Have a look at the the contextual ads on the homepage and the actual article page for the Suiciding Billionaires. Oh dear.
It's worse for the actual article page. The orange banner started with "What would you do if you had more time"
Note for all brands. I don't want my banner shown on anything related to death. ie suicide, dogs killing kids, war etc etc. It's just too much of a minefield.
I guess publishers will lose ad revenue and have to settle for a "happy news site"
On a side note: Also why can I only comment on certain news articles on news.com.au.
Howard calling shotgun to Obama's place = OK,
Babysitters Dog kills little girl = OK,
Guy with pants down on ski lift (very front page worthy) = OK
but suiciding billionaires = NO and
a driver arrested speeding and wanking (again front page worthy) = NO
Paul Isakson has come out as the person behind the Don Draper Twitter feed. It wasn't AMC after all. Although it seems he is handing over the account to them now. I wonder if they will continue the story. I feel it might have lost some of it's allure now that we know the true story behind it.
This type of extension into the social web won't work with every show or character but I can see this working again. It's the perfect medium for TV shows as a film doesn't have that prolonged interest. Will Smith Twittering from NY about the I Am Legend prequel for a year wont cut it. But characters filling in the gaps between episodes is fine.
If you've ever read the comments in any moderately popular YouTube clip, you'll be forgiven for losing a bit of faith in human intelligence.
So its quite interesting to read the issues discussed here.
In particular, they talk about the process of disemvoweling. Which is basically a way to censor stupid/rude/nonsensical comments in online communities. The offending comments aren't removed, but the vowels in the sentence string are.
This doesn't seem to be a brand new technique, but one that seems like a happy medium between draconian heavyhandedness and a laissez faire free-for-all in online spaces.
We've been sent so much stff for the Election this year we thought we'd just dump it all here. Thanks Russ for all the links.
You could not have asked for a better election year with two easy to carictature candidates and their running mates. Well I can;t even remember the guy who is behind Obama but Palin has really bee good value for money.
I found this documentary from 2004 called Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton on a CD while sorting the crud on my desk. I found it fascinating and and thought provoking at the same time. Also sad in a way. I can't help but think of the iPhone when I watch this.
People are still talking about the death of something. The 30 second spot, newspapers, magazines. But shit even comics are still going strong and how much competition do they face in today's digital world?
Here's a couple of big comic things happening.
The recent spate of GREAT comic book movie adaptations has probably lead to more investment in new IP being developed. And the recent success of Marvel's Civil War showed that comics can do big cross over blockbusters and excite everyone.
Oh and hats off to Marvel for Marvel Zombies! Who doesn't like zombies?! All DC can muster is a Mortal Kombat tie in. Yawn
There's never been a better way to find out what people are thinking about than Google Trends. It's like a global vox pop at your finger tips.
Check the rising searches for recession, subprime and CDO. All related to the financial mess we are in. Dire straights? Looks like Singapore is screwed too judging by the number of searches.
But then compare this to searches for costumes...... um look like it's business as usual for most people. "We might lose the house but fuck it.. we're not going to let that ruin Halloween!"
Technorati also allows you to easily chart posts on certain keywords too. Recession and subprime posts have all increased.
All this search traffic and confusion about financial elements that make no sense creates a real opportunity for people who know WTF is going on to step in an explain it in layman's terms.
A forward thinking financial institution can use this time to try and explain it to consumers rather than push their standard messaging. And in doing so create some trust and worth behind their brand besides having the lowest interest rate. There might already be examples of this I've missed?
There's already been a few PPT files flying about explaining some aspects in a humorous way. Like the Subprime Primer which you can read in full on Google Docs
Or if you want to be even more confused about the future economic situation (hint: it's not good) check this presentation from Sequoia Capital (the guys who backed Google). Thanks Valleywag for the tip.
And lastly this type of situation is best explained through video like the one below. This was found on an NPO's channel.
Xplane, a company which specialises in this type of communication (and one of my fav companies around) has their Xplanation video online too. They sent this around to their mailing list. Although I found the champagne video easier to follow as to why it all went tits up.
Watching all these presentations has cleared up a lot for me. I'm still confused why the USD is going so strong lately but I'll wait for a video to explain it to me easily than read pages of boring jargon.
How does this financial situation affect the digital market worldwide and especially here in Australia? I'm hoping it means more money goes into online and less in traditional (seems obvious).
