The hugely successful phenomenon of women posting the colour of their bra to their status updates on Facebook has demonstrated the potential power that Facebook has. Facebook is becoming more and more of a public forum on issues that affect everyone. Although what actual effect this particular phenomenon will actually have on breast cancer is open to debate. But the power of Facebook to replace the old signature on a petition and to demonstrate public opinion cannot be denied. Of course there are a lot of useless groups that are joined. How anyone thinks joining a group which is opposed to violence against women will actually affect the level of violence committed against women is beyond me although my cynical side tells me that some men joined this group in order to impress women. Today I joined the "NO, I WILL NOT PAY $3.99 A MONTH TO USE FACE BOOK FROM JULY 9TH 2010!" This is an empty group with no apparent message and no real content. But in three days it has attracted 190,000 members. Something for Rupert Murdoch to think about when he starts demanding people pay for content. It will happen but the method has not caught up to the madness. Not everyone has a credit card and not everyone trusts putting their cards online. I don't mind watching a 30 second ad clip between videos on the onion.com. The site knows it's audience and delivers a relevent ad. In this case a trailer for the new Micheal Cera comedy. But for the love of god I do not want to watch the same clip ten times in a row. The payment model is too soon, the advertising model can still succeed. If it's something you're not interested in, it's advertising..if it's something you are interested in .. its Information!!! And I'm probably gonna catch that movie 'Youth in Revolt' in the cinema.. and today's ad on the Onion for Blue Mountain State? Well seein as that's only on in America I guess I'll have to download it...

Facebook where all the action is and some brands are really seeing some action...

Poptarts have an easy job when going online. They know their target is essentially Gen Y and Z. Anyone above that still eating Poptarts will still eat Poptarts regardless of marketing. (until the partner stops them) Their site features funny videos featuring Poptarts, offers downloads and features and the by now stock standard flavour competition. There was a call to action for fan videos to be uploaded featuring their New Year’s Resolutions. This hasn’t seemed to happen yet but there were some random videos by Popfans. PopTarts have missed a trick by not disabling user comments on user generated content. Haven’t they been on the internet before?


RedBull offers everything you would imagine that RedBull would. They offer links to interesting external sites with the Soap Box Racing game catching my eye in particular. Design your own car then invite your Facebook friends to join you and race. You can even stick your own face behind the helmet and splash your own image of choice across the racer. There’s country and world rankings which is what makes it interesting enough to keep playing.I know it’s not technically Facebook but it was the Facebook page that got me there, and that’s probably the key. How many people actually browse brand websites? RedBull also had a scavenger hunt for hidden lots of Redbull. Clever, I’m still waiting for the scavenger hunt that makes social marketing mainstream news. Who can offer the big enough prize/stir up enough interest/make it interesting enough to really grab the press and public’s attention?

Vitaminwater have offerd the flavour competition too. But hey if it aint broke...vitaminwater “who has dreaded today? it's never easy to get back to school or work after a long break... let's get through this thing together. here's to a happy and healthy 2010” That’s the spirit from vitaminwater. But they don’t stop there. vitaminwater “allowed November to go by without telling you just how thankful we are of you- we won't let it happen again. we're big fans of yours too!” And the reaction from fans is appreciative and in the same spirit. Who’d have thunk it, social networkers just want to be loved?

Ok it makes me cringe but then I’m the sort of person who likes real current friends and using FB to keep tabs on old ones that I’ll see again. I recently deleted 60% of my ‘friends’. Will it catch on? I doubt it, the narcissism being spawned by social networking is being extended through new behaviours such as adding people you don’t even know to be your ‘friends’. All rules for social behaviour are being rewritten and even though it’s to the detriment of real life, it’s to the advantage of marketers as relationships without the proverbial 80% of body language are booming which makes it so much easier for brands. Case in point is my 21 year old roommate who has forsaken real life to communicate online with his friend from abroad while playing games 18 hours a day. Is he typical? I’m not sure but 80% of his topics of conversation are about what he saw on the net...Call me old fashioned but I much prefer conversations about real life..

Mashable.com who I follow on Facebook and SocialNetDaily whom I follow on Twitter bombard me with updates and dominate my news feed in each medium. Isn't that the cardinal sin of social marketing committed by supposed experts?

Iphones..marketers and advertisers really want to tap that resource..particularly the apps. But with so many to choose from why bother?

There’s over 100,000 Iphone apps currently available to choose from and apparently Adobe’s CS5 is going to make creating your own application even easier, so prepare for iphone apps to become one of those pre-apocolyptic predictions such as there are more iphone applications than people in Australia.. So what are the top applications out there and how long before someone goes digitally postal on the app store? Mashable’s list of the top phone applications for 2010 certainly provides some food for thought.

