Award entries videos are something to be cautious about as they naturally tells you a certain story (of success) and I’m not sure how many people will give their friends mobile number away.
BUT this is still a very clever idea that should be further explored.
I’m late to the party but this one is just plain nice and good:
They’ve done some modern subservient chicken there, and yes, I did write ‘shags’ in there (as well as loves and hugs).
Go on, you know you want to watch it
5.5 million views and counting.
One day in the near future we will reach some sort of a tipping point with everything social. The new-platform frenzy of the last 5-8 years where almost every year we saw the explosion or a new social platform sometimes at the expense of an old one will slowly fade out. I might be wrong but apart from increasing mobile penetration, location aware and integration of social with eCommerce we are not going to see any significant innovation in social publishing and I don’t see any facebook or twitter killers coming soon.
The revolution of the social web is nearly completed.
From a brand and marketing comms perspective, soon enough a presence on social platforms (predominantly a facebook page, considering the fact that facebook is about to become dominant in social as much as google is the single player in search) will become hygiene in a similar way that every brand now has a website.
And then what?
Then we’ll see a magnificent display of Sturgeon’s law (oh wait we’re seeing it already!). The novelty of social, humanised brands will fade out and people will get pretty bored with the whole chattiness thing. I wholeheartedly believe that the vast majority of people don’t want any ‘extra’ layer of relationship with the vast majority of brands (“I had a bad commute after an average weekend thanks you very f**ing much”). And in as much as personal profile pages fast becoming irrelevant so do branded social spaces.
The legendary Ted of innocent wrote earlier this week that
when, and if, social media reaches tipping point there could quite easily be a divide in those that got in early and have (reach/ market share/ and lessons under their belts), and those that didn’t and have-not”. It’s a very interesting observation from someone who got there early, done some great stuff and keep learning.
My prediction is that similarly to the evolution of the (personal) blogosphere brands and social spaces will go in three possible directions:
1. The big Haves
These are the very few brands that both have what you can call “the social mojo” and who got there early and reached a scale (whatever scale means for them) and some understanding of what is the value for their audience as well as for the brand (read ROI). These are the Starbucks of the world who not only reached a scale but cleverly integrated/adapted their business and culture to the social mode.
2. The small, sophisticated Haves
Sometimes scale is not the main thing and some brands will realise / learn that getting closer to your core few is much better than talking to uninterested masses. These brands will find the value in doing great stuff to a small but valuable group of people and maintain a healthy, sustainable relationships with them. These are the brands that will find their voice, purpose and value proposition whether that means doing real-time customer service, brand’s storytelling or open-innovation.
For both types of Haves it will be (it already is) much more about the other stuff that happens outside the owned social spaces that will drive growth of audiences and interaction. It’s the great products, services and marketing that will keep people’s interest and love and get them back to the social space. Put differently, it’s only your business, brand and marketing strategies that will increase your social mojo.
3. The have-not’s
This is going to be the fate of most brands on facebook (or Twitter). Look around you and you can already see thousands of branded pages or twitter acounts that are so lame, screaming lack of purpose, so me-too without minimum understanding of the space and a strategic direction. Unsurprisingly these brands fiddling around with few hundreds or few thousands of Likes/Followers. Soon enough they will get bored and frustrated from the no return and will simply ditch their spaces (or facebook will become a massive graveyard for deserted branded pages). Unlike your website which is absolute hygiene and can be fairly static a branded social space needs constant TLC and that means time and money. The days that brands will pay someone external to sit and do that chit chat banter on their behalf without proving real value are numbered.
Discuss etc.
By Eric Yahnker
Note: I have another social media related post on draft but my (new) rule is to never have two successive social media related posts otherwise I will really start not liking myself and this blog. So this is sort of a place-holder / buffer post.
I hope you like Eric Yahnker. More of his hilarious absurdities are here
There’s a piece in today’s campaign that asks the question “should social media be handled in-house or outsourced to agencies” which I’ve been interviewed for and as it usually happens with these cases people are looking for conclusive black n’ white answers where there’s none so I just wanted to expand on a very narrow statement I am quoted for.
First, there is no such one thing as social media to relate to so any categorical question/answer/statement related to social media is very problematic. This point applies to the question “should social media be handled in-house or outsourced to agencies”. There are so many aspects to social media so there simply cannot be a black or white yes or no answer to this question.
Generally speaking still, you can narrow down ‘social media’ to three key areas for which you can ask the outsource vs. in-house question:
Community management:
This is the most relevant area for the question above. Managing your permanent presence online (your company blog, facebook page, Twitter account etc). There are 3 possible solutions here:
a) Done completely in-house – this is personally my preferred solution and there are enough examples out there from the awesome innocent people, Yorkshire Tea, Zappos and Dell, when a business takes the digital and social culture seriously and invest in internal resources it is much more cost effective but more importantly it says something about your brand. Being hands-on is always a good thing.
b) But sometimes internal processes, knowledge, structure and personnel simply wouldn’t allow for an in-house team. In this case a dedicated community manager(s) work along side the brand team but with ongoing guidance and direction from the agency that helped recruit and train this person. so it’s a 50-50 ownership and direction. I’ve done it with few clients and in many cases this is the only feasible solution and as close as you get to in-house.
c) In some cases brands are simply either too busy or too lazy to even care about social and for all they care as long as the job is done it can be a cleaning company that handle their spaces. They are happy with an intern in a social media agency to be their voice online. The results of this solution are usually (but not always) lame. Not my cuppa.
Creative development
This is the area that brand will need the help of their agencies just as they need them for any other creative direction whether it’s ATL, BTL or digital. For your social media oriented campaigns and so called ‘conversation starters’ clients with no in-house creative team definitely need a great creative agency to help them in this area.
