Two Cents

If you haven’t seen, read or heard anything about this story you must be living under a rock.

In a snapshot, it was a 19 year old girl (Clare Werbeloff) giving her apparently ‘bogan eyewitness account’ to a Channel 9 news crew about a Kings Cross shooting that happened in mid May. If you haven’t seen it, you can still view the clip on Youtube.

As it turns out, she seems to have been in Kings Cross at the time and was aware of what had happened, but didn’t actually view it. Nonetheless, in her own words ‘she is not camera shy’, was drawn to the Channel 9 news crew and manufactured ‘her eyewitness account’ on the spot.

This has already polarised the community with some seeing it as totally inappropriate (even abhorrent) and others viewing it as connecting to perceived Australian values of ‘mucking around/having a bit of a laugh’.

Let’s look at what happened after this ‘segment’ aired:

• Since being posted on YouTube 2-3 weeks ago it has been viewed over 690,000 times
• Within 24 hours of the footage first airing, merchandise was available for purchase (t-shirts, caps, mugs, drink bottles, etc)
• A rap-music remix video was developed
• From May 18 through to June 5 there were 3,243 individual posts in social media, which generated 10,122 comments online, with a total estimated viewing audience of 1,273,740
  (Source: BCM’s social media monitoring service Buzzhound)
• Clare has given many TV, radio and press interviews (interestingly the TV interviews were exclusively with Channel 9, where the segment first aired)
• She has appointed an agent to deal with the inundated response and has apparently received many media job offers (stay tuned, she might end up on Channel 9)

There’s no doubt this story has had both enormous impact and effect. What I find myself struggling with is how much of this should we truly acknowledge. Clare may end up being the real winner and if this really happened ‘off the cuff’, despite the inappropriateness I also can’t help but admire the spontaneity and cleverness. There are perhaps some bigger questions to be considered:

• Is this just an insight into Clare, or perhaps a broader insight into the 19 year old mind
• Is anyone else cynical about this ‘whole story’, perhaps we haven’t heard it all yet
• True or not, what else might it spurn and where might it end?

Please do share your thoughts.

While I didn’t have the opportunity to watch the number one US sporting event of the year live, the 2009 Super Bowl has certainly provided a plethora of case studies into how offline and online advertising are converging, and continue to bring new light into how we interact and even define social media.   With advertisers spending on average USD$100,000/second, online data with the right analysis can deliver some understanding into what all the fuss is about and why, even in difficult economic times, these spots continue to attract top dollar.

Take for example the New York Times ‘Twitter Chatter’ tool, which very neatly mapped the tweets by location and frequency of commonly used words in Super Bowl messages, particularly chatter about the ads. It’s interesting to note the progression of just how much the marketing associated with the event has become almost as important as the event itself.

If Twitter is one barometer then certainly YouTube is another.  YouTube set up a dedicated channel called AdBlitz 2009 where users could vote on their favourite ads.  Winners from this vote  included Doritos in the number one spot with their “Free Doritos” ad, E*TRADE with it’s singing babies and CareerBuilder.com’s “When to find a new job” ad in the top three.

Doritos also appear to have gained a whopping 80% bump in search volume compared to the period leading up to the Super Bowl according to Google’s Insight for Search tool, no doubt supported by their open approach to their marketing which invited Doritos aficionados to ‘Crash The Super Bowl’ by creating ads – the winner got to take home a cool $1million.

While this is all very interesting, advertisers are continuing to try to harness the data to provide insight into just what the return on investment from social media exercises may be.  The Groundswell Blog featured one methodology which compared the Tweets of approximately 70 people in relation to a brand and attempted to marry those to the comments the ad incited – be it positive or negative to come up with a sort of ‘net promoter’ score.

