18 May 2011

A few months ago a water feature was installed on the corner of Swanston Street and Collins Street in Melbourne. For a while, the large stone wall with water cascading down one side remained untouched. But then slowly people walking passed realised that the leaves from the trees surrounding the feature could be stuck to the wall. Quickly, messages and pictures started appearing. A walk passed this wall each lunch time would have a new piece of art every day.

As I’ve said before, people like to think they’re creative. Yet not enough brands create things for people to interact with. This water feature is the perfect example, and it wasn’t even intended to be.

I wonder what a digital/mobile version of this would look like.

Posted by Zac Martin

28 April 2011

The gents over at Native Digital ditched their iPhones. And I thought I’d do the same, so for the month of May I’ll be iPhoneless, instead using this Samsung “burner” I picked up for $20.

For 31 days I’ll be without reliance on a permanent connection, satisfying my digital communication and technology needs through only a desktop. It could be a long month.

I’ll post the results here, but in the mean time you can follow my progress on Twitter through the #iphoneless hashtag. Although I’m not too sure how tweeting will go without my phone.

Posted by Zac Martin

23 March 2011

Here’s some fun statistics for you that I promise I didn’t make up.

  • 71% of peeps are becoming more selective regarding the pages they Like on Facebook
  • The two main reasons people leave pages are because updates aren’t relevant or are posted too often.
  • When this happens 19% of peeps do nothing, 38% block the posts from their News Feed and 43% unlike the page.

As more and more brands jump on the Facebook bandwagon, the market gets to a point of saturation and fans start to get choosey. There’s only so many times you can click the Like button.

The first-mover advantage was a win if you got there, but you probably didn’t which means you really need to be doing something of value on your page.

Most brands think the solution is to launch with a campaign and a media buy to build a foundation audience. Which usually works. But once that’s over, they spend the rest of the year when their budget runs out pumping out pointless status updates.

There’s only so many times you can ask someone to Like a status or fill in the blank. I know I’m guilty of it, where you write bait posts to crack a good level of engagement. But at some point people are going to start seeing past these shitty pointless status updates that don’t mean anything.

Instead, you need to be entertaining or useful. There’s enough brands trying the former (most of them failing), but not enough for the latter.

And I reckon one really useful post does better things for your brand and page than 20 pointless ones.

Posted by Zac Martin

05 February 2011

Nearly everyone likes to think they’re creative (even if they’re not).

I’m certainly one of those people. We like to flex our creative muscles where we can, but never really go out of our way to do so. We express this in the everyday things like updating our Facebook status with something witty. Or writing a funny product review on Amazon. In fact, here are my recent feedback posts on eBay…

The brands that do community and content management the best are the ones that let their consumers be creative without having to go out of their way. Running a UGC campaign isn’t always about asking people to film the next Super Bowl commercial, upload the next big viral on YouTube or be a pro in Photoshop.

Just let their inner copywriter run free. It’s usually free (because people like to show off) and it creates good content to feed back into the community.

Posted by Zac Martin

02 February 2011

The Advertising Standards Board (ASB) regularly receives quite a few ridiculous complaints. Thankfully, most of the time they’re dismissed.

But I wanted to test it out myself. And what better way to do so than with this recently released Pure Blonde ad…

 

 

Here’s how it played out…
23rd November 2010
I submit the following complaint on the ASB website…
 
“On the weekend just passed I was enjoying a cup of delicious tea while watching some Sunday night programming only to be confronted by an appalling commercial for Pure Blonde beer.

I am sure I am not alone when I say winged-horse enthusiasts like myself will be outraged at the disgusting lack of treatment regarding the magnificent animal in this commercial. The rare creature is clearly depicted in distress and suggests it is later physically harmed or, god forbid, killed. While some consider these beautiful beasts nothing but mythical, this ad supports animal cruelty for those of us who know the truth and it must be taken off the air.”

24th November 2010
The Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code (ABAC) Adjudication Panel dismisses the complaint regarding any breaches of the ABAC Code.

13th December 2010
The complaint is scheduled for submission to the ASB for a potential breach of Section 2 of the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) Code of Ethics.

2nd February 2011
After consideration, the ASB dismisses the complaint and issues the following response…

“At the time of writing this, the commercial had been on national television for over 3 weeks and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. In relation to the complaint […] we’d just like to state that no harm to the ‘Pegasus’ (a mythical horse that has wings – brought to life here through special effects) is depicted. Whilst the horse is clearly startled when the mountain starts to crumble – as are the humans featured – and does move with the mountain as it gives way, the horse does not come to any physical harm in the commercial.

In addition to this, given the horse has wings it’s completely reasonable to extrapolate that it flew away to safety.”

“This is the only complaint of its kind that we have received.”

I can’t believe it’s someone’s job to waste their time considering and responding to people like me.
Posted by Zac Martin

01 February 2011

Yesterday I arrived home from a trip around the world in 21 days. For the final unit of my degree, we traveled to Hong Kong, London, Milan, Madrid, Paris, New York & Los Angeles. Over the three weeks we visited brands and agencies such as Google, Ogilvy & Mather, DDB, L’Oreal, Citroen, Arsenal and Zara. Good times.

And tomorrow I start my full time career at George Patts.

I think I just hit a new stage in the life cycle.

Posted by Zac Martin

05 January 2011

I’m going to call it the popularity paradox, where something becomes too popular and peeps turn away from the lack of individualism. It’s in every aspect of our lives from avoiding mass fashion and art to paying out on mainstream music to not buying an iPhone even though you secretly want one but everyone else has one therefore you can’t.

Here’s some interesting examples from Facebook…

1) As parents jump on Facebook, their children turn away.
2) Bigger fan pages tend to have lower levels of engagement because when something already has 3,000 comments I’m less likely to add my own.
3) Exclusive access for college students was arguably the key to Facebook’s initial success.

