About Jeff Whang
As a semi-professional cellist, avid runner and tenacious home renovator, planning comes naturally to Jeff Whang. After all, one doesn’t find himself selling his music on iTunes, running the Seattle half-marathon or retiling an entire bathroom without some strategic preparation. In fact, Jeff has a solid strategy for everything he does – one that has always led to success. Jeff’s college strategy was simple. He loved the Braves, so he moved to Atlanta to root for the home team with pride. Of course, the fact that Emory University’s top-ranked Business School and renowned strategic planning program were in Atlanta did weigh into his decision. Upon graduating with a degree in Marketing and Communications, Jeff joined The Richards Group and kicked his strategic skills into high gear as an Account Planner for The Home Depot, Nortel Networks, Red Lobster, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Office Depot and Fruit of the Loom. Yet he couldn’t ignore one very strong strategic insight: the Internet was the place to be. So, Jeff migrated over to Click Here where he now specializes in interactive strategies for brands like Chick-fil-A, Fruit of the Loom, The Salvation Army, Advance Auto Parts and Mayo Clinic. Dissecting how the human mind works, Jeff dedicates himself to uncovering the inherent story in each brand that’s most relevant to consumers’ lives. He then scours the latest new media tools and technologies to tell that story in engaging, strategic ways. At home with his wife, pet shih tzu and the first kid on the way, Jeff spends his downtime up and running – pursuing his lifelong goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon and passing at least 30 people up Heartbreak Hill. Will he make it? You can plan on it.
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Almost a year ago, Brian Kress wrote about the importance of capturing conversations online and the options for measurement out there, from DIY solutions to robust buzz monitoring partners.
Since then, the demand for capturing conversations has only grown. Our agency has invited many of the best services in the industry to walk us through their capabilities in the space and how partnering with them would provide real value to our clients. And our clients themselves are increasingly curious about what’s being said about them in the marketplace by consumers.
Through all this activity, the one question that we’ve been hearing over and over is “so what do I do with this?” Sure, it’s great that we now have the capability to capture, in real-time, what people on Twitter, in the blogs and on forums are saying about our brand. But more than just the volume of conversation, whether it’s positive or negative and some links to actual conversations, what action can we take as marketers with this new source of data about our brand and consumers?
From a PR perspective, it’s fairly easy. The ability to track relevant conversations as they arise in real-time gives you the opportunity to address them, whether it be calming and addressing negative sentiment or encouraging and reinforcing positive sentiment. But from a research perspective, it gets tougher. How do you wade through the sometimes enormous amount of data (in the case of large brands that are frequently talked about) to find interesting insights of truth or give credence to the few mentions that appear (in the case of smaller, less talked about brands), hoping that it’s not just the vocal minority?
As a brand steward, buzz monitoring tools are incredibly useful to keep a real-time pulse on the brand, but it isn’t the research tool that will single-handedly make you rich with insights. It’s one tool in an arsenal of research tools and one particularly suited to partner with other forms of research. Here are a few ways you can use buzz monitoring with other research tools to make insights much more actionable:
1) Use secondary resources like Iconoculture or Mintel to support or dismiss insights we’re seeing in buzz monitoring. I’ll demonstrate this with a silly scenario to get the point across. Say you have a used clothing retailer brand who notices in their buzz monitoring tool that there’s an increase in volume of people using their product in games of “capture the flag.” Rather than dismiss this as simply a vocal minority, you could see if this trend was appearing in secondary research reports, where you might see that “capture the flag” is experiencing a resurgence in popularity or that flag making companies have been going out of business, leaving these consumers nowhere else to turn. In this case, secondary research could help put some weight (or dismiss) a discovery in the buzz monitoring tool.
2) Conduct primary research using insights discovered in buzz monitoring to see if those ideas have legs. If the tool leads to an insight that a brand has already considered or is much closer to their core business model, it may be worth conducting primary research or adding on to an existing piece of research to see how well that idea plays out in a group setting.
3) Deploy a quick quantitative online survey to get a sense of if a certain mindset scales across the demographic you’re targeting. One aspect of buzz monitoring that is often difficult to gauge is the demographics of the people talking about your brand. In this case, buzz monitoring would pair beautifully with a piece of quantitative research. Recruit respondents who fit your target market and then share the ideas that you’ve seen in buzz monitoring to see how well they do with your best customers (or potential customers).
