With Cannes Lions Advertising Festival starting to roll, maybe the ad people enjoying the sun and booze take a few minutes out of their time to reflect on a better way to spend their talents and convince the organization and rest of the industry on creating advertising that does make a difference, instead of using it as an excuse to get a piece of metal.
Last year, on a short Twitter exchange with Marc from Osocio on the subject of awards and social marketing, i replied:
We’re in the business of changing behaviours, not winning awards.
Fast forward to Cannes 2009, and on a great collaboration with the duo from StealOurIdeas.com, Osocio presents their draft concepts on how your brand should be used for the right reasons,
Every year hundreds of PSAs are done for the wrong reasons.
Help us to create social advertising that actually makes a difference.
The next time you catch a creative doing spoof work just to win awards, forward these concepts so he or she could get a few really noble ideas.
When this blog was created i used to follow the Interesting Snippets Flickr series from Lynette. A few months later, she published her book and altough she’s been collecting more interesting quotes, the snippets are long gone. I picked up the habit and started collection my own snippets on Tumblr, and thought it would be great to share a few of these snippets to spice your presentations about digital media.
This week i commented at work the fact that some blogs rival in terms of online audience with same major newspapers, with marketers needing to review their traditional media planning. On a happy coincidence, today the Wall Street Journal writes why many marketers are lagging behind consumers in terms of social media.
Don’t just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process.
The conversations consumers have with each other, result in “some of the most interesting insights,” including gift ideas for specific occasions, such as a college graduation, and the prices consumers are willing to pay for different gifts.
Give consumers a reason to participate.
Other companies provide more-direct incentives: cash rewards or products, some of which are available only to members of the online community. Still others offer consumers peer recognition by awarding points each time they post comments, answer questions or contribute to a wiki entry
Listen to — and join — the conversation outside your site.
monitor relevant online conversations among consumers and, when appropriate, look for opportunities to inject themselves into a conversation or initiate a potential collaboration.
Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.
When consumers are invited to participate in online communities, they expect marketers to listen and to consider their ideas. They don’t want to feel like they’re simply a captive audience for advertising, and if they do they’re likely to abandon the community.
Don’t control, let it go.
“You have to let the members drive. When community members feel controlled, told how to respond and how to act, the community shuts down.”
Like it or not, the old way of doing (push) marketing is on its final days. Or has i heard yesterday on the Campus Party panel about Advertising and social media, your homepage is now Google.
From guerrilla marketing to urban interventions, the streets have become a new canvas for creativity. One of the most prolific projects in this area comes from Brazil, with the creative duo Anderson Augusto and Leonardo Delafuente, aka, 6emeia.
Started as a intervention to transform daily environments as a reflection of their creative work, the duo started painting gaping holes and other objects on urban landscapes, reminding us that even the most forgotten object can be regarded as art.
UPDATE (24/10/08): Paulo reports (in portuguese) that Renova has contacted Todd from ImprovEverywhere and apologized for the misappropriation.
The cat is out of the bag, now. After posting a comment and emailing Renova, the napkin and toilet paper company, and not getting any answer, it’s time to take a stand and share Agent Todd’s frustration.
Renova produced this guerrilla marketing stunt, based on the original Food Court Musical, and didn’t bother to credit the music authors or idea creators on their video. Hey, they didn’t even bother to change the lyrics. At Renova’s corporate blog, they’ve already set the video to private (wonder why), but i’m posting it above, along with the original idea. Just because i care.
Will someone get Renova a napkin to clean this mess, please ?
The term hardlink is used by mobile industry to represent the connection between the physical world with the mobile web. QR codes for instance, allow users to capture the data and translate it into a URL.
Mobile technologies offered us multiple solutions to connect the physical to the virtual. And yet, we seemed to forgot one of the most widespread form of these connections: the URLs printed in ads, on the back of business cards, displayed in TV commercials, even in our own skin or landscapes.
Shortening the description of “URLs used in offline promotion” i’m calling them a SOFTLINKs. They are indirect hyperlinks between a physical object or media and the web, with the intent to create a future recall on the consumer and induce him to visit the website. Hyper-graffiti, call-to-action or content traps, offline URLs have a increasing importance in a brand’s image.
Do you remember the URL?
