Greenpeace Lurid Viral

This viral has a very powerful message. It depicts a graphic exchange between Mr and Mrs Smith and is a satirical skit about the Bush/Blair relationship.
I am interested in the depiction of brand

The front page of the Greenpeace website mentions the types of activity that I would interpret as heartland Greenpeace viz. Dolphins, Whales, and taking action.
Yet it also includes this picture
It seems to me that this type of imagery (the viral and the fishfinger) are taking the brand into more militant territory. Greenpeace could have been considered a very "wholesome" activist group that was concerned about oil platforms and sea life but this new content seems to be taking the group towards a more aggressive, antagonistic stance.
Take a look at the viral it's fairly lurid and decide for yourself.

Bloody Big Beer Ad

What a fantastic advert, this is spreading virally at a significant rate throughout the web. I am part of several advertising fora and every time I turn on my e-mail I get another e-mail telling me to look at it.
You can look at it here
It's a fantastic advert shot in New Zealand by an Australian brewer that parodies the British Airways advertisements of many years ago.
The music is Carmina Burana and apparently 20,000 of the cast are computer generated.
Apparentlyit has reached 500,000 people over the web and will be launched on TV on 7th August.
Significantly Matt Keen Foster's GM is quoted as saying....

"The advertising arena has become more fragmented," he says. "TV is still the way to market but the digital arena is becoming increasingly important, it's also a way of engaging with drinkers personally. When they watch a television commercial there will be a number of other distractions Â… it's shown among other ads and there's generally a lot of noise about, but when people are sitting at their computers we know they've taken the time to see the ad; they've engaged with it. And that's important."

Take a look it really is fantastic advertising and in my opinion deserves to sell more beer.

Feel good factor what a buzz

It is quite unbelievable how fast some news travels. I am blogging about it now. The Olympics is coming to London. I watched the news on TV as it happened. Why? Because my sister started the buzz when it was down to the last two cities. I am not from London but I jumped up when it was announced. It would be the most fantastic advertising that could create that line of "must talk about" content. We will have to see which organisation can capitalise on the Olympics in the next seven years.

Search Engine Optimisation and the future of search behaviour

A number of articles that I have seen recently offer an opinion that SEO is a cottage industry. This seems to indicate that organisations are looking beyond directory listings.
The importance of Google position etc., seems obvious, but for how long???

Surely levels of awareness can be generated and the googling factor could be removed?

Our family business used a telephone directory for many years, now we have reduced our advertising to a line entry as the effect has been reduced through "off line" awareness in that business sector.

A number of organisations have tried to create and develop portals that would be the gateway to the web for their users. These portals would include and deliver all that the user wants. At the moment whilst many net users are "teched" up this opportunity seems to be small but will it all change when interactive TV becomes the gateway to the net? Perhaps Sky might replace google and we could all be sky-ving instead.

Eye Tracking

Further metrics are developing from studies of eye tracking of "consumers" on the web.

The increased in multimedia viewing and listening gives added significance to this these studies.

You can find articles about these studies in the following places.
http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=45457

http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/advertising.htm

This is very interesting stuff and could encourage a move away from ppc costings in web advertising towards the "print" pricing of advertising.

I just wonder what the new back cover or inside front cover will be?

These articles seem to suggest half page text advertisements when scanned quickly, but I'm not sure that will be compelling creative, unless it's written very, very well.

Imitation is the flattery that's best

This new website follows the "subservient" genre that started with Subservient Chicken.

Subservient Chicken
Subservient Chicken is a marvellous site that has reportedly helped Burger King's emotional ties with the "youff" market.
There's a link to Subservient Chicken above.

This version of the genre is a version for the g8 leaders in preparation for the summit in Scotland.

Action 8
The g8 version allows you to tell the world's most powerful leaders what to do. As the person who sent it to me said, "Try asking them to lift their kilts."

Honda - Another Company moves money onto the web

Just picked up this headline from New Media Age. It seems that Honda the company that brought us "Cog" is moving a considerable amount of money to the web.

