Ms. Adverthinker

These are my raw notes from this session.

Speaker is Director of Digital Strategy for Publicis in NY. Describes herself as a b-tard. Taught at Miami Ad School..

4chan is an image board forum. Very old school method if Internet communications. 4chan is anonymous, which is very unusual now. No archives. Very fast moving. If you say something on 4chan and it is not interesting, it will go away. You can’t search for something on 4chan. There a very few rules and it is quite chaotic.

4chan is a high speed microcosm of the world. It is a small strange community that shown us idea spreads.

“Bump” is something people can do on 4chan to show a “like” for the idea posted and keep itinerary the front page longer. Real time response, live critique. This is how brands are treated online right now.

People are remixing, playing with and editing our brands on their own, whether we want or allow or not. That is the crux of this conversation: 4chan show what happens when the community takes over. How can we learn from that and embrace that?

If you are not getting the views that you want, then consumers are telling you that you are not culturally relevant.

When people want to see more, then your campaign is successful. This happened with Old Spice. Real time content creation becomes the need. Agencies and clients are not currently structured this way. It is a huge shift in terms of teams, money and turnaround time.

Microcontent is the answer. Fast, small and sticky. See this happening and FB and YouTube.

When you ask consumers to come co-create with us, chaos can happen. Need to have rules and moderation in place. But how do you deal with that effectively?

A troll is someone who is annoying you because it is funny. For the “LOLs.” Speaker gives free burger giveaway example when fulfillment wasn’t ready to give the burgers. Had built the community big and fast and they started complaining. Need to have a plan for this. TGIFridays.

NYPA = not your personal army. Sometimes we are asking people to do too much. Just because you can ask, doesn’t mean that you should.

How do you get past legal? Get all the people in the room together at the same time so that everyone that has to say yes or no is there and can do it on the spot. Additionally, the legal person would learn and be more likely to approve more.

Brands with lower budgets are better at social media because they are wiling to take more risks. And don’t have another choice.

In measurement, people understand dollars, so the closer you can get it to dollars, the better your chance of getting buy-in. This is usually impressions and sales.

Astro-turfing = the idea of creating a grassroots campaign that is actually fake. If you get caught, you are in trouble.

These are my raw notes from this session.

Storytelling and advertising through social games.

Zynga’s mission is connecting the world through games. Has 57 million daily active users. World’s largest social gaming. One in 5 Americans are playing social games.

Average browser time per user per day is 68 minutes.

Farmville audience is similar to the audience size of American Idol. Farmville is the new daytime TV. 40 year old mom is the new hardcore gamer.

55% of all social gamers are women. 53% are between 24-54 years old.

Gaia Online

1/3 of revenue comes through ads and sponsorships.

An avatar-based community. Builds both the game and the network. 30 million users.

Finding likeminded souls when playing these online games.

Gaia users: 60% female and 40% male; 90% 18-24 years old

Why are playing social games?

They are easy to play. If you can use a mouse, you can play these games.

They are social. Cooperation not competition.

Everyone wins.

It is free.

What is in-game advertising?

Integrated and seamless. Enhances the game and users don’t even realize they are interacting with the brands. One of the most successful brand sponsorships was with Nike. Nike shoes would make the player run faster.

“Sponsored features” not banners. Scion cars allowed for customized cars on Gaia. It made the feature better.

Aligned with user goals.

Engagement with the brand

Discussion about the brand.

Zynga looks at advertising as content.

“Social glue” = integrating the online game with the real world. Case study: 7-11 partnership with Zynga. 3 million redmptions. Beat projections. Most successful co-redemption ever according to 7-11. (Question: did any of those users go back to 7-11 after the promotion?)

Case study: Farmers Insurance. All Farmville users could get a Farmers blimp on their farm for a week that protected their crops. Farmers KPI was Facebook likes. After this promotion, they were the most liked insurance brand on Facebook.

Reasons for success:
Scale
Engagement
User choice
User reward

Truly believe that social gaming will lead to social good. $3 million raised for Haiti. One day turnaround for Japan relief. Have built a school in Haiti by allowing Farmville users to donate school supplies.

Gaia had an Alice in Wonderland promotion. 87% of users responded that they enjoyed seeing and participating in the promotion. 515,000 forum posts. Users spent over 5 minutes in the flash space for Alice in Wonderland.

People love to take surveys and polls.

(I would like to see behavioral overlays to the demographics of these online gamers.)

This is a panel discussion with Bob Garfield, Brian Clark, David Eastman, Kyle Monson, Shiv Singh.