The key is to use the tools we have at our disposal to come up with a more complete analysis, not looking at buzz monitoring in a vacuum.
At the end of the day, we have to remember that buzz monitoring is a much more passive form of research than traditional qualitative or quantitative, where we have much more control. Unless our clients have a robust social media response team, we typically can’t probe when consumers bring up an interesting insights on a blog. We can’t write the discussion guide and require our Facebook fans to fill out all the questions. And we don’t even know if MrBigMan83 is even a man. We’re here to listen. And by listening, we might get a nugget of insight that we could use as we look at our client’s business using all the tools we have at our disposal – buzz monitoring being just one of them.
We’re now in Day 6 since the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. All of us have seen the coverage, the images and stories of tragedy in the impoverished nation. We’ve also seen the pleas for help, from former Presidents Bush and Clinton to Wyclef Jean. If you’re having a hard time wading through all the options and want to make sure help gets where it’s most needed, here are some digital tools you can utilize to make your decision for the current crisis in Haiti as well as research on any charitable organization.
First, what are the options for online giving? The traditional methods of giving by phone and mail are still widely available, we’re seeing more charitable organizations experimenting with new ways of making it an easier, faster and smoother process. Giving through websites for charities is now a standard that no charity can go without. But one particular method of giving that has received a lot of attention in recent days has been through text messaging. If you haven’t heard, organizations like the Red Cross have partnered with a text message intermediary called mGive. To donate via text message to the Red Cross, you text the word “HAITI” to the number “90999” and you’ll automatically get a $10 line item added to your next cell phone bill. Other charities get other keywords to text to that same number. For the Red Cross alone, this method of giving has raised over $22 million (as of Monday).
One thing to note about donating via text messages is the delay that occurs because the money has to pass through middlemen before actually getting to the charity. This is less of an issue for big charities like the Red Cross which has an emergency fund and can get the financing they need in times of crises, but may be more of an issue for smaller, less-established charities.
For all those who have given via text message, here’s what the Red Cross has to say: “The processing delay doesn’t mean we’re waiting,” said Jonathan Aiken, spokesman for the Red Cross. “Our policy is always to work in good faith and assume people will make the contributions they pledge.”
Another innovative method of giving that is gaining traction is directly through iTunes – again, the Red Cross has taken the lead here and has become the beneficiary of choice for users of Apple’s Tunes software. Here’s the link to donate via iTunes (this will open up iTunes)
How do you decide who to give to? How do you know an organization is legitimate and will have a positive impact in Haiti? Established charities like The Salvation Army, Oxfam, Red Cross, UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders are safe and effective bets here. But if you have a desire to give to one that isn’t as well known, the key is to do your research; the good news is, there are lots of online resources that make it easy to learn about the legitimacy of the organization you are thinking about supporting. One excellent online resource is Charity Navigator, which is an independent evaluator or non-profits and aid organizations. They’ve put together a page on their site on charities providing relief, their overall rating and descriptions of what the organizations are doing on the ground there. To take it a step further, you can even look up the charity group’s most recent tax filing and non-profit status.
So what has the crisis in Haiti taught us about the age of digital donations? First, text message donations have to be taken seriously. With the huge impact it has had on the Haiti relief effort, it should strongly be considered for any future giving campaigns. Another lesson is to explore even more ways in which organizations can make it as easy as possible for people to give their support: consider platforms like social networking and mobile apps that are increasingly being adopted by a wide audience. And finally, if you are a reputable charitable organization, tout your presence on independent, third-party sites that have deemed you a worthy aid organization. In today’s world, being transparent about your ratings by third-parties can go a long way in establishing trust with the audience you’re trying to impact.
I hope this cleared up some of the questions you may have been asking about giving to help the people of Haiti. Remember, there are lots of different ways to give (some as easy as sending a text message or clicking on a link in iTunes), but do your research and make sure the organization is a legitimate one. And go do some good.
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These days, I’ve been spending an awful lot of time helping get my mom on the Internet. I’ve been putting it off for awhile. But now is the time. Her first grandchild lives with me and grandma wants to see some pictures and videos.
(In case you were wondering, this is not my mom)
And what I found out was, she’s not alone.
According to a report from the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, while fewer Seniors are online than other generation groups, the ones that are online are extremely active.
