I was on YouTube looking for an old Smokey Robinson commercial - you know, the one where this middle aged guy tells his son to turn the radio down. The son whines, "But Dad, it's SMOKEY!" (I was watching Celebrity Duets on Fox).
Didn't find that spot, but I did notice that some big name bands are starting to post content on the YouTube musician's channel. Gorillaz has a page up, looks like they're keeping up with their MySpace page too. Bad Boy Records has a page up too.
YouTube should take a page out Facebook's playbook and create a channel for politicians...
It ain't over for Snakes on a Plane. Although media coverage calls the film a financial disappointment, we've only been through one weekend. Calculating the P&L of a film can be tricky and isn't as straightforward as revenue less expense - see this example of how crazy things can get.
So now marketers will take these snakes back to their white collar labs and dissect them, in the same spot they autopsied a subservient chicken. What will they find?
Some will mistake correlation for causation and make one of the remaining ten animals of the Chinese zodiac the star of their next viral marketing campaign. Actually, narrow that down to eight - Crispin is making the Rabbit into a star and and someone trots out monkeys every year.
Others will go back to basics - "you have to start with a good product." True, but the success of SoaP isn't about how seminal the film's content was - it's about the overwhelming consumer involvement in its marketing.
I believe that advertising has to do more than drive site traffic - otherwise we'd consider the Carl's Jr. + Paris Hilton ads on par with 1984. Great advertising drives sales. So the stage is set for the biggest viral hit of 2007, which will:
Sync up with current memes - rising cultural trends. This is tougher than it sounds; if you've ever produced a commercial (and I'm not talking SpotRunner here), you know how difficult timing can be. You've got to be smart, in the loop, and a little bit lucky to succeed.
Involve consumers early on, but not from the very beginning. People are much better at critiquing something that already exists than creating something on their own. Why are there so many more readers and commenters than actual bloggers? Inventing is tough, innovation is how you make it your own.
Come from a small to medium sized business. Might be a smaller part of a whole - but marketers with fewer resources and less to lose tend to be much more creative.
Be part of a new entry in an established category. Derivative of the point above - less baggage to deal with.
Use material from cultural and social edge that is comically acceptable, but would be uncomfortable or inappropriate with a slight twist. Subservient chicken wouldn't be funny if it were a real person. Snakes on a Plane could have easily been just another horror movie. It's material that just approaches the line but doesn't cross it for an unexpected reason. Cross the line and it's over.
So what's it going to be? Depends on the brand and product - but next year does happen to be year of the pig...
Brentter has posted an ad by W+K in GTA style, as part of the Coke Side of Life campaign. Awesome.
More companies need to pick up on this and other emerging design treatments - this is advertising that consumers will want to watch. Might not make you buy more in the short term, but definitely moves the needle on the brand.
UPDATE: More on the background to this ad, including storyboard - from the W+K Portland blog.
Too bad for the people who paid for the service on eBay yesterday. In the past, bids had climbed into the $40 range. Prices are down to $1.79 - $5.00.
While some other free analytics tools are tailored for tracking blogs specifically (e.g. Blogbeat, Performancing, and MeasureMap), Google Analytics is a great tool for both individual publishers and SMBs.
If you're not hooked on one service over another, the cost of running multiple services is minimal. You should implement a few and then decide for yourself after comparing user interface, reporting, tracking results, etc.
My dog got a letter in the mail yesterday. He's been offered a credit card! (see pics at left)
Some things to note:
This isn't the first time I've blogged on DB marketing gone wrong - my niece was offered a Starwood Preferred Gold membership. She's four years old.
I know why this happened - when I moved recently, I changed the name on my magazine subscriptions to my dogs.
What's strange - all of the subscriptions are in two names, both the male and female dogs. Their names are not ambiguous as to gender. The credit card offer was to the male dog only.
Maybe the credit scoring database knows that bichons are just high-spenders compared to labs.
One way to build a brand is via partnerships with others that share similar ideals. What's interesting is when you string some brands together and see where it gets you. Pictured at right is the JetBlue Shut-Eye Kit from bliss. Let's actually start this chain with the in-flight coffee:
Seems like we're move towards a persona-based world where brands help define Jerry Maguire-style customer segments, where our target is "holding a beverage, wearing a shoe, playing a video game, singing a song in a commercial starring her/himself."
I'm still getting random LinkedIn requests on a regular basis. I'm a big fan of social computing and online networking - but there are specific ways I use my LinkedIn network. That's why I removed about 700 connections - so I can better respond to useful requests from colleagues and friends.
Useful: Helping someone find a new job.
Not Useful: Requests to update someone else's online address book.
Useful: Facilitating a research request.
Not Useful: Someone who's connected to 1,000+ people but ignores requests.
I'd be happy to connect - if we have something in common. I recommend following this best practice piece of advice and suggest you view requests to connect in a similar fashion:
"Why should I bother to connect personally with you, if you can’t be
bothered to write me a personal note? Plus, because the average
businessperson has more than 3,000 connections, you should probably
include a description of how you know me if you’re not 100% sure I’ll
remember your name."
But here's a tip: if you want to make your LinkedIn connection unbreakable, use lower case to start your name, e.g. "peter kim" or "Peter kIm". There are some stragglers left in my network and LinkedIn's customer service has been unable to help with these, even manually.
The followup piece to my Reinventing the Marketing Organization piece is going to focus on reinventing the agency relationship. Why is this necessary? Because Forrester researches technology and technology is the primary catalyst driving change in consumer behavior and marketing strategy today.
Case in point: someone at BBDO has just discovered Gillette's No Scruf microsite. Which has been out for about three months now. The irony is the blogger's call to action:
"Gillette brand managers… tune in for some girl talk, straight up."
Pretty sure that's stated without irony, as the agency behind the site is Digitas. You'd think that agencies are at least monitoring each other, let alone social media.
I'm feeling a lot of great momentum behind recent research into Reinventing the Marketing Organization. On a related note, two critical aspects of reinvention are the cultural and political shifts that must occur within an organization. There's a new post on Forrester's marketing blog about addressing these topics via the marketing of Marketing and six elements for executives success therein:
Define your role and responsibilities;
Educate your peers AND yourself;
Proactively collaborate;
Develop a strong team;
Actively pursue accountability; and
Engage in two-way communication.
While these seem fairly high level, Cindy's research gets pretty in-depth about how to make this happen. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. I'll be exploring this issue in future research as well.
