Otters holding hands: Happiness Guaranteed™

Because it’s Friday.

Because we all like seeing things guaranteed to make us smile.

And because everyone can use a helping hand every now and again.

Catvertising: why more ad agencies need to learn to laugh at themselves

Catvertising is the latest YouTube sensation to ‘go viral’, with creators, Canadian advertising agency John St., undoubtedly now reaping the rewards of global awareness.

How did this little 150 second clip gain nearly 1 million views? And what other agency can claim that from what is essentially a promotional video?

Quite simply because there is something for everyone: People love the cats, brand-side marketers enjoy the mockery of typical agency showreel videos and every other marketing consultancy around the world is wishing they thought of the idea themselves.

In terms of a strategy for new business, this ticks every box:

1. At the centre of their pipeline ‘bulls eye’ will be the brands – potential clients – to whom they need to prove their creativity and ability to deliver against a brief.
2. In order to attract the best people to work in their team, they need to make sure everyone in the industry knows who they are so that if you don’t currently work there you kind of wish you did – or at least that your team was more like them.
3. And finally non-industry folk - who, directly, are of little benefit to John St. in terms of revenue, but they will be the ones their clients look to reach, so proving they can market themselves to this audience is a pretty convincing way to show they can market their clients with the same creative success. Not everyone will get the knowing references to AdLand’s bullsh*t bingo, but that doesn’t matter, because what everyone does know is that cat videos rock.

Having worked in a marketing consultancy for five years (and loved it), creative and innovative though it was, the trappings of the agency showreel are fairly universal. Catvertising is full of these and I love John St. for being so openly willing to poke fun, laughing at themselves and their industry nuances in the process.  As cutting-edge as they may be, too many agencies can take themselves so seriously, that by blinding prospective clients with zingy quotes, mind-boggling stats and mind map flowcharts, they alienate more than they do attract.

What John St. seem to be saying is ‘we know our stuff, but we’re not afraid to have fun. We don’t need whizz-bang strategy documents, Venn diagrams uncovering the ‘sweet spot’ or graphical displays of consumer behaviour to get our message across. We create content that sticks, and by doing so attract the very audience we set out to reach. We entertain, and we deliver. And we love cats.’

Who wouldn’t hire them?

Oh Oh Oh by The Golf Boys – Farmers Insurance go viral

As far as sponsorship goes, Golf is a pretty cluttered marketplace and one dominated by Financial Services brands and sports apparel. It is rare to see a fairly straight, corporate brand letting go a little bit and doing something fun.

So hats (or visors) off to Farmers Insurance, sponsors of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in California, who have done something a little different and all in the name of charidee.

PGA Tour players Ben Crane, Rickie Fowler, Bubba Watson, and Hunter Mahan, with just a little help from musician Con Bro Chilli, have created a music video. Yes, a music video. With a real track. On iTunes and everything.

Posted just at the start of this week, at the time of writing Oh Oh Oh by The Golf Boys had already garnered over a million views.

As Brand Channel reported earlier this week, the video is rapidly going viral, with a feature on PGATOUR.COM as well as its Facebook and Twitter pages. The video can also be seen on Ben Crane’s YouTube channel, and website.

The Sponsorship Story (via BrandChannel): “The fact that State Farm is sponsoring Ben Crane’s group and video shows the expanding relationship between the two. That relationship dates back to Crane’ victory at last year’s Farmers Insurance Open. Since then, Crane has partnered with Farmers and Farmers’ parent company, Zurich Financial Services, and he also sports the Zurich or Farmers logo on his golf cap, depending on the tournament.”

But for me, what takes this from being a ‘plum stoopid’ stunt (in the words of @One_Off_Olly) to a cute piece of marketing is the charity/viral element. The video is positioned as ‘presented by’ Farmers Insurance but what I love is that for every 100,000 views Farmers will donate $1,000 to charitable proceeds that will support both Farmers and Ben Crane charitable initiatives.