The Japanese car manufacturer is shifting 10% of its £20m-a-year above-the-line budget to the Web in an attempt to raise awareness of planned new product launches in 2006.
www.NMA.co.uk

This is further evidence of money moving away from the traditional media. TV may not be in total decline but customers are using the web and getting their information for their decisions from it.

When convergence happens and TV/Radio/Internet are all on the same machine in the majority of homes then content will be the key. How far away is this? I think it might be nearer than some commentators like to think.

New Senseo Viral with added grounds!

I've just received a new streaming video viral via one of the discussion groups that I subscribe to.

The viral is for Senseo coffee machines that make use of the convenience factor. It's rather like washing powder tablets, the coffee pods save time spooning out the grounds into the machine and offers perfect portion control time after time after time.

.

The viral is ok in my opinion but what I really liked was the fact that after I'd watched the viral a pop up research questionnaire appeared.

Hence the title "added grounds" The research was a mix of media research and coffee drinking preferences.

This was a very interesting way to combine the interactivity of the Internet, using a viral clip and pop up research questionnaire combination.

P&G sidestepping PVRs?

This article from New Media Age continues the theme of today's earlier post on this blog.
P&G spends £160-£170million on TV and the company is concerned about the long term future of the thirty second TV slot.
P&G are trying to use interactive technologies to develop and enhance the slots - the ubiquitous digital "red button" being used.
So PVRs and fewer viewers the future for TV looks bad, but I have a nagging doubt that if you sell mass market FMCG products TV will be removed from the media mix.
Where else can you deliver huge reach to support mass market products. This page from the Guardian illustrates the size of the viewership for some programmes.
Even between 10 and 10:30 at night on the "main" commercial TV channels 7.1 million viewers were watching.
If we use a figure of £7 per thousand for all adult airtime that's a cost of approx £31,000+
So it's still a big market and it still has good reach but there's little doubt that advertisers are concerned about the long term future for traditional TV advertising.

On line ad spend up again

An article in Adage today highlights the growth in on line ad spend in the first quarter of 2005. Yesterday one of the alumni from the university contacted me to say that he was now working in an on line agency and it was the place to be.

"The medium that once was the power of TV is dying at an alarming rate, so I would recommend telling your students not to bother!"It's an interesting comment. I think one of the key questions could be rather than "Is TV dying" one could ask
- "Given the maturity and potential decline of the Television Advertising market how will advertisers and the media buyers achieve effective ratings points in the future?"

I concur that TV advertising is in slow decline, but so too are newspapers. Why? Well simply ....readership and viewership figures are down in many developed markets. In a connected world the choice of media vehicles for all to consume is vast.

The move is almost certainly to a content driven media buying environment.

Must see TV - but through HD recorders (ad skipping is compensated for by sponsorship).
Must read papers and magazines or rather blogs
Must listen to - podcasts or radio

Another interesting blog that touts similar views is Ian McKee's blog

He highlights some interesting stats from a recent Harvard Business Review article.

"Some eye-opening statistics from the June 2005 Harvard Business Review (subscription req'd) on the effectiveness of 500 various consumer and B2B marketing programs:

* 84% resulted in less market share, not more
* Most customer acquisition efforts did not break even
* Fewer than 10% of new products succeeded
* Most sales promotions were unprofitable
* Advertising ROI was below 4%
* Doubling advertising expenditures for established products increased sales just 1% - 2%

The HBR shows what Professor Andrew Ehrenberg has cited before. The weak theory of advertising exists in mature FMCG markets.

Advertising in these markets is about sustaining your market share.

As one of my colleagues from Strathclyde yesterday quoted Ehrenberg - "Let the data speak." (sic)

Blogmetrics - More is good?

I hear that the more often you post to a blog the more often people will read your blog? This seems intuitively true. Whenever something is posted if someone has a feed or an aggregator then the blog will could be read. But will this always be the case or will the content be the key thing?

The blog reader may not browse the blog very often if the blog is not updated regularly but surely with RSS etc., then the content can be seen when it is published. Thus I am in two minds about whether or not the frequency of posting will effect the number of readers or hits on a blog site.

