A couple of posts back, I posted some viral videos done by Jaz beer to promote beer drinking tips and tricks. Again, they did a very good job to promote the beer brand here where the main target audience is obviously male beer drinkers. It's very cleverly done as they don't over promote the product. All I can say is a hot girl and beer somehow always seem to go well together.
Episode 4: How to Freeze a Beer in 10 Seconds!
Episode 5: How to "Bottoms Up" a Bottle of Beer in 11 Seconds!
This is a problem I commonly face when dealing with some companies. Apart from additional budgets needed to maintain Facebook pages or corporate blogs, it all boils down to lack of resources and knowledge about the media channel. Recent stats by Meltwater Group shows that 38% of corporate companies lack resource and time to devote to social media.
With the rise of social media, it is up to media / PR agencies to take the lead and advise corporate clients the benefits of using social media as part of their marketing and branding strategies. One collective issue that I can gather from the chart above is that corporations lack the knowledge simply because they lack the monitoring tools for them to understand and to monitor as well. Unknown to many, there are a wide range of free buzz monitoring or social media monitoring tools available that can be used to keep tabs what is happening in the social media space.
Online tools such as Socialmention can monitor trends as well as positive or negative sentiments about a brand in the social space or using a tool by Momentus Media to conduct a Community Health Check to see if your Facebook page is "healthy". Both of these free tools are amongst the many available free tools that corporations can use to do surface level monitoring as well as keeping tabs on their competitors. Although these tools only give surface level numbers and information, there are of course more in depth analytical tools which are only often available to agencies who purchased them.
The role of a media / PR agency would be to then to come up with social strategies to support their business and marketing objectives. But before anything else, it is important that corporations need to be educated and understand how social media works plus the benefits that the monitoring tools can bring to their company/brand before anyone goes to pitch to them on a social media strategy.
Facebook recently launch Places, a location based "check-in" platform which is their equivalent to Foursquare and Gowalla. Some parties predicts that this will "kill" the other 2 popular platforms in years to come. But what people probably fail to see is that Facebook Places isn’t just another location based check in service, it's probably not even meant to compete directly with them to begin with. What it does is that it leverages on Facebook's massive database and uses the API that will connect them together with the use of mobile applications, websites and beyond.
Think of it more like a friend finder and venue recommender service, and not so much of a gaming element like Foursquare and Gowalla. A simple scenario: your friend could have visited a particular venue and have either good or bad experience in that venue. Your friend then leaves a comment about that place or "Like" that place. The next time you "check-in" to that venue, you can see which of your friends have visited the venue and their comments. It can also be used to find your friends who are within the same vicinity as you are at. All these activities of course, would be linked back to your Wall on Facebook notifying your friends of your whereabouts.
For now, Places is only available in the US. But it's only about time when they open it up to the rest of the world. And when they do, I bet it will be huge! One thing I'm really keen to see is advertising on these "Places". It would definitely be another gold mine for advertisers. Let's face it, you know it's going to happen sooner or later.
A colleague recently sent me some links about some local viral videos which I personally think has been really well executed. The videos feature a girl speaking in local Cantonese about beer. In the first episode, she talks about how many beers before one fails a breathalyzer test. I bet not many people know (not even myself!) that all it takes is 2 bottles of beer to exceed the local alcohol limit of 0.05%.
In the second episode, she teaches one how to cheat on a breathalyzer test during a roadblock after a night out. I really can relate to the fact that all the methods shown are commonly used by drinkers to make them think that they can cheat the breathalyzer test on their way back home. Key message at the end of this video is that no matter what method you try, you can't cheat on the breathalyzer test and is always better to call a cab, or ask a friend for a ride home if you have drank more than you should. A clever way to entice you watch the video to begin with.
In the third episode, she give tips on how to open a beer bottle without a bottle opener. I think that this is probably my favourite video because I find it useful and not to mention, you can show off to your friends as well.
In summary, I think these videos are brilliant because of:
Local content which people can appreciate and relate. The way the girl presents it makes it seem natural and unscripted to a certain extend.
Clever product placement and branding. Very minimal and not "in your face", but yet people notice the brand.
Content is surprisingly educational. Who would have thought you can educate the public about the dangers of drunk driving this way.
I always say self-branding is important as it portrays how one sells his or herself. In the case of Alec Brownstein, he needed a job so he did something out of the norm to get the attention of some of the world's top creative people such as David Droga, Tony Granger, Gerry Graf, Ian Reichenthal and Scott Vitrone, all of which are well known figures in the creative and advertising industry.
He didn't do it by sending out resumés to them, but instead all it took Alec was $6 to run a Google Adwords campaign which feature their names to which the search result had a message that read something like: “Hey, David Droga, Gooogling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too.” which links back to his website to let them know how he can be contacted. This again displays the power and capabilities of Search Marketing, and how it can benefit someone or an organization.
Oh...and Alec landed a job at Y&R New York at the end of it. Simply brilliant!
