I suppose you all remember Jill and Kevin’s wedding video, in which the couple and a few of their friends were dancing to „forever“ by Chris Brown?
For those living outside Germany, here it is (YouTube is blocking music videos in Germany):
I really liked that video and copied it into my German Blogs. I enjoyed the story of how this idea came about (here is some background info about the wedding). I liked the idea of the couple wanting to celebrat their most important day in a special way. And I am sure quite a few of the many million who have watched this video thought alike.
Hard to believe, I have to admit. Highly disappointing if it’s true.
So what was it marketing for? In that article it says that it was a campaign for the music of Chris Brown, who had popularity challenges and low record sales after having hit his girlfriend Rihanna.
Which is apparently the reason why you could not only purchase the song „Forever“ via Jill and Kevin’s website, but also donate for the Sheila-Wellstone-Institut, which is a foundation against domestic violence.
I am not sure whether this story is true, since I haven’t heard anywhere else about it. But if it is, then I am heavily disappointed:
People (including myself of course) believed this story to be true – only to find out the they have been tricked by a marketing campaign. Working in advertising myself, I know about the current challenges to get the attention of the target audience. But lying and cheating should never be an option for any marketer.
So I wonder: is it true, was it really just a marketing campaign? Does anyone know?
Something which I am currently thinking about is the relationship between Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. There surely is a direct relationship, and this short post about SEO and Social Media Marketing mentions it, too:
When it comes to social media, millions of links are shared every day on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and blogs. As more people share a link to a website, the ranking of the webpage will increase. So the more your links are shared via social media, the more search engines pick up on this and increase your website’s overall rank.
But it doesn’t only work in one direction – it also works the other way around:
It’s also important to note SEO’s impact on social media. Primarily, if a link is easier to find on a search engine, then people are more likely to share it.
So far, SMM and SEO experts don’t seem to be working together much. Social Media Marketers might think about a presence on Youtube, or conducting a „blogger outreach“ programm, some crowdsouring, etc.
But when selecting platforms or target audiences, Social Media Marketers tend to only think about „social value“ of the respective platform or person. This Social Value is determined by the potential influence of that platform or person on the opinion or actions of other users.
The SEO tends to only think in „Link Value“ of a platform. When doing offsite optimization, SEOs try to place links on other sites that have a high link value in the „eyes“ of Google, so that it helps to improve the ranking of the SEOs site.
So SEOs don’t necessarily care about the Social Value of a site, and SMMs don’t care about the Link Value of a site.
Quite often this might correlate, since the Google Algorithm is based on social dynamics (sofar, most links are still published by human beings), but not always. And as far as I know, SEOs and SMMs don’t yet plan their activities together, trying to increase the intersection between the two online marketing approaches. It could prove to be interesting to unite these two approaches the next time activities are planned!
Coming up for an original idea for a rather ordinary product like the cereal wheetabix isn’t always easy.
In this case, it’s a play on the fact that wheetabix as a breakfast gives you energy for the whole day. So they came up with a questions that is interesting for all of us: „What makes the worlds largest search engine work?“
The answer: a library lady who assembles all the information within 0.12 seconds (or so), you can take a peak behind the Google screen over here.
When you’re not typing search queries yourself, it seems like you can see queries of other people as live search. But somehow I don’t believe that…
You know it’s getting closer to a years end, when people start forecasting trends for the following year. This time it’s really early. It’s only the beginning of November and the first selection of six trends is already online.
David Armano writes about these 6 trends:
Social Media begins to look less social: as more people contribute ever more content on social networks, updates-fatigue sets in and people filter out other users for reduction of clutter. I agree, and I would like to add: social media will have less farmville and mafia wars…
Corporations look to scale: companies leveraging social technology to better serve customers, e.g. Best Buys Twelpforce
Social Business becomes social play: playful social (mobile) applications with a competitive component for users are used for (local) marketing.
Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced): the title says it all.
Mobile becomes a social media lifeline: Due to the IT departments locking down social sites, people will increasingly turn to their smartphones during (or instead of) coffee breaks.
Sharing no longer means e-mail: Well, that is kind of obvious in times of facebook and twitter…
The program — which included a test-drive program — has elicited the interest of about 50,000 potential buyers, 97% of which don’t drive a Ford at present.
In toto, official Fiesta Movement content has drawn 4.3 million YouTube views, 540,000 flickr views and 3 million Twitter impressions.
These are quite remarkable results, indeed!
And all this is achieved with „$0 ad spent and a fraction of marketing costs“. I assume it really does compare well to traditional advertising efforts.
Yet communicating a figure of $0 seems to send out the wrong signal. The total costs (for 100 cars, the website, the staff at Ford, etc.) might be „a fraction“ of what is usually spend, but somehow I can’t imagine this whole campaing having been „cheap“.
Wo ich sonst so bin...