The Digital Marketing Blog

A collaboration of Fernando Barbella:

 - Agency: Saatchi&Saatchi Frankfurt

- Client: Frankfurt Taxi Services
- Brief: to encourage people to take taxis going back home after a night of drinking in bars, instead of driving while intoxicated their own cars. 

 
 http://www.piss-screen.de/

Thanks Fer!

After our post on Friday, Mariano de la Vega sent us some words from Cannes (thanks Mariano!)

 I wouldn’t say that Argentina hasn’t obtained anything when it got two shortlists and both shortlist are the same idea played on two different ways (banner and viral video.

 Only great ideas reach the shortlist, but getting to an award, excellence in execution was expected, I can show you excellent executions (automotive) that have not reach the shortlist because they couldn’t find great ideas on them.

 It has been a very demanding jury on this edition and as proof you just need to compare the awards from 2006 with the ones on 2007, where less awards were given. I am very happy with the level and where a standard was set for the future, I think that the last period 2006/2007 has been very productive for the industry in our region that has been growing, but also around the world.

 Beyond countries, borders, agencies and networks I believe that Cannes is about celebrating the best ideas and executions without thinking about its origin. This is what makes the festival big. Awards are not given: the excellent is distinguished among the best.

 I have seen people from countries that are more developed than our region, celebrating getting into the shortlist. It was really difficult getting into the shortlist.

 I think we have to take advantage of Argentinean creatives and make the clients invest on big executions and not seeing the media only as a source when there is not budget, brief or strategy.

 This space is evolving not because of technology but because of the people that is using it. We have to understand that besides being an integrating media of other media it is a media to distribute content.

 The viral video grandprix  shows how a customer and an agency had the guts to choose to broadcast a spot that could have been done for TV, however the strategic decision was: instead of looking for the consumer I will let them come to us, choose to see us and  choose to spread the message with a relevant concept to the audience, inspiring and full of insight.

 The grandprix that won, diesel (far far Sweden) shows that it’s not a question of technology application, but that success is based on an identification of the user and the originality approaching the website.

 Maybe this is the beginning of the end of corporate sites that try to speak to the user from there own core without establishing a real conversation with the consumer.

 Lets not forget that people do not visit a website just for its good design or because they click on a link. People visit a website when there is something valuable for their own interest.

 To sum up what this Cannes edition leave us as a lesson is the value of simple original ideas that come from and insight and that they involve the user building it and spreading the message.

 In this order: Idea and execution.

MORE INFO

 Agencia Interactiva del año: AFRICA PROPAGANDA from Brasil.

 Premios IAB Argentina

You can see all winners here.

 Good for Spain for the two golds, one for Quieroverunfantasma that was mentioned on this blog and also three silvers for Brazil.

 Argentina? Very well thank you… we settle with Mariano de la Vega as a juror who anticipated that northen countries would receive a lot of awards.

I think that the viral from Dove that obtained the Grand Prix,  was really good, so much that it generated parodies like this one… 

Video day, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to Youtube looking for web 2.0 videos, I once uploaded one in the old blog.

This video has been watched more than 2.5 m times and was commented on more than 5,500, I had seen it first in a presentation of Mariela Pol at IAB Argentina workshops together with CACEM.

Imagine a brand sponsoring this video, if I were Blackberry or any other thechnology brand I would run to sponsor it.

Is the machine using us or learning from us? Is it part of the masterplan?
RETHINK OURSELVES
Do you have time for more videos?
< !– –>

Directa Networks video in YouTube went over the million views in three months after launching and it is one of the most viewed video in its category.

This was born as an experiment about what we could do with this new media and to explore other viral marketing options. Right now it went over the boldest expectations that we could have, being even linked from Japanese sites.

It is very clear that it is very complicated to forecast what will happen, who will be the target receiving the material, its impact and the public response, but on the other hand: How much are 1,000,000 spectators in an 8-minute spot (not 30 seconds) on open television? 

CTI has recently launched a TV commercial called “El tema del Verano” (The hit of the summer) that has become an excellent case of viral marketing.

Surfing through YouTube I found more than 30 homemade versions imitating the commercial “numa numa” style.

There is no doubt that in 2006 the web has become a powerful media where small contributions of millions of people participate and interact with the brands. Time Magazine, dedicate its cover to this subject: Time’s Person of the Year: You

 As the “Argentinean philosopher” Carlitos Bala used to say, you show movement by going, so Let’s Go!

This is our humble contribution to viral marketing. The best way to learn is by doing, measuring, testing, correcting and trying again.Our try outs start with the following:
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYQno94rSsw

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5PRmMqsrFA

 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2p2FkSg9Hs
 I hope you like them.