First up, the top 10 augmented reality applications. The laying of digital technology over reality has some exciting possibilities and Le Bar Guide has to be a winner for marketing potential at least. Created by Stella Artois, it will help people to find the closest bar with ratings and even point you in the direction of the taxi stand. The rest of the list is either inane, very function specific, limited or downright silly.

Next up? 70+ free social networking apps. Too many, too many. How many of these could be worth anything to a brand or advertiser? How many will still be in use next year? How many have already seen their peak usage and will suffer a slow decline as they are discarded in favour of the next flash in the pan application? The numbers say Facebook is where the action is followed by Twitter. After that we have to wait and see who steps up with something useful and capable of stealing some of that thunder.

But speaking of Facebook there is also the top ten apps that use Facebook Connect on the iphone. They’re still a little bit too much of a novelty but apps such as LuckyCal appear to be something that people could truly enjoy using. It essentially identifies friends near you and activities in the area that correspond to your interests. And anything that lets friends play online games together by connecting through Facebook is awesome. Game developers should consider allowing brands to sponsor tournaments and give out decent prizes. That’s pretty much a win win situation for all. I’m already imagining a world where my friends and I play the Nike penalty shootout app between us and the winner gets a pair of sneakers. It might have heavy branding and the game might be a little subpar but the idea of competing amongst friends for real prizes could really excite consumers. Ok the logistics of all these events and the costs of the prizes would have to be worked out but an app linked to a website with both connected to Facebook Connect could really start something. Make the grand prize something your target market really wants and you could start a big ball rolling..

Speaking of facebook games.. I started Dantes Inferno in the Facebooks application section. It's a promo for the full game and allws you to enlist your friends. Maybe the idea was good at one stage but if I have a full length big budget game coming out, I don't want it promoted with a really frustrating and stupid mini version..

Everyone and their brand is on the net. And the digi-spend keeps rising. If you need someone to manage your digital advertising and presence, it makes sense that you check out their presence online. I’m gonna compare two huge agency sites and see if one has the edge over the other.
Young & Rubicam
www.yr.com
The Site
Resisting the usual. Hmmm. This is the cliché for all ad agencies now. Makes sense but maybe resisting the usual when it makes sense and utilising the usual when it’s appropriate is a better idea. Articulating this well is the trick. I’m not even gonna try yet until I’ve seen everything there is out there.
Top marks for the original drag left/right main screen idea. But was it unnecessary? I had to think about it for a moment. Will others become slightly frustrated at this initial confusion? First impressions count.
The site is fairly uncluttered and easy to operate after you figure out the slide screen. Yet it doesn’t offer as much as DDB.
Some videos didn’t load or at least not on the first try. Websites must work seamlessly.
7000 partners worldwide? Is that an intimidating statistic? Should quality be noted before quantity?
If I’m an Australian brand, I want to see an Australian agency. The site is not going to drive these customers to the Australian agency.
Great site address though.
The Work (from the Innovation section)

The Spring Valley Sensible idea was pretty great. They created something original. Placed some intriguing posters at great spots and really seemed on top of things with a viable Facebook page that incorporated some cutting edge technology. Fantastic and the idea behind it was sound. But do you really want your brand/sensible notifying your consumers to take it easy at a festival? Nope. That’s what Mom’s are for.

The Latet project achieved news coverage and lots of media interest but looking at it from an outsiders/potential client point of view the clip didn’t really tell me much.

www.whenthelightsareoffthesiteison.com internet marketing 101, don’t make a difficult site address. While the use of webcam technology is fine while targeting those in a group likely to have top end laptops and PC’s (Nissan Z), this site could prove difficult to those not operating with these connections and equipment. Wasn’t the Orange site targeting a large demographic? Plus it’s way too gimmicky and pointless. The insight wasn’t regarding people in the dark, it was ‘People love to try gimmicks’.

Colgate, Second life. Good/great idea but Second Life is an overrated joke.

Maor campaign? Stop me getting to my internet site? Too intrusive. Publicity stunt. Pure and simple.


DDB
http://www.ddb.com/navPreferences.html

The Site

Straight away I have to think about it. Strike one against it. If you’re going to the website first time you don’t want to have to make these weird decisions.
It’s a little cluttered. I think a simple approach generally works best for any website. But the sheer volume of content makes up for it.
DDB has twice the number of employees (14,000) but articulates the advantages better than Y&R.
The voiceovers commenting on the work are a top notch idea and I believe that putting a face and voice to the agency on the website is always a good first step in starting any potential relationship.
DDB incorporates blogs in its website. Shows they have a good idea about what’s going on in the digital world. Plus they have an RSS feed. The Yellow Papers. Gold. I love these papers as they are fairly concise in explaining a lot of the theory in modern advertising while using DDB’s work to illustrate points. Makes one think they know what they’re doing.
All videos from Youtube play straight away on my laptop. So why should I have to wait for the half sized versions from DDB to load?
DDB encourages interaction on its website and wants communication and feedback

The Work

DDB consistently produces great stuff and has a fantastic amount of its work available to view. Sure some could be critiqued but too many of it is good or great and unlike Young and Rubicam doesn’t leave me thinking that’s not how you do it or you slipped up there. I can view a lot of great work.

