Bloody great idea. Again, taps into a cultural tension (that incidentally never existed before facebook) and as such, watch the earned meeja lap it up.

And another ready made example of CPB’s creative policy working; show me the press release, not the ad script (see my Whopper Virgins post).

Hat tip Nick.

The trailer:

The film:

Amelia has written it up nicely here and I think I agree with her on the whole moral debate of this campaign. Although it is painful to see one of the world’s largest symbols of commoditisation happily paying the bill to get a chopper to drop in a Burger King BBQ in order to cook the Whopper on location (to perfection obviously), from a marketing perspective, the whole campaign is bang on.

Three main pull outs for me:

PR
Get a PR brain in brand strategy planning. It works. If the old chestnut of all publicity is good publicity is true, this campaign ain’t doing bad (I wonder if CPB have worked out advertising equivalent values yet?!) At the end of the day, when you pay for media space with an ad, yes you can control what is contained in the ad, but it doesn’t make people believe in what you are saying. Picking up on Amelia’s ‘Bogusky PR’ point, the press are already getting their teeth stuck into the campaign suggesting the creatives really know how to answer a brief! And the comments below this article really make for interesting reading discussing the pros and cons of the campaign, who is patronising who, etc and this is indeed what PR folk are very good at creating- in fact one agency  in the UK has already coined the term ‘talkability’ as a registered trademark! Of course I’m bias but in today’s digital age it’s a no-brainer surely?

Content
Online, if you create content that is worth passing on, this is a “viral”.  I’ve blogged about this before; don’t brief in a ‘viral’, look to create something interesting and newsworthy – i.e. if you had no media budget, what would you do? What’s the story? Does it pass the ‘so-what?’ test? This is what journalists, TV producers and PR’s  do (admittedly some are better doing it than others) everyday. If you want to create content, surely you want to hear from a marketing pro who has been trying to be a part of content as a day job?

Google
…is the new front page, the new anchorman, the new Moira Stewart, the new Dermot Murnaghan, the new Michael Burke. If this is where a lot of people start to find information online, we have to give a shit about the other results that come up and how this shapes brand perceptions in consumer’s minds. i.e. what are the branding implications for searching through google for the campaign? Does the fact that a large percentage of the organic search results are negative ad credibility or detract from it? Does it make the brand edgier? What other brand equity does it build if any?  Does it draw people in to finding out more about the campaign because we can see it has already been spoken about before we’ve clicked the BK paid link?

But I do like the campaign. As a 24 year old male  who does occasionally eat fast food (in between my muesli, pomegranate seeds, tofu, yoga and green tea… a-hem and who the campaign is probably laregly targeted at), the campaign appeals. With this and the Family Guy tie up, BK seem to be getting their ‘game face’ on right now.

Gizmodo has written up here and uncovered it’s an ad for the new Nokia N96. The comments are so sycophantic I’d be tempted if I was the brains behind it to print off said comments, drop them on my bosses desk and ask for the bleeding world.

Tip of the cap to Michael for the find.

p.s. Remember- this has come out of someone’s marketing budget…. V cool.

I saw an ad in the Londonpaper freesheet the other week for a website claiming to be ”a fun and exciting way to buy top brands for a fraction of their real price.”

The website is called Bidboogie. I had a look online, had a dig around on the site,  then went back to google and hit the other 5-6 links that came up in the search to go and find out more information about the company and product. One of the results was this insightful review from a blog written by Danny Dagan.

Few points:

- Bidboogie are doing some form of digital PR. They’re a tech start-up so it seems second nature to engage in the space for them
- The media strategy looks pretty good at present- on and offline display + competition, on and offline PR has got me interested
- When you’re launching a product/brand (on or offline), people are searching beyond the product itself and seeking out more than just product benefits but also info on the integrity of the vendor too.

Fundamentally though, you really need more than just a decent concept to get people to buy into you. Bidboogie probably need to address this by opening up and becoming much more transparent quite quickly otherwise the great British public are probably going to stay pretty sceptical and won’t jump on their bandwagon (particularly as most will be less likely to ‘gamble’ on sites like this in a downturn). I came across another good concept earlier this year- social shopping with ei42 but again, you need to do more than just present a good idea to create that critical mass that will get the idea to really work effectively.

Here’s the/a press release and Contagious write up.

Courtesy of jmac who incidently was interviewed on a website called Someoneoncetoldme. I hadn’t heard of the site before but looks good, especially for a young upstart like me. Here is jmac’s someoneoncetoldme (unfortunately I haven’t made the main thing the main thing in this post but heyho- I’ll learn one day jmac!).

 

“How can we mean more than just [insert product here]…?” is the question that all of the greatest brands have asked and will continue to ask themselves.

More than just soap? More than just running shoes? More than just cola?

And most recently: More than just a Kenyan/American with an awkward name?”

