The silly season is never ending at the Orange offices, as you can see from The Feed: a random collection of light hearted fun designed to get all buddy with customers. This week it’s a Santalookalike competition. But in the past they’ve posted ‘Secret Portraits’ (student illustrators interpreting your tweets), the Film Flipper (a very basic tool to randomly choose the movie you’ll see), and who can forget the Singing Tweetograms. People tend to hate telcos like they hate banks. Rather than serving up this sort of fluff, I wonder if it would just be better to you know…give people what they want…like skilled call centre staff and accurate billing. Am I being grumpy? Sorry.
Some campaigns based on user generated content are good. Some are not. I realise the ‘It’s no picnic’ campaign won awards but I don’t know why. How engaging is it to watch 30 seconds of someone trying to talk while stuffing their face with a Picnic bar? Personally, I much prefer the slice of life moments from Beechies’ latest campaign, inviting fans to submit stories too good not to share (just like their chewing gum). It’s fun and the story lines (if not the idea of sharing) are original.
Research company ExactTarget recently asked punters why they ‘like’ brands on Facebook. The key motivator turned out to be discounts, followed by social badging and freebies. I have a sneaky feeling the whole report has been done in Dutch. I don’t know any Dutch. But the bar graph is pretty easy to understand. And Lauren Bianchi’s translation of the commentary by (Dutch firm) SocialMediaConsultancy is definitely worth a quick read.
You’re most probably blind if you haven’t seen any of ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ campaign by W+K, but in any case here’s the case study. Man, I wish I had worked on it.
What’s the worst that could happen? Sounds like the brains behind this Facebook app for Dr Pepper might be Des Kaye admirers (see Little Britain Live if you don’t know what I mean). Sick of all the noise online, the drink’s agency has come up with a competition that lets them hijack people’s status updates. All you have to do is choose a level of updates you’re comfortable with, from mildly annoying to super embarrassing, then prepare to have a laugh at your own expense. Kind of reminds me of BK’s Whopper Sacrifice – a dig at those insecure souls who simply befriend people on Facebook to appear more popular.
Money doesn’t make an idea good. But it can lead to great execution which is often enough to capture many people’s imagination. Take a look at this interactive video for Stella using Facebook connect then consider how effective it would have been as a plain old HTML email. The answer: probably not half as much. I particularly like the way photos from people’s profiles are seamlessly integrated into the plot. That plus the reward of a free movie when you forward the promotion to four friends (a nice touch to leverage existing Stella content).
His Royal Highness, the Burger King, is finally winging his way to NZ! And it’s about time. Y&R has murdered that account for a decade or more, shooting TV ads about monkeys testing burgers and rugby girls on horseback. Meanwhile BK in the US has been doing a lot of good work, including branded Xbox games featuring the King for only $3.99. And now Colenso looks set to go down the same route. The TVC leaked so far looks pretty slick and leaves me wanting more. The only thing I found a little lame was the ‘reality video’ on Facebook (the one where the King arrives at the airport). Posting such faux user content is just treating punters like mugs. It’s an AD CAMPAIGN guys – treat it that way! Let’s hope BK uses this fresh start to improve its actual in-store experience – some of the stores are pretty grubby. (What’s with that 50s theme anyway?)
I know what you’re thinking – how can I sneak off to the football on Valentine’s Day without getting red carded from the bedroom? Well fear not, for the lads at Puma have brainstormed a truly romantic gesture to keep you onside with your better half. Simply dedicate this charming love song via Facebook or email and prepare for the red carpet treatment when you get home. The Puma ‘HardChorus’ ad, ‘featuring’ a motley collection of Tottenham supporters, will air during TV coverage of the Bolton v Tottenham FA Cup tie.
Hand on heart I can honestly say I’m not one for train wrecks – in fact I turn away when cringe TV comes on – but I can’t resist this lesson in how not to do Facebook, courtesy of Waiwera Water. Check out the response from the company when an unsuspecting (?) customer raises doubts about the quality of its bottled water. On top of this, many of the posts elsewhere seem little more than brand boasting, a tactic that hardly lends itself to genuine two-way dialogue with followers. Does anyone else feel there are way too many brands on Facebook and Twitter for no great reason, or am I the only one? (I’m thinking brands that represent low involvement purchases in particular.)
I love simple, cheap ideas that work their buns off, like this one for the opening of the new IKEA store in Malmö. The guys at Forsman & Bodenfors created a Facebook campaign that invited people to tag products for their chance to win. Now the stuff IKEA comes out with is hardly Charles Eames but Swedes love it and word about the new store – and interactive IKEA catalogue (extra brownie points F & B) – soon spread. I guess this is a more sophisticated, more engaging (and more sincere) version of those junk emails promising a reward if you forward it to 10 friends. I got one of these just the other day promising me a brand new Sony laptop. Yeah right.