No doubt there are plenty of other fascinating tools that have been developed by advertisers and interested spectators alike, all very likely to be reporting any number of different results as to who the real winners from Super Bowl advertising investments were.  As marketers continue to navigate within the social media landscape more and more ways to measure these interactions will continue to develop.  Until then, it certainly is fun to post analyse, and there is much that can be learned from the experiments of others in applying to your own brands advertising impact online.  I’d love to hear if you’ve come across any other interesting ways to analyse social media, Super Bowl related or not.

I was recently trying to choose a holiday destination, and like many people nowadays, I started by scanning holiday websites and searching feedback from ‘real people’ on sites like TripAdvisor.com. I managed to unearth some useful info, particularly in blogs and forums, but then suddenly something occurred to me. Why not search YouTube for other people’s ‘holiday videos’ of the destinations I was considering? Not exactly a stroke of genius…but it certainly was a new way of thinking for me, and I suspect for many others.

It doesn’t seem to matter how obscure your destinations are, SOMEONE seems to have posted a video from there on the internet! In my case, I found YouTube ‘home-videos’ that gave me great insights to Cape York fishing safaris, Cambodian trekking and remote Fijian getaways.

Look, maybe it’s the advertising cynic in me, but I do find great value in seeing real peoples real videos, rather than risking being influenced by professional footage that has been carefully manipulated by tour operators and local tourism bodies. I like that the power is now in the public’s hands, to show the REALITY of destinations that await travellers. These YouTube clips, often just 10-20 seconds long, can contain a single magic moment that will either convince you to book your trip, or turn you away from paying a deposit! In my mind, they offer better insurance than the policy you take out with the likes of a dodgy travel insurer. Try it out!

I have to say, I am enjoying the controversy and media attention that has snowballed over the past week as two now infamous viral stunts have unraveled and become exposed.  Tourism Queensland successfully generated free global publicity from their so called ‘mistake’ related to ‘the best job in the world‘, and it’s now official that the Naked clothing line from Witchery are in fact the modern day Cinderella… only after receiving significant prime television coverage, Nationwide press and became the latest hot blog topic to trot.

With the media’s spin that we as marketers should be ashamed for sneaking our brands into the lives of unsuspecting consumers, it has made me wonder; where do we draw the line between developing innovative ways to engage the increasingly indifferent consumer, and propping up the stereotype of advertising seen as simply shallow sales antics?  Are we risking the trust of our bloodline with reckless and deceptive acts? Or is this the evolution of the traditional PR stunt gone viral?

In this technology-driven and busy world we exist in, it is a necessity for survival that we place our brands firmly in the eye of the world where possible, and granted these recent events have done just that, but what are the long term costs which result, if any? Are we helping or hindering our brands? Or will these stunts just become ‘yesterday’s news’?

Google. It’s the company of choice for commentators (and particularly bloggers) to endlessly bang on about. Any why not? It’s a corporate miracle the likes of which has quite literally never been seen before. What other company has ever impacted on a global level in such a short space of time?

So, now it’s my turn to talk Google – because in the mountains of chatter, there’s a few things about Google that you might not know.

1. Google is revolutionising all media, not just search

At least in the USA, Google is determined to break down the costs of entry associated with most offline media. Already, anyone with a credit card and an internet connection can place an ad through Google on TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, even podcasts. Google will even help you produce the ad. Your placed ads can be precisely targeted and tracked centrally through Google Analytics. Pretty amazing stuff.

2. They might have discovered how to monetise Youtube – by video text search

Google’s success is built on paid search – the Adwords alongside your search results. Youtube’s sucess is built on… well, in financial terms, Youtube isn’t a success, it’s a money pit. Their problem has always been serving relevant ads alongside content without destroying the great Youtube user experience. Now that Google has figured out how to convert speech to text, all that will change – because Google now know which relevant ads to place next to the videos. The ads could even change as the video progresses. Combine this with copyright holder’s increasing willingness to negotiate with Youtube – and you’ve almost got yourself a business model.

3. They have a wicked sense of humour

April Fool’s Day jokes. The changing logo. Gmail fun like beer goggles and canned responses. Rick Rolling the whole of Youtube. The list goes on. If nothing else, Google is endearing for not always taking itself so seriously.

