On Wednesday I went down to Online Marketing & Media 08 at the Business Design Centre. As the workshops were free to attend, I wasn’t expecting much to be honest, but the selection I went to in the morning were interesting and provided some good tips and case studies (although there were some rubbish workshops too…but I’m not going to name names!)
Anyway, the first workshop I visited provided a recap on viral marketing and outlined some of the viral video success stories of the past few years. Over 200,000 video clips are uploaded to the internet every day, so it’s becoming harder and harder for brands to stand out. It can be done though! And the following couple of clips show how. Because they did so well, you’ve probably already seen them, like I had, but they give a good reminder of how brands have got viral campaigns right.
1. Quicksilver’s dynamite surfing viral – 20 million unique views.
2. Agent Provocateur’s Kylie viral – created as a cinema advert but quickly became viral online with 360 million unique views!
I was also reminded of some non-branded virals that had huge success (mainly because they are so funny) so I’ve thrown a couple of them in too…
The Star Wars Kid
The Hoff drunk
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Industry news | Tags: advert, AMV BBDO, are you serious?, brokeback mountain, Deli Mayo, gay, Heinz, homophobic, i kissed a man once and it was great, kiss, no tongues, pulled the plug, tv, two men, two salamis in the deli, YouTube
After only one week of airtime, Heinz have pulled the plug on their latest TV advert in an apparent move to appease the sensibilities of a vocal homophobic minority. When I first watched the ad I couldn’t quite believe that people could feel so strongly about a short peck on the lips. I was truly expecting tongues and all sorts.
The ad, by London-based agency AMV BBDO (now there’s a catchy name), revolves around the central concept that Heinz Deli Mayo tastes so good “it’s as if you have your own New York deli man in your kitchen”. At the end of the ad, as the father prepares to leave the house with his sandwiches, the two men share a brief kiss.
According to the Guardian, viewers have complained that it is “offensive” and “inappropriate to see two men kissing”. What exactly is inappropriate about this, in an age where same-sex relationships are perfectly accepted and same-sex marriages legal? Other parents complained that the ads would require parents to discuss the issue of same-sex relationships with their children. I can’t see how this can possibly be justified.
As reported in the Independent, Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall, has urged its supporters to stop buying Heinz products. Whether this will be carried out to the point where it actually harms Heinz remains to be seen.
I personally don’t feel as angry with Heinz as I do with the idiot viewers who took it upon themselves to complain. As someone in the office pointed out, the Heinz brand is centered around the idea of the family, and a protracted fight over this issue may go against the overall interest of the brand.
As the debate spreads across the Internet it seems that despite being withdrawn, the ad will find an audience on YouTube and other video sharing sites.
I think that Sarah Britten, a blogger from the South African newspaper The Times, sums it up well:
“Heinz showed even less spine than Thabo Mbeki on Zimbabwe.”
“Never underestimate the wilful stupidity of the viewing public”
Filed under: Coffee Break | Tags: Brando, call the Frog brothers, Count von Count, Dracula, fridge magnets, garlic will not save you, hobby, if you got a TV guide you don't need a TV, quirky, Sesame Street
Many of you know that we collect fridge magnets here at Neoco. A few less of you actually contribute to our growing collection whenever you get out of this land of Eng. Recently, it seems Sian of Brando has been bitten by the bug and is storming up the chart of ‘magnets sent in to Neoco’. Her latest entry comes from Romania and (legend has it) is carved in the likeness of the original Count Dracula.
Not sure if he would quite send me running but hey, each to their own. I’ve always like the Count from Sesame Street:
“Vun… Doo… Tree… Mwahahaha”
Keep those magnets coming in people!
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, New Technology, Technology | Tags: advert, Bakerloo line, better off walking, Billboard, deodorant, digital instalation, GBH, I want to get off, KitKat, london, negative space, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, poster, projection, Puma, sweat, TFL, the other day someone fainted cos they were so hot, train, tube, Underground, water
Occasionally, and I mean very occasionally, I put myself through the hell of a London Tube in summertime. This is an experience that I thoroughly recommend against. So whilst I have always maintained that there is a great business opportunity for deodorant and cool water vendors – most people squashed against me tend to be the sweatiest and smelliest on the carriage – I rarely take on any other advertising.
The other day at Piccadilly Circus though I saw a new installation being trialled. A projection display with changing advertising – that also cuts out 30 seconds before the train arrives.