In fact, Seniors (65+) lead all other generation groups when it comes to shopping online – 77% of them do so regularly. They also regularly use email (94%), look to the Web for health and medical information (71%) and manage their finances and banking (59%).
And Seniors are certainly not far behind in technology adoption. While Gen Y enjoys a 96% adoption rate of cell phones, Seniors aren’t far behind at 80%. And the gap is even closer with things like a digital camera (Gen Y: 85%, Seniors: 77%).
The one area where seniors have been slow to adopt are…you guessed it, social networking. According to SeniorJournal.com, only 7% of Seniors have a profile on a social networking site – well below the average of 35% of all adult Internet users and
My own experience with my mom wasn’t too far from what’s happening in the marketplace. When I asked her what she wanted to do online. Here’s what I got:
1) See pictures and video of baby
2) Email said pictures and video of baby to relatives, mostly back in Korea
3) Watch Korean TV dramas on websites like www.naver.com
Zero interest in social networking (unless it was links to see pictures, which may not be that different from the rest of us), but email was high on the list. I can’t see her managing finances and banking online anytime soon, so maybe she’s part of the 40% who won’t for now.
So knowing these facts about our audience, coupled with our own experiences, keep these things in mind as you consider your digital strategy to connect with Seniors:
How should websites be designed differently for this audience? Particularly if your brand attracts an older audience, consider usability testing to help your developer understand how the site needs to be architected and designed to appeal and be user-friendly to an older audience. My own experience trying to navigate my mom around busy, cluttered sites was extremely difficult – and simple ones like Leica’s site were instrumental in helping her understand how to navigate around sites.
Does the fact that boomers are getting older mean this is a more important issue? While social networking has really only caught on in the last few years, as Boomers get older, they’re going to have much more experience and comfort with social features. They’re also going to be the most online-savvy audience we’ve seen yet (and obviously a trend that will continue on with subsequent generations). Think about ways to learn more about the first wave of Boomers that transition to Senior life and how the online world affects their lives.
What do seniors want online? If you’re really bold, you might look to see when your local community college or recreation center puts on Internet 101 classes for Seniors and see if you can attend one. Observe – see what they gravitate towards and what turns them off. And consider that accordingly to a 2009 study from AARP, 1/3 of people 75 and older live alone. While social networking use is low now, according to comScore, “among older people who went online last year, the number visiting social networks grew almost twice as fast as the overall rate of Internet use among that group.” And according to Antonina Bambina, a sociologist at the University of Southern Indiana, trends point to current Seniors and the next wave of Boomers growing up to see online networks to be a place where they can make new connections, feel empowered and talk to others in similar situations without having to ask friends and family for yet more help.
The future for my mom
So what does the future hold for my mom and the Internet? Well, baby steps. It’s been a bit stressful getting to this point. But I can see her getting into some online shopping, at least to browse different products. It will certainly be difficult with all the complicated navigation structures out there but over time, I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it. And using things like Google Maps/Streetview probably isn’t far off either. As she explores the Web, I’m expecting to be intrigued by having her share what she finds online with me. The Internet, as seen through the eyes of a senior – what will she find compelling? I’m looking forward to finding out.
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My daughter was born about 2 months ago. Between diaper changes and tummy time (I had no clue this was a real thing until I had a kid), I’ve had thoughts of how being immersed in digital every day affects the way I parent. It started before she was born: hours of googling ways to make sure my wife and I were doing the right things to prepare for her arrival. Things like what cribs got the best reviews online, how to prevent stretch marks, what we need to pack for the hospital and the list goes on.
And of course, we’ve had to balance all the things we’ve learned online with the wisdom and experience of our parents. Advice from both sets of parents who happened to grow up in Korea in the 50s and have not only a generational but a cultural gap in terms of the kind of advice they give (did you know that if you have a baby in the sweltering summer of Korea, they will refuse to turn the air conditioning on…some superstition about cold air giving you osteoporosis when you’re 80 years old or something.)
So as I reflect on the past couple months, I’ve noticed a few areas that have really shaped the way I parent that has been impacted by the digital life I lead.