The Verdict

The Winner is DDB. If I was a brand looking at these two sites, I’d plump for these guys as they seem to have a finger closer to the current pulse than Y&R who seem to be checking for the pulse behind your left shoulder. Yet I still prefer the simplicity of the Y&R website. However the DDB website offers a lot more value and I’d feel more confident allowing these guys to work with my brand.

It must be really nice to work on the Coke advertising account. Unlimited budget, and no need to find any truly original tagline. Seriously you could put 10 verbs in one bag and 20 nouns or feelings in the other and with a little scrabble-esque whirl in the bag come up with a tagline that fits Coke perfectly. Then the creative team has to somehow combine the sun, beautiful young people and long refreshing swigs from a Coke bottle with some marginally original idea. Oh and add in a catchy upbeat song that wouldn’t work in the charts but is perfect as a jingle. There you have ‘Open Happiness’. Everything you would expect from Coke except this time..It’s Digital!!
And they’re doing it right. Apparently. Three ambassadors will travel around the world facebooking, tweeting, uploading, blogging and [insert random digital verb here]ing about their travels. Sounds pretty good so far but will it be a one way dialogue or will Coke allow consumer interaction to decide and make suggestions where these ambassadors go because if it’s just a travel log with Coke branding everywhere then I reckon consumers would rather look to independents or Lonely Planet experts for these experiences. The ambassadors themselves were chosen through recommendations by media companies and the likes of Lonely Planet culminating in some sort of online voting that nobody really ever heard about. Maybe Coke missed a trick here. The Greatest Job in the World campaign certainly got a lot of attention (although I do wonder if this attention was massive in Australia due to the location of the job) and Coke could certainly have run a similar competition for these roles. Maybe a Chinese, an Indian, a European, an African and an American chosen from be competitions within these regions might have created a lot more buzz. It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how it goes. It could go well if there’s actual consumer involvement. I mean a vote for the ambassador to eat one of several local delicacies perceived as indigestible by your average western voter would be interesting. Or voting on the tattoo the ambassador gets as a memento at the end of the adventure. The possibilities are endless. The online game related to the campaign seems to offer Itune vouchers as a prize. Pity the game is slow and annoying. And on a related note it’s a little ironic that Cornetto’s new site is titled ‘no boring bits’.

Apparently video games are bad. Thats what they said about the movies at the start too. Kids should be reading books instead and people lament the culture lost to the decline of the written word on paper. But if you could flip it on its head and look at an alternative universe where video games existed before books and reading, how would people perceive books? They would laugh and shake their heads at this entertainment vehicle where you can’t actively affect the storyline, where there is no true interaction with the medium and at a solo pursuit that can’t be shared with your peers.

Traditional advertising and digital advertising are sort of in the same boat. Some marketers stress and shake their heads at social networking, consumer empowerment and the perceived decline of the thirty second spot. But the rise of digital advertising has to be considered an opportunity and a challenge. Imagine a world where digital had come first, before traditional mass media. Marketers would scoff at traditional advertising, asking; why doesn’t it directly hit the chosen target audience? Where is the two way dialogue with the consumer? Where is the opportunity to learn from the consumer and respond accordingly in the best interests of both the brand and the consumer? And of course where’s the opportunity to crowdsource?
Crowdsourcing is a word filled with possibilities. The ultimate example of course is Wikipedia, a success that surprised everyone but one that in hindsight was inevitable due to the massive connecting power of the internet. This connectiveness has increased at an incredible speed with social media at its core. But as increased video and Youtubing tops the list of digital marketers 2010 predictions, will we see the concept of crowdsourcing for brands become too much. Will consumers start to switch off at yet another video competition, designed for marketers to try catch lightning in a bottle, invades their world with the promises of prizes and opportunity? The Satchi and Satchi Toyota video submission debacle may serve as an example of this. They didn’t receive many contributions from the general public for a couple of reasons. The first was that they didn’t utilise social media to any great extent but perhaps the main failing was the lack of clear targeting and target market relevence. To truly crowdsource effectively you need to avoid trying to garner any involvement you can and instead focus on getting the involvement of the people you want. If you are an Australian brand or ad agency, you should limit the involvement to Australian consumers online. Why do other companies work for them? Why crowd out your target market? The world is getting smaller online but as ROI is ultimately measured in sales it makes sense to focus on those who will make those purchases and will ultimately justify your work.