Category Archives: television

Jan 10 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, mash-ups, social media, television

Social mashup goes mainstream: Pepsi Hit Refresh

Pepsi Australia Hit Refresh social mashup

Pepsi Australia Hit Refresh social mashup

Earlier this week, Pepsi Australia’s Hit Refresh social media and heavyweight outdoor campaign started it’s promotions activation phase, via a Twitter treasure hunt and the engagement so far has been extremely high. This is a campaign I’ve been working on since late 2009, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing social brand advocacy in action at a grass roots level in the Gen Y and Gen Z demographic. Particularly on Facebook, Fans of the page are spontaneously sharing their love of Pepsi, requesting the treasure hunt come to their city, and enjoying the MTV TV spots.

There are a few points about this campaign that makes it distinctive in both the social media and advertising landscape in Australia:

  1. The Hit Refresh site acts as a social aggregator so removes any barriers to entry. Being on Twitter is not a requirement to follow or participate in the treasure hunt (winners get a $250 Refresh card to spend as they choose). Instead, they can watch the clues turn up on the Twitter section of the website, or watch the clues turn up on the Tweets tab of the PepsiAustralia Facebook Page
  2. The site is a mashup of social APIs. It uses the Twitter API  but filters it via specific hashtags to only show treasure hunt clues. Hit Refresh site also uses Twitpic’s API, filtered via hashtag to show only those tagged as #refreshwin. It makes it easy to follow only clues, and winners. The Google Maps API displays the region for each of the daily hunts.
  3. There is a hashtag structure related to the geography of the Twitter treasure hunt, so those who are advanced Twitter users can set up a search specific to the city they’re wanting to follow clues on, e.g #refreshsyd, related to Sydney specific clues #refreshmelb, on the days the hunt is on in Melbourne
  4. The Twitter followers are a range of those who follow because of the treasure hunt and those who are interested in the campaign from a social marketing point of view.
  5. Twitter’s being seen/used as the channel for the clues and treasure hunt specific interactions, whilst Facebook is being seen/used as a more general brand engagement, conversational channel.

A lot of overall campaign feedback, some negative some positive, can be read on the comments on the mUmbrella and Campaign Brief posts, most of them focus on either the creative, or the mechanic. What’s been missed is the bigger picture: that we finally have the Australian region of a global brand embracing social media, for one of the heaviest weight outdoor campaigns in Australia’s history. It’s one of the first times a multi-channel social media campaign has hit the advertising mainstream in Australia.

Australia is the first PepsiCo International market to launch the new look Pepsi trademark across the four Pepsi brand, but the Hit Refresh campaign is a year behind the US in terms of re-brand launch. In the US, the new look Pepsi was launched a year ago during the American Presidential inauguration. A year on, the latest US campaign - Pepsi Refresh Project launches 1 February 2010. It’s already generating huge interest and buzz, by allocating funds normally earmarked for Superbowl advertising to giving away millions of dollars in grants each month to fund great ideas. The Refresh Project concept may or may not be used in the Australian market, but either way Hit Refresh is a significant step forward for the maturity of social media in the region.

Pepsi Australia has chosen its social channel names carefully: PepsiAustralia is used on Facebook and Twitter, a recognition of the benefits of social media not just being short-term tactical campaign support, but as part of a long-term “always on” brand strategy.

I’m interested to hear your opinions of the social aspect of the campaign, please share your thoughts.

Dec 06 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, film, social media, television

Why filmmakers should care about social media

Why should you care about social?

I gave this presentation at the 17th Annual World Congress for Science and Factual Producers in Melbourne on 4th December. The audience was mainly documentary and science filmmakers from around the world who came to find out about social media and what it could do for them. The majority of the story/speech is in the Slideshare notes so have a good look if you’re interested in

Many thanks to Daryl Karp from Film Australia for giving me the opportunity to speak at such a prestigious event, along with fellow panelists, Guy Gadney from the Project Factory and Simon Goodrich from Portable Content The audience seemed to get a lot out of the session which was called “What the Hell is Social Media (and Why You Should Care?)”

The common theme from questions? How can busy filmmakers find the time to socialize their content? My answer: its important enough to sacrifice other activity, and 1 -2 hours a day is a fairly small commitment that can be shared between a few people.

Jun 08 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, mash-ups, social media, television

Death of the microsite a casestudy: Bonds Art Attack


Bonds ART ATTACK

The microsite is dying, only most clients and (traditional above-the-line) agencies have not woken up to this yet. Adam Ostrow asks Is Social Media making corporate websites irrelevant? I agree with him and with We Are Social and say microsites are being killed off by social media (and search).  Even David Armano just killed his website

Microsites are usually part of the silo’d channel marketing that clients (and some agencies) seem to love. So to have a brand campaign, you put out a TVC, some print ads, outdoor and then online is just the tacked on afterthought - and its usually the “matching baggage” banner advertising, and the microsite. Microsites exist because of a need for a campaign extension: a place to enter a competition, a place to go to when you’ve clicked on a banner to “find out more”, sometimes it’s a story that continues on from a television commercial. Except in most cases there’s not enough story to keep people hanging around to engage at all.

