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.
Previous Editions
+ Vary Your Vernacular I
1. Go to Google
2. Type “find chuck norris”
3. Click I’m Feeling Lucky
4. Enjoy what is one of the greatest Chuck Norris Facts ever.
Having a sense of humour only further adds to an already remarkable product.
What a great idea to use Ricky Ponting, Australia Cricket Captain, to head up your campaign. Dispite his inabilty to act, its an ideal celebrity endorsement to bring in to really boost your campaign. This is all fine and well, the problem I have is with the balls.
To receive your free ball you have to attend one of only a few events run in your State. And if you do attend, all you get is a ball? Even if I did make it out to one of these events for my freebie, I still wouldn’t consider using a Rexona product.
This one should never have left the ideas room.
Also worth checking out the hopeless ‘official’ Rexona website. Surely in this day and age of new media every brand needs its own webpage, particularly a big one like this.
So when Skins claimed that they “don’t pay elite athletes to wear” their sports gear, they were using the same thing. Apparently the ACCC isn’t aware that consumers aren’t idiots.
Contrary to popular belief, people don’t believe everything we tell them.
Merely hours after this story exploded on the interweb, slapcorey.com was launched. What better way could Vivo Group market themselves than through what they claim to do best?
At more than 500,000 hits, I’d say this is a great example of UNM2PNM.