Marketing Hipster

I saw a video on Sean’s blog, Craphammer that took me to a real interesting campaign P&G is doing called Jingles for Pringles. They launched a contest where users create their own custom video promoting Pringles of course and upload it to their custom site. Very much like YouTube, users can comment and rate the videos to see what the community likes the best. Along with this online video campaign, P&G has also chosen some malls where they will be having street teams videoing people right there and uploading those videos to the web site as well. The winners get some sort of prizes.

I have been real impressed with a number of campaigns that P&G have been doing lately. They really seem to be one of the few large corporations that have really embraced the internet and a number of these community and viral campaigns. I was going through the Jingles for Pringles site and was real impressed with how the technology worked as well as the user experience. What I liked most about it was that P&G did not try to stuff their product down the users throat. They setup the campaign correctly and understood that everything that the user is creating is focused already on their brand and product and nothing else was needed. This is a critical part of any kind of viral/community campaign, you as a marketer cannot push too hard with your message or product or you risk alienating your community.

What do you think? Can I ask everyone a favor and go over to the Jingles for Pringles site and take a look? You do not have to register to view the videos and surf the site. I really would love your thoughts on what you like and what could be better. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: P&G, Jingles for Pringles, YouTube, viral, community

Yesterday afternoon I was getting some work done and per usual I had the TV on in the background. I happen to have Nascar on. Even though I live in North Carolina, I am not really a Nascar fan, but for some reason it was on my television as I was working. Over the couple of hours that it was on, I noticed something that made me wonder what these people were thinking. One of the sponsors for the race was DLP Technologies. If you are not familiar, this is the technology by Texas Instruments that uses mirrors that is supposed to make the pictures on televisions with DLP look amazing. I am sure you have seen their commercials before, they usually have a little girl and a baby elephant in them.

What really made me scratch my head was that they had either been given as a sponsor or bought significant air time during the race. Their commercial ran almost every commercial break based on my unofficial count. What drove me crazy was that it was the same commercial each and every time?!?!?!?! I don’t get it.. This company spent millions of dollars on being a sponsor of a Nascar race, they spent millions of dollars more on a media buy to get their commercial seen all day, but they were not willing to actually produce more than just one lousy commercial? Do you think that was done on purpose? Do you think someone internally actually brought up that the same commercial was going to be run a dozen or so times during the race and that was acceptable with everyone? Towards the end of the race, I was praying for that baby elephant to go on a rampage.

DLP, I am your target audience. Mid-thirties man who watches sports religiously and who is presently looking at big screen televisions to purchase for my home. You had a perfect opportunity to sell me yesterday and you failed miserably. Now I am questioning your brand. If you do such a lousy job marketing your product, should I be concerned about the quality of your product?

Technorati Tags: Nascar, DLP

I was hanging out yesterday doing my usual Sunday regiment, laundry, catching up on work, emails and a little TV here and there. While I was doing 40 other things with the TV on in the background, a commercial caught my attention. It had a young guy in front of his computer at a coffee shop. A lipstick rolled and hit his foot, he bent over to retrieve it and handed it back to an attractive woman sitting behind him. When he turned back around his computer and the lipstick woman were both gone. There was no words spoken in this commercial and it ended with a URL, nowwhat.com.

I thought it was an interesting commercial and I did exactly what the commercial makers wanted viewers to do, I typed the URL in my computer. When I went to the web site, I discovered it was a commercial and web site for State Farm Insurance. When I entered the site and looked around for a second or two, one question popped into my mind, “Now What?”. Ok State Farm, you got me to your web site, now what do you want me to do? You have a cute little Flash movie here, nice, but I am assuming you would like me to maybe get interested in your home or auto insurance? If so, your web site failed at this miserably.

This is another example of taking the ball all the way to the one yard line and then not only not going into the end zone, but turning around and going the other way. Let’s discuss what is missing? First off, why should I switch my home or auto insurance to State Farm? What makes you different from my present providers of Allstate and Geico? You ran a contest for users to submit their own Now What videos on iFilm, I think that is great, but did you bother putting up your own commercials? I searched on both YouTube and iFilm, the place you ran your own contest, and neither have your own commercials for viewing or at least that I could find?

