SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION

I am the first to admit that I am a novice in the world of technology. A student learning, trying to keep up with the ever changing social web sites, apps, media sites, etc.

But, I have got to admit that I am baffled. There appear to be so many opportunities and so little creative detonations. Perhaps it is because I come from a strong broadcast advertising background; but I, for the life of me, cannot understand why corporations and ad agencies are not getting on board with this evolving explosion on the net.

I found the "Old Spice" campaign to be the first and only truly unique campaign that involved the net, smart PR and conventional advertising. It actually went viral, and quickly. The team responsible for that advertising was very clever. They acted quickly and kept it alive, fun and interactive.  Wieden+Kennedy were the masterminds behind this brilliant collaboration of television spots and the integration of the web.

Here are just some of the results:

Source: Wikipedia

   

In 2011, it was announced that Fabio would become the Old Spice spokesman, leading to criticism from fans of Mustafa. This lead to a poll as to which spokesman viewers preferred. A "Mano a Mano" video was produced featuring a confrontation between the two.

he New York Daily News gave the initial ad a favorable mention, citing Mustafa's "wildly smug, cool-cat smooth dude persona" which "helped make the cologne commercial pop". People magazine's Blane Bachelor called Mustafa's monologue "sharply scripted" and his character "smug, and over the top". The commercial was a hit on video sharing web sites, such as You Tube, where it has already received over 34,700,000 views, as of 08/06/11. In June 2010 it won the Grand Prix for film at the Cannes Lions International Advertising and in July 2010 the ad won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial.

In popular culture

The spot has been parodied on Sesame Street, where the monster Grover takes Mustafa's role to illustrate the word 'on'.However, his narrations do not go as smoothly: the dropped shirt fails to fall around his neck; the clam containing the tickets bites his nose, forcing him to fling it away; and despite claiming he is on a horse at the end, he is actually on a cow. It was also parodied on iCarly, on the episode "iOMG".

There was also a parody made to advertise the 2011 film Puss in Boots.

Back in August of last year, I read this blog by Jeff Bullas, and thought - of course, the ad agencies, corporations, PR firms, etc. are all going to jump on the bandwagon. (http://goo.gl/dgcvf), but no one did. It is still a great read and it is still pertinent.

The Old Spice Campaign Facts and Figures

Here are some of the numbers that were the result of the continuous marketing campaign.

· The number one most viewed sponsored channel on YouTube

· 236 million YouTube Views

· 80,000 Twitter followers in 2 days

· Facebook Interaction increased 800% with the personalized videos (Fans now total over 1.5 million)

· Sales figures increased by 107 %   

      Now granted, it is difficult to measure ROI on a product like body soap, as it is not a weekly purchase unless you are one dirty dude, but seriously - this campaign ruled. And nothing, - not one thing, has come even close.  What does that tell us?

Conventional television advertising is dying a rapid death. DVD's, remotes, cable companies that have built in real time skipping of commercials has changed the way we have to view engaging the consumer. Perhaps there will come a day when television advertising will become live and "reality based". You might see your standard half hour television show putting all of its advertising at the end of the show - with tie in's to various social networking sites - offering 10 minutes of entertainment and incentives to get the viewer to stay tuned. An hour television show might do a 20 minute "live sponsored by" ad that commands that the viewer stay involved with incentives. Who know's?

Maybe it is time to integrate with the television shows and networks themselves? A crawl at the bottom of the show enticing the consumer to stay tuned to their commercial coming up with some kind of spectacular reward incentive? To me, the possibilities are endless...

But what I see instead is a lot of social networking talk, guru's, fake guru's, books about social media - and very little action in terms of creativity.

Yes, creativity. It seem's to be getting lost in the shuffle and clouded by the learning curve, that changes rapidly in terms of keeping up with what's hot on the net. That does not mean that there isn't room to be creative and act quickly. I have no illusions what so ever, why corporations are scratching their heads and wondering which way to go with advertising.

Personally, I think corporations need someone I will call a "Facilitator". This role would be a person who can see the forest beyond the tree's.  Even the furthest tree's, as the tree's will change almost daily. This Facilitator must have the ability to analyze the clients product, and get seriously creative about getting it and the consumer acquainted with their business. This will require working closely with their advertising agency and understanding who to outsource good creative ideas to in terms of merging conventional advertising, PR and with Internet involvement.

As astounding as it is to me, it was the Grammy's last night that prompted me to rant on here. I was on Twitter, a platform that I am seriously thinking about starting a "Rehabilitation" and/or "Intervention" venture for, as it is so satisfyingly addictive.

Throughout the show, west coasters; hell Los Angeles and Piers Morgan in particular was saying that they could not get the show live while it was being taped in their own blinking city. CBS lost a major opportunity to capitalize on a creative way to get viewers on line to watch it live. Now if CBS hasn't figured out that the net is a power house - how can one expect large corporations, and God help the smaller one's to embrace the way advertising and viewership is changing. It led to those in the know, figuring a way to pirate the live broadcast - but that's another story that should not have been an issue with last night’s Emmy's.

I believe the new emphasis must be on engaging the consumer across multiple platforms. The technology exists, there are many people equipped to help companies do this - but I just don't see it happening. It requires specialists in their respective areas to merge and not be afraid to take chances.

Well that's all for now.

Hell, I sold my product design company recently, and have too much time on my hands. I thought I would love a year off, but it turns out that I get bored rather quickly, so I have been having fun studying some of this.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, and remember, it is just my opinion, and I'm pretty new to blogging.

Best. Bonnie