A lovely little video from Coca-Cola who put a real-life happiness machine into a London university and made a lot of students smile. Sent to me via Twitter from James, who worked on it with lexis PR, it made me smile as well.
Haven’t we all wanted the vending machine to do just that little bit more, happy when it makes a mistake and accidently gives you 2 chocolate bars, or whatever you were after. Here’s a surprise machine that gives you more, an extra can, some popcorn and cupcakes galore (mmm, cupcakes )
It’s a simple idea, taking the digital into the physical and spreading a little bit of happiness to a few directly and delivering a smile to a lot more through the video. I wonder if it’s going to turn up somewhere else. (I’m also wondering how they managed to concince the college to put a hole in the wall, or was it in front of a door!)
you’re gonna witness 24 modern products adapted into vintage style advertisement. Some of them are created by modern designer, yet others are modified directly from genuine vintage ads originated from your parent’s era.
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
Updated 13 Sept
I watched this today. or at least tried to. Here’s what happened:
The McLaren twitter feed, @thefifthdriver was giving news about the race happening before it was due to start on Facebook.
When it eventually started, we were subjected to 25 mins of images of Hamilton sitting in his car, with a commentary bascially telling us that we were waiting for clearances etc (I think, My Dutch isn’t brilliant).
There was a very quick sequence of the car racing the digital version, before switching back to the ‘live’ feed.
The Facebook app then stopped broadcasting and declared the results. Facebook 0, Hamilton 2, although with copy that states that Facebook won. (result later changed to 1-2) and the copy changed to reflect the result that Hamilton won
So, great idea, badly executed with the stream. I’ve no idea what happened. I’ll get the edited highlights later, but it was supposed to be live!
<Vodafone vs Hamilton results version 1 (later changed to reflect Hamilton winning)
Anyone who checks in to select locations in Los Angeles and San Francisco using Loopt Star — Loopt's deals app — will receive a voucher for two tickets for the price of one to Los Cabos or Cancun from either LA or San Francisco. Virgin is just now opening up service to Mexico, and is using the Loopt promotion to draw attention to the new routes.
The spread of social media has made it impossible for employers to completely control their employees’ online presences. As it is, mistakes and missteps are bound to happen. In the case of handling a controversial or inappropriate comment made by an employee via social media or elsewhere online, there are certainly steps that employers can take to make the process smoother. For starters, organizations should be proactive and define the distinction between acceptable and inappropriate behavior, emphasizing the link between employee behavior and company image. As the old adage goes, “the best defense is a good offense.”
What are Facebook fans looking for when they "like" a brand page? According to new research from ExactTarget and CoTweet, it's pretty simple: coupons and free stuff.
Peperami are launching a new product, Nibblers, which are bite-size bits of the snack in a bag. They’ve taken the interesting step of using using the service Idea Bounty to create their ad for the product. The crowd-sourcing site is a way for brands to connect with the creative industry for ideas, without the hastle of choosing new agencies, or paying for account management or any of those services and allows creatives to try soem things in areas that they may not have a chance to. It’s not ‘UGC’ as it’s a professional connection service, but it has roots in that area. For this brief, they had 1,185 entries to choose from. Here’s the result
In the publicity, they have focused primarily on the methof of prodcuing the ad, rather than the ad or the product and they seem to be happy with it
“The new ad demonstrates we are relevant and current to our target market, and we are confident that it will herald a successful campaign for the Peperami brand and the legendary Animal.”
I’m obviously not target market as the ad does little for me, but it is in the style of the previous work. maybe far too close, as Adliterate says, #
Fourthly, surely crowd sourcing should be about engaging the wisdom of the crowd to create something new and interesting but what we get here is a ‘90s Lintas ad that’s not quite as funny or interesting precisely because it’s a retread of old work and an old idea. ‘A bit of an animal’ was powerful for the brand when it was conceived because it broke the conventions of the category’s advertising and, along with Tango and Pot Noodle (both from my alma mater HHCL), rewrote the rules of advertising for a generation.
there’s nothing new in the ad, it’s not a new way of looking at the product, just a continuation. Should this new way of idea sourcing generated a new way of looking at the product? Maybe, but I’ve not seen the brief and I have no idea what they asked for. But I don’t agree with some of Richard’s other points. This is not an engagement campaign, to connect with the fans. People who love Peperami do no appear to have been involved in the process, inthe same way as Doritos have done, with public voting and commentary. Idea Bounty is crowd-sourcing from the creative industries, not from brand advocates; as a process it’s taken over a year, with the first announcements about it in August 2009. That’s not a consumer campaign, that’s just a new way of sourcing your marketing.
We want to bring home the human scale of events and places in history. The Apollo 11 Moon walk explored an area smaller than Trafalgar Square; the distance between your WW1 trench and the enemy could only be as much as from your front door to the street corner.
Dimensions is a feature on websites that juxtaposes the size of historical events with your home and neighbourhood. You’re hearing about the span of the base of the Great Pyramids, or the distance of the book depository from JFK, or the extent of the Great Fire of London… Dimensions overlays this map on a satellite view of where you live.”
You can always tell when there’s a new tool around that provides a social media score of some sort. Today, it’s Twifficiency which
calculates your twitter efficiency based upon your twitter activity. This includes how many people you follow, how many people follow you, how often you tweet and how many tweets you read.
It also demands OAuth access to your account and then spams your followers with your score and a link, thus rendering many of your followers annoyed at you spamming them. From the tweets around the app, it appears not to inform people that it does an autotweet, so it’s making users angry as well.
So we’re going to see a quick peak of tweets from the app, lots of tweets moaning about the app and some money made for James Cunningham from the ads on the page. Update: as Jonathan points out, I’ve also missed out the number of blog posts talking about it
It’s just another score, with no indication of whether high or low is good, whether it means anything or what it can be used for. But it’s demonstrating how too many people just follow a link on a page, see a button and press it, without considering the implications – that’s how the malware links spread. At least this one is not asking for user name and password! And it’s going to get exposure for the builder at least.
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.
)