Why is this so neat? The charity element, built on the basis of viral value (each view on YouTube equates to 1c from Famers to charity) gives users a tangible role in helping the cause. And even better, its not from their own pocket, but from the ‘big bad’ corporate entity. Some will be inclined to re-watch numerous times just to stick one up at the Man – and it’s win win for Farmers because the more people that view and click, the more promotion they get as a genuine supporting partner. But most will be watching for pure comedy value because, frankly, it’s hilarious.

Enjoy.

Inside Lauren Conrad’s Laguna home

So it’s no secret that LC is pretty much my current style icon, and imagine my joy at finding a sneak peak into her Laguna abode.

You may recognize it from early Hills episodes – and even earlier, from the very start of Laguna Beach – plus the sad moment when Lauren’s family moved out of Laguna and her and Lo helped pack up the house.

Anyway, here it is in all its Southern Californian glory. Jealous? Moi?

*with thanks to @24hourslater for the YouTube post

The M&S Tortoise

Being the brand geek that I am, this blog is no stranger to featuring my favourite print ads (and I’ve recently started a TV ad playlist on my YouTube channel to capture my broadcast favourites too).

So here’s a little charmer from this morning’s press (this particular execution sat in the Daily Express).

He’s cute. It’s a tortoise. In a woolly bobble hat. Heating his home. What’s not to love?

But largely, it is all about timing. And that is the beauty of tactical advertising. Over the last 10 days, London has become considerably colder, with those annual domestic arguments over when to turn on the heating beginning in earnest. Why the arguments? Because energy isn’t cheap – but wouldn’t it be great if you could heat your home, knowing you were saving money too…? Enter the M&S Tortoise.

 

Federer and Nadal get the giggles while Credit Suisse has the last laugh

I spend a good deal of my working life managing the varied personalities of professional sports people, largely in their capacity as some form of brand ambassador.

I’m fortunate to work with a host of exceptionally talented and good natured individuals, and for the most part every bit the professional media spokesperson.

A media appearance going to plan without a hitch is a rare thing, and whilst we don’t like to laugh at others’ misfortune, this latest video to surface from Credit Suisse of the World’s top two tennis stars is honestly pretty funny. All carefully briefed messages fly out of the window and replaced by endless fits of giggles.

But surely, I hear you cry, this is just an intentional promotional mechanic by one of their sponsors (or the event sponsor in this case)? Just a shameless plug for publicity?

It’s interesting for me, because money can’t buy a viral of this nature. I am absolutely convinced it is entirely natural and uncontrollable. Anyone who has worked with professional athletes in a similar capacity knows that asking them to act rarely delivers any effective results (Gillette’s recent Federer ‘trick-shot’ viral just about scraped by), and so any outtakes are a total bonus. Unless Ken Dodd was carefully positioned behind them, branding his famed feather duster, that laughter is 100% genuine.

So while credit should be given where credit’s due, Credit Suisse undeniably got seriously lucky with this, getting more publicity for the RF Foundation’s charity tennis match than they could have dreamed possible (871,000 views at the time of blogging). The two guys played off each other beautifully and what probably started life as a straightforward interview soon became an instantly infectious viral. Job done.

Socialnomics – putting an ROI on successful social media campaigns

After my great digital comms/social media training run by the eConsultancy‘s James Matthewson earlier this week, I was prompted to go out and find some concrete stats about the success of brand involvement in social media campaigns. Just came across this fab little Socialnomics video, from the author of the Socialnomics book, Eric Qualman, and however much you think you already know about brands marketing in this space, it really is worth a watch.

Time and time again we find clients hesitant to relinquish control over their brand in the interests of entering the social media space, yet there are countless examples – as the video will show you – of big and small brands who have made the leap (or even tiny step in some cases) and for whom it has paid huge dividends.

However, of course it is far from fool-proof and companies should not throw all caution to the wind, implementing social media marketing strategies with abandon. In fact, social’s greatest strength is potentially its greatest danger – that of instant amplification. Whilst it means that campaigns done well can reap huge rewards in a very short space of time, it also means that those done badly can rapidly spiral out of control in the worst way, with irreparable damage caused to the brand (see the online legend of Kryptonite bike locks, the shining example of one man’s blog causing an estimate loss of $10m).