It also means the listed digital agencies will have a hard time raising more capital. BlueFreeway's recent "3 for 1 renounceable rights issue" will be a hard sell when everyone is trying to keep hold of their cash. And even harder sell when you look at the stocks recent performance. For those interested you can read the prospectus here.
Note: Bannerblog are not financial advisors nor do we have any idea how the financial system works. See a registered financial advisor for proper advice before throwing your money away.
Attention CSI writers. Real life is stranger than fiction and the two following examples involving Criagslist prove this.
From Cnet just last week. Man robs Armoured truck and uses decoys dressed as himself recruited via Criagslist to be around the scene as he escapes. He escapes via an inner tube down the river! They may have been filming a new season of Prison Break :) Another link here with a video.
I love this story! Can you imagine pulling this off but not being able to tell anyone!
And this one from March 2008 where an ad announced the contents of a house were "free for all" as the owner had to leave suddenly. The owner returns early to find 30 people taking stuff from his house!
I love this too. It's like the ultimate prank and cost's nothing.
I remember when for Mission Impossible 3 they were running their Easter Egg hunt / ARG (info here) and one code was hidden on Craigslist. I posted an entry to my blog at the most obvious spot (but the wrong answer) and got heaps a traffic. It got taken down 2 days later. Not exactly at the same level of these guys but an example of how you can easily hijack a promotion running on social networks.
Are there other examples of this in which a social network has been used in a nefarious way? I was going to try and claim the term Crime 2.0 but it's already been used. Here's one blog which sums up what I'm thinking.
"I'm just waiting for reports of shrewd criminals that monitor Twitter, Jaiku or Facebook to see reports like "I'm going out of town for the weekend. Ciao" and use the information to break into some poor geek's house. It wouldn't take a genious, that's for sure."
So keep that in mind when you next tweet that the people following you might be doing so for the wrong reasons.
When writing a press release in the advertising industry its hard not to claim something using the following terms
"First, largest, oldest, most successful & viral"
and sometimes using more than one of these in the same release.
What I want to know is does everyone believe what they read or do they do as I do and call bullshit? If so why isn't there any fact checking being done? I've seen some claim to be the "most successful online campaign for XXXX" and agencies call themselves "largest XXXX XXXX agency" or "the first XXXXX agency in XXXXX".
Blatant use of the word viral is the easiest to put a stop too. If you are writing the press release before the campaign has been launched then describing it as viral is like calling it award winning before it's won any awards. Julian mentions this here and here.
I'll admit I've done it myself with both Bannerblog and Soap. Each time I knew it was bending the truth. But I'e made sure to put and end to it lately. I guess we work in an industry build on deception (read: BS) and there is no honour among thieves.
If you see a blatant exaggeration of the truth from an advertising agency please send it my way and we'll try and make this a regular fixture.
And I thought the election in Australia over did it with all the Facebook groups and Youtube channels
While I was in Brazil I asked if elections had been taken over by the web yet and it was a resounding no. No politics online yet. Are there any other examples of politics being bitten by the social media bug?
Here's a recent example of how trying to save a few thousand dollars ends in FAIL for the brand. What a simple problem to avoid.
Someone should be fired. I wonder if any agencies have paid the originators of ideas that they have appropriated.
I heard EA paid the creator of the original video that sparked the video response below. Good karma there. It shows you don't even need to be fast. The response was 12 months after the fact.
Rather than actually write 500 words about "what it's like to be on the Cannes jury" I just edited my twitter feed down. I was a Twitter doubter but doing this at an event with significance seemed like a good use of the technology. It was a pain though. Every time we went anywhere I'd be on my phone looking down not interacting with people. It also cost me a bomb in SMS fees (damn international roaming).
I'll be following Cherp to see how an agency can just specilize in Twitter. Why not Facebook or Wikipedia?
This had me thinking of new guys on the block The Population.
Note: Claims of "firsts" are never fact checked when it comes to PR from advertising agencies, which is weird as an industry we're the ones most likely to bullshit.
You can read about the 4th Pure Social Media Marketing Agency to start in Australia and get insights from one of it's founders Julian Cole. The Population is backed by Photon so there's no shortage of good minds, clients and cash there.