The end of the year is a moment for making reviews and retrospection. If we take a look to 2006 and we focus on what was important during this year on viral marketing, without a doubt we have to say that the impact made by YouTube is one the most relevant facts.

YouTube named by the Times as the best invention of this year, became the media to chanel million of home, semi-professional and professional  videos competing for people´s attention. If you want to watch videos 24 hours without repeating, you could spend 38 years watching YouTube without repeating a video. Just a few become relevant to million  of users. This is why is very important to understand what the audience wants to watch.YouTube is not the ideal media to advertise any product, but it is a trial lab much more real than many marketing research in which are based a lot of decisions according to what is happening to people.In the middle of year end reviews AdAge magazine listed the 10 top YouTube videos that you must see.

1 OK Go 

2 Diet Coke and Mentos

3 The LonelyGirl15 series 

4 Bank of America

5 Faith Hill loses to Carrie Underwood at the Country Music Awards  

6 Clay Aiken puts his hand over Kelly Ripa’s mouth  

7 Natalie Portman’s gangsta rap

8 Smirnoff’s

Brand is a combination of perceptions that people have about a product/service/company. These perceptions don’t mean having consumed the product. Even a person who have never driven a BMW, perceives “the pleasure of driving”. As Philip Koter says “you don’t consume a product but the image you have of it”.

  
This perceptions are built in different ways. A simple and powerful way is to create experiences. For example Disneyland doesn’t sell hotels and amusement parks, it sells a family fun experience like a lot of other brands that don’t sell the product but the experience.  On Internet through the web you can also transmit different types of experiences. Among the negative ones that all of us have suffered at one time there are: arriving to places that says “site in construction”, sending mails that nobody replies or very complicated forms that later they don’t work or nobody replies to them. A very good example of strong experience on the Internet is at www.quieroverunfantasma.com (I want to see a ghost) where several resources are used to generate a strong experience from the senses side to make an impact and after turns to personalization to generate virality.

  
Put your picture or a video to send it to a friend.

  
Another example of experience creating an experience through people’s values instead of turning to perceptions. Experience comes through channeling the commitment in something useful and cooperative at the same time (one of the basis of web2.0) ttp://www.frenaelcambioclimatico.org/ (stop weather changes)

When we talk about viral marketing we are referring to the way we make a product responsible, and not a bounce effect, of a person talking to another about this product. And what this generates, is good to build the brand and helps in a positive way position the brand in the mind of the consumer.

If the brands or the companies achieve certain relevance they are exposed to this Viral Marketing, whether they want it or not. They are always exposed to the opinion of consumers and them expressing the positive and negative feelings about their relationship with the brand. Unless the brand is not perceived at all by the client, in this case we have a greater problem.

Having all this interaction, and they being out of our control, it doesn’t mean that a brand can not have a bearing on it  and do things to improve the perception of it, accelerate the communication rhythm, facilitate the process, and stimulate the communication between the satisfied customers and find a way to reverse the unsatisfied ones.

The first step a brand manager should take is to understand how viral marketing works and the different factors that integrate the communication between users. A good start point would be ¨Unleashed the ideavirus¨, quoting Seth Goding again, it a very easy book to read, that’s been around the industry for quite some time. It was one of the clarifying contributions in an area full of confusion and that it is still preserving the fundamentals value, even though some cases are not current anymore. 
 PDF unleashed the ideavirus- Seth Godin (go to the Spanish version to see PDF) Nowadays, marketing 2.0 (Mktg20) is full of opportunities where companies can start talking to their clients, and where the can motivate the client to a be the co-brand manager of the company in its environment, where the client defines what the company communicates him, the same way he used to do it with his friends, but now, through the Internet, amplified and taken to other levels that were unthought-of of in past times.
Brands need to learn how to develop communication learning with this new media and a practical way to illustrate this learning process is what Chevrolet is doing.
 Chevrolet is asking the general audience to make their own spot and send it to them. In this first action they did it with their SUV Tahoe. The received spots have gone over the 30,000.

Although most of the videos seen are very critical and ironic, like the one talking about needing an extra salary to pay for the gasoline that this car uses or the one that alerts about global warming illustrating it with SUV images.
 

  This phenomenon allows a relevant brand to be influenced positively as well as negatively and with a stronger impact each time. It may be that the first impulse could be initiated by the consumer or the brand itself but it is critical that the brand understands how to work with it.
 

It is the consumer who shares today the position of brand manager where he can promote or punish a brand, and where viral marketing is every time more virulent and amplified. It wouldn’t be strange that in short term period we would be talking about marketing pandemic.