My favourite case study is a recent one for Bonds underwear called Bonds Art Attack. It had a rich media banner, where you could interact with it and make the bum in it wiggle. The banner doesn’t live online anymore but you can get a sense of it in this Vimeo video case study.

The interaction rates of the banner campaign were huge -  even offsetting the naturally higher engagement rates on rich media platform Eyeblaster the interactions and click throughs were 2000% higher than average. So what happened when the audience clicked through? They left Bonds Art Attack a few seconds later. The bounce rate on the site was huge (much higher than average), and probably because there was not much more there than the banner (just a bigger virtual canvas with photos of under wear to splash paint on). “Flashturbation” is a term I laughed at this week, in connection to agency Flash websites, can so be applied in this instance too.

So we can ask some questions as to why something like this can happen:

  • Bonds doesn’t have a digital strategy, nor a search strategy; probably because it doesn’t sell product online.
  • No social media strategy. Searching for Bonds pulls up the Facebook page which was created by Bonds and has grown to 39,000 + fans. This was more by accident than design - the content to the page is sporadic and doesn’t drive traffic to any of the campaign microsites. The only mention of any advertising campaigns is the embeded TVCs on the Wall.
  • Bonds website and microsites are all in Flash, and are typical of campaign microsites with pretty pictures and not much else
  • Eyeblaster as a platform offers “in banner conversions” not used in this case but could have been a way to get users to stockists via Maps in Banner feature By using a rich banner, the content is brough to the user rather than forcing the user away from the content they are currently browsing, and especially if there is no purchasing reason to go
  • There’s no reason to go back to the microsite, or stay if you went there from the banner which had a similar user experience (albeit a more compact one)

So what’s the answer? This would work for most fashion brands

  • A social media strategy - Bonds talks to customers where they want to be talked to - Facebook is a clear winner at the moment (because its the only option!) but Twitter may be an option for them
  • A digital strategy encompassing search and a long term eCRM strategy that lives beyond campaign work
  • Decentralised content could work - especially if there are reasons to create user generated content, and with the fan base they have this is likely
  • Shareable content - the Bonds Art Attack TVC doesn’t live on YouTube or Vimeo, (its been hacked by some third party aggregator which is how I found it and embedded it). The only other place the TVC is available is within Facebook, again only to stay and to be shared within Facebook.
  • A mashup site that acts as a social media and decentralised content aggregator - all the benefits of constantly updating content

What do you think? Do you go back to Flash websites? Are augmented reality websites just the new Flashturbation? What do you want out of a brand/product site?

Mar 23 Comments comments
brand engagement, social media, television

Twitter as interactive backchat

So You Think You Can use Twitter as backchat?

So You Think You Can use Twitter as backchat?

As an attendee of the freebie  Ad:Tech09 keynote sessions, there were a few of us commenting and reporting on Twitter of what was going on using the Ad:Tech hashtags #atsyd. Mumbrella pulled out some selected highlights of the Twitter stream comments, whilst the unfiltered Ad:Tech hashtag stream ranged from the serious to the downright hilarious. There were some rumblings that much of the tweeting was sniping and backstabbing and surely the tweeters could just come out and say what was being broadcast on Twitter?

I also attended a building online communities presentation at NSW KM in February, where we again publicised the event by tweeting interactively throughout the three talks. Despite an audience who were all ready to do it again, the most recent NSW Knowledge Management speaker Ed Mitchell put an end to the Twitter stream by saying he preferred not to allow Twitter’s through his presentation because it would lead to people “checking their email” and other online tasks. It was an old media argument by saying electronic “note taking” through Twittering was not allowed, whereas a traditional pen and paper method was not frowned upon. Ironically, by preventing the Tweets, we now have no record of what the audience thought of his presentation, unlike the February event where one could follow the key insights during all 3 of the presenters.

Twitter since it’s launch 3 years ago has been a major part of SXSW, so much so that Pepsico spent some sponsorship dollars this year in creating an interactive visualizer of the various Twitter streams, following the parties just as much as the event itself.

Which brings me to the most pop cultural use of Twitter as interactive backchat. So You Think You Can Dance Australia has a bunch of amateur commentators (me included I’m afraid) who sit on Twitter every Sunday and Monday evening, tweeting on the minutae of costumes, music, hair, camerawork and oh yes, the dancing. Every week, the #sytycd hashtag becomes a trending topic, prompting Twitter users from opposite hemispheres (literal as well as metaphorical) to ask “what’s sytycd?”. Meanwhile the backchat goes on in an interactive (at least amongst the amateur commentators) stream.