This would be be similar to us at Soap spinning of an "advergaming agency" which we coudl probably attach a first to that aswell (well in Australia at least) but that would feel limiting. I guess Social Media Marketing is such a broad term and the Population will be mostly consulting and outsourcing any specific production required.
Does anyone else know of any nice marketing companies utilizing new technology or buzzwords as their business model?
With blogs becoming a regular part of digital marketing I thought I'd share my opinon on what goes on in the mind of a blogger. If you're selling drugs its good to know what goes through a junkies mind and the same can be said for bloggers.
There's plenty of blog posts about blogging being addictive (here, here, here and here).
But there's not much about the WHY and what drives a blogger to spend the wee hours posting and reading.
Here's my take on the topic. This also applies to Video Blogging on Youtube. People who read blogs are different. They are just addicted to the web.
1: Getting Your Voice Heard:
Blogging becomes more addictive the bigger your audience becomes. You feel that what you say will be heard by hundreds if not thousands of people. This is a big deal for people that usualy don't get their opinon heard by anyone but their parents.
This is why I'm posting this here and not my personal blog.
2: Stats:
Most people wouldn't call themselves stat junkies or even care about numbers. But look at Facebook and you'll see that quantifying your friends is something akin to collecting all the Pokemon, gotta get them all. Blog stats give you even more data and thus becomes more addictive.
We did a small site back in 2002 for a 2 people design agency and the client constantly checked his stats. He even sent emails to friends announcing it and waited for the graph to rise. I recently spoke to a photographer friend that had to delete his photos off Flickr after constantly checking his stats and comments a few times per hour. When no one commented on a new photo he became anxious. He coudln't handle the stress the addiction caused.
"Ohh 15 people today read my blog! Oh.... and one persn from Turkey maybe I can stay there. How exciting. I better post again!"
3: Doogie Howser:
Remember when Doogie Howser used to blog at the end of every episode? People want to keep a journal of their life and blogging tools made this easy. No more need for a big thick diary to lug around.
4: A Chance to Become Famous:
People love to increase their chances of becoming famous. They might post something that could become the next big thing. Or maybe they'll just get to crash at someones house in Turkey. That'll save on hotel costs. Or like a lot of bloggers in the marketing industry it's a way to get a better job.
"Oh yeah I blog so that must mean I know that I'm doing. Job going for Head of Strategy? Of course I'm ready for that, I've been blogging since 2006! I'm OG."
5: Free shit or money:
No one will complain if their blog gets huge traffic and makes money, or even just get sent free shit. When the money and free shit starts rolling in you'll become addicted to keeping that level of income and growing it.
"My eCPM is dropping and I don't know what to do."
6: Impress the friends:
Most people want a way to impress their friends. Show social worth. Having a blog is an easy box to tick and a way to seem interesting. That might be cynical but that's why iPhones are so popular too and why using a Mac is better than a PC. Can't afford a BMW or a fancy watch? just blog.
"Oh you don't blog? Well you're missing out. I can show you how sometime."
For me it's a combination of 1 & 2 and some of 5. Toss in a little bit of 4 too. It all started at 3 but that's gone as I hardly blog about me now. I only blog what I'm interested in or mostly stuff I think people will be interested in.
Some people become trolls and just like posting negative comments on blogs. It's their release and is still classified as being addicted to blogging.
Credit for the image above and a simple test to see "How addicted to blogging you are" can be found here.
The fact that blogs are much more of an influential media than the mainstream and that your audience probably reads more blogs now than traditional sites (and may not know it) is proof that blogging is the Fifth Estate or at least the new Fourth Estate.
The more we digitize our lives the easier it is to visualize all the data we produce. Take your music taste for instance. Previously when someone asked what music do you like you'd have to think on the spot. Now thanks to services like Last.FM I can rattle off my top 10 musical artists.
The same goes for video games and Xbox Live. I can claim to be a gamer but checking my gamer tag will reveal that I've hardly finished any games and play infrequenstly.
I can visualize my friends thanks to Facebook's Friend Wheel app.
I can visualize my exercise thanks to Nike+. Well make that I could if I did any or owned a pair of Nikes. Here's someone elses. But if I did take up running I'd only do it with Nike+ as I'd hate to not get the data.
Here's my music listening trends from my Ipod and Itunes for the last year. You can see where I've been on holidays with the dips.
