“FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site; Poverty.com
FreeRice has two goals:
1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.”
To date 21,957,026,530 gains have been donated. Not bad eh?
With the success of the show this would certainly have gone straight to number one on the charts… had it been launched six months ago. Cashing in on the show’s success a little too late?
I picked up a bottle of Another Bloody Water yesterday. What an incredibly creative product design. The labels is written extremely well and really plays on the idea that no one cares what brand of water they drink. I know I certainly don’t, until now.
Product design is important, even for those regular purchases and a little innovation can make all the difference. Its the reason I will buy the new slim can line of Coke. And its the same reason I’ve stopped purchasing Lynx because of their twisty top can.
As a massive fan of Futurama, I could not wait to insert Bender’s Big Score into my DVD player. To say the least, it certainly did not disappoint my high expectations.
Upon doing some reading about the movie, I discovered 20th Century Fox has filed to protect the trademark Slurm in relation to what looks like soft drinks. I love when fictional products become real, a little like slurpees becoming squishies for the Simpsons Movie release at 7-Eleven.
When can we expect Slurm on our shelves in Australia?
So how do you get to this stage faster with a higher hit rate? My second realisation; the need to be active in your community. It is essential to follow other blogs of a similar nature and actively contribute to them. Reading, listening and importantly commenting is essential. Not only will this help you formulate ideas of your own but planting that seed does surprising lots.
So get out there, build a name for yourself, network, contribute and become a successful blogger.
Here is one of my favourite thus far which I thought I’d share…
I’m sure you can remember only last year when the hopeless Martin Merton campaign was run, headed up by a Doctor who had a PhD in Train Etiquette. On similar lines, Metlink launched its latest yesterday; Karma Central. According to mX, this will involve giving away free coffee vouchers to paying customers in an attempt to stop fair evaders.
There are a lot of things going for the latest move by Metlink. I love the idea that this time they are encouraging their consumers rather than punishing them like the previous campaign. I also find the billboards and print media rather humorous and the website has a really great, innovative design.
So where does it fall down? Simply the concept. No matter how much you spend on promotion and advertising, you can’t market anything successfully without an acceptable product to start with. Instead of blowing your budget on an expensive campaign, put your money towards running a reasonable service where people don’t blog about you because they hate your brand.
Instead of offering me a free coffee, why not give me a seat I’ve already payed for?
The campaign has your usual vitals; a Facebook page, YouTube channel, blog and more but it seems the campaign hasn’t quite received the attention they wanted. A contest asking for user submissions of people videoing their own Truths didn’t receive a single entry. Promotions were run through billboards, bus sides and a cinema spot, yet $500 and a free trip to Sydney went unnoticed. Even after a month, I only heard about this campaign through someone at Naked Communications.
It raises the question, does new media require old media? Can you successfully market a campaign digitally without a traditional launch? Perhaps in two years things will be different but at least here in Australia and now in the present a thirty second spot would have benefited this campaign greatly.
sneezer
n. sneeze·er
Coined by Seth Godin, he defines it as “someone of influence in the community that spreads the word about a product or service”. Bascially, if a viral campaign is spread like a virus, then a sneezer is the person who spreads it.
flog
n. flog
A portmanteau of the words fake and blog, usually found when a brand fails to be transparent with a negative outcome. Perhaps one of the best known examples was Sony‘s All I want for Xmas is a PSP which significantly backfired when revealed.
word of mouse
n. word of mouse
The Web 2.0 version of word of mouth with the ability to spread much faster via the Interweb.
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