Sure, the Darth Vader spot is cute if you like “Star Wars” and you like kids.  I thought the spot was cute, for sure; it made me smile.  But since advertising is my job, I look for more than likability (although this is very important, too) in commercials: what was the strategy?  Did it deliver the message?  What is the take away for the brand?  What is the take away for the product being promoted?

This morning as I watched actual “news” coverage of the spot and an interview with the child actor that was in the Darth Vader costume, I hit my tipping point of curiosity and started searching for some explanation for the strategy of the spot.  The majority of the talk online, much like that “new” segment I saw this morning, talks about how “cute” the spot is and how much everybody liked it; there was little, if any, mention of the brand or the product.  While I can accept that it is a brand ad and they are not necessarily trying to sell Passats, can it be considered successful if no one remembers/talks about/notices the VW brand itself?

It was on AdAge that I finally found a real review of the spot:

“But if we were VW, we wouldn’t be too triumphal too quickly. Another name for the Relationship Era is the Listenomics Age, and if you listen to what was being said, you’d notice that the vast majority of the Twitter traffic mentions the ad, and not the car. Not even the model — which happens to be a Passat. Certainly nobody mentioned the ad was nominally promoting keyless ignition, and no wonder: that’s all but a generic feature.

“So, yeah, VW got some positive attention, and that’s good. But the attention wasn’t on automobiles. That’s bad. This could have just as well been a McDonald’s commercial. Which just goes to show: If you’re peddling entertainment instead of products, cultivating smiles not constituents, the Brave New World will be just as easy to squander resources in as the cowardly old one.”

Right on.

Enjoy.

Just a quick thought.  A few days ago, we were all patting Pepsi on the back for being different and for recognizing the power of social media when it was announced that they were abstaining from the Super Bowl advertising orgy this year and instead launching a socially conscious social media campaign.

Today, when the ratings for the Super Bowl were released we find that with 106 million viewers, it was the most watch telecast EVER.  So, was Pepsi smart to sit this one out?

There was a Super Bowl gathering at my abode, and in between cooking, conversation and conviviality around the Saints, we Googled, blogged and surfed the social networks.  Because we work in the business, our web use centered around the Super Bowl advertising.  And while most commercials were disappointing, there were some stood out from the overdone guy humor that was abundant this year.  I am not going to get into my opinion of what advertising was good, bad or ugly – you can find more than enough commentary about that here, here and here.  I want to talk about is the morphing of the event into an online social experience.

Watching the Super Bowl has always been a social event: friends gather, eat, drink, boo and cheer. The advent of social media made our parties grow exponentially over the last couple of years as we interacted with those we knew online in addition to those watching the game with us in person. Last year, 12% of Super Bowl viewers were online during the game, according to Mashable. But this year, rather than having to search out the pertinent discussions on Twitter and Facebook separately, communities have developed around areas of interest, be it sports, food or advertising.  Hashtags are now used more consistently, making search for relevant commentary outside those communities easier, too.  With these community hubs and hashtag prevalence, our online interactions have gone from just the people we know (and the people they know) to introductions to people, content and views we might never have stumbled upon before.  And just when we thought we couldn’t be more connected to the world.

I didn’t want the Super Bowl fun to end last night. In years past, I have only watched the Super Bowl for the commercials, and even then become bored by the second half. Last night was different, it was bigger and it felt like my world expanded just a little bit more.  And that is always a good thing for the curious being that is me.

For fun, here is my favorite commercial of the night.  Although, as it turns out, it has been around for a few months, last night was my first viewing.

From the people that brought us the drumming gorilla, a new spot for Cadbury appears. It is great fun, just as chocolate should be. The drumming gorilla was a great viral success for Cadbury, and it looks as if this one has that potential too.

For those of you that do not remember the drumming gorilla, here it is (if it hasn’t been removed yet for copyright infringement):

An interesting video about the ways marketing has changed.

Frequent readers of this blog know my opinion of the hit show Mad Men.  I won’t go into another rant about it.  I am not opposed to television shows that feature the advertising industry, however.  I just want them to not make us look that bad.  So, I am excited about a new show that premiers next week on TNT called “Trust Me.”  Stay tuned for my opinions next week.

What interests me about this new show is that it is going to promote real products, according to an article in the New York Times.

I am a sucker for dance videos.  They just make me happy.  T-Mobile has a new “Life is for Sharing” campaign that uses dance videos on their YouTube channel as an example of one of those fun moments in life you like to share.  The campaign is complete with a dance video contest.  This is the perfect use of a brand’s YouTube channel.  Check out the T-Mobile Dance Video:

Check out a fun article from the NY Times on movies and TV shows that featured ad agency enviroments.  Enjoy.

Another hilarious Mad Men parody by SNL. Enjoy.