oh dear. Interestingly, of their 276 "members" the majority of them are from Adelaide. As Julian Cole pointed out to me, Clemenger BBDO, the agency behind this atrocity, is from Adelaide too. I hope these guys can sleep with themselves at night. Not only are there ethical issues here but you're really fucking up my career....
Before I began blogging I was quite a naive young student. I thought, as you logically would, marketers would only run campaigns that had profitable returns. Branding issues aside, common sense would suggest that expenses should at least equal income. So when my local real estate agent does a mail box drop of 10,000 pamphlets they must be covering their costs. When telemarketers call random numbers, they must be selling enough to cover their hourly rate. But blogging has changed this rather naive view of mine. Brands don't always make logical decisions....
This post stems from an article suggesting The Gruen Transfer had received over 6,100 user generated submissions on their website. As of the end of the season tonight, I've read it's reached 10,000. If this is true, the guys behind it must be ecstatic. The question I feel most important here; What is the purpose of user generated content? I'm going to go ahead and suggest the answer would be the interaction with the brand. Or at least should be. If you're going in looking for free advertising you're doing it for the wrong reasons. The user generated content on The Gruen Transfer's website follows a template. This template allows users to easily make an advertisement in five minutes or so. This is great because it allows the low involvement users to get involved and also means 10,000 entries. A similar concept has been used for Design A Coke. But this limits the user's creativity. As a result you have 10,000 entries that all look the same and because of that most of them are only viewed a couple of times at most. Most importantly the interaction with the brand is limited. Whilst I understand you need different levels of entry for interaction, I'd much prefer a passionate user who spends two hours interacting with my brand than fifty people who spent five minutes. A passionate user is likely to then upload it to YouTube. Then they're more likely to send it to their friends. Then they're more likely to check back on it regularly. They're also more likely to create something remarkable not restricted to a template. Essentially, as with most things, it comes back to Seth Godin's idea of "who" instead of "how many"....
Randy Pausch passed away yesterday. His inspirational talk The Last Lecture is based on an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are basically asked, "What wisdom would you impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?" Prior to this presentation, Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. I hope my Last Lecture can be just one tenth as inspirational as this....
If you haven't seen Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, it's too late. And that's the reason you will buy it from iTunes or on DVD. During the Writer's Guild of America Strike, writer and director Joss Whedon developed this mini series. It was to be low budget and circumvent the issues of the strike but professionally done. Three weeks ago the first fifteen minutes were uploaded. A week later the next fifteen and last week the concluding fifteen were aired. It was free to view with no advertising or sponsorship on the website what so ever. On Sunday night it was taken down where it is now exclusively on iTunes (for a price) and soon to be on DVD. The buzz it generated was amazing. There are no statistics on the website hits, but the Facebook fan page has more than 43,000 fans. And in under a month, that is more than remarkable. I know I'll be buying it on DVD (apparently the Audio Commentary will be a musical in itself). You should too. Much like the music industry and soon to be the publishing industry, the middle man was cut out. And while they haven't made a cent yet, I expect the profits will be high. Is this the future of television?...