I wonder whether there is a rule of 3 postings a day = 3 x hits? I am sure that this cannot rise with a direct relationship or 1,000 posts a day = 1,000 x more readers but it is possible that a relationship could exist between the number and frequency of posts and the hits.

Obviously as an academic who is interested in the empirical facts about blogging and its effects on media consumption particularly from the point of view of marketing, advertising and PR this is a key area for my study. If anyone has data in this area please send me an e-mail, or even if you have any views please send me your comments.

Another golf game!

I recently received this urban golf game via one of my "newsletters"

I have just played Urban Golf a Jaguar Advergame
This is one of many games that I have received recently.

My question is - How does this fit with the brand's integrated marcoms campaigns?

Is urbangolf an attempt by Jaguar to appeal to a "younger, cooler" generation of jag buyers?

The game graphics are good, but what does the image of the car at the start of every hole add to the image of Jaguar?

Certainly the player interacts with the brand for a long time 34.21 minutes in my case, however, there are many games and they are often similar so how effective are these advergames?

New Audi Viral

Another great example of viral activity from Audi. It's noticeable that Audi have decided to move money from other media buying activity into viral, see Brand Republic.

This is a very interesting development, and I do enjoy the personalisation of this work.

It will be interesting to see whether the grwoing use of vital by car companies gives a competitive advantage. BMW, Mazda, Ford and Audi have all used viral. This is a high involvement product and it would be interesting to know whether the virals do tip the balance in favour of these organisations.

Store Wars Viral

Just seen a fantastic viral. The content is a parody of Star Wars.The Farm is the setting for the war against the supermarkets.
The content is fabulous it should spread rapidly.
The only problem might be the fact that the clip is 5minutes and some more.
Even my broadband took a good while to download the movie.
It seems that the age of VOD isn't quite here yet, but it's certainly getting closer.
You can view the viral here.

Advergaming - The answer to media audience fragmentation or more of the same?

The recent Advertising in Games Forum in NY (14th April 2005) discussed the growing trend for advertisers to use games as a medium for advertising. Some fascinating facts, such as the top 10 game titles in 2004 are listed in an adrants article about this Forum.
The top selling game in 2004 was Grand Theft Auto San Andreas with 5.5 million units sold.
My question concerns the effectiveness of in-game, advergame or similar advertising. There are claims made about the interactivity of the games and the amount of time that someone would be playing and therefore the value over and above a 30 second TV slot. Massive Incorporated claims to be the creator of the first video games advertising network that will "reach the holy grail of advertising." That is 18-34 year old males. A graph within the Massive Incorporated site clearly indicates the opportunity for advertising in games. This is similar to a "press cuttings" metric, but is it really a metric that measures effectiveness.
One of my main questions is how games manage to cut through?
There are many games on the Internet and some are very successful - but how do companies ensure that the message works for the organisation.
As ever I think that a connection between brand, game and customer are the key ingredients. Hence the Mastercard Advergame for the Brits is very effective but Golf games for anything other than golf-linked (terrible pun) companies are not going to cut through and deliver the message.
I'd welcome any thoughts.

Global Blog Week 2

I have noticed on the Mediations blog that Global Blog Week 2 is on the way. Anyone who is interested in blogging and how it is used; how it will be used; or even how it could be used should read the Global Blog Week 1 articles.
On top of this the blogosphere has provided further evidence of its growing status through Volvo's sponsorship of the MSN Spaces blog pages. This sponsorship is interesting because the sponsorship is for the whole of the Spaces blog pages.
The value of this "buy" has been questioned by Blogsads founder due to the content of the Spaces' blogs which often contain a great deal of profanity that is perhaps not in keeping with a safe, family car manufacturer.

Oh Bloggeration

Following my attendance at the recent Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) I met a number of other researchers, academics and practioners interested in the field of blogging and its use as a PR tool.

