Digital Hive

When Marketers Lie

This interesting post about Edelman's expanding Wal-Mart crisis from Mack Simpson of the Adverb blog calls up an age-old advertising problem: What do we do when we get caught pretending to be consumers?   The best lines from the post:

See Edelman not register the “Working Families for Wal-Mart” domain name.

See Edelman say, “oh crap.”

Rock the Internet

I love rocking the Internet.  A great idea from whoever is promoting the new Tenacious D Movie.  This site lets you play with the whole Internet - while having a fun Tenacious D experience. Aside from the brilliance of turning the entire World Wide Web into your playground, there are some other smart ideas making the experience engaging:

1) People are recognized for being the first to "rock" a site, encouraging you to find a cool site nobody's hit yet.

2) You're told how many people have already rocked any site.  This can make you feel special by showing that you're part of a large group (I was one of many who wanted to rock cnn.com) or make you feel extra special by showing that you're part of a small group (I was one of the few fans of toothpastefordinner.com).  It adds another engaging fascination - a curiosity regarding how many others have rocked any particular sites you like.

3) The very nature of the creative output lends itself to being shared.  I can rock out my friends' websites and blogs and send my custom "rocked" versions of their own pages to them. Check out my rocked version of Digital Hive.

Be sure to check out the true-to-brand disclaimer.  My only complaint is that the email-a-friend tool doesn't seem to be working right now.  They should get that fixed...

What do you make of the new James Bond?

The box office results are in - the dancing penguins beat the new James Bond this weekend, but just by a beak (or was it a flipper?). However, the quantitative researcher in me must qualify that report with an important detail: Casino Royale was on fewer screens than Happy Feet, and on an average revenue per screen basis Casino Royale was actually the winner.

Numbers aside, what interested me was how different this Bond is. He gets angry, grows despondent over the death of a paramour who's done him wrong (don't worry, I'm not giving the plot away), even breaks into his boss's elegant Thames-front flat (BTW, who knew M was married?). At this early point in his career (Casino Royale is apparently the opening salvo in Ian Fleming's series) Bond isn't suave, effete and elitist, he's in the fray, all on his own (where's Q?). A dark character in many ways. Reconciled to the danger of his work, but not yet mature enough to find humor in it.

Men with cramps?

I recently came upon a site called Men with Cramps. The videos are pretty funny, and the site is surprisingly deep (make sure to follow the link on the bottom to the MacInnis and Porritt Institute.)

This is really a viral campaign promote P&G's ThermaCare Heatwraps, and it really is a departure from the more traditional forms on advertising on this topic.

It's a nice execution. It will be interesting to see how it spreads and what the reactions are.

Thoughts?

That's a new banner up there!

Look up top people!  Digital Hive is pleased to launch the new banner!  Created by our own James Biggie (AKA "Biggie", "Mr. Big" and "Bigs" - yes, that's his real name) and proudly uploaded by Jeff Flemings. 

We would love your input, thoughts, feedback or (how could it be possible) criticism. 

As you know, I am ALL about the customer feedback - especially my own.  Comment away people - the Internets is open and operators are standing by!

Word of mouth - literally

Jackie Huba of Church of the Customer has written a wonderful post about her recent experience with Invisalign - including the critical ingredient of the product experience provided by neither the brand nor her orthodonist: support from other Invisalign wearers going through the same painful process.

It's amazing to me how such an important part of the process of having your teeth realigned isn't being supplied by the product's brand, it's coming from the product's users.

Invisalign's CMO should definitely give its users a discount to reflect the tremendous value they are providing to each other (apparently without the company's involvement) - tips about how to endure the discomfort, support for sticking with a change process that can seem endless and without immediate reward.

I wonder if people would be as forthcoming with support on a brand-sponsored site; or if the brand would even allow people to call out the "dark side" of the product by offering suggestions for how to enhance it. This might be one of those situations where customers really do have to do it themselves to make it real.