If someone asked me who my favourite musical artist was I would not have said Beck but it seems he is by a long shot. Here's my Beck listening graphed.
And what about newcomers like Justice (I run a music blog too and I've expanded my musical tastes ten fold lately.
You can even get your tunes as a poster. Here's a crop of what you get.
Here's my email visualized thanks to Xobni. I send more emails at 10pm than I do at 9pm. Weird
I can track my infuence on Technorati and visualize the incoming links to the blog. Sadly my influence is dropping while traffic is increasing. Go figure.
What about brands?
How long before other markets start to bring this form of visualization into their products and normal life.
Imagine an airline that visualized your flight history with them,
A fast food chain that tracked your consumption and presented you with a certificate to congratulate your 100th burger.
A bar that tracked every drink you consumed.
A car that displayed your driving habits, urban vs rural, miles per day, week and month, mpg etc etc. Then when you go to buy a new car you can use that data to choose a car that's right for you.
Why doesn't my mobile phone bill look more interesting? Imagine your bill that charted your location and time of day you talk in a sexy graph. I'd be able to make more informed decisions on if I talk off peak or not.
A condom manufacturer that tracked your sexual activity.
This one has already been done, without a brand. Bed Posted keeps track of your sexual activity. It's dying for a brand to own this space. (lynx? Or a condom manufacturer) The data alone would be worth a lot to the product teams. Track this app's dev on Twitter.
Pretty much everything in your life generates data. And the more data you have the more informed your decisions can be. For brands gathering this data from users is a valuable business tool.
Amazon knew this and that's why their suggestion engine is so powerful. Nike now knows your running habits and can recommend a new pair of shoes to you after you've done a few hundred miles.
One graphic designer has been charting his life for the last 3 years and produces annual reports based on his life. Beautifully designed and insightful. See 2007 here. The printed version is quite nice.
What else in life or what brand could be enhanced with data visualization?
Check out Agencytool.com which is a good resource for all things to do with agencies. I also like the Web design Dashboard which has all the links you need in one spot.
I found it interesting the different verticals dominating each region. Australia sure loves cars and banks. I'm surprised automotive isn't higher in North America. I thought cars were like lungs to Americans. ie they need two to function.
If you told someone that you're main source of income was for a site about LOLcats the reply would be WTF!
But the team behind I Can Has Cheez Burger not only have themselves one of the top blogs in the world (#8 to be precise) but they also now have a network of 4 other blogs with the same simple structure and same social network tools.
Failblog, Graphjam, Pundit Kitchen and their newest one Totally Looks Like are all perfect examples of what people want from online. Tiny bite sized laughs that they can contribute to easily. It's easy to join and play along and these are perfect email fodder.
This is a lesson for all potential bloggers or agencies trying to create blogs for their clients. Find something and do it well. These blogs pretty much run themselves now. The community do all the work and the team behind it reap the rewards.
After studying these more closely I need to tweak a few of my blogs. WTFcostumes is the easiest to update but doesn't have any of the necessary tools to let people contribute properly while Sleevage requires a lot of research and some posts take me more than two days to put together. The blog I'm working on now for City of Ember an underground blog also takes quite a long to put together.
Even Bannerblog could use a major overhaul in how I let people digest the site.
Mike has done a lot of research into viral marketing patterns breaking them down into 21 different segments in this article.
For me he has missed a very obious trend and that's music. Check the top viewed videos on Youtube of all time, pretty much back to the top 100, and it's domicated by music. So if you want to market something tie it in with music.
And two he missed my personal fav Crowded Ads. But aside from those two omissions it's a good read.
Oh and he's missed mashups too. Ok no list will ever be complete or maybe these are covered these with different categories.
Oh and the virals that look like they took (and probably did) take a shit load of time and effort. Usually stop motion of some kind.
Oh and spoofs/parody.
Also don't forget the major element to anything going viral is being first (ie original). It doesnt matter i
A chick in Vancouver has painted a giant mural of Wally from 'Where's Wally?' (or 'Where's Waldo?' if you're in America), and has invited people around the world to find him using Google Maps.
Sydney hosted it's first Red Bull Flugtag today. The even was a huge success with 50,000+ people cramming into Mrs Macquarie's Point. 45,000 of them in front of me which meant I saw the back of a lot of people's heads. Compared to the Sony Tropfest this on equal par but as Red Bull own this event 100% I think Red Bull got much better value for money. I think we'll see this as a regular event.
