Category Archives: engaging

CRM-ing, engaging

Smart and Relevant Customer Relationship Building from Atlantic

Atlantic
a lovely example of talking to your existing customers from Atlantic Gas and Electric who this week sent me two free energy saving light bulbs.  I – like many people I suspect – get a plethora of items through the letterbox from brands with which I have an association; egg in particular is never shy of sending me an invitation to increase my ARPU.

so great to see Atlantic putting their CRM where there mouth is and sending me something which is tangible, practical and above all pertinent to the credentials there aiming to build.  more of this please.

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content creating, engaging, IPA|ED:one, social networking, user-generating

I Loved it So Much I Bought (Into) The Company: the rise of the crowdmanaged brand

Beer_bankroll_2
so those observant people at Springwise have spotted the latest brand to cede control to its potential consumers.  hot on the heels of crowdmanaged eco clothing company nvohk and MyFootballClub's purchase of Ebbsfleet United comes BeerBankroll.com.

for just $50 you get to join an online community for beer lovers where you can not only share your passion for beer but at the same time help create a brewing company.  as Springwise reports, the site:

"…is currently recruiting a minimum of 50,000 members, each of whom
will contribute USD 50 in exchange for voting rights on ideas such as
the company name, logo, product design, product mix, marketing plan,
advertising and sponsorship … Assuming the concept goes well, profits
will be divided three ways: one part to members in the form of reward
points redeemable for products from the Beer Bankroll store; one part
back to the company; and one part to charity"

this potentially potent project is feasible because of tho things: (1) access to information and (2) the ability to share and manipulate that information within the context of a networked community.  and it of course relies on Surowiecki's three requirements for Wisdom in a Crowd: diversity of opinion, decentralisation and independence.

I used to work with a small brewery brand and I acutely recall conversations about how they could, and should, more effectively and transparantely engage with those consumers who (we knew) loved their brand.  but the old habits of deployment of planned branded communications won out (and still does – I observe – to this day).

that brewery and many other brands should be paying close attention to this space.  how long before we all have a couple of side-interests in brands…?  brands that will not only occupy a small – very engaged – part of our mind, but a considerable share of our wallet too.  after all, if the brand was so good that you bought and continue to buy into it, why – when you get to the shelf – would you buy anything else?!

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engaging, internet, social networking, user-generating

Analogue Politicians in the Digital Age: how YouTube came to Downing Street

back in June of last year I wrote a post in which I quoted Tim Montgomerie who in the Spectator suggested that the next general election will be remembered as 'Britain’s first internet election'.  He
notes that “in this new world [of internet communities] the campaign
staff of political parties and traditional media will have a much
smaller share of power”.  I suggested that both brands and political parties needed to shift from 'send' to 'receive' mode.

either because of my post, or as a result of jibes made by David Cameron that Brown is "an analogue politician in a digital age", Downing Street has just engaged its 'receive' mode.  it takes the form of a Downing Street Channel on YouTube, on which – in the above video – Gordon asks for questions from the YouTube community.

it's an interesting – if clunky – development, and a far-cry from the slickness of the WebCameron site.  but this is part of it's charm.  despite the fact that watching the PM ask for questions like "how globalisation's working?" or "what's happenning to Climate Change?" is a bit like watching a bad audition for Newsround, there is the clear ambition to not only let consumers set the agenda, but to go to an existing community.  this should be applauded; Cameron's site may be slicker, but it's still effectively a walled garden.

what will be really intriguing will be the potential debate that this could start…  Chris Crockers Britney video has been viewed 20 million times and has spawned a plethora of text and video responses.  we should hope that a similar, if less emotional, post from Gordon on globalisation could instigate a similar response.  we live in hope.

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branding, engaging, praising

When Positionings Get Real. How Honda Show Their Power of Dreams.

gotta love Honda’s efforts.  having demonstrated their ‘Power of Dreams’ positioning thru several high-profile ads, they’ve taken the step of allowing their 4ft 3in ASIMO – which stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility – into the real world.

plenty of brands can talk at length about their positionings, but few get the chance to demonstrate it.  fewer still allow themselves the effort and energy to demonstrate it with such panache…  ASIMO is demonstrating Honda’s positioning for real, and that speaks volumes for their ambition to show rather than talk about the power of their dreams.  watch and learn.  watch and learn.