Though even more importantly than all of these questions, I believe the biggest error made was State Farm and their marketing agency not understanding the media landscape and falling back into what they have always done which is make TV commercials.

Technorati Tags: nowwhat.com, State Farm Insurance, videos, YouTube, iFilm

Great article in Adage about Proctor and Gamble‘s Jim Stengel recent speech where he talks about a “major cultural shift” happening within P&G. He sees P&G moving to a marketer who starts conversations rather than a one way communicator. Finally!! Someone who represents a major marketer is starting to get it. It is not about who has the loudest bullhorn or who has the most money, but who is willing to engage with their customers and open a two way dialog.

The Adage article also speaks to at the end what might the agencies sitting in the audience be thinking as they listen to Stengel speak?

“What that means for the conference crowd here, many of whom are still obsessing over the finer points of distinctly tell-it-and-sell-it media.”

In simpler terms, “Holy crap, what are we going to do since we have only focused on creating TV commercials for the last 20 years?!?!?”

Technorati Tags: Proctor and Gamble, Jim Stengel, P&G

Last night around 10 pm, I am minding my old business catching up on some email with the TV on in the background. I see a Dove commercial come on. If you are new to my blog, I have written several posts on Dove and their interesting online/offline ad campaigns. Dove’s latest commercial which I caught last night consisted of a number of fast cut shots that had what looked like to be naked people. The interesting thing about this commercial was that it was a teaser telling the viewer that if you want to see the actual video, you have to go to Dove’s Pro Age web site.

Now I thought this was great. There are not many large advertisers out there that would spend the money on a 30 second spot with a single goal of enticing a viewer to go to their computer and type in their URL. I gave a silent prop to Dove and Unilever the owner of Dove brand and did actually what they asked, I went to their URL. And what did I find there?

OLD NAKED PEOPLE

Dove has a new product which of course is targeted for older people and their skin. And of course, they have a video of older folks naked with I guess good skin.  Can you tell they have good skin from these shots?

Does it seem to you that as the population is getting older and the baby boomers, who are the folks with the cash, are hitting retirement age, we are starting to see truth in advertising? At one time, if you were selling anything from clothing, makeup and skin care to cars and electronics, all you saw were beautiful folks. Is Madison Avenue starting to realize that if you want to reach users, you are going to have to show them and communicate to them in way that will strike a chord with them?

What do you think? Will showing “real” people like Dove is doing here have more of an impact and increase sales or does fantasy still sell best?

Technorati Tags: Dove, naked people, Unilever

As marketers, one of our main responsibilities is to know our clients’ business, their goals and expectations. I have always began every client engagement with at least one if not several meetings with the client to gain insight into their business, their competitors and most importantly, their take on who their customers are. We use this information to design a marketing campaign that will increase our clients’ visibility and hopefully grow their business. I am a firm believer that no matter how much experience I might have within an industry there is no-one who knows the business better than my clients themselves. They live, eat and breath their business everyday and their thoughts and insights into their business are essential for developing a successful campaign.

Though over the last couple of years, I have begun to understand that even though clients might know their business this does not mean that they understand how to market their business effectively. In this day and age, where technology and information seems to be growing and changing at epic speeds, I believe it is time for companies to realize that they “don’t know what they don’t know”. Brand marketing managers all the way up to CEO’s need to realize that what has worked in the past is not guaranteed to work in the future and that no matter how long you have worked in this industry, you do not have a firm understanding on how and where to market to your customers.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been struggling with how I can communicate with a tempestuous client that I disagree with them and strongly believe that the marketing road they want to go down will not deliver the results they are looking for. Ask anyone who has worked with me in the past and I believe they would tell you that I am not someone who is afraid to say what is on my mind whether internally or to a client. My challenge at the moment is this particular client I have never worked with before so I have no track record with them. How can I tell a client who does not know me from Adam come in and tell them that I am right and you the client are wrong?

