Digital Stuffing

Vodafone have been doing some interesting things with their sponsorship of the McLaren F1 team and I really like the latest manifestation of their marketing. It’s a simple idea, executed well.

To promote the launch of their mobile broadband in the Netherlands, they’ve conceived a race between the dongle download speed and Lewis Hamilton in a F1 car (from 2 years ago). they’re looking for 28,800 people to join in and connect with the Vodafone vs Hamilton Facebook app. At an average of 10kb per profile picture, they’ll attempt to download all of the images quicker than the car can race 2.7km. Now obviously, the distances and numbers have been calculated so that I’m pretty sure the download will win, but it’s certainly a great idea to promote the speed of the new service.

They have a cool visualisation of all the profile pics, with a 3D rotating car made up of the pictures and it’s incentivised, at least for Dutch members, with prizes of computer and free Mobile broadband service. (Although personally, I think I’d rather attend the race!)

• It’s a great idea perfectly expressing speed and leveraging the sponsorship
• Although it’s a Dutch promotion, it’s open to anyone to contribute to the race, so having a wider branding reach than just the new product launch. Vodafone have mobile broadband in many countries, so it works just as well for them
• There’s a risk if they don’t reach the numbers required. As of now, they have 4.7k participants, only 16% of the required and it’s 11 days to go. I’m sure they’re promoting through social ads and in-market collateral, as well as the auto-posts to Facebook Wall. The latter is a minor annoyance, as they are posting without informing specifically what they will say

Metrodeco, a furniture and tea shop in Brighton, is using Foursquare to offer its customers something different. Not content with just offering specials for customers who check-in, last week they ran a special event in an attempt to get themselves and their customers the Foursquare Swarm badge, This only gets unlocked when you have over 50 people check-in in an hour. The time (and money) spent promoting the event obviously paid off, with the badge being unlocked and the takings doubling for the day. As they say in the Metrodeco press release

“Foursquare has been brilliant for our business because we’ve used it to engage with customers in a whole new way and to offer them a better service.
“There’s a growing excitement about it in the UK because of the power it gives people to share their views and tips on bars, restaurants, airports, public buildings and many other locations. Social media means businesses are now forced to do their customer service in public and the best businesses will embrace this fact, rather than fear it.”

It’s not the first UK swarm, it’s been done at sports events and conferences, but they’re claiming the first deliberately planned business event that reached those numbers. The owners are busy leveraging all the tools at their service to drive traffic to their business and doing it well. Here’s one clear case of digital/social media leading to direct sales.

So if you’re going to try this, what needs to be thought about:

• Consider your audience; they have to be checking into the location for any promotion to have an imapct. So sign up to the service and see who checks-in
• Claim your business on the service and get the description, address and geo-tags set up correctly
• Make sure the offer is relevant and obtainable. Setting out something just for the mayor is great, unless your staff claim mayorship, or the title never changes. Metrodeco have a simple offer (free tea or coffee at lunch) for everyone who checks in
• Make sure your staff are aware of the offer. In a single location like this, it’s simple. Larger promotions by companies such as Gap and Starbuck have had bad press as staff were just not aware of the deals.

Remember to have some fun as well; it’s a new tool to play with, be creative and you may be surprised. Next up for Metrodeco? It has to be the Superswarm for 250 people.

The last few years, Orange have been running (through) a ‘Spot the Bull‘ contest – pick where the bull is going to be in a field, get it right and be entered into a draw for tickets to Glastonbury. This year, there’s still a contest, but it looks like it’s changed. There’s no bull, no random chances, no hitech tracking and video from a field, just an image photoshopped with a little orange welly – Where’s My Welly. Find it, click on it and you’re entered in the draw.

Orange Spot the Welly for Glastonbury (screenshot from site)

As well as the contest, if you already have tickets, you can take advantage of their GlastoNav an augmented reality app, which will display events and locations on the site. It’s definitely available for the iPhone and probably for other smartphones, but they’ve not yet confirmed listings. They’re providing charging stations on site as well.

So it’s a mixture of a digital contest, mobile app and on-site experiential offering, there’s going to be a blog at some point; there’s no facebook page except for the ‘Like’ button. There’s also no mobile version of the site, nor embeddable widget, so it’s been slimmed down a lot since last year. Another area that’s been changed is the promotion. Last year, personal email, this year, an impersonal press release from M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment. Still a good contest, it just feels a lot less friendly and quirky than last year, the brand putting up shutters.

Update: I’ve received an email from the team apologising for the lack of contact; they’re working their way through emails at the moment and not got to me yet. Having had to do this in the past, I can understand the time taken to do a good job with outreach. So, they are being personal still which is great, far better to do this than stick with press release language.

Last week, at a seminar run by FreshNetworks, I heard a case study of how they had run a promotion with Jimmy Choo, using Foursquare. In essence, it was a London wide treasure hunt, where they checked in on the service at various places and stayed for a few minutes. If you caught them, you’d win the pair of Jimmy Choo trainers they were promoting.

This week, Domino’s announce their own Foursquare promotion in the UK. Slightly less glamorous than designer shoes, NMA are reporting that mayors of their restaurants can get free pizza once a week; if you’re just a member of Foursquare, you can get a free side dish. I wish I knew more, but the Domino’s site has no information visible.

Regardless of the lack of promotion anywhere I can find, I like this idea. In the US, locations like Starbucks are already awarding regular users via Foursquare and it’s no surprise the idea is spreading to the UK.