(A good number of examples of crisis communications in the YouTube era can be found here.)

But there are still a lot of brands out there who have a lot to learn, and they could do a lot worse than start with some Socialnomics.

The iPad – will it blend?

Squeals of excitement yesterday at an Engine Digital Training day provided by the eConsultancy, when trainer James Matthewson revealed his shiney new iPad – fresh out of the box from his trip to the States.

I have long been in love with all things Apple, and finally it seems I have the ultimate toy – a Kindle combined with an iPod Touch. It was just as pretty as expected, and very impressive video/picture quality. Above all it was fun to use. Sadly the app store wasn’t connecting in the UK so no books had been uploaded yet, and I’m still keen to see how well the books read on screen without inducing screen fatigue after long periods. But I’m optimistic.

But in all testable respects it seemed a smashing piece of kit. Web browsing was just as fluid as the iPhone but obviously with much greater visibility, although there remains the issue with a lack of Flash compatilbilty. Even the keyboard had good usability. Though I have read recommendations for the external keyboard when using it for prolonged blogging, I feel this just turns it into a regular Notebook, but with a rather unwieldy piece of extra kit attached. I’d be hoping to blog away using just the iPad interface – that’s the cool factor.

And look who else has jumped onto the iPad bandwagon? Our friend in the white coat at BlendTec. Posted just over a week ago on 5th April, the YouTube video has already received over 5,ooo,ooo views. Wowzers.

But will it blend?

90210′s product placement horrors

TV product placement in its various incarnations is something that I love to keep track of. We see it with the greatest presence (and price tag) on the silver screen, but we are starting to see it more and more on the small screen too – especially in American shows targeted at a youth audience. Unfortunately, the more common it becomes, the less sophisticated the methods seem to be.

Granted, the US have very different rules on brand presence, but with the recent return of 90210 to E4, I needed to share some screen grabs of a couple of season 1 episodes where the product placement is nothing short of paid-for full-screen advertising (and thus I have tagged this post appropriately).

I love the show and I don’t usually find this kind of over-exposure offensive as such, but 90210′s integration of brand into scene is so unsubtle that it is starting to become intrusive even for me. The two prime examples (taken from the previous, first, season) are Dr.Pepper and T-Mobile’s Sidekick mobile phone.

So you could watch the clips in the context of the show, I had found the clips on YouTube, but as is increasingly the way these things go, the clips in question have been removed by a CBS copyright claims. A shame, but if you are studying product placement methods (and the clangers therein) it is almost worth buying season 1 just to spot them (I’m sure you will find more).

Dr. Pepper makes its first appearance behind the bar (and front of shot ON the bar too)...

...and gets prime placement for the close-up

It even (bizarrely) gets wall placement in the cafe to cover the reverse camera angle and (even more bizarrely) gets a reversed placement on the bar in the foreground

Naomi got so over-excited at receiving a message on her T-Mobile Sidekick that she had to taunt Annie with it...

...and the producers felt the need for the obligatory close-up

Can anyone NOT read the vertical T-Mobile branding? Well fear not, if you are blind, Naomi gives it a verbal mention too.

All that said, while I still won’t touch Dr.Pepper because it remains vile-tasting no matter how much screen time Hollywood gives it, I do now quite want a Sidekick. And I did write this blog post about it. Go figure. Maybe we can learn from the Americans yet.

Britney’s Trouble (For the Record)

Good old Facebook link sharing – not sure I’d have ever come across this had it not appeared in my mini feed this evening. A Britney track that I haven’t heard? A video I haven’t seen?! Surely not! But yes…

For her revealing documentary broadcast in the UK on Sky One earlier this year to much press attention, the track Trouble was recorded and a video montage of clips from the doc produced to boot. The track itself is awesome, great beat, infectious lyrics and a black and white video revealing just a little bit of everything that Britney is about – just as in the show.

Click on the screenshot above to view or here (damn WordPress for no longer allowing me to embed the full code directly into posts… what is up with that?). But enjoy.

We love you Brit.