Marketing Hipster

Over the last month, I have written several posts about Dove and their most recent viral video venture on YouTube. If you are not familiar with it, they hired an actress and offered users a chance to (in their minds) create a Dove commercial that would be played during the academy awards. Though they supplied all the content that could be used for these videos and they also banned all men from participating in this contest. This campaign received a great deal of attention and hits from the YouTube community, but if you look a little bit deeper, you will see that the campaign was no where close to a success.

YouTube vlogger Shmuel Tennenhaus sent me a link to a video post of his where he discusses this campaign and I think he raises a number of great points. Please view the video below.

Excellent thoughts Shmuel, thanks for sharing!

Though I do believe there are some other points that need to be looked at here regarding this campaign. First and foremost, this video should of never been put up on YouTube, period. The video is an absolute straight advertisement and anything that is blatantly advertising will most likely get panned by the YouTube community.

Even more importantly than that, at the heart of viral videos is the engagement factor. What makes viral videos successful is that they are contagious. Viewers want to send them to their friends and others want to take them and make them their own either by commenting via message boards, blogs or vlogs. Dove did not allow for any of these things and it cost them dearly. How do you create a contest where you supply all the content, images, videos, music, etc. and expect to get anything original? And then be surprised when you are called out on this.

Bottom line is that Dove – Unilever and their agency Ogilvy wanted their cake and to eat it too. They wanted to capture attention using user generated content, but were unwilling to give up control of their brand to see if they could be successful.

Technorati Tags: Dove, YouTube, Shmuel Tennenhaus, viral videos, engagement

If you have not seen it yet, Orville Redenbacher has been brought back from the dead in a new commercial for of course, Orville Redenbacher popcorn. The word that came to my mind when I first saw this was creepy. There is something very wrong with this in my humble opinion.

What audience was this commercial meant to reach? Anyone old enough to remember Orville Redenbacher will find this wrong and for anyone too young to remember Orville Redenbacher would find this just plain dumb. If you want to continue to use Orville Redenbacher the man as your brand, why not bring back some of the old commercials? Check out the video below and let me know what your thoughts are.

Technorati Tags: Orville Redenbacher, commercial, video

I wrote a story last week about Dove’s recently launched viral play following their hugely successful viral video – Evolution. For this campaign, they are allowing users to edit and create their own video and the winner gets the commercial aired during the Academy Awards. When I looked into this further, I read in the contest rules that this contest was only open to women. I did not understand why Dove would limit the pool of involvement to just women. It honestly did not make sense to me so I sent them an email asking for an explanation.

“To whom it may concern,

I would like to know why the Dove Cream Oil Body Wash Ad Contest is only open to women? Is it right that you are discriminating against 50% of the population? I am very in touch with my feminine side you know. I would like to understand your reasoning behind this. I would appreciate a response. Thank you.

Cord Silverstein”

I just threw in the feminine line for laughs… Well, even though their responder said I would get a response in 48 hours, it took 6 days, but I finally got a response.

“Dear Cord:
We received your inquiry regarding the Dove Cream Oil Body Wash Ad Contest.

While Dove appreciates all consumers, both male and female, this particular promotional campaign is open only to women. This is legal and is a promotionally targeted decision.

Males are more than welcome to create and submit their ads, that could in turn be featured in the contest gallery, but they would not be eligible to win any prizes.

Thank you for your interest in the contest, we hope this answers your question.

Your friends at Dove.”

“Promotionally Targeted Decision”, well that clears everything up for me, how about you?

I keep coming back to the same question that I have asked over and over again, why? I know, their product is geared towards women, I understand that. Though it just seems like excluding men who at times shop for women as well as buys Dove’s other products does nothing except hurts your product, your brand and your company in the long run. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: viral video, Evolution, Dove

There is this hilarious video on glumbert.com called Laughter is contagious. You just cannot help but to laugh.

Technorati Tags: hilarious video

A good post on Digg about a blog that was made to look like it was two young guys who wanted a Sony PSP for Christmas from their parents. They made some cute videos, some interesting posts, etc. etc. Though very quickly it was revealed that the domain was registered by an ad agency and this was a poor attempt by both the ad agency as well as Sony to create some viral marketing buzz for the PSP during the holidays.I always wanted to be a fly on the wall during these marketing meetings when an agency is trying to plan out a campaign. I wonder if during this particular campaign meeting, anyone brought up the point that they are being dishonest to any and all people who will come to this blog? This site is being developed, written and launched by an ad agency and these guys in the blog are merely actors and what might the repercussions be if the public finds out for both the agency, but more importantly, our client?!?!?!?

When I was looking over this blog, there were several items that jumped out at me. First off, this agency wrote this focused on the lowest common denominator. I understand the target demographic for this site was probably boys 11-18, but did they assume their customers are stupid as well?

Look at the writing; misspelled words (Kids do know how to use the spell check feature), lower case letters like i (Yea, finding the shift key is tough) and then just total run-on sentences that my cousin who is 4 could of written better.

Many people believe that this campaign failed miserably because Sony and their agency got caught lying. Oh yea, by the way folks, if you are going to lie, don’t register the domain in your ad agencies name. Though the lying part just made this story bigger than it would of been. But no matter what, this campaign would of failed for one simple reason, it did not communicate well with the target audience. It demeaned them, it talked down to them and it offered them nothing of interest. I equate this web site to an accident you see on the side of the road. You know you should not look, but for that couple of seconds as you drive by it, you cannot help but stare at the horror of it all. Though two seconds after passing it, you have moved on to something else in your head never to return to the accident.

If you do not believe me, let’s look at some of the comments users are posting. These are the people Sony wants more than anything to buy their product.

• This site makes me want to get rid of my PSP.
• This is terrible. I mean really terrible. I don’t think anyone is fooled by this terrible, terr1ble ad.
• Things are going really bad for Sony if all they can afford to push one of their flagship products are you monkeys.
• Sony should be ashamed….
• What The Hell! Not only is this fraud of a joke site a simple paid for advertisement for Sony, but it also is horrendously awful! You spent how much on this absolute tripe?

Technorati Tags: Sony, PSP, dishonest, failed