Digital Stuffing

The NMA this week has a special about social media – so I’d thought I’d comment on some of the comments. They’d spoken to some of the heads of the top digital media agencies to get their opinions.

I really ought to set the scene – this is an advertising journal talking to people who buy advertising space for a living. Everything they see is through a lens of paid media, something that doesn’t always sit well alongside the social aspects of the online world. I came to this business from a social media perspective, how tools and sites can be used to foster a dialogue between customers and brands, so my point of view probably starts off the opposite from many of the quoted people. (Update...given that, as Stefan says in the comment, I do agree with some of them. I should really write these in 1 session instead of over the day!) Given that context, here’s my favourite bits and my response.

the best social media campaigns are ones which add something to the user experience and therefore leave people with a positive brand association….we take it on a campaign-by-campaign basis. Josh Krichefski, BLM Quantum

Entirely agree that a paid media campaign should focus on adding to the user experience, to give something back. But treating them on a campaign-by campaign basis can backfire, if people think they are being used again and again without the chance to feed something back to the brand. Listening is as important, if not more so, than broadcasting.

People are figuring out that social media isnt’ just a media buy… Andrew Walmsley, i-level

People who are not in the advertising space figured that out a long time ago. Social media for them is more about the social site, the media (especially the paid stuff) is secondary at best, downright annoying at worst. A brand may do better participating in the social side than trying to dominate the media.

There’s a genuine lack of understanding from clients as they don’t use the sites themselves. Robin O’Neill, GroupM

Social networks are in the same place the web was in the late 90′s/early 00′s. Many brands could not work out why they should be on the web as the people holding the budgets did not use the web. we’ve got the same now with social networks and will have the same with whatever comes next. It’s a long hard slog to get that understanding.

…two uses of social media: generating huge numbers of impressions through display and as part of a campaign, which is the exciting part. Stefan Bardega, Director of Digital, MediaCom

The former can be useful – lots of brand measurement figures improve when online advertising is in the mix of a campaign. Providing some utility, some piece of fun, something else to do can have a far bigger effect (and be more fun to create!)

Find the right insight and develop the right idea, then look at how to implement it. If it happens to require social media, then great. We don’t want to a return to the old online obsession of using a medium just for the sake of it. Keven Murphy, Zed Media

As someone who has spent far too much time on the receiving end of being pitched the latest agency obsession, amen to this (just look at the current lust for Twitter). You have to have the right idea, audience AND brand culture to use social media effectively.

The other articles are really just about social networks – Facebook, Bebo and mySpace, which are only a subset of the social media out there. But I guess you can only mention so much in a dead tree format.

(As an aside, I wonder how many of the people mentioned do ego searches?)

Samsung have gone big with the cute animals with this video for the S8300 Ultratouch phone. I think my favourites are the bunny workout and the chick dancefloor. Oh, and the evil hdgehog. This is the one product video around – so enjoy!

I quite like this ad, having seen the real Bellagio fountains – but most importantly because it looks such a fun ad to make, as the behind the scenes video shows. I want a coffee bean shooter NOW!!!!!

The add is by McCann Erickson London, for the UK market. They seem to have forgotten the digital component, as the Nescafe site has no reference to the campaign. The YouTube channel is there, but I’m not expecting anything else to appear on it, it’s a one off. And, most annoyingly, searching for what I would think would be a pretty obvious search term ‘Nescafe Beans’ (the name of the YouTube account) just presents me with loads of ‘money off vouchers’ sites, not even a paid search ad to take me there, although searching for the More Beans, More Taste (the ‘official name’) does bring up the video

Facebook changed their Terms and Conditions this week, to strengthen their licence to display your stuff on the site. But in the opinion of many, including me, they’ve gone too far. Even though I’m not a lawyer I still have a good grasp of what they are trying to say. For a lawyer’s opinion, see Paul’s post over at web.tech.law

The license which you, as a Facebook user, grant to Facebook is very broad and it covers not just your content on Facebook but content you may have linked to from outside Facebook. What the terms don’t do is grant ownership but the license is so broad Facebook may as well own your content. What alarms me the most is that Facebook takes a license to the content you may only link to on Facebook and don’t upload to the service. This covers photos you may have stored on Flickr, videos on Zoopy or Vimeo and more. This virtual land grab makes these terms of use a particularly invasive set of permissions.

They used to have a clause that states that when you deleted your account (although with Facebook you can never, really, delete your account) then the licence is revoked. No more, they keep it forever.

One complication I see coming up is how brands are going to react to this. Facebook is used by many brands for both campaigns and for connections. It has to be one way that FB can gain revenue. I’d love to see what the lawyers of, say, an entertainment property or film say about the new terms.

I’m getting mildly excited about the new Watchmen film, enough so that I’m contemplating buying the book to see what all the fuss is about, why everyone praises it. Which is a pretty interesting choice for me as I never find graphic novels that interesting as an input device. As befits a genre movie, they have a lot of online activity going on, much of it over at The New Frontiersman, a great source of images, films and text in the alternate world of the Watchmen. Many of the assets are available on other channels as well, such as YouTube, the New Frontiersman photostream at Flickr, the Twitter account and the Friendfeed account.