Every (Really Every) Moment Captured
Everyone has baby pictures. And some of your parents may have gone a little trigger happy on those cameras and you just have a ton of photos. Well, I bought a DSLR and flash media camcorder to add to our arsenal of memory-capturing equipment. The result? Just over 1,800 photos taking up about 16GB of space. Add to that a couple hours of HD video and I’m glad I went ahead and bought an external hard drive dedicated to baby (hopefully it will last through the first year.) The great thing about all this? A 8GB SD card will run you just about $15 on amazon. And a 500GB external hard drive, about $80. Having to be conservative about capturing memories due to the cost of developing film or the cost of memory is quickly fading (no pun intended.) And keeping one set of grandparents who live on the west coast up to date on baby’s growth is 3 clicks in iPhoto.
Dr. Parent
While in the recovery room after delivery, our nurse came by and asked us if we’d like baby to receive her Hepatitis B vaccine. We asked her if there were any downsides to getting it at the hospital and she said no, so we said it’d be fine to go prepare the shot for later in the day. Just to be curious, I whipped out my iPhone and googled “hepatitis B vaccine risks” and got a barrage of articles connecting the vaccine to a number of neurological disorders. Now I don’t want to be the “anti-vaccine parent” but it did make me pause – so we called our nurse up and asked her if it’d be okay if we waited on the vaccine until a checkup with our pediatrician later. She had no problem with that, and it gave us time to look into it further. Without mobile Internet, we would’ve had no perspective on this other than the opinions of our nurse.
On another more light-hearted note, we’ve found some fun apps on the iPhone that were more fun to try than anything, but I’m sure there are some power users out there. Here are a couple apps that keeps track of feedings and diaper changes:
Cataloging the consistency of your baby’s stool has to be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done on my phone. WebMD Mobile has also been a useful app in accessing funky things a baby does in her first two months.
Baby’s Early Digital Identity
A couple week’s after we found out my wife was pregnant, we secured preferred gmail email addresses (with multiple variations using her first and middle name, depending on what she wants to go by) and a Facebook account. None are active right now, but we’re wondering whether to active her Facebook account and manage it for her in these early years. We post all these photos with her in them but we don’t tag her and what’s the fun in Facebook if you don’t do that. And who do we let become friends with baby? Just our friends? If she starts liking a certain brand of diapers or a stuffed animal, should we try to seek out their fan page or Facebook identity? In all seriousness, we did read up on the debate happening online on the line between transparency vs. privacy. When we post pictures of our children, do we only allow certain friends to view the content, do we open it up to all our friends or to the entire world? What is paranoia and what is unsafe? When do children get to manage their own digital identity? Lots of questions in this new world where we feel compelled to share content (embarrassing photos and embarrassing home videos) that 5 years ago we’d keep much closer to us.
This is a bit further away for my wife and I, but I’m sure there will be a day when a site like digitalparents.org (a site that is dedicated to “making sense of how young people use the web”) will be great reading for us.
So What’s the Verdict?
I think technology has enabled a lot of neat things to be possible as a parent but also introduced us to some of the ills of society that we’d probably rather have been ignorant to, but this is the world we live in. It’s highly connected and inter-related. The reason I can find such great advice and content for parenting in 2009 on babycenter.com is because other parents are transparent about their own experiences. But the same technology that makes that sharing possible strikes fear into other parents about posting details about their adorable baby online. As a first-time parent, I’m going to continue to contribute and share, but cautiously. That’s not to say I’m not going to post a gajillion photos of baby on my Facebook, but I’ll definitely be careful about what all I post and who I accept friend requests from.
Lots of things to get excited about and worry about, but at this point, two months in, I’m just focused on smiling a lot at baby, burping and changing blow-out diapers. And of course, taking lots and lots of pictures.
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Recently, I’ve taken on a few clients for which raising money online is a big part of how they operate. And while most organizations we’ve worked with and have seen out in the marketplace have long understood that an online strategy is an important part of growing their donor base in today’s philanthropy world, just a select few are doing really innovative things in the space.
Here’s a short list of unique tools brands are using to connect with donors in new ways.
1. Online widgets/microsites that encourage interaction and competition
Online widgets have become a powerful way to connect with your donor base and give them a different way to participate in the cause than your typical donation page. We had the opportunity of working with an extremely well-known brand like the Salvation Army to develop the Online Red Kettle during their Christmas campaign in 2008. The campaign is idle now until the holidays ramp up again, but this past year was an incredible success. The keys to why this worked so well included its seamless interface, the ability to share news about the online red kettle easily from the site itself, and the competition it drove by highlighting the top teams and individuals.