It’s an interesting balancing act when you want to gain the confidence of a client, but know if you continue down the road they want, you will never gain their confidence because the campaign will not work. It is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. Do I raise my objections now and risk losing the client before we have even begun or do I deliver mediocre results and have to work that much harder to gain the clients’ confidence int he long run?

I welcome any and all thoughts.

I was interviewed for a story on click fraud which has just gone live. What I said was truncated a bit and the story gives the impression that I do not believe there is any click fraud whatsoever and maybe that I was wearing a Google and Yahoo cheerleader outfit with pom-pom’s as I did the interview.

While I believe that click fraud is much lower than what many outside reports show, I do believe there is some fraud. The point I was trying to make in the article was that there are a number of factors that determine a successful PPC campaign and I believe click fraud is no where close to the top.

I welcome any and all thoughts.

Technorati Tags: click fraud, Google, Yahoo, PPC

Brains on Fire, a company and a blog that I have a lot of respect for posted a great article summarizing this whole Aqua Teen Hunger Force fiasco that I just wanted to post here so everyone can have an opportunity to read.

Spike sums it perfectly:

“The rest of us that are out there in the trenches trying to educate and win business have to put up with this crap.”

“………..This was the very definition of interruptive marketing. It wasn’t a conversation. It wasn’t listening. It was yelling. Old school “look over here” yelling. And we will all feel the repercussions for some time.”

Technorati Tags: Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Doritos ran a Superbowl contest where users could submit their own commercials and the winners commercial was played during the Superbowl. The winner of the contest just happened to be a group of 21 year olds from where I live now, Cary, North Carolina. If have not seen the commercial, you can view it below.

I have been reading this morning all these posts from “advertising executives” that the quality of this user generated commercial and user generated commercials in general are no where close to the professionally done ones. Here are some responses:

“The Doritos user-generated ad wasn’t our choice, but got great laughs. It just needs a stronger ending.”

“Doritos. User generated content. Don’t give up your day job. …”

“Doritos user-generated spot: I hope this commercial finally dispels the myth of user- generated content, and most importantly as a submission-based campaign. It doesn’t work. These spots aren’t good, or funny, and there is a reason people get paid to make ads for a living.”

Quotes were found here.

My response: Please… The Doritos commercial which was made for less than $15 dollars proves that content can be created on par with commercials that are created by big advertising agencies for millions upon millions of dollars. Tell me 5 commercials that aired last night that were significantly better than the Doritos commercial?

Technorati Tags: Doritos, Superbowl contest, commercial

Last week it was announced that Ogilvy would partner with Technorati and they would provide Ogilvy clients with blogs, video blogs, videos, photos and other online user-generated media.

“Ogilvy creatives and account teams will use Technorati’s conversational marketing products to build relationships between brands and conversations relevant to those brands. This will result in the the creation of destination sites, new forms of advertising and communities of interest.”

This will be interesting to watch and see what transpires from this. My initial thought was that this was yet another example of an agency creating another avenue for their clients to communicate to their customers, but not creating a way to better listen to their customers and most importantly understand them. I think we have seen numerous examples of companies jumping head first into the blogosphere and truly falling flat on their faces. The reason for this was that they did not understand who their customers were and what they were saying.

Developing a blog is the easy part of social media. Creating landing pages for people go to and read is nothing different than creating new landing pages for a pay per click campaign. Though if you want to capitalize on social media, there needs to be a great deal more than this.

A company needs to understand before launching a blog what issues and feedback they might receive. They must have procedures in place to not only hear what their customers are saying, but being able to respond to them quickly and correctly. And finally, a blog’s singular purpose is to engage with their readers. If a company is utilizing a blog for yet another avenue to put out press releases, they will soon realize that this blog will do nothing to enhance their brand and more often than not, it will hurt their company’s overall brand and reputation.

What do you think? If you were a Fortune 100 company, what would your initial steps be to launch a successful blog?

Technorati Tags: Ogilvy, Technorati, blogs, social media