I read a great slideshare presentation today from SXSW on The Future of Social Networks. The overall idea was the ubiquity of social networks, that your friends commentary will become the “subtitles” to the TV show, (have a look at the #sytycd hashtag on any Sunday or Monday evening live during the show) and that events will need to be re-thought to include Twitter streams. When Ev (Evan Williams) did his TED talk in February 2009, he was confronted by the Twitter stream about his own speech by the TED MC. Scroll to around 7 minutes in to see Ev’s hashtag backchat.

So in the era of smartphone Twitter applications enabling Twitter on the go (except where 3G can’t penetrate), and TV consumers who are online as much as they are watching TV (at the same time) its natural that a new form of live interactive backchat evolves from the public Twitter stream, monitored through relevant hashtag.

Some interactive uses for Twitter backchat:

  • Brand feedback (Skittles did this in the most public way possible - previous post about the bravery it took here)
  • Live event feedback - including interactive questions from an audience not limited by geography (already happening more often than not)
  • Live TV show feedback - including interactive questions from an audience not limited by geography
  • Dating show - I would love to see a Twitter version of Perfect Match where the contestants would be subjected to a three round tweet out. Only the wittiest in 140 characters or less gets to go out on the date with the datee.

Any other ideas? Please feel free share them here.

Mar 11 Comments comments
brand engagement, social media, social networking, television

The Friendship Algorythm

Being a Big Bang Theory fan, this video shows how hard it is to define the steps to friendship when (you’re Sheldon and) you don’t know how to make friends. We can use this as a metaphor every time we try to lock down what social media engagement looks like. Or we can do a giant flow chart just like Sheldon.

Mar 08 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, collaboration, social media, television

Flight of the Conchords rock social media

One of the finalists in the Flight of the Conchords really arty poster search

One of the finalists in the Flight of the Conchords really arty poster search

Flight of the Conchords is a great HBO television show about 2 NZ singing dudes who “make it” in New York City. Flight of the Conchords has a Facebook fan page they actually use. I say that in all seriousness, as so many Facebook pages get set up and then forgotten. Or ignored. On Facebook, Flight of the Conchords make an effort and communicate to their fans (me included). The latest is a poster competition, the Really Arty Poster Search. This is what they say:

Bret and Jemaine were pleasantly pleased to find out just how arty you guys really are. Visit the Flight wiki to see their top 10 potential finalists (subject to elgibility), chosen from over 1,000 entries.

On the wiki you can see the huge effort fans have put into the work. Earlier this year, its likely the very same fans were memorising lines, and uploading music videos. I have done a post previously on how well Flight of the Conchords do brand engagement - nice to see it continuing with such great results.

Takeaways:

  1. If you set up Facebook page,  MySpace, Wiki, Twitter account, forum or whatever your social media touchpoint, keep updating. Unlike “brochureware” websites, you need to tell people what’s going on in your world so they can participate further if they choose to.
  2. Use your social media channels to direct people back to other relevant sites. Especially if your blog is at a different address to your main website or your competition page is somewhere else again.
  3. Give your fans/customers simple tools to engage with you - and chances are they will.
Mar 02 Comments comments
advertising, television

This is an unscripted Brand Review™ review

this is an unscripted celebrity endorsement

this is an unscripted celebrity endorsement

When I wrote about digital video recorders killing TV advertising, one of the comments (thanks  Doingwords) suggested that there will be an increase in “home shopping” type of advertising where the ads are extended into infomercial lengths. Given this is a trend happening in the US too, watch E! channel Australia to see the millennial versions of the Ginsu knives, the Ab Blaster, the Steam Buddy and the Ped Egg (ewww!). As bad as these ads are for content, at least they don’t pretend to be something else.

On free to air, however, the con jobs are airing in prime time. Australia has 2 major “third party authorities” in TV advertising, Zoot Review (”this is an unscripted advertisement”) and Brand Power (”helping you buy better”), both owned by the same company. I was at the taping of the last episode of the Gruen Tansfer when the panel hooked into Kim Watkins for appearing with fake (not her real) children in one of the Zoot Review celebrity infomercials. I find the Georgie Parker “roving journalist” style hilarious because its so fake,  in what’s really just a celebrity product endorsement spot.