I entitle this piece "Oh Bloggeration" because that's a similar phrase to the one I uttered when I found out about NewPRWiki and GlobalPRBlogweek. These sources contain a great deal of information about PR and blogging as does Philip Young's excellent blog Mediations (see links).

I met Philip at the conference, where I presented a paper concerning a case study of Nokia and Blogging. This paper will appear on this site in the next two weeks. It followed on from information I gathered through the Adrants network. I had struggled to find research papers about blogging, but I was looking in the wrong place, academic resources, rather than searching cyberspace itself.

A question about traditional academic research and publishing in cyberspace came to mind.

For academics researching dated definitions and debating long-standing theories text books and academic search tools may be relevant, but for academics writing about, researching and commenting on the issues of the day I ask - Have traditional forms of research publishing become redundant?

Is it better to be published in a journal that is controlled by an editorial team of academics who could have an agenda of their own or to make your material available for comment on a blog?

A recent discussion about the Research Assessment Exercise in the UK made me aware that cross-referencing other academics' papers lifted a researcher's ranking and so the finance his/her institution received. This "nepotism" reduces the validity of this exercise.

I propose that academics establish blogs and take comments from fellow academics in cyberspace for discussion and comment on our work. Forget about blind reviewing by peers and introduce a system that utilises the technology of the day. The 2-3 year waits for publication lead to reduced credibility and out-of-date material when publication eventuall happens.

Let's open up the debate - post our research on the web and change the current assessment system to fit today's world.

Advertising in the Apprentice UK

Last night in BBC2's "The Apprentice" the wannabes had to develop a short advertising campaign for one of Amstrad's new products. The product was a ten CD changer for £99 with the working title JB1000. It's difficult to understand in an age of small, portable MP3 players why the product would appeal to the mass market, especially given the design of the product, the size of the product, the levels of PC penetration in the UK and the huge increase in music downloading legal or not. In a very quick assessment of the market and the environment around the music player market I can only believe that the price would need to be the whole focus of the advertising campaign.

Before I comment on the programme I did search for the product on the Amstrad website and I could n't find it. If it is an actual product I think the Amstrad may have missed a trick, 60 minutes of product placement and all you can see is the video phone, although the phone always features several times (without seeing any video image) in the programme and that is the first product on the landing page.


One team produced a plausible effort with a tag line of "The Jukebox is back" the other team tried to sell two JB 1000's per household. Not surprisingly the team that fragmented into two cohorts; tried to sell two machines per household; used a print ad with product copy that needed a microscope to read; offered a TV advertisement with hardly any product shots and minimal visible product use ( music played but it was not clear that it could accept 10 CD's); and had an extremely embarrassing pitch - came second in the two horse race.

I was intrigued by the fact that we did not see all of the winning team's 20 second commercial, perhaps some copyright issue?

One thing was certain though neither group are yet ready to threaten the small, medium or large ad agencies, although the smooth leadership of Miriam's team and the calm professional presentation by James was very good indeed.

This really is a fascinating programme because if someone had told me that I would be watching a job interview using role play on TV for 12 weeks I would have denied that it would happen.

Sir Alan Sugar is fantastic as the boss, and for the most cringe worthy moment of the week - Rachel's Dancing - I felt that Sir Alan made the right decision.

I did love the gag -

I've written books on advertising. ....................Cheque Books!

This was delivered with timing and in the bluff, pugnacious style of Sir Alan, a fabulous line.

It's definitely an idea I'd like to use in for a seminar task during the next academic year.

Virality in Marketing Communications

The current confusion over the leak or not of the latest Doctor Who illustrates two things (at least)
1. The level of interest in Dr Who despite the long absence from our TV screens.
2. The power of viral communications over the Internet. The news of the leak spread very, very quickly and the BBC and its Canadian partner are all denying any fault.
The question is: Why are they concerned? The amount of coverage has been huge and the BBC have gained a hype even beyond the round of interviews for Billie Piper. Some sites talk about heads rolling, I think its bonuses that the leakers deserve! See wired for a great discussion.
As for me it brings back memories of hiding behind the settee when the Daleks came on.