User generated content: some clues about why they do it

Snaps to Greg Verdino for this one - he wrote a great post about a new answer to the question: why do people blog?

This cool PDF summarizes the findings - which vary considerably by individual. For a true appreciation of just how diverse the motivations of bloggers are you've got to read the whole thing.

I was interested in how many "pull" marketing applications are mentioned - blogging isn't just about "purshing" your message out via soapbox, it's a great way to run an idea up the flagpole for initial reaction, as well as stay in touch with customers (or "fans").

Appropriate that the survey was fielded via a blog, of course

How NOT to Waste Your Direct Marketing Budget

{Phone rings} Thank you for calling Philip Morris customer service, please select from the following options.

I only wanted to hear one option: How to remove an address from the direct marketing list. I selected option 1 for the Philip Morris brands and got a very helpful young lady on the line. I explained that I had received a postcard addressed to the daughter of the former owner of my home and wanted to remove my address from their mailing list.

I have owned the home for about two years now, so my patience for receiving really weird catalogs, credit card offers and student loan offers has worn beyond thin. I believe I'm fast approaching the direct mail danger zone - so I really have no patience for tobacco direct mail. I explained to the young woman that the person named on the postcard had not lived at the house for two years and that I did not want to receive the mailings. I gave her the 16-digit number on the front of the postcard and asked that my address be removed from any Philip Morris mailings. The young woman explained that she would need to transfer me to a customer relations supervisor. Uh oh, not a good sign.

ADTECH FULL FRONTAL: Is real time the new prime time?

Turning up the heat on marketing campaigns by turning up the spend on prime time TV is fast losing its oomph. Instead, we all need to start dialing up the live and real time aspects of a campaign to generate impact. That’s where the new marketing energy can be found.

There are lots of examples of media programming and campaigns that use a sense of live urgency – a perishable not to be missed experience - to generate interest and keep an audience. Whether it’s a real time promotion like My Wishlist for American Express during the holiday season or the ever increasing importance of big live sports events or the live aspects and audience participation in many reality TV show formats, real time urgency helps stop marketing and programming go cold or disappear into the long tail of fragmented excess.

The live nature of the web in terms of social networks is another dimension for dialing up the heat of a campaign. TV used to be a social network too, when we all watched the same programmes at the same time. Now it’s the networked nature of users online that can create shared experiences and extend a campaign’s reach.

If live is one side of the real time coin, then on-demand is the other. When customers do nowadays want to talk to a brand or want content about a brand, we better make damn sure we are there for them in real time where and when they want us. This means more money spent listening and responding to customers rather than pushing ourselves onto them. I guess prime time also now means your time. As Mark Burnett said recently, the new prime time is 9 to 5 when people are at their computers.

Finally, behavioral targeting is surely another example of the shift from old world analogue mass marketing to a real time digital approach that’s big still in terms of its ultimate reach but not mass.

- Mark Beeching, Digitas Chief Creative Officer

ADTECH FULL FRONTAL: Convergence - is it really divergence?

What has happened to convergence?

In the future, we were told, we will all be watching radio on our phones. Enter iPod. A single use device for listening to music. Sure, now you can watch videos and play games on it too. But it’s still a proprietary format. And the movies don’t look good plugged into a 52 inch plasma.

So what did we mean when we talked about convergence in the future tense? Not really sure. But I think what has happened is things have not all converged. Sure some devices have merged and morphed. But there are just as many devices as before if not more.

The difference is that more of them talk to each other. To the point that even your sports shoe can talk to your nano now. But that’s surely not convergence. And no one is making phone calls with their shoes yet.

The other big development is the fact that content itself has become much more liquid. Far from all content ending up on a singular converged device, the same content can be served up on multiple devices – off your DVR onto your computer or off your computer onto your TV screen or phone and so on.

So content is liquid and devices are interconnected. Convergence? Divergence? Dunno.

- Mark Beeching, Digitas Chief Creative Officer