So how do you stop something becoming too popular? By the time it happens, does it even matter? And how can brands use social media to minimalise mainstreamism?

I really don’t know, but I haven’t posted in a while and that’s what was on my mind today.

Posted by Zac Martin

14 December 2010

I’ve come to hate my DVD collection.

It was once something I was proud of; a collection of great movies that had grown considerably over the years. In fact movies were the only form of content I was willing to pay for, unlike the music and television shows I downloaded for free.

But I’ve realised it’s become an expensive waste of physical space, for many reasons.

Not only is the DVD case poorly designed and unnecessarily large, it’s quickly being replaced by Blu-Ray. And were I to update my collection to Blu-Ray, I’m certain even that would become obsolete within a few years. And while your standard definition DVD’s (which by the way I think are fine quality wise) seem to be on the way out, retailers have no problems stinging you $40+ for a new release.

And if I were to try and sell my collection today, I reckon I’d be lucky to get $5 for each one.

Unfortunately I can’t see myself paying for digital downloads, which means over time I’m going to steal the content to replace my current collection. I figure if I’ve paid for it once, I don’t need to again, right?

Now I only need to work out a way to download special features. And find someone willing to pay more than a gold coin for my collection.

Anyone else have the same frustration? How many people have as stack of CDs collecting dust?

Posted by Zac Martin

29 November 2010

Stephen King wrote the novel Misery that later became a movie of the same name. Although I’ve not read it, Wikipedia tells me it’s a story about a women who rescues an author after he crashes his car in the snow. She recognises him as her favourite author of a series she’s obsessed with. Locked in by the snow, she takes him to her home and nurses him for months. However she discovers a manuscript of his latest novel and doesn’t like it. Her series is ruined and it eventually leads her to cut off his foot, holds him captive and forces him to rewrite the ending.

I think social media, particularly community managers, are increasingly going to have the same problem.

Social media is great for building a community around your brand, or bringing together an already established one. What you can then do with this group of evangelists is limited only by your creativity.

But by bringing together this group of hardcore fans, you also bring in the fans that are a little too hardcore; the fans whose obsession with your brand becomes harmful. They don’t quite fit the mold of your perfect target market, where their social awkwardness is not limited on platforms of such an impersonal nature. Their constant activity becomes spam and a slight wrongdoing in their eyes creates an unwarranted response. These obsessed lovers become haters.

I have a friend who does promo work, usually giving away free samples. I found it amusing when she told me she was only allowed to approach consumers who were in the target market, but never to turn down anyone when they approached her, no matter who they were. Many of those who approached her would not reflect positively on the brand. But she dealt with them by keeping them happy, allowing them to move on.

But with social media these people don’t have to leave. These crazies can continue to interact with the normals and when you create a branded community, they think they’re being encouraged to do so.

And dealing with these people can be difficult. Particularly if you like your feet.

Posted by Zac Martin

10 November 2010

Yesterday I stepped out of my last exam thus completing a Bachelor of Business (Management/Marketing) from Monash University. Well technically I still have a piece of assessment due in March but let’s not talk about that. Looking back, in a concluding sort of manner, here’s the six lessons I take away from my time as an undergraduate.
1) Play the game
University is about playing the game. Once you learn how to work the system, achieving good grades is easy. I worked it out towards the end of my second year, and my grades were consistently better from there on out. It’s not about saying the right thing but giving the teachers what the want to hear.

Students aren’t encouraged to apply themselves, they’re told what to write, do “research” (read: plagarise off a journal article) and any form of creative execution goes unrewarded. Instead you play the game to get the grades.

2) It’s important where you sit
For some reason universities are far too keen on group work. Which I don’t have a problem with because that’s the way it should be done in the grown up world. However if you’re caught in a shit group, it’s too bad. Upon raising concerns with teachers about said group you’ll be told that it’s too bad, in the real world you don’t get to choose who you work with. Except in the real world people who are shit don’t get employed. And if they don’t do anything they lose their job.

In some cases I single handedly carried useless groups to HDs (arrogant but true). The best way to overcome this is to make sure you attend in Week 1 and sit next to “good” people and try and get into a group with them.

3) Be loud
Being the loud arrogant kid in class isn’t all bad. Opinionated students never receive anything but full marks for class participation and presentations. Even if what you’re saying is rubbish the fact that you’re saying it gets you points. Especially when you sit in a class full of people unable to speak up in front of others.

4) Rote learning is for winners
Studying the night before an exam trying to think of stupid acronyms to help you remember a list of six items that you forget on the way out of the exam got me through my degree. Likewise for when a tutor tells you that you can’t do an assignment the night before it’s due. Challenge accepted and you prove them wrong when you smash it.

5) Drink beer with your lecturers
Well, the cool ones anyway. It makes a massive difference when you can rock up to Week 1 and the tutor or lecturer already knows you because you’ve met them through other staff members. Can’t state enough how helpful this is, especially beyond academic performance.

6) Uni teaches you to learn
Most importantly; I will finish on the the biggest point. Uni helped me realise my career interest. I wouldn’t say it taught me a lot about it, perhaps a few basics, but it did teach me to get off my ass if I wanted to follow it and go out on my own to learn it.

In many ways, it taught me that university couldn’t teach me what I needed to know. It got me interested in marketing and ultimately advertising, which made me realise I needed to learn on my own by reading books not on the text list, start a blog, meet people in the industry, do internships and ultimately score a gig.

I suppose that’s a rather negative take on the past four years of my life, one that will no doubt change as I look back on it in the future. There are certainly a few teachers who do good things and I would like to thank them.

And I suppose because of that last point alone the ridiculous HECS debt and the piece of paper I receive when I graduate will be worth it.

Posted by Zac Martin