Pretty nifty, eh? Yeah, it’s OK but without sound and animation it looks like one of those crap screensavers. And sure enough, with a bit of development, it will be pretty cool in the future – although we done a better digital installation project for Puma with their brand design agency GBH. But this is not the best tube ad. That honour (or ‘honor’ for our American readers) is reserved for the station one-stop north on the Bakerloo line: Oxford Circus. I thought this was so great I actually got off the tube to take a photo to show the power of ‘negative space’.
In a world saturated with advertising, sometimes it’s nice to view the same environments ’sans-ads’. Just imagine these same blank sheet spreads with a simple red chocolate bar image, small and in the centre, with those three little words… ‘Take a break’. I’d buy a KitKat that instant – as long as the deodorant and cool water vendor had some in stock.
What do you think about a break from advertising every now and then? Or any other great ads (or technology) you have seen?
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: communicating, digital marketing, Facebook, friends, Friends Reunited, Genes Reunited, horse bolted, ITV, redesign, social networking, tv
Once arguably the best-known “social networking” site in the UK, even before the term social-network was widely used, Friends Reunited recently been redesigned to give it a new “contemporary” feel. According to Airlock, the London-based agency responsible for the facelift, there has been a “dramatic” improvement in activity since the launch. But is it all too little too late?
It is interesting reading the history of Friends Reunited to see just how dramatic the rise of the school-friend catch-up site was. Launched officially in July 2000, by the end of the year it had 3,000 members, a number that had increased to 2.5 million a year later. By 2005, Friends Reunited had been the centre of a TV show (The curse of Friends Reunited), resulted in libel payouts and attracted 15 million of us to the site. Looking back, it seems crazy how a site that demanded payment to actually contact anyone could become so popular.
When ITV bought the site at the end of 2005, there was every reason to believe that the site would continue to grow in popularity. Facebook was, at the time, a high school network, only opening up to key companies in 2006. However many of the features which have come to define modern social networking sites, including the ability to make friends and communicate with these friends for free, were not a part of Friends Reunited. It seems that over the next year or two social networks moved on whilst Friends Reunited stood very much still.
My experience of the new Friends Reunited site was generally positive, albeit this was when I recently deleted my profile (having not been able to unsubscribe from emails without logging into my profile, I thought that having gone to the effort of figuring out my username and password that I may as well just go the whole hog and delete my entire profile). The new design is very much in the “web 2.0” mould; stripes, gradient-background titles, uncluttered.
The new features also go some of the way towards replicating the key features of modern social networks. It seems that it is now possible to join up with friends, and all monetary barriers have been removed (it’s free!). From the new-look homepage it looks like there’s a news feed feature and more of a focus on sharing pictures.
But do people need another social network? I personally don’t know a single person who uses Friends Reunited regularly, and this is going to be a huge barrier to wanting to use the site. Whereas most people I know do use Facebook. Now I don’t even like Facebook (I’ll save that for another day) but I think the key thing here is that if I do want to contact one of my friends, Facebook is currently the place to do it – simply because of the number of people who do use it.
I think another problem with Friends Reunited is that it’s lost much of the original purpose and focus. The original idea was simple – log in and find out what your friends are doing. Right now I’ve been there and done that. I don’t actually care anymore what everyone from school is up to; and the people I am vaguely interested in are all on Facebook.
In place of the focus of the original site, Friends Reunited now offers an expanded set of features, including Genealogy (Genes Reunited of course!) and dating.
So has the horse already bolted? Alexa traffic graphs seem to suggest that interest in Friends Reunited did increase markedly after the new launch (June 2008), although shown over a ten month period traffic is still definitely decreasing.
Compare this traffic with Facebook and Bebo and you start to get the impression that the founders of Friends Reunited got a good deal, and maybe ITV should have kept their money in their pocket! (Hint: Friends Reunited is the blue line that runs at a parallel to, and infinitesimal above, the x axis).
It will be interesting to see if the redesign can have a long term impact on Friends Reunited, or if the horse really has well and truly bolted.
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Industry news | Tags: .com, .xxx, address, auction, bidding, brands, digital marketing, domain, Ebay, Facebook, fee, ICANN, names, register, regulators, rules, SEO, UK
This Thursday, the internet’s regulators will vote and ultimately decide whether the strict rules on top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can finally be relaxed.