And BTW on this point the Lean Mean Fighting / Coke case comes under this category and was just an unfortunate incident. It was a super awesome campaign that very very few brands could pull out in-house. Coke and others reaction was completely out of proportion IMHO
Monitoring, measurement and reporting
Again, no black and white answer. Some clients prefer to be hands-on, trained on the ongoing monitoring dashboard while some will want to pay for this service like they pay for any other research brief – both are completely reasonable and legitimate. Similarly campaign tracking and reporting will normally be done by the agency but can be shared by the client.
Any thoughts?
Similarly to other big interweb hits the old spice shenanigan brought upon us another wave of stupidity or as I called it previously the false causality bias. People using success stories to prove the effectiveness of the channel as if only by ‘doing’ the digital/social you will generate buzz etc. Following the old spice hugely successful assault, you hear the experts saying, “here’s is another proof that social media is powerful” or ” a striking proof that social media is a great tool for FMCG brands to change brand perception”.
Nooooooo!
The focus on the ‘channel’ is dafter than daft. What the old spice success has proved IMHO is entirely different:
It proved, yet again, that great ideas, well, they work! I find it a great reminder of the art and science of advertising. The success of the man your man can smell like was down to that rare stroke(s) of genius: first and foremost the quality of copywriting. Comic writing is arguably the most difficult form and the W+K team nailed it with immortal phrases (“Silver fish hand catch!”) that will forever remain in our popular culture. Then of course the combination of genius writing with the perfect casting and acting. Can’t imagine anyone could have done it better than Isaiah. That was the Art.
All the rest was ‘just’ the science, from the initial media planning and buying all the way to the ultra clever extension to real-time production as a live dialouge with loads of people from Twitter, facebook and youtube. Piggybacking or simply milking the success of the original ad was not least brilliant but something which has been achieved through great outreach strategy and admirable understanding of the culture we live by.
‘naff said.
PS: The ever too clever Graeme talked about cause and effect from a slightly different angle (read it here it’s good)
I must quote the super clever Andy here, as this half baked thought “is going to have that awkward ‘haven’t blogged in a while’ feel about it. A bit like a one-night stand after 3 months celibacy”. (Genius steals etc)
Don’t know if you feel or experience the same and I’d be surprised if people haven’t wrote about it something already but it seems like the industry is in a massive state of contraction (as the the opposite of expansion) at the moment. There is a sense that there are no specialists any more and everyone is trying to get a piece of the same cake.
Up until few years ago ‘digital’ was still a new territory done by digital specialists, DM was the blacksheep of the industry, POS was the territory of BTL peeps, media agencies simply planned and bought, well, media and the idea of a PR stunt was something that mainly PR people talked about.
Etc.
But recently, more often than not I see a response to a client brief coming from different agencies and they all seem to play in the same playground. I’m sitting in an all agency initial respond meeting and apart from few ‘crafts’ that remain within their natural territories it seems like the idea of a specialist (ATL, BTL, Digital) is a thing of the past. Media agencies develop and execute ideas, PR agencies doing ‘digital’, the best ad agency in the world is doing social media powered customer service and everyone’s doing the social media thing (little drops of puke in my mouth as I type, excuse me).
And unsurprisingly, the hottest shop in town is a cross channel, media neutral ideas factory kind of agency – just a bunch of very clever peeps solving business problems.
Some clever peeps talk about the death of siloed channels:
We wondered what would happen if we banned people from talking about “digital”, “social”, “viral”, “mobile”, “ATL”, “BTL” and “TTL”. As an exercise, it’s revealing. What do you sell to clients? What do they buy? What do you “make”? What do planners talk about all day? We believe it’s the end of the road for talking about “digital” and all talk of channel-based silos. Thinking and making in silos prevents us from joining the dots between a business’ activities and the audiences it seeks. Both client side and agency side, silos are the enemy. But what’s the alternative?
So what’s gonna be? Everyone’s going to turn into an idea shop and the best ideas will win the business? Is that a good thing? And more importantly, can clients handle that?
I don’t know, you tell me.
Mila’s Daydreams:
“This is my maternity leave hobby. While my baby is taking her nap, I try to imagine her dream and capture it”
There are loads more here for your cute overload
Part of me is in “i wish i’d thought about it” mode but if I’m being honest part of me id also a bit….In your face Huggies and Pampers and all other mums’n'babies brands that pay loads of cash to their agencies (that’s me) to “build awareness, buzz and ultimately increase sales through social media channels” and will never get any near the traffic and love this project gets.
This is why I love the internet
This is why I hate the internet
Thanks Paulina
There’s a lot of plannery chatter on agile planning and how brands should be more reactive, take part of the conversation etc so I won’t add to that. I just want to share a quick timeline observation on the fascinating evolution of brands comms and their responses to the live (social) web.
2008 Tiger walks on water
EA grabs our attention with a very quick, clever and wit response to a youtube video posted by a user of a game who allegedly discovers a ‘glitch’ in the game. It took EA 2-4 weeks to produce and launch this video:
2009 Meerkat rides on twitter waves
The campaign of the year. A stroke of genius peppered with herd and luck makes a surprising talking animal a social media hero. The brand and VCCP were fantastic at responding to the popularity of the meerkat with lots of banter, fun dialouge that extended the character’s personality, most notably their hall-of-fame response to @stephenfry twit-pic of a powercut ordeal. Credit were deserves etc. The meerkat pave the way for what we saw last week.
2010 @oldspice man owns the internet
Unless you were on the moon last week you couldn’t avoid LOLing at the absolute-fuckin-awesomeness of @oldspice. One blogger quite rightly said that for 24hours @oldspice man ‘owned the internet’. I can’t think of a better complement for a marketing activity.
Niiiiice.
I’m feel really fortunate to do what I do at these super exciting times.