Here’s what the site looks like now:
2. Smart website improvements that engage donors minds and hearts to where their dollars are going
We often see philanthropy websites built on a template that looks like every other donation site out there and has very little unique content. In a world where you’re competing for the limited dollars out there, we believe the keys are to create engaging experiences on your website and give the potential and existing donor a glimpse into where their dollars are going. There are a couple of examples of website that are doing a great job of this – one of them being my alma mater, Emory University and their capital campaign, called “Campaign Emory.”
Instead of a canned website, they have developed a unique look and feel and addressed the unique needs of touting the reasons to give for various schools within the university.
Another example of a philanthropy engaging donors through smart website improvements is NothingButNets.net, an organization dedicated to raising money to send anti-malaria bed nets to Africa to help prevent malaria, the leading killer of children in Africa. They’ve developed online game called Deliver the Net and an Interactive Net Distribution Map. The online game, while simple, is a fun way to get immersed in the experience of participating in the cause.
And the interactive map gives you the feeling that it’s real time and things are happening in Africa right now. Both engage potential and existing donors like few philanthropic organizations do on their websites.
3. Leveraging social networking for transparency and cross-platform sharing
This last one should be obvious. Social networking and philanthropy seem like the perfect match. But it isn’t as easy as developing a fan page that links to your donation page and waiting for the dollars to pour in. The most effective ways we’ve seen philanthropies use social networking is to leverage the transparency it offers and make it easy for users to spread the cause. The Humane Society has done quite a bit in the social networking space and has over 100,000 fans.
They utilize their page to share news stories that would be relevant to their audience as well as setting up events in local communities that users can RSVP to. Social networking is also the platform where users can easily find out pretty much all they need to know about the cause, through its Facebook page, Twitter feed and YouTube channel. There’s obviously much more happening in this space, but the Humane Society is one good example.
As innovations keep expanding the power of online, particularly in the mobile space, we hope more philanthropic organizations pursue these new methods of reaching potential and existing donors. The old rules of direct mail and cold calling may not go away anytime soon, but peoples’ taste for receiving those kinds of communications look like they’ll continue to decline as their receptivity to new and innovative ways of communication increase.
Consider the growth in e-commerce on mobile devices – already popular in some European countries and Japan, it seems like only a matter of time before it becomes commonplace here (remember a few years ago when it was hard to fathom entering your credit card information into a computer?) When that shift happens, philanthropies would be smart not to ignore this trend of people making these kind of financial decisions on the move. Other cutting-edge trends that philanthropies would be wise to keep an eye on:
- Facebook Causes: While these primarily bring in supports but few dollars, this is certainly an area not to ignore for general awareness of your cause and possibly in the future, as a regular source of donations
- Location-based social networking: Partnering with new social networks that find like-minded people near you geographically, philanthropic organizations could quickly put together events that bring these people together to support the cause
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“There’s an app for that.” In the past few years, Apple’s iPhone has popularized the term “app” among the masses. And these days, brands are beginning to find innovative ways to deliver compelling content or sponsor compelling content as it relates to their brand.
While much of this activity is happening on Apple’s iPhone using the App Store platform, the space is about to get big. Very big.
Growth in Smartphone Market
Before we get into apps, consider the exploding smartphone category in general. Smartphones account for only 11% of the world’s mobile handsets and is still less than 20% in the U.S.; however, in a Gartner report that just came out on Wednesday, worldwide mobile phone sales decreased 6% in Q2 2009 from Q2 2008 – in the same time period, smartphone sales surpassed 40 million, representing a 27 percent increase.
And analyst firm Ovum predicts more future growth for the smartphone category: it’s expected to continue by nearly 20 per cent over the next five years, with smartphones accounting for nearly 30 per cent of the market by 2014.
In the same Gartner report, surging iPhone sales helped Apple increase market share among smartphone makers in the second quarter, jumping to 13.3% from 2.8% a year ago. Apple is now closing in on BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion, which has 18.7% share and ranked second in the smartphone category. Nokia, the category leader has 45%, but that’s down 3% from a year ago. These numbers also do not take into account the iPhone 3GS launch that happened a few months ago. That’s expected to change things in a big way for Apple when those results come out later this year.