If the plans are agreed, it will have a huge impact on the address system, as companies will be allowed to turn their brands into domain names. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) oversees the domain name system and has been working towards opening up net addresses for the last three years. They have said that any string of letters will be allowed to be registered as a domain, but there will be an independent arbitration process for people with grounds for objection (who hopefully won’t treat every possibility with rejection as they did .xxx – although I’m guessing they are going to). However, hundreds of new domain names are expected to be created by the end of the year, rising to thousands in the future.
While there are clear reasons as to why these plans have come about: a) the Internet has changed so much since the original address system was established that this system is dated; and b) existing domains are running out; I can’t really see many existing brands and companies actually using them. Maybe in the future once a few others have tried and tested the new domains they will start to catch on, but to start with I think most brands will stick with what they’ve got. After all, brands know that consumers are familiar with their current addresses and that their consumers know exactly where to find them. For example, if I want to visit a site for a brand, say Nokia, the chances are I’ll type in nokia.com and that’s where the site will be. I don’t want to have to start guessing at nokia.nok, mobile.nokia or nokia.nokia (which looks stupid anyway!). Also, changing domain names to turn your brand into a domain will have implications for your SEO. Well established and search engine friendly sites are not going to benefit from starting from scratch – especially taking into account Google’s 6 month sandbox period.
However for some sites, I think the .brand domain will work really well – .ebay is a domain that it’s suggested will be introduced and this make a lot of sense for them. Individual store owners/sellers could then have their own address at .ebay, so for example, my clothes range could be on sale at laurawear.ebay. This system would also work well for other huge sites that have individual pages or subdomains – Facebook members could each have their own address at .facebook.
Another interested point is that the plan would also allow for the new domain names to be internationalised, and so could be written in scripts for Asian and Arabic languages. And again, like most things these days, it will all come down to money in the end. Icann are still working through how much the application fee to register a domain name will be, but it is expected to be at least several thousand dollars. And, in cases where there is a dispute over a domain, there will be an auction and it will go to the highest bidder.
I guess we’ll just have to await the outcome on Thursday to find out whether the rules are relaxed, but hopefully they will be because it will be interesting to see how brands react to the new possibilities.
Filed under: Industry news, Mostly Mobile, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: 3G, aware, Being Digital, digital marketing, GPS, interface, iPhone, locatin, mobile, Nokia, Plazes, services, social network, user
Nokia has bought Plazes for an undisclosed amount. Plazes is a German location-aware social network site, which basically lets users know where their friends are.
As discussed at mashup*’s Being Digital last week, location is a really hot topic right now, with everyone in the industry having a go at creating a location/mobile/social network mashup (although most do seem to be getting it all wrong!) and this will no doubt increase even further with the iPhone 3G. Predictions can easily be made that whoever is able to master this and create a useful service with an easy to use interface – and most importantly, of course, monetises this – is going to reap in the rewards. Nokia’s acquisition shows that they too are on the path to creating a location-aware service.
While many users are looking forward to use location based services, it appears that many aren’t keen to expose their location and trade in their privacy, and this will inevitably raise concerns for the success of these services. Apparently, Plazes’ CEO Felix Petersen was caught somewhere else than he was supposed to be – and I’m sure many of us wouldn’t like to be put in the situation where our partner/friends/family/colleagues can see where we are all the time. Think about that sneaky ’sick’ day at work when you have tickets to an event that you can’t just can’t miss! Or when you want a quiet, relaxing night in at home, so you tell your friend that you can’t babysit because you are going out. Or when you tell your partner you have to work late, but you go out with your friends instead. (By the way, I don’t do any of these things…they are just examples…)
Whatever users think about location-aware services, they are definitely something that we are going to be hearing a lot more about over the rest of 08.
