Digital marketing, engagement, transmedia, games, fun
Orange have released their latest ‘movie’ – plus the game of the movie. It’s Sigourney Weaver in Snake, film of the game
Another one of their quirky takes on the Hollywood business, I like this visualisation of the film. The game is extremely addictive, so make sure you have time for it! This is yet another game using Facebook connect, but I don’t have to use it to play, so keeping me in control, which is what I prefer. Another good effort by Orange and Poke.
I feel like I’ve been posting nothing but grumpy posts lately, with complaints about the product or the approach. Having been in an email exchange about the Guinness advertisement post below, I thought I’d just summarise what I think are the simple requirements.
That’s it. Simples (as another advertising icon may say).
Guinness Behind The Scences
There’s a new Guinness ad being launched today. I have no idea what it’s about nor what it looks like. What I have had is a series of emails from the PR company charged with promoting the ad; the initial offer was a digital picture frame they were planning on mailing me. As I can’t put that on the blog, I waited until they were able to send me images before posting – which was today, the day the ad opens. And I still have no idea what it’s about.
Overall, Guinness is not working this correctly. If you want bloggers to write about something, then give them some things to write about. Sending an email offering a token prize means nothing if there’s nothing to write about. I believe they would have been far better offering a video preview or images far earlier in the process than they did. It’s been far more of a hassle then it needed to be, which means that my perception of the brand has worsened (which is a hard thing to do considering I used to work for them!)
Update: although they may not be providing the bloggers anything, the mainstream press are getting the ad and the information. From the Media Guardian
The TV ad, called “World”, focuses on how the famous stout looks like it comes alive when a pint is poured.
Guinness’s epic ad was shot in locations including New Zealand, Canada, Fiji and the UK.
It features a group of men who bring life to a barren landscape by populating the ocean with fish, dragging fields of grass into place and supplying fresh water.
As the 90-second commercial unfolds Guinness aims to draw a parallel with the famous “surge and settle” motion that typifies the pouring of a pint and introduce the new strapline “Bring it to life”.
Created by ad agency AMV BBDO, the commercial will first air in high definition on Sky Sports 2 during the Champions League clash between Liverpool and Lyon tonight from 7.45pm.
Guinness has linked up with Google Earth to allow web users to “bring an imaginary planet to life” in a simplified version of games such as Civilization or Sim City called “Guinness World”.
The Campaign
VSP, the US’s ‘largest eyecare service provider’ (I’m guessing that translates into health insurance in English), has decided to get more into social media. They’re doing this with ‘The Great Bernie‘, a campaign that combines a website, Facebook app and Twitter feed to give
“non-seers” a glimpse into their wondrous futures featuring their Facebook friends, photos and more. Bernie, who has been touring the globe revealing futures, is reportedly eager to transfer his visionary skills into the digital age with The Great Bernie.
So by connectiing with Facebook, you’re going to hoepfully get some interesting content posted to your Facebook for you and your friends to enjoy.
The Great Bernie (Screenshot from site)
What I think
This is a nice, if slightly obvious, connection for a eyecare service provider, allowing you to see the future clearly. However, the implementation lacks something for me. The site is well designed and put together with a retro-feel associated with turbaned fortune tellers, but I have no idea WHAT is does. It’s asking me to Connect with Facebook, therefore exposing my connections to something I have no control over without giving me a hint of what it will offer. They’re asking me to get involved in a blind value exchange; I know what I’m bringing to the bargain, my connections, but there’s no indication of what I’m getting, not even on the Facebook page.
My reaction to this is definitely influenced by my reluctance to let any brand post to my feeds without it being clear why this needs to happen, but I’m not the only one. If you want something, it’s only fair to be clear what the bargain is for.
The Pitch
Again not strong on details, a short email in exactly the same language as the ‘ VSP social media press release’. No explanation of what is does. There’s a suggestion I can ask for more images (there’s actually a few on the Facebook page, which are stills from the video). But I don;t think I should have to ask what it does to my Facebook feed! I’m left feeling perplexed more than anything else about this campaign.
I think they need to expand the email to give more information and add some examples to the website to explain a little more, to avoid those barriers.
Sitting at home yesterday morning, I saw a tweet from a friend about a Zombie Walk he was organising. He was doing work to promote Capcom’s newest game Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, which launches for the Wii at the end of the month. Now I’m a fan of Resident Evil ( I think I have 4 versions of the game) but I’ve never been a zombie, so this looked a good moment of fun to partake in.
Wandering down to the Tate Modern, I got made up and then spent a lot of time taking photos of the real professional zombies, who came all dressed and made up. It turns out that they were part of the Viking Hat Zombie Group, who went on later to a Zombie Pub Crawl. It was great fun, with tourists asking for lots of photos. At the end of it, we took part in a photoshoot and then staggered and moaned around for a chance to win game copies and a Wii.