So we get it, smartphones are here to stay and are expected to grow market share considerably over the next few years. But what about the potential of apps?
Growth in Apps
In addition to the App Store, Google’s Android and Blackberry’s own app stores, as well as others like Palm and Nokia have all launched recently, some just in the past few months. As you might already know from the ads Apple has run, the App Store vastly outnumbers the other two by huge margins.
Apple app store:
35,000 apps
Android market:
3,200 apps
Blackberry app world:
1,000 apps
But with recent Apple app store controversy combined with the growth in adoption and use of these other stores like Android, Blackberry and Palm, the entire category is exploding with growth. An industry analyst expects that smartphone downloads from all app stores will reach 6.67 billion in 2014.
Apps for Advertisers
So as marketers, consider how your brand can work in this space, and not just on the iPhone. Ask your agency to provide their POV on if apps make sense for their brand and on which platform. If you have a target that you think might skew toward a platform other than the iPhone, do the research and find out which platform they do use more often. Then look at what kinds of apps make the most sense for your target. Most of the buzz in the app space has been around games and entertainment apps – expect that to change as these other app stores continue to grow and more business users adopt the iPhone.
And be inspired by what the trailblazers have done in the space – explore the successes of Kraft’s iFood Assistant app and google what Levi’s Dockers did with their shakeable ad and Charmin’s sponsorship of the SitOrSquat app. Or go out and find your own!
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Recently, I was tasked with helping one of our clients understand what independent films were doing to promote their film via their website. At first, I thought “no problem” and began with a simple google search. As you can see, that search didn’t pan out too well – and neither did variations of it. I also tapped some of our secondary research resources, but most of them talked about how much the big studios were spending on websites for Harry Potter 6 and Bruno. I needed the independent film perspective. But even the big independent studio film sites weren’t much help: for example, nearly all the films on Magnolia Pictures’ site were on the same template, and not a very good one at that.
My next direction was more fruitful. I found all the film festivals happening right now and went down their nomination and award list. While many of them don’t have a web presence at all, I was pleasantly surprised to see some neat things that some films are doing to promote themselves, often on what we know is a small budget. Here’s what I found:
Judicious Use of Video
Films like Wah Do Dem engage the visitor immediately with the trailer for the film, using an integrated flash player, vimeo player or even YouTube. Gone are the days where you can find out everything about a movie except for the only thing you’re really interested in – the trailer. Other indie films like Big Fan also put the trailer for the film front and center. I also noticed more films including short videos from the director, teasers and other things you might traditionally see as a DVD extra.
Tying to a Cause
This isn’t so much a trend in film websites as much as it is just something films are thinking about early in the process. Films like Flow and The Cove make “taking action” a big part of the web experience. Often, these are prominently featured on the film site and then link out to a full-blown “activist” site where people can dive much deeper into the issue at hand.
Links to Social Media
This was the big surprise for me. With Flixter’s Movie app on Facebook being one of the most popular (over 17 million active users), you would think that independent films would be all over the social media front. Unfortunately, it’s utilized by only a select few sites. But the ones that are doing it are promoting their social networking links prominently on their homepage. Films like Burma VJ, More Than a Game, and We Are All Precious all take advantage of the power of social media.
So at the end of the process, I was able to help our client understand the space, learn about some of the most effective tactics independent films are using on their websites, and as an extra perk, experienced some websites that did their job – I think I’m going to go see Burma VJ!
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Most of you reading this blog have heard of the Cannes Film Festival and the Cannes Lions – the international advertising festival.
Fewer of you have probably heard of the Cyber Lions, which were launched in 1998, focusing on interactive advertising. For years, this part of the show was relegated to the early part of the week, living in the shadow of TV commercials.
Much has changed since those days. The award night has been moved to be more accessible to more attendees of Cannes and most of the seminars in the last couple years have been focused on digital, with talks being led by Twitter, Razorfish, AKQA and Digitas, all interactive-focused shops. More integration with digital seems to be a reality in today’s Cannes.