Filed under: Coffee Break | Tags: air travel, Bill Hicks, black, comedy, dead, environmental, Funny, George Carlin, heart failure, humor, humour, obituary, old man, political, religion, RIP, save the planet, stand up, ten commandments, top 5, top five, voting, YouTube
George Carlin stamped his one way ticket today and now has a chance to explain his views on religion to the big guy up there, no doubt with a cigarette in hand and a raised voice.Known as the guy who took black humour and beat the crap out of it, then introduced it to drugs and porn, and then took it around the world for a series of unbelievably insulting stand up shows, Carlin certainly had his fans and also left a footprint on the media. The two combined on YouTube where thousands of kids were delighted to hear the dirty old man telling it like it is. Personally, I’ve always felt that he never really came into his own until the great Bill Hicks moved on, as then George became a little more edgier but still only took the audience close to the line (whereas Bill actually started most of his stuff at the line and carried on from there!) Here’s a short selection (from Mashable) of George Carlin’s best YouTube flicks. If you’re a fan, I know you’ll enjoy them; if you’re one of the uninitiated, well, better late than never.
5. Voting – why do we always feel like there’s a lack of real choice on the ballot? George explains the habits of an average voter, where politicians come from and why the country is screwed.
4. Ten Commandments You know those stupid top 10 lists, that always seem like they were inflated up to a round number (any similarity to any persons or blogs living or dead is a coincidence)? Well, it goes all the way back to Moses.
3. Airline Announcements Ever wondered why all announcements on an airplane sound like they’re spoken in some weird language from a parallel universe?
2. Saving The Planet – Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It’s what got us in trouble in the first place.
1. Religion Is Bullshit If he was wrong about this one, it might get George into a lot of trouble right about now.
RIP mate, thanks for the show.
[image credit: starpulse.com
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Filed under: Design, Events | Tags: Adobe, Carson, Chip Kidd, david carson, Design, event, experience, graphic, graphic design, hero, i love design, ilovedesign.com, InDesign, influential, Peter Saville, quark, Quark XPress, seminar, student
…and when I say ‘meet’, I mean kind of saw from a distance… …and when I say ‘hero’, I mean graphic designer I have definitely heard of.
On Wednesday night me and a couple of colleagues were given the opportunity to see the ‘most influential graphic designer of today’, talk about his work in Hammersmith. As a mere student/scavenger, I know when I see an offer I can’t refuse/normally afford, so I took my chance.
The three hour seminar (by neoco client Quark XPress & I Love Design) provided us with a glimpse at the ‘chaotic’ world of David Carson and some of his favourite work. Two hours in, after the projector had jammed for the fourth time, the audience didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, although fortunately the majority did the former. It was hard not to chuckle when the old machine was literally throwing slides of his work across the room, and vibrating on the spot. Luckily David saw the funny side too.
David Carson was undoubtedly entertaining and certainly had some great work to show and some interesting stories to tell, even if half of them were about his latest surfing accident in California. He liked to use images of his wounds to wake the audience up, which reminded me of when your at school and you want to show your best mate your biggest scab. He seemed to ‘potter about’ a bit too much though, fiddling with things on his desktop, unsure of where files were and you couldn’t help think it might have been an act. When he did get down to showing his work though it was very interesting to see his how he worked through a project and what his relationships with the clients were like.
At one point he made some refreshingly down to earth comments about having to (to paraphrase) bullshit clients. It was moments like these he connected to the audience at a personal level and won us over a bit. I think it would have been better if it was half as long though, leaving you wanting more rather than wanting to leave (which people had to towards the end).
Despite all the subtle hints of the staff (‘we should probably wrap it up now’), he didn’t want the show to end. When it eventually did, some of the hardcore fans queued up to buy some one-off pieces of work which he signed. I managed to capture him amidst his glory. I’m definitely glad I went and it was a great experience for me. So thanks again to the team down here at Neoco!
“A big part of being a designer is seeing stuff which is around you and incorporating it in your own way in your work…”
“…your family, how you grew up, these are the things which are unique to you, no one else has these things so use them in your work“
“a design shouldn’t necessarily be timeless, the fact that it relates to the culture of it’s time is often what makes a design successful”
David Carson 18th June 2008
Filed under: Industry news, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: digital marketing, Facebook, funding, investors, LinkenIn, members, site, social networking, value, venture capitalist
LinkedIn, the social network for business and professional networking has just raised $53m of new funding from investors, taking its total funding raised to over $80m. Bain Capital Ventures led their latest round of funding giving investors a 5% stake.
Venture capitalists now value LinkedIn at $1bn, which following on from Facebook’s recent $15bn valuation, once again shows the confidence that VC’s have in social networking sites.
LinkedIn now has 23 million members worldwide with around 1.2 million new members joining every month. They plan to use their new funds to add features to the site and expand their service in other languages.