Whilst writing this post, I struck advertising deception paydirt. Cheerios appears on both Zoot Review and also on Brand Power. Guess what? Kim Watkins “fake daughter” in the Cheerio’s Zoot Review also stars in the Cheerios Brand Power “spot”. Come on!

same female child actor stars in Cheerios fake third party advertising

same female child actor stars in Cheerios fake third party advertising

Both Zoot Review & Brand Power are built on the illusion of being “objective” third parties (i.e. not directly associated with the advertiser). Brand Power provides

“rational information about grocery products to help you make a more informed purchase when you’re at the supermarket…  a unique advertising vehicle that’s quite different to many of the other ads you’ll see on television”

Under the guise of being an independent body, The Buchanan Group take cash from brands and ad agencies and produce  infomercials but pretend to be “editorial” (i.e. not associated with the brand, and are there to empower consumers through customer advocacy). This is unlike real customer advocates such as Choice, who compare products in the same category for genuine results.

It’s not so much that Brand Power manages to sneak through the Free TV Infomercial Substantiation standards - I’m sure the emphasis on rational information gets the ads through. What irritates me is the positioning of Brand Power as the independent voice “helping you buy better”.

Brand Power is big in Canada too, and a post from One Degree in 2007 has similar issues that I do, and puts forward:

this is the type of con job that could only exist in the traditional media and could not be successful online

What’s really sad/scary is Brand Power is now successfully online, with “real people” feedback/statements appearing on the site as “Latest reviews”. On some level, consumers have bought into the Brand Power customer advocacy and are now submitting their reviews in good faith. How much do the consumers (mainly women) believe they are actually participating in an open forum? And it purports to being an open forum yet you wonder why there are only positive comments? Is it because they are being “bribed” through promotions they might win by participating in a positive way?

It’s good old fashioned “leading the customer to believe” through association and assumption. There is nothing authentic about either the television advertising for Brand Power or Zoot Review or their associated websites. Brand Power is dishonest in its positioning of customer advocacy, and talks around the brands paying for the service. Given the level of brands paying for the “Brand Power” service it must be working on some level, although most of the brands are already advertising often on tv with creative ads. Are overly cautious brand managers hedging their bets? What do you think of alleged third party advocates like Brand Power, Zoot Review and MediFacts? Is it dishonest to do it on tv as much as it is online? What’s your view?

Feb 26 Comments comments
advertising, television

Is timeshifting killing television advertising?

Timeshifted television means fast forwarding ads

Timeshifted television means fast forwarded ads

I am a TV content consumer, but I don’t necessarily watch free to air or subscription television at the time its aired. With a Foxtel IQ box, time shifted TV has become our household norm, and as a consequence I find myself reflective of a growing revolution taking place.

Nielsen report 37% more consumers are watching programs via DVR (digital video recorders) which timeshift TV, rising about 9% in the fourth quarter from the third quarter. The other key of the report is that viewers are watching their television content online, and on mobile devices rather than watching it through the television itself.

Nielsen’s report covers the US but the same trends are taking place here in Australia. Foxtel is now in nearly 1.6m Australian households. One-third (more than half a million) of these subscribers have a Foxtel IQ digital video recorder. Subscriber’s are up 7% and Foxtel’s revenue is up 13%

So instead of watching TV when the advertisers and the networks intended them to be watched, viewers are watching them in a different timezone or online or on a mobile phone. The viewers who watched TV online consumed even more video content, to the tune of another 3 hours per month. Even Nielsen’s report is called the “3 Screens Report” reflecting the fact that the traditional TV screen is only one of the delivery mechanism for television content.

This has big implications for content developed for network TV where traditional ratings are the way to secure advertising dollars and hence operating revenue.  So here’s the dilemma:  two shows hitting lows on American TV are “Heroes” and “Chuck”, yet they are both getting great audiences online with “Heroes” coming in at 5th overall spot for December 08. “Chuck” is in an even more interesting position, when ranked by time spent per viewer in December, Chuck comes in at number 2 with 163 minutes spent per viewer. The key quote from Nielsen is this:

Advertisers should be looking to balance overall reach with minutes per viewer, since those programs with longer viewing times are ones where consumers are much more likely to actually watch the advertising.

Here is the dilemma, do advertisers bury their head in the sand and use TVC’s as the key for building brands, buy the media placements assuming demographic data is still current for “prime time” and continue to ignore the writing on the wall for traditional television viewing?

Or do they really believe the growing number of people with DVR’s will stop and watch the TVC’s when watching time shifted content? I have to admit to stopping for ads occasionally, more a rewind when I skip past it and feel its worth a look, but then again I work in advertising, and I like best ads on tv. But forgive me for not stopping for Brand Power.

And when dramatic content is delivered online, how do advertisers use the medium to its best advantage, rather than sticking to the “traditional” format of pre-rolls or “commercial breaks”?

So how do you consume television? Is it timeshifted? Streamed online? Podcast and on your mobile? And do you ever stop for ads? Drop a comment and join the conversation.