Google isn’t perfect, and as it becomes a behemoth, it’s losing some of its sheen. But it still has a long and bright future ahead of it.

Ah, the heady days of 1998, just a decade ago. The year Australia held a Constitutional Convention, John Howard was re-elected for the first time, and Bill Clinton faced the music over his dalliances. Doesn’t seem that long ago, does it?

In 1998, there was no such thing as Napster, and the music industry was happily resting on its laurels – MP3 was yet to become a household term (the cool kids had discmans, Apple was that weirdo company trailing behind Microsoft, and the notion of storing your entire music collection on a device called an iPod was laughable). To access the internet, you crossed your fingers and hoped your 56k modem would connect, and then not drop out – broadband was but a geek’s wildest dream. You couldn’t attach a photo to an email without it taking hours to send and receive. If you were lucky, your brand new PC might have had a new-fangled USB drive. Your mobile phone was just that – a phone.

Google was born. There was no Myspace or Facebook – social networking involved going to the pub. No Youtube – watching video online was a horrid affair. No such thing as a blog. Nobody knew if sites like Amazon and Ebay would ever turn a profit, let alone survive.

It is by looking to the recent past that we can take stock of the incredible impact that the internet has had on our lives in such a short space of time, and the way in which it continues to change us. It is a phenomenon that everyone is a part of. It is inescapable.

This nostalgia was inspired by the release of a report by Pew this week called Networked Families which highlighted just how much impact the internet is having on our daily lives. One quarter of American adults say they now watch less TV as a result of the internet. 47 percent of households say new technologies have increased the quality of communication between family members. The internet, not TV, is now the hub of conversation for the water cooler – “Have you seen that latest video? Have you seen that cool website?”

Indeed, the very notion of a family sitting down in front of the TV with dinner to watch a show on free-to-air TV may soon seem as quaint as the idea of 56k modems. PVRs, video on demand, IPTV, cheap laptops – all are drawing people away from the TV and into a far more interactive world.

My, how things have changed. Anyone care to guess what the world of 2018 will look like? Good luck!

Banner ads. Love them or loathe them, they’re an integral part of the internet experience. They remain the primary source of revenue for many of the sites we love to visit.

That said, there’s plenty of room for innovation. Not only in their creative execution, but also in increasing their relevancy to us. There are currently great strides being made in behavioural targeting to increase relevancy, but privacy concerns over intrusive methods of tracking your behaviour could well hold those advances back. And rightly so.

But back to creative executions. You can see a plethora of really cool stuff over at Eyeblaster’s Creative Zone. But there were a couple of very-above-average ads which came to light this week that I want to share.

The first is this execution for Jeep. It gets points for utilising 3D within an ad. Can’t say I’ve seen that before! Have a play around and cruise around terrain within the ad in 3D.

This takes the cake though – it’s been a viral hit so you might have seen it already. I don’t want to give anything away, just check it out! And be sure to watch the whole thing!

Unfortunately creative executions like the above are probably outside the realm of any Australian advertiser (I’ve heard rumours of what it costs to partner with Youtube to do something like that, and you don’t want to hear them). That said, BCM has some pretty cool online display ads in the works for clients, so keep an eye on Two Cents, I’ll be sure to post them up.

BCM has been working with the NSW Rural Fire Service to develop a campaign to recruit volunteer firefighters to the service. Based around the slogan “What would it take for you to fight?”, the campaign encompasses a stirring TV commercial and a dedicated microsite. The microsite contains all the information you need about joining the service, video testimonials from current volunteer firefighters, and of course a high-res version of the TV ad. Just quietly, it’s also a great example of the interactive creative talent here at BCM.

We also put together this ‘making of’ video which is proving popular on Youtube. If you’re in NSW, keep an eye out for the actual ad. It’s a beauty. And of course, if the question “What would it take for you to fight?” stirs something inside you, perhaps you should check out the finer details of volunteering.