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engaging, praising, viewing

“The one Cadbury’s didn’t want you to see”, that you really should see

discovered this courtesy of a post by Faris on TIGS.  wasn’t going to post about it but haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  it is so right in so many ways…  positioned as ‘the one Cadbury’s didn’t want you to see’, its a slow-mo version of the suicide cult which formed the climax of this year’s creme egg campaign.

its so totally mesmerising you forget your watching dozens of eggs get smashed to a pulp by their own personal wire on a spring.  and some delightful restraint at the end of the piece ensures that it only hints at it’s marketing origins.  just lovely.

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engaging, gaming, internet

Let the AR Game begin!

I’ve wanted to get my teeth into planning a good Alternative Reality Game (ARG) for a while now, so I was interested to see this come my way courtesy of Stew Gurney.  it’s an ARG based around the upcoming Olympics in Beijing.  what strikes me is how slick this is…  very high quality audio-video content and great design of the navigation of the evidence.  the whole site can be viewed here.

it will be interesting to see where this one goes…  ARGs as a concept, have struggled from a perception of being too niche – capitalising on the Olympics could be a sound strategy to breaking into the mainstream (it would seem that the nature of the interface has been designed with entry-level in mind)…

also I’m clueless as to which brand this is for, or whether it’s for the Olympics itself…  but I’m not sure this entirely matters!  half the fun will be finding out…

Daniel Terdiman has written a great summary of the initial box of evidence which he received here…  let the AR Game begin!

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Update: Thanks for Stephen Bedggood for the heads up that this ARG is for McDonalds…  great effort on their part… smart and unexpected.  it will be interesting to see how and if this translates to any in-restaurant activity come August

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advertising, branding, engaging, internet, planning

There now follows a simple exercise in Building Brand Associations…

Mm_dark…courtesy of M&Ms.  this is quite old now but I just came across it today whilst browsing a post  by Jason Oke who writes on the Leo Burnett Toronto blog.

so you’re M&Ms and you want people to know and remember that you have a new product in the form of Dark Chocolate.  you could invest in an ad that communicates this and deploy thru relevant and effective media, or

…you could get consumers to find out and then re-enforce (multiple times over) the association for themselves via an online game where you have to find 50 hidden movies – all of which have a ‘dark’ theme.

this is stand out for two reasons.  one, only the buffest of movie buffs will know all the answers, so you’re compelled to pass it on and try to work out the answers amongst your mates.  it’s very sociably-networkable.  which is good.

secondly this little piece stands out for the sheer elegant simplicity with which it has been put together.  using flash you navigate your way around the image, zooming in and out as you go.  and once you’ve spotted and noted a movie it blacks out, allowing you to focus on the remaining movies you haven’t got yet.  infuriatingly addictive and of course very easy to pass on to others to inflict the same brand association building on them.

click here to play but be warned; it’s addictive.

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engaging, experiencing

Seeing beyond the Stunt…

thanks to Jonathan Pearson for this link…  over 200 people freeze in place on cue in Grand Central Station in New York.  what’s great about this isn’t just that it’s a simple, elegant example of how drama can be created in public spaces; but rather the response it got from the bystanders in and around the station…  not only were they intrigued throughout the stunt but gave spontaneous applause at the end.

they didn’t know why they were clapping and cheering, they just knew they’d witnessed something different, amusing and out of the (all too) ordinary.  it would be great to see this kind of sponteneity incorporated into comms planning – in previous posts I’ve talked about how we should be encouraging consumers to join the dots for themsleves, by creating what JJ Abrams calls Mystery Boxes…

I can’t imagine a better mystery box than the one in the above video…  why did they freeze?  what’s going on?  what happens next?  will they do it again?  the answer in the above case was that it was for art and art alone, but if it could be harnessed as a means of engaging consumers with a brand idea, it could become very powerful indeed…

I think things like this are all too often dismissed as stunts.  and yes a stunt it undoubtedly is, but when incorporated into a multi-media (transmedia) campaign, it could potentially be a great deal more.  what’s lacking are not better stunts, but the imagination to build such events into campaigns in intriguing and relevant ways.