There was a few corporate entries with Myspace, Mortein (Louie the Fly), LG, Footy Show, Dirt Magazine
Here's a quick snapshot of the crowd. The entire area was packed with a huge mix of people young and old.
Red Bull now have this event and the Red Bull Air Race both of which encapsulate the brand really well. It also makes Coca-Cola's sponsorship efforts (um what are they?) seem insignificant.
We reported earlier here about the music industry and their "pay what you feel" releases. I also remarked that Trent Reznor didn't seem all that happy with the results.
We'll it seems Trent learns from his mistakes and his latest venture Ghosts I-IV has paid off in spades. A $300 limited edition sold out in two days. That's $750,000 mo money in 2 days. There's still a smaller $75 version, a free sample and a $5 and $10 option for punters.
It goes to show people will pay for things that they see has real value and that this new way of releasing music might be here to stay.
I found these internal Atarti memo's from Atarigames.com. Very interesting, both from a gamers point of view and from an advertising perspective.
I love the highlighted findings that "Centipede" is in the top 10% of characters in terms of appeal. It was slim pickings back in 1984 as who could really love 8 pixels or this friendly cabinet decal.
There's strategy documents about game tournaments being held in 1991 and design documents for classic games like Marble Madness dating back to to the early 80's and earlier.
Levi's latest effort with their Back Pocket Gallery is interesting. I don't recognize any of the artists names so it looks like they went with many up and coming artists. The norm is to get a hip bunch of artists and use their popularity to spread word of the project. FOr those wanting to know what's hip in the art world I rely on Juxtapoz.
I would have liked to be able to purchase the pockets.
It also got my thinking why don't jean brands offer customizable back pockets. The jeans could be sold with no pockets and this is the last step in the products purchase. With jeans now running at a price tag of over $300 you can hardly say price is an issue.
Mini do this with the roof of your mini, along with hundreds of other tiny tweaks and it really make you feel like the Mini you own is unique.
If you need more proof that my formula of "Your brand + artist = Cred" you can't go past the Obama Obey posters. This would be a great time for Hillary to do a Coop inspired poster in a nuns outfit with a robotic Bill getting naughty but that would be in bad taste.
I'm loving this infographics on campaign contributions based on creative careers from Notchcode.
It's pretty clear that the creative community support the Democrats. What's with photographers though, the donate alot and donate big. Read the full article here for a breakdown on the info.
What Americans found interesting was that voting is compulsory in Australia. You're legally bound to vote and will be fined if you don't. We also don't really donate cash to candidates.
B&T reports that Facebook has overtaken Myspace as the most popular social network. This is from a survey of over 35,000 people. This is the opposite of a similar survey conducted with the same group of people last year.
People have never been so intune with technology. Mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and computers are now central parts of everyones lives. And the race to innovate and be different has always been the easiest way to gain market share. Look at the iPhone as a prime example.
This year the race to "one up" other camera manufacturers has taken a another step forward at the recent PMA conference with the announcement of the Casio EX-F1. It's the first time I've ever been excited by a Casio camera.
2007 was the year of anti-dust sensors and image stabilization and face detection. 2006 was all about Mega pixels with 5,6,8 then 10 becoming the norm.
Now it's high speed recording (up to 1200fps) and high speed burst modes (60 fps) and HD recording 1920x1080 all in a prosumer digital camera for less than $1000 USD.
Check the rest of the demo videos and tell me this won't make your average camera buyer excited.
The high speed feature is also easy to explain. Just show stuff exploding in slow motion. Anti-dust and image stabilization is a harder sell and face detection is hardly exciting.
Sony's 2008 innovation is a live preview system on their Alpha DSLR range. Which means you get the ability of a DSLR but with freedom of a standard digital camera's LCD preview. While a great feature it's hardly going to excite your general consumer like the high speed videos will. Sony also did the full sensor 24.8MP thing to try and blow Canon out of the MP race once and for all but people seem to have lost interest in MP lately.
This need for speed was first started by LG with their Viewty (photo. Capable of capturing 120fps video on your phone.
Here's the viral clip for the phone which I think over estimates what 12-fps video looks like but is very well done
And here's clip of what you can do with the humble mobile phone.
