Neat idea for Heinz fans in the UK – send friends suffering from the autumn chills a personalised can of soup (£1.99 including delivery!). This certainly has novelty value and it’s bound to put a smile on the faces of recipients. The company says: “Because Facebook is a place people choose to engage with our brand, we want to be there… Our use of these channels doesn’t replace TV, but it is a great compliment to it because it allows the consumer to spread the word and they engage more than they would with traditional channels such as TV or Radio.” Good stuff.
Funny, tongue-in-cheek video from the Dutch National Maritime Museum that shamelessly piggybacks off the popularity of Facebook and its creator Mark Z. I’d give it ten out of ten for execution, especially the voiceover. Tonally it looks pretty progressive for a museum. I imagine the brief said something about attracting a new generation of visitors.
I wish I had a client like Burberry. Everything it does is slick, from the behind the scenes content and tryvertising on Facebook to the 178 videos on its You Tube channel. Here’s the Burberry bigwigs’s take on social enterprise, courtesy of a promo video for one of its suppliers.
This is quality advertising. Engaging viewing. And great casting. Rocky Taylor, a stuntman who nearly lost his life on the set of a Bond movie, is the star of a new campaign that asks people to remember a charity in their wills. The creators have extended the idea to a Facebook poll (vote for the size of the flames in Rocky’s last stunt) but the stats after two weeks are pretty underwhelming (922 views and 1288 likes). It makes you wonder about the seeding or lack of it.
This Coca-Cola campaign, which uses Facebook Places to encourage recycling, reminds me of the good digital can do, at a time when we are surrounded by loads of ‘addy’ stuff (I nearly said crap). Kudos to Coca-Cola for extending its CSR beyond lip service on the pages of an annual report!
I spend most of my time trying to drag clients into the online world but here’s a cool idea that goes the other way! Social Memories is an app that lets you publish a very nice hard copy book based on your Facebook activity. Could be a good present if you can somehow access your friends’ Facebook login details. (Would you want a book about a friend?)
New Zealand marketers still seem suspicious of social commerce. I guess it’s easy for global brands to talk about low set-up costs. But if you do have the budget and a decent-sized audience, pop-up stores like this one from Chanel can be a good idea. It was created as part of the pre-launch for a new range of lipstick, which gave Facebook fans a chance to buy before the products hit cosmetic counters. I have no idea of the uptake but this is a smart way to take advantage of Facebook’s shareability and turn fans into advocates (the f-store also appeared as a ‘wall-store’ in news feeds).
Here’s a nice YouTube page takeover from Schick. I like the way they link to Facebook. But whoaaaa, spare us the page of razor jibber jabber, like ‘proprietary technology to pack advanced lubrication…’ Wouldn’t it be better to throw in a sampling programme that rewarded followers?
Now here’s a lesson in keeping ideas simple. The guys behind Lacta’s Facebook strategy noticed that Greeks were comparing loved ones to Lacta’s sweet taste. So they built an application that allowed fans to personalise and send virtual chocolate bars complete with their lovers’ names on packs. We’re talking little more than wall posts, wall-to-wall posts and tagging in galleries. Yet in two months, Lacta almost trebled its number of Facebook fans, from 87,000 to 250,000. Many fans also changed their profile photo to show off their own unique bar. What a victory for insight, simplicity and shareability! As with many case study videos, there’s no reference to the actual impact on sales. But I’m picking the application was fairly cheap to build. In any case, the benefits in terms of brand attitudes and brand loyalty would have far outweighed the costs.
It’s that time of year again for the Contagious round-up of the best in digital. Some of my personal favourites from recent CDs (editions 22 and 23) include: ‘Breaking the Cycle’ – a campaign from U by Kotex that shakes up the crimson tide category with its sheer honesty; ‘Let’s Colour’ – a Dulux campaign with great feel good factor; and, ‘Microsoft Kin’ – branded entertainment that had the balls to ask if a person’s social media friends were really friends at all.