So you won’t miss anything, they’ve also got this cool embed TV player, that will bring you the latest from the ‘verse.

Another lovely little piece of content is the ‘widget’, which brings you the more ‘official’ stuff instead the extended reality content

What do I think

You couldn’t do a film like this without all of the extra stuff, given the target audience. However, I think what has been done is very good and is garnering a lot of online excitement as the quality is excellent. It’s not an add on as so many are, but fundamental to the story. As Adam from Rubber Republic says in his email to me:

…this really shows how online platforms shouldn’t merely promote a film but actually be a crucial of part of the narrative, extending and respecting the graphic novel’s rich backstory, offering the online audience added layers, access to the source materials and dimensions there are in the original ‘Watchmen’ masterpiece.

Exactly what should be done with this type of the campaign, something that is so often forgotten or just ignored. The web should not just be used to push the content that will end up on the screen but to add to it and be a piece of entertainment/storytelling in its own right.

Hamleys (screenshot from site)

Databases, they can cause all sorts of problems. Somewhere, in the depth’s of Hamleys listing, someone has missed a field!

A bit different from last week, which was full of Superbowl product ads, we only have the one in the list. I’m not sure i like this one from Absolut, where, in an Absolut world, goods and services are exchanged for for kisses and hugs.. Firstly, the concept is both too fantastic and not fantastic enough. Kisses for goods just does not work and they have not gone far enough with the idea – Bacardi have done it far better.

But this could be considered a product ad, or at least an anti-product ad. It’s from The Onion and is a review of Sony’s latest (swearing included)

On Thursday, I made my way down to Brighton to talk at an evening seminar ran by use8. It was a combination of talks and a panel, with myself taking part in the panel at the end of the session. Not having prepared too much, much was in response to questions, there’s a lack of things to put up here, but there are 2 key points I included.

A Brand Usage of Social Media

James Temple, an ECD of RG/A gave a lovely little talk about how they have used social media channels and tools to promote their brand campaign. Two key examples from Nokia are the Urbanista Diaries (search for it, they no longer seem to exist) and ViNe, which is basically a life blog form your mobile, which tracks where you are, what you see, what you listen to and all your photos.

• Campaign Usage: The first, at least, is an example of the use in social media in campaigns, to support a specific time/set of messages. Advertising in general thinks this way and so social media tends to be seen by marketers and agencies as something that can be treated the same way. You just turn the tap on, people talk about you and then you turn it off again. You can do it and it works, but the effect is ephemeral, it is still seen as advertising, so can easily backfire or never be as effective as you want. The ROI on this type of usage is rarely high, as it is treated in the same way as mass media.
• Customer Service Usage: The second usage is from a customer service point of view. The tools are used to connect with customers, see how they are doing, answer their queries, respond to them and fix their problems. It’s the same as a call centre but instead of waiting for them to come to you, you can be proactive. (When being proactive and solving things can often turn critics into evangelists). This is not short term advertising, it’s long term customer service. It needs not to come out the marketing budget – even though it really is marketing, as is everything that you do that touches a customer. For me, this is the more effective usage. You can still do the first type, sending out information about campaigns, but you will have a far better relationship to start with and more chance of being considered if you are seen to understand the space.

Should a brand use social media?

A second question was asking whether all brands should use social media. The answer has to be no. In order to use the tools and channels successfully, you need to know if your customers are using it, can it add value to your customers and what is the internal culture like – is it ready to have real contact with the people who buy the product, not cushioned by research and focus groups and agencies and other layers. Do your customers WANT TO HEAR from you in that way, are you prepared to LISTEN TO THEM and, most importantly, are you prepared to DO SOMETHING

A really detailed study from Paul van Veenendaal and Igor Beuker from viralblog.com. It examines how Obama used online media to connect with the voters in a way that has never been seen before and takes a little look at how brands can learn lessons from the campaign. Superb research here.

Alfa have produced an interesting game to support the launch of their new car, the Alfa Mito, it’s the Mito Rally

Alfa Mito. Screenshot from site

The game is spread across 10 sites, such as TopGear, Maxim and MSN. Each site basically has the same flash game, with different stages of a racing game. You have to compete in all 10 stages to be in with a chance of winning one of the prizes – a Wii, iPod Touch and IPod Nano each week and a Alfa Mito for the overall winner of the 9 week contest.

Lovely idea here, taking the common flash racing game idea and adding a great media spin to it – I’m guessing there’s all the placements are ‘added value’ instead of straight media buys. At each point, there are reminders to test drive the car, find a dealer or get more information, pushing the idea that you have to get out and drive the car.

When you go to play the game, you get offered the chance to login/create an account – or just play as guest. This reduces the barrier so that you can play before you commit to giving away your information. The race itself is pretty straighforward, each version just having a different background. I was a little disappointed with the game itself, there was no real crashes or bangs when I drove into things! But the concept and general execution is very good.

Alfa Mito Race - Screenshot from site