Need a short URL for twitter? try http://url.so-smart.be/ instead of the typical tinyurl.com – this is a nice marketing idea by smart, the shortest car around. 😉
A nice new advert by Hondy, in stopmotion, using lots and lots of cars:
A card board trailer of „300“ by Panasonic – what would happen to Hollywood given the current financial crisis. It belongs to a German UGC campaign of Panasonic. At the microsite papphelden.de you can upload your own cardboard version of a Hollywood Blockbuster an win lots of prizes.
A rather cruel (viral) video, could be a little less gruesome, if you ask me. But then, some say, a good viral video needs violence, blood and disgustingness. However, they called it: „violence is no solution“ – it’s an advert for a secure e-commerce shop.
Mary C. Joyce was the New Media Operation Manager of Barrack Obama’s electoral staff. German Techsite Golem interviewed her during re:publica, a german blogger conference last week. It’s not about the tools, she says, it’s the strategy. I almost guessed that…
There is a new ad idea for social media, called WOMI – Word Of Mouth Impression. Developed by a company with a name that says it all: Social Media.
It functions like a mini-application that spreads in my own social network of contacts and friends, and I wonder: does it do that automatically, whenever I interact with it? Here is the description of Techcrunch:
WOMI campaigns present visitors with ads asking them for some kind of input either though a multiple choice question or using a text field. SocialMedia then uses this input to customize ads which are shown to the user’s friends on the same social network.
For example, if an ad for Star Wars had a call-to-action asking if I was on the Light Side or Dark Side of the Force, it could take my response and then present my friends with an ad that said “Jason is on the Light Side, how about you?â€. In turn, their responses are passed on to all of their friends, making this among the first kind of advertising with a viral element.
This is spooky, unless they definitely ask users before they present their friends with the answers to the multiple choice questions. It’s like a facebook app that spreads as soon as you launch it, without even asking.
If however, the user stays in full control, it could turn out to be rather interesting. Especially if you get to see all your friends responses later on, too. People love to see how they compare in polls and questionnaires. This can be a huge playground for brands. More effective than regular applications/widgets in a sense, because of the „classical“ advertising component: „pushing“ these polls onto the profil pages of friends and contacts, instead of just mentioning in some news feed „XYZ installed application ABC“.
Traditional media no longer produces „predictable“ results and sometimes completely fails to activate certain target audiences at all. Hence brands are increasingly adopting social media tactics and moving into the social media space. This is no news. But for the big brands social is still very much a test lab. There are many marketing Euros ready to be spend on new ways to engage the target audience, but there are (yet) not many proven ways to spend these Euros effectively.
Related to this, two blog posts by Tom Smith caught my attention in the last couple of days:
This was around the idea that big brands shouldn’t be active in social media, as the presence of big business will destroy the consumer driven spirit and purity of what the social revolution stands for.
Big brand involvement for some feels like a sellout. However, now that social media is mass market, I strongly believe that this viewpoint misses the big picture. I believe that we all benefit as consumers from big brands being in social media.
1. Social media drives complete transparency
2. Social media drives quality product
3. Social media can be a great customer service channel
4. Social Media creates products that we want
5. You control the relationship
6. Big brands keep our access free
7. Big brands have interesting stories to tell
8. Users drive the content and conversation
Good food for thought, even though I think the example given for the customer service channel is a bit far fetched – I wouldn’t consider a twitter dialogue good service… But hey, some might like that.
Wo ich sonst so bin...