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advertising, engaging, IPA|ED:three

Joining up the Dots

cloverfield
it’s in the second episode of ‘Alias’ that JJ Abrams first penned a reference to a random drink called Slusho.  the mention – which was to be followed later by cameo in Heroes – was the first of a sustained, ingenious and elaborate viral campaign to promote his next project, the movie Cloverfield.

in doing so, Abrams created more hype than could ever have been generated by broadcast comms.  but the approach has been more specific than that…  at no point was everything held together in one place…  to make sense of the clues, the dots had to be joined together; with seemingly random and stand-alone pieces of communication joining up; not in a script or on a schedule, but in the minds of consumers.  thats the kind of headspace that broadcast money can’t buy.

Abrams talked about his approach to all his projects – from Alias to Lost and now Cloverfield – at the always amazing TED last March (click here to watch it).  he talked about the idea of a ‘Mystery Box’, a $15 box he bought as a boy with the promise of $50 worth of magic inside.  it remains unopened.

to Abrams his unopened box “represents infinite possibility, hope and potential”, he notes that “I find myself drawn to infinite possibility and that sense of potential and I realise that mystery is the catalyst for the imagination … what are stories but mystery boxes?”  he describes how in TV the first act is called the teaser, it asks a fundamental question.  but as soon as it’s answered there’s another question; another Mystery Box, and another after that…

his point is that the intentional withholding of information is much more engaging than giving someone the whole story…  a lesson from which advertising could in many instances learn…

intrigue and the witholding of information in order to engage should more often be at the heart of a comms brief.  we more often need to let product intrinsics or resolution within the context of a TV script take a back seat.  we need to be creating more mystery boxes.  then using media to join the mystery boxes together…  a broadcast TV ad with a random link to a website.  which has a list of postcodes, each of which has a series of posters.  we shouldn’t be afraid of challenging our consumers…  what a individual can’t piece together a networked community of individuals can…

in comunications planning we’re too obsessed with giving consumers information, we need to start giving them some questions, some intrigue.  as Abrams says, “sometimes mystery is more important than knowledge”.

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advertising, engaging, internet, planning

Missing an Opportunity in the Search for the Golden Domino

I’ve seen this latest Guinness effort a few times since it launched on TV last Thursday.  it’s a fantastic piece of advertising, as of course it should be for the £10m price-tag that came attached to it.  but according to an article by Stephen Armstrong in today’s Media Guardian;

"By the time the 60-second film broke last week …  it had already been pieced together and posted on YouTube by thousands of net users across the world in an enormous online hunt for a golden domino … AMV BBDO gave out the first clue on posters, beer mats and websites two weeks ago.  Solving each of the 11 clues released a code that revealed a few more seconds of the commercial, with the first to sling the completed film on to YouTube earning the brewers’ version of Willy Wonka’s ticket."

really!?  you could have fooled me.  not a jot have I seen of it!  which is more than a little disappointing.

the investment behind Guinness’s broadcast media (and a £10m ad) should quite rightly take priority in the mix – but to invest so little behind a genuinely interesting and smart piece of consumer engagement shows at best a lack of confidence, and at worst a distinct case of ‘let’s do the consumer engagement bit’ as an add-on.  the fact that – as a thirty year old urban alcohol drinker – I didn’t see the golden domino activity could just be accident; the fact that this activity started a mere two weeks before the ad was first broadcast definitely wasn’t.

a case of smart, very smart, thinking just not backed-up by investment.  this should and could have been huge, the fact that it wasn’t (96,000 views to the discussion forum just doesn’t cut it), represents a genuinely missed opportunity.

the same article observes that "alarm is growing in the advertising community over the idea that the net allows clients to pay for an ad in one territory and then reap the benefits for free across the globe".  the fact that ‘if I paid £10m for something, I’d feel I had the right to do whatever the hell I liked with it’ aside, one way to combat this threat is to ground the ad into a territory with exactly the kind of comms behaviour that golden domino demonstrates so well…

great ads will for a very long time to come have a key part to play in any communication strategy…  but a failure to use them as part of a bigger picture, and more importantly invest in that bigger picture, will only contribute to the spot ad’s woes.

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