Now this isn’t digital marketing, my normal topic, but talking to a few other attendees, it was spread through digital means – Twitter and group sites. It also results in a digital trail from photos, videos and write ups. It’s part of the a mixed approach, to connect with community and with the press. (But mainly, from my perspective, it was fun!)
Warner Brothers are releasing a new version of Sherlock Holmes on Boxing Day this year. As part of this, they’re doing a ARG on rails – a flash based game – around the film. I signed up for the game in August and today it got released. Found at the nice vanity URL http://www.221b.sh/, the site looks good. It’s also got some interesting tie ups – Sherlock Holmes on Tweetdeck is obviously part of the offering
However, implementation is not so good. In fact, it’s so bad in my first few screens, I’ve sent a complaint through to Warner Brothers. Here’s the email, which, based on the auto-response will never be read as it’s been classified as spam.
1. Restricting the game to users who have a Facebook is poor. There is no need to do this, games like this should be playable without forcing me to share my personal profile. In order to create an account, give me the OPTION of using facebook (or another OAuth/authentification tool) but allow straight forward account login. Don’t add barriers to your users.
2. On deciding to connect with Facebook, it rightly asks me a series of questions about what rights I will give the game. However, it then decides to keep asking the question about allowing the game to post to my updates. (on logging in at different computers). If you want me to spread the word about the game – make a GOOD game. then I’ll do something about it. Don’t impose your need to broadcast your messages onto my friends.
3. When I decided to play alone, the site is broken. there appears to be no way to play the game that way, despite offering that option. There’s nothing to click on.
4. When trying to partner up with a fellow player, the gameplay is definitely broken. We’re both in the game, we’re friends on Facebook, but if we try and invite the other to be our partner, the only message it sends is that the other person has given up on you and has gone away (plus a link to the site). Looking at forums, it appears the only way this works is if the the potential partner is not already signed into the game. I understand why you may want a distribution mechanism, to force people to invite ‘new’ players, but the implementation is extremely bad and just gives the impression that it’s broken and you have failed to test.
So that’s it. What I see is a design team running through the various ‘must have’ elements, putting them in place, without thinking them through properly, to allow all to play the game (well, all if have flash). Not a good first impression.
I get almost all of my groceries delivered from Ocado. As a company they seem to be pretty good. They have a pretty good ordering website. They have green credentials, allowing you to to book the optimal delivery time plus recycling their bags. They have a lovely iPhone and Blackberry app. They’re even on Twitter as OcadoUK. But they are still managing to annoy me by falling down on their Direct Marketing and CRM, which taints the whole brand for me.
There are two main things with their emails, both related to lack of targeting. Considering they have all my shopping information, they should be able to get this stuff right. The first thing they do is send me emails with offers that are completely irrelevant – I’ve never bought a single baby thing so why send me emails of those offers. The second, even more annoying, is the continuous pushing of their on demand service. Given I probably order once every 3 weeks if not even less frequently, the service is not cost-effective for me (it’s about paying a fixed price for ‘free’ delivery) – they should easily be able to tell this from the data they have.
So we have a online brand that is doing a lot of things right, pushing out how you can interact with them and it falls down with their oldest digital marketing tool, the email. Enough so that every time I get an erroneous email it lessens their worth (not to get it wrong, they do send useful offers). What would be good? Let me rank the usefulness of each email so that they get better targeting and I only get the ones that I may end up using. Or at least record which offer codes I use and send me less of the ones I never touch!
You have to think about the whole package, every single touchpoint is a potential fail point. nthis case, Ocado definitely have an issue.
One thing you can usually be sure of is that a standard billboard won’t break. But the digital ones, all sorts of things can go wrong. Here. someone has left the control panel open and it gets displayed on screen.
Whose brand does this impact? The display people or the ones that are on rotation on the screen.
Juliette Lewis amd Orange Films (used with permission)
Orange are back, with their latest Orange Film Cinema ad for Fngrz of Fury. The ad was shot by Fallon, the digital stuff was put together by Poke.
On the site you have:
I like all of this; I’ve been a fan of these movies for a while and happy to see another one, even if the film title is so, so bad. It’s still better than anything else I can come up with. The game is fun and the graphic style a welcome change from the more usual cartoony, off the shell things I see. I’m enjoying the game play (I can actually do this one!), even if it’s pitting keyboard typing against big monster finger texting – can you get on the leaderboard?
It looks like the highest ranked product video, the only ranked video, this week is one from Mountain Dew, who have teamed up with Blizzard Entertainment, the guys behind World of Warcraft to promote new flavours of ‘game’ drink – Mountain Dew Game Fuel® Citrus Cherry and Mountain Dew Game Fuel® Wild Fruit. They’re running a promotion, the Mountain Dew game, with lots of gaming prizes. To enter the prize draw, you need to collect tokens by basically going to the site, clicking around, reading the product information, telling your friends, clicking through from ads on other sites, or from social networks. The one thing you don’t have to do is buy the product, it’s all via web interaction.