So what’s in a softlink? What’s the effect of placing it on your marketing materials? Do people actually remember it?
Offline media perform well in driving web traffic and search, with media sinergy being a strategic asset. Ads with URLs are more likely to drive readers to advertiser sites overall, with study subjects 13% more likely to visit advertiser websites.< br /> MPA, Accountability Guide
47% of people who responded to a newspaper ad by going online went directly to a URL they saw in the advertisement, but a full 31% chose to use a search engine (overwhelmingly, Google.com). NAA, Newspapers drive online traffic
Source: Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo and Google study for NAA, Newspaper Drives Online Traffic, PDF
Not only do these studies highlight the importance of a web presence, but there’s a sweet irony in being print associations to reinforce it.
While a web presence is obvious to big US centric companies, many small businesses are yet to get their URLs and companies in developing countries are still looking for the right way to build their web strategy. It’s still quite ordinary to find small business owners that don’t realize of the web’s importance on the purchase funnel, so these reference studies should help broaden their minds.
Keeping your customers URL happy
It sucks when reading a newspaper article and realizing you can’t bookmark it for reference or later review. Perhaps that explains how the Amazon Kindle is performing better that expected. Or why QR technology is booming, even if it’s mostly used as a hack to insufficient advertising real estate and excuse to accountability..
When creating an offline media ad, it should be taken in account that people do take mental URL notes for later reviewing, so let’s keep their task simple. A memorable URL is even more important offline, and from big brands to small business, it has become common practice.
It’s my opinion that prefix subdomains should be used only if there’s a clear need to reinforce the brand name. Web aliases and brand/campaign domains are much better way to insure a later recall (heck, they’ve got less dots).
As for the long, long URL, with dozens of query parameters, don’t do it unless you invested in some heavy SEO. You’d better use URL shortening services like TinyURL, that now even allows a custom alias (altough i never seen it offline).
I know unique names are hard to get, and with all that cybersquatting around (now with the new ICANN brand TLDs), it’s a legal and brand manager nightmare, but if you want your consumer share of mind you have to play the game.
Softlink like Adwords
The next time you need to choose a softlink for offline promotion, do it like you’re optimizing for AdWords, with some of their performance tips:
Choose an effective keyword: that means find a short, distinctive and sticky domain or alias
Make your URL bold: don’t put it a 7pt size, near the footer, in a 2 frames sequence or whisper it on a radio spot.
Avoid the use of similar or confusing character sequences (I and l, or example). ALLCAPS is a bad idea, but you could try Camel case for a change.
Target your softlinks by using several matching options: i wouldn’t go as far as Converse did recently by using dozens of URLs in a campaign, but registering similar domains, synonyms or type mismatches are all valid domain options to consider.
Optimize your softlinks with a focus on themes and call to action phrases: That means that sites like GetTheGlass.com or halo3.com/believe should be awarded also in this category.
Include prices, numbers or promotions. It doesn’t get closer to direct marketing than this: audi.com/R8.
Use your powerful brand name in the softlink. If your brand isn’t there yet, you could try your luck with some unique domain names, like this one
Drop the http:// and the www. Your users are not that dumb, and your webmaster should know how name servers work by now. Save a few keystrokes, save the ad.
With this info and tips, go ahead and spread some softlink love on your next campaign.
The Braille League (Belgium) helps blind and partially sighted people in professional, social and cultural areas, promoting also several actions to create awareness to the problems this group of individuals faces.
On a brilliant and innovative use of the omnipresent cellphone, agency Duval Guillaume challenged a ordinary daily event: You know when you happen to make a call by accident to the first recorded contact on your cellphone address book?
So how about turn that into a good action, by placing The Braille League number on the first slot ?
And so the award winning campaign “A Blind Call” was born:
Add “A blind call” as a contact on your cellphone (contact = A blind call ; number = 070 22 22 30)
If you accidentaly press your address book, that would be the first number
You no longer would bother Adrian, Alan or Armando thanks, anyway! but rather contribute to solve blind people’s problems.
The call ends after 30 seconds with a maximum toll of 0,75 *.
The campaign is live until 31/12/2008
Thousands of people made a blind call, and the muchawarded campaign had a surprisingly large coverage in media. A great use of world’s largest platform for a good cause.
Adwords