 

Nick cited this latest campaign from Starbucks (beautiful score but that’s by the by)

Lots of brands, as he rightly point out, wrestle with this and here are two routes in my opinion to help uncover those areas where they can mean more to people than just as a vendor of a product:

- find an area where the business model already touches in some way for the company to care about. It then does not come across as contrived or awkward because the brand/business cares for a reason which will also ultimately affect profits e.g. Starbucks and coffee plantations, P&G detergents and smaller but more potent product sizes taking more delivery lorries off the road whilst shipping more units (this is a dubious one though as more concentrated detergents usually mean more chemicals). They have to be transparent in why they believe that caring works for their business too- if they can tell this story in a compelling way, they’ll win friends for just being honest and more personable.

- Find a cause for which your employees give a shit about and talk about it. Personalise the company by revealing the people who are behind delivering a product or service and tell the story of their commitment and concerns for the category/product or their environment. In an increasingly digital world, companies don’t have to be (and probably shouldn’t be) faceless anymore.

Companies need to have a relationship with consumers that extends beyond just flogging cups of grand skinny mocha choca lotta froth (hopefully a challenge that has been identified in marcomms meetings across the globe as the economy slows down and people increasingly look for reasons to switch brands).

So how about marketeers start talking to their customers on issues that matter to both of them so as not to come across insincere ? Starbucks can be more than just coffee, but the issues it adopts needs to align with the company’s core business values and contribute to the growth of the business otherwise the whole thing will just feel contrieved.

Here’s the recording on youtube:

But what struct a nerve with me was this quote:

Even the Mail – perhaps reluctant to go overboard on a story broken by a Sunday in the same house – didn’t make it the splash, though it ran a front-page picture of Brand and inside, Melanie Phillips gave her usual imitation of a Victorian dowager who has overdosed on laudanum. Ross and Brand, she raved, were guilty of “cruelty and indeed sadism” and their behaviour was “bordering on the psychopathic”. Her column attracted 209 comments (mostly anti-BBC) on the Mail website, the Sunday story 220 – numbers well above average. The Mail scented blood.

So who was it that was really ‘setting the agenda’? Editors are even now bowing to the ‘power of the crowd’ using online articles as their own litmus test for how much a story has touched a nerve with the nation. As the article describes, the press jury was certainly out as to how serious ‘Wossy’ and Brand’s brands behaviour really was- I mean we could expect the Media Guardian to jump on it- but rolling news on Sky during a presidential election and one of the worst economic downturns of a generation?!

The true lesson is the growth in appreciation for listening to your audience, whether you’re a brand, a national newspaper editor… or even a BBC radio presenter; Russell and Wossy; listen up.

For now, though, here are just a sample of some cracking election videos being posted up online and if you took the youtube community as a straw poll of voter intent, it looks like it’s going to be a landslide…

Pro-bama

Mc-Pain

And a good video on the presidential candidates marketing campaigns, in particular Obama’s use of Twitter:

That said, there is an overwhelming number of videos that look to undermine both candidates but Obama’s proactive approach to engaging in dialogue direct with his electorate rather than being reactive and courting the old news heavyweights, seems to be paying off… we’ll find out next week… maybe they’ll be a little surprise in store…

This is a brilliant idea. Tip of the cap to Dave for the spot. A submission for google’s 10tothe100 project

Seriously, how GOOD is the internet?!!! Check out how this video even came about in Simon’s blog here

“Global Head of Stakeholder relations Coca Cola” Salvatore Gabola, we salute you for attempting to open up your organisation.

You can view the details of Simon’s call with Coke here on his personal blog which is fascinating in itself as it details the unfolding story of his campaign- excellent content in itself, even more so there is now serious traction behind it!

What’s also interesting is that if Coke are in a little bit of a pickle if they choose not to pursue Simon’s idea unless they are completely transparent (and justified- the debate of course will then be played out for the world to find online) with how and why Simon’s idea can not be progressed…. so they better have a pretty robust argument in place if the idea is unworkable.

Next challenge according to Simon- an international NGO to engage… check out the Radio4 iPM interview here and a video interview here. 

Spread the word about this fantastic initiative which adds further fuel to the fire that if a brand wants to resonate online (or, in my opinion, offline too), they increasingly need to be operating pretty authentically whilst doing nice things- this is a fantastic opportunity for Coke and it’s brand; a creative idea just tapping them on their shoulder and asking them to pick it.

It’s fascinating to see how digital is just completely tearing up the silos of CSR, advertising and PR whilst peeling back the brand into something which now needs to stand for something and has a point of view on the world. It’s amazing, and somewhat ironic, how the ‘virtual’ world, so long poked fun out for being intangible, flaky and just, well, not real, is turning brands into something which can’t be ‘virtual’ anymore- they need to be saying ‘real’ things for people to believe in them.

Audiences are increasingly believing in a brand through it’s actions, not necessarily through it’s ad spots.

Surely this is good for everyone?

Coutesy of Planning for fun