Vodafone have pulled together a lovely little competition to tie in with the Formula One races, calling it the Vodafone Taxi Grand Prix. Vodafone are a sponsor of the Mecedes McLaren team.

• First of all, you need to sign up
• Then, pick your team. You have a choice of 10 drivers across 5 different cities. You need to pick 2 for your team.
• When the race starts, Vodafone track the taxi drivers – using the GPS in their HTC Magic phones. The miles are totalled up. The idea is to complete the race distance in the shortest time. The race distance is that of the target F1 Grand Prix, it was the British one last week, next it’s the German one. Over 5 races, you score points for distance and time, so the person with the highest points wins a trip to the Italian Grand Prix (there’s lots of other prizes too)
• Keep an eye on your drivers. You get lots of statistics about them, so if your driver is not travelling enough, you can swap them around to improve your mileage.
• Come back again and again!

Vodafone Taxi Grand Prix (screenshot from site)

This is a pretty nigty idea. A contest connected with the real world and real people. You get brief bios of the drivers, who are also twittering, so you see what they are getting up to, so over time, you’ll get to know the drivers and what they are like. The mechanic is simple and the interaction allowed keeps you coming back

Spot the Bull with Orange (image from Poke)

Orange are again doing their Spot the Bull competition, giving away tickets to Glastonbury if you can predict where a bull will be in a field at a certain time of day. I played this last year and it was good fun; it got launched yesterday, starting off with an email, I’m guessing to all of last year’s participants. Later on, I got a lot more information about the competition from Poke.

• They’re using a new bull this year, called Desmond, a 5 year-old Charolais Apparently last year’s bull was a little quiet, they’re hoping for more action this year.
• In another change, they’ve adjusted the tech they’re using. Instead of a complicated set up using GPS and satellites to follow the bull action, they’ve got people in the ground, posting the position every 5 minutes and getting great pictures using a mini-dv camera. In a further extension, they’re also tweeting throughout at spotthebull
• They’ve gone mobile this year; go to the same URL on your phone’s web browser and get a sweet mobile version of the site. You can play direct from your phone or SMS your chosen square. There’s also a html version
• Return visits are encouraged. Statistical information is being built up around where the bull will be over the day, plus the tweets will let you know what Desmond’s favourite places are. You can start to predict the bull’s behaviour. Another tip is to play at weekends, which were quieter last year so you have a higher chance.
• There’s an embeddable widget, which brings all the bull action to your blog or profile.

What I think

It’s a successful mechanic for a competition, that obviously worked well last year, enough for them to bring it back. What I’m most impressed about is how ‘solid’ the campaign is, with all the elements connected. There’s a html version, a very nice mobile version, a chance to connect with SMS, the sharable elements. They’ve connected all the dots from a digital perspective. My biggest issue is with the flash version, which is heavy, takes a while to load and slows down the browser. It’s very, very good, but just a little too much of it. All in all, I love this campaign/

As a blogger, they connected with me well, a polite first enquiry about writing about it, then a whole load of imformation that is just lovely. It was done by the Poke team, so thanks to Dylan for the info.

There’s only one video in the rankings this week It’s all a bit quiet amongst the Eurovision, SNL and Enimem stuff. I bring you the making of the Samsung HD8910. Glad to see I got it right.

Campaign has a piece in the dead-tree edition today, about the latest T-Mobile ad, about how agencies can follow a successful execution.

It says about the singalong event in Traflagar Square “lacks something of the spontaneous feel of its predecessor, probably because of the organised nature of the event”.

Personally, I think something of the opposite. The dance video was highly organised, highly choreographed. They knew exactly what the the performers would do, it was just the spectators who were an unknown. In this, part from the idea, everything was an unknown. You could predict what could happen, but you had no idea the numbers, or whether they would join in. Imagine if it had been a damp squid and about 3 people had turned up.

From the spectator point of view, it was far more spontaneous, a real flash mob, a surprise event. I’m guessing many people felt far closer to the brand than with the dance.

I do agree that from an outside, see it on the telly or the digital billboard it does not work as well, it is not as exciting, but it was far more in the moment than the dance.

Here’s what T-Mobile were up to on Thursday, a sing-a-long. The ad is the crowd singing Hey Jude, with some glimpses of Pink, but she’s not the focus, the crowd is. The first video is the full 4 minutes of the song, the second is a recording of the 2 minute ad that appeared on TV (the official channel does not have it yet). At some point I’m guessing there’ll be a 30′, digital billboards and all other stuff. (just as I was writing this, the 30′ was on TV)

I like this, it’s far more authentic than the dance ones, where they’ve hired a bunch of professionals to turn up and do the dance. This really was a flash mob, called together through teaser videos, some judicious seeding and word of mouth. Apparently 13,500 people turned up to sing-a-long. As demonstrated by the many videos on YouTube and images around, many of them had cameras and phones. I;ve seen a lot of buzz about this, so I think it worked for them, at least from a brand awareness side. Given the current company situation, I think they need it!

Miss Geeky points out the T-Mobile are planning something new, following their Liverpool St Dance Flash mob.

They’ve got the Facebook Group and the YouTube channel promoting their next event. Cue dramatic music and a call to action – be at Traflagar Square in London 30th April at 6pm to see what they have in mind.

Update: there’s seems to be some desire to flashmob the flashmob. I’ve suggested taking signs for other networks, others like Chris are suggesting something more

Update2: It happened and looking around it seemed to have been fun. T-Mobile brought along the singer Pink, performed karaoke with the crowd and the big screens . So the new T-Mobile advert with Pink, Trafalgar Square and ‘you’ will be shown on Saturday at 9.