Facebook recently announced the launch of new “social plug-ins” at the f8 conference that will revolutionize the internet and how people are connected to it. Mark Zuckerberg talked about how Facebook intends to connect parts of the Web that other social sites are building, as part of what he described as the "Open Graph." People are increasingly discovering information not just through links to web pages but also from the people and things they care about and through their experiences. Facebook has always been focused on mapping out the part of the graph around people and their relationships. On the other hand, other sites and services have been mapping out other parts of the graph so users can get relevant information about different types of things.
Imagine this: Yelp maps out the content based on businesses and services while Pandora maps out which songs are related to each other. Facebook now helps bring your friends from Facebook to share experiences on these sites or personalize them to you. So if say you liked a song you heard on Pandora, or say you liked a service that aided you on Yelp, you can now tell your friends on Facebook about it by simply clicking on the “like” button on the site and it will appear to your friends as part of your “News Feed”.
With the new social plug-ins, brands would now be able to gauge how well their products and services are doing in terms of public reaction to the number of “likes” or “recommends”. One sample implementation is on CNN.com, where you can see which of your friends “liked” which article from the site.
Noticed the “Friend’s Activity” section highlighted? Those are actually people I know from my Facebook friend list who have “liked” certain articles within CNN.com. This serves as some sort of “recommender” to people on what to read or what to do, assuming it’s their first time to a particular website.
Zuckerberg himself mentioned that the new changes announced constituted "the most transformative thing we've ever done for the web." …well how true indeed.
I was researching through some online viral campaigns to get some ideas that I stumbled across this brilliant viral video campaign.
If you don’t understand Cantonese, the video above shows a young girl who is pissed off at her ex-boyfriend for dumping her 3 months ago. Before they started dating, he used to pay for everything, and once they got together, they went Dutch, but she was still cool with that. The final straw was when he dumps her because her breasts were too small (AA cups). Later, she went for a boob job and now has C-cup breasts and taunts him that no matter what he cannot get to touch or get anywhere near those C-cups ever again.
Now, I must say, this is a very “hook, line and sinker” style of marketing. It build so much talkability and hype that it generated 700k+ views in just a matter of 10 days. The girls’ main intention here is obviously payback for him stereotyping girls with small breasts…or at least that’s what they want you to think. The second part of the video shows the ex-boyfriend who “responds” to her video.
Noticed I used the word “they”? “They” as in the company.
Now in retaliation, the ex-boyfriend looks a bit annoyed at what she has done (who wouldn't?). However, he does not believe she has C-cup breast and asks her to prove it. He says the only way she can get C-cup breasts in 3 months is if you take this (he then whips out the product that “they” were trying to sell). The Perfect C Breast Enhancer! That’s the product. At the end of the video, he even tells you where to get it by giving the website. Brilliant marketing don’t you think? It really shows that online viral marketing really does work!
Try taking this brand quiz. It's a clever way to see how people associate color and imagery with some of the world's biggest brands. Each question will show 2 colors, which are the brand's corporate colors, an associated picture and a cryptic clue to enable you to guess each mystery brand. There is also a timer for you to answer all 21 questions in total. I only managed 15 out of 21. It's not as easy as it sounds trust me.
Whether you like it or not, you are a brand. How you behave and how you react is what makes each person unique. Having said that, whatever you say or do in the online world is a reflection of who you are. People who like to rant a lot on blogs or via status updates on social media sites are usually whiny people too in real life. In social media is all about the power of influence. It’s therefore very important to note that you need to be extra careful and witty on what you put up on Twitter and Facebook because the general public might not necessarily perceive it the way you really meant. And if you’re a fairly well known individual, it could be rather damaging to oneself.
Similiarly to consumer and service brands, people might lose confidence should they have a bad experience with a particular brand. So the next time you update that "status message" of yours, do remember to put extra thought to your content and also put yourself in your intended audience's shoes and see it from their perspective.
Google recently launched Google Buzz, a service to share updates, photos, videos, and more. There are a lot of criticisms when it went live 2 days ago, I for one am a skeptic, but also understand what Google is trying to achieve by doing so.
It certainly looks like a mediocre attempt to emulate Friendfeed and it certainly feels like it's a half baked product in terms of features. But if you look at how Google is positioning it in terms of a marketing stand point, it looks more like a beta or even alpha version of the upcoming Google Wave. Right now, Buzz is available as an extension on Gmail while they improve on Google Wave.
What I don't like most about it it's the way it's presented. Latest "buzz" threads are not displayed in reverse chronological order like Facebook or Twitter updates...which means users need to scroll all the way down to read new updates in a particular Buzz thread. Active Buzz threads are on the top, while the less active ones are below. Although it’s annoying, it does kinda make sense, because “buzz” is really what it’s all about; which are the more talked about topics/threads.
There also isn't a clear indication of who has updated what thread, unlike Facebook have with their "Notifications" tab. Also base on my usage, I’m only notified on Gmail on the threads that I’m participating in, and don’t get updates on those which I’m not. I might be wrong though. Bear in mind, you can also now share photos, videos and links using Buzz…nothing new really...all features that can and will expand into Google Wave in future.
In summary, I think Buzz is released to do what it's meant to do; to create "Buzz"...simple as that...nothing more in terms of function. If you ask me, Google definitely did a good job by getting users like you and me to use Buzz as a test platform for the development and enhancements for Google Wave in future.