Speaking of integration – compared to previous years, this year’s Grand Prix winners are more holistic, integrated campaigns rather than the digital-only executions that tended to win in year’s past. In fact, Lars Bastholm, president of the Cyber Lions judging jury says: “Digital no longer lives in a vacuum, it is integral to larger campaigns and this [campaign] is a great example of that,” referring to Tourism Queensland’s “best job in the world” campaign. He adds, “Digital tied everything together. There was a minuscule budget but it became a global campaign. Digital [allowed it to] blow the budget [in terms of impact].”
Let’s take a closer look at these three Grand Prix awards and what made them so successful.
Tourism Queensland: Best Job in the World
In the interactive campaigns category, Tourism Queensland and their agency Nitro came up with “the best job in the world” which got quite a bit of press for its website promoting this job opening and the applicants it attracted. The person selected for this job would get paid $150,000 to live on an island and blog about their experience there. Yep, that’s it.
They drove traffic there in a very nontraditional manner – newspaper and online classifieds treating this job just like any other on places like monster.com and the big newspapers of the world. They used an almost satirical teaser video that got distributed to news outlets, garnering over $100 million in media coverage with a campaign budget of only $1 million. Their YouTube contest attracted over 35,000 submissions, the bulk of which were surprisingly serious.
Unfortunately, the contest has wrapped up now so you’ve missed your chance at the best job in the world. But the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef have not stopped here – they’ve leveraged the buzz they’re still getting from this campaign by featuring the personal blog of Ben Southall, their winner, as well as putting him to work starting July 1st, where we’ll all get to see what the best job in the world is really like.
Fiat: Eco:Drive
Fiat and AKQA won in the online advertising category for their eco-campaign called Eco:Drive. Seemingly inspired by the data-driven revolution occurring in the mainstream consumer’s life, proven by the success of Nike+iPod running system and the hybrid cars that track your efficiency as you drive, Fiat made the investment to integrate “Blue&Me” technology that allows drivers to transfer their driving information via USB thumb drive to their computer where they can analyze their driving style. The website then dissects the driving style and offers custom recommendations on how to improve fuel efficiency. In a beautifully illustrated interface, Fiat also gives you results of individual road trips and tips on the optimal way to shift gears to maximize efficiency.
Like Nike (but on a much larger and costly scale), Fiat made a commitment years ago to open up its in-car diagnostic information not to be a black hole only to be accessed by expensive dealer service bays but by the average Joe. Then they realized that conveying that information via online would be the most user-friendly and engaging platform to build a relationship with their customers.
The Dark Knight: Why So Serious?
In the viral advertising and marketing category, Warner Brothers and 42 Entertainment built a campaign to hype “The Dark Knight” film, called “Why so serious?” It not only involved nearly 30 microsites that got people talking and interested in the world of Gotham, but also integrated an online alternate reality game as well as live events all over the world. People came out in droves to see the bat signal placed on buildings in New York and Chicago, tens of thousands showed up across the national to march with Harvey Dent signs and shout campaign slogans, and many more were sent on a hunt across the world using GPS coordinates for bowling balls left by the Joker.
This campaign attempted (and succeeded) at creating an alternate world where people could feel as if they were citizens of Gotham – through participating in real-world events to visiting the campaign websites of Harvey Dent or the Gotham City Pizza website. This resulted in over 10 million unique participants online and nearly a million in real-world participants.
As you’ve just seen, these Cyber Lion winners aren’t just microsites anymore – they are simply great ideas with digital playing an important role tying components of the campaign together. As our industry evolves, look for more smart, integrated campaigns; no longer treating interactive as an add-on but rather as a foundational piece.
Want to see more stellar, integrated, interactive work? Visit the Cannes Lions website and see the rest of the winner.
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Any Facebook user these days (which is pretty much all of us now) knows how potentially annoying apps can be. From biting vampires to “what literary time period are you,” we’ve all seen our fair share of apps we wonder why our friends use. But is that all Facebook apps are about? Just fun and games?
Well, not quite. Facebook apps certainly do attract the crowd of folks who are looking for some fun (Solitaire and Mindsweeper must have started to get old), but there’s a huge number of apps that have a somewhat more noble purpose for existence.
To get started, point your browser to Facebook’s Application Directory.
Click on the “Most Active Users” tab and you’ll see all of Facebook’s apps based on monthly active users.
Here’s a list of the top 20: (as of May 15)
Living Social: 31.7 million monthly active users
RockYou Live (formerly Super Wall): 20.3 million
Causes: 14.7 million
Movies (Flixter): 14.5 million
We’re Related: 14 million
Top Friends: 13.3 million
Texas HoldEm Poker: 12.2 million
Pet Society: 10.8 million
Mafia Wars: 10.5 million
Music (iLike): 8.8 million
Zoosk: 8.5 million
Birthday Cards: 7.9 million
Pass a Drink: 6.9 million
Slide FunSpace: 6.7 million
(Lil) Green Patch: 5.8 million
Bumper Sticker: 5.5 million
YoVille: 5.1 million
Mobile: 5 million
MindJolt Games: 4.8 million
Sketch Me: 4.6 million
At first glance, these apps seem to fall into wildly diverse categories, appealing to all kinds of niche audiences. But by digging a little deeper, we find that most of them fall neatly into categories aligned along some basic human needs. Here’s how I think they play out:
Entertainment Utility
Apps that have some basic entertainment value, typically silly games but serve their purpose. Apps that fall into this category include: Mafia Wars, Pet Society, Birthday Cards, Pass a Drink, Bumper Sticker, and MindJolt Games. These kinds of apps dominate Facebook and also have the highest annoyance-potential depending on how much of this we get in our news feed.
Texas HoldEm Poker is one of the best known apps in this category. Be careful clicking below – you might get sucked into the world of Facebook poker in one fell swoop:
Connections that Brand
Apps that connect us to people with similar interests, at the same time, branding ourselves. Think of these apps as a way to draw a picture of ourselves, or even find out what our picture truly looks like, based on the groups of people we affiliate with. Apps that fall into this category include: We’re Related, Zoosk, Top Friends, and (Lil) Green Patch. These apps don’t necessarily help us discover new things, but they do “officially” connect us in little groups to people we want to be seen as associating with.
Causes is a great example of this kind of app. I’ve pulled a screenshot of a serious one, Keep the Arts in Public Schools that has over 800,000 members, but you also have ones like “Save Water: Drink Champagne” that are more fun but also says something about the person who’s added it to their profile.
Discovery
These are apps that also connect us with others, but are focused on introducing us to new media, new thinking, new everything. These apps often use algorithms to eerily figure out what we’d be interested based on the crowd we associate with. Apps that fall into this category include: Living Social, Music/iLike, RockYou Live, and Slide FunSpace. Anyone who’s used these apps before know that you discovered something new as a result of connecting with your friends.
Movies/Flixter is one of the most successful discovery apps, particularly its movie compatibility test feature:
What Marketers Can Learn From the Best
As marketers, we should take note that none of the top 20 are created by traditional brands to sell anything. All the top apps, silly games or not, tap into our innate desire to either be entertained, to connect with others or to discover new things.
When we develop apps to drive brand awareness, preference or loyalty and want a strong, loyal base of users, remember to take a look at these top apps and not see them as just a jumble of apps with no purpose, but rather apps that meet a few basic human social needs. We should run any app we think about developing through these filters and identify which need our app would satisfy. In the meantime, try adding one of these apps above and find out which ones are most compelling to you.
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Accenture on Television’s New Era
Brian Kress
In this PDF, Accenture reveals findings from their 2009 Consumer Broadcast Survey. The verdict? TV is entering into a new era of mass-fragmentation where people spend more time watching more programs from more sources. Right now, they’re looking for ways to discover new content and platforms that allow them greater control over it.
Gen Y Aren’t the Earliest Adopters
John Keehler
When it comes to new technologies, it’s the over 35 crowd that’s adopting faster than their 18-24 counterparts. This is due in no small part to the fact that adoption amongst Gen Y is flat and saturated.
The Fiesta Experiment
Jeff Whang
Remember the Ford Fiesta? Not exactly a great reputation in America. But Ford is relaunching the incredibly-successful-in-Europe car, and betting its success on the blogs, tweets and Facebook updates of 100 people who will live with the cars and share their experiences online. And it might just work – stay tuned.
Hispanic Internet Audience Growing Much Faster than the Total
Brian Kress
This February, the Hispanic Internet audience reached 20.3 million, recording a 6 percent growth from last year and outpacing the total US population by 50%. In this release, comScore digs into how Hispanics are growing in just about every typical Internet metric.
Follow-Up: YouTube Symphony Orchestra
John Keehler
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