The best of times, and the worst of times…
March 7, 2012 by
Some of my favourite advertising efforts have been born from those witty retorts to a political scandal, news event or local current affairs. Similar to newspaper political cartoons, you have to give credit to the comedic and almost knee jerk reactions to the event in question. Also, good on the clients for giving their agencies the reign for a quick turn around and a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour.
It seems Mr. Rudd gets a bit of attention in this area – Angostura Bitters on the anniversary of his deposition as Prime Minister and Nando’s on his recent bid for control of the Australian Labor Party.
And another favourite of mine, New Zealand’s Hell Pizza on the death of Osama bin Laden. Within an hour and a half of President Obama’s announcement, this press ad ran was dispatched to run in the morning edition of the New Zealand Herald.
No CommentsTop 10 Ads of 2011
January 6, 2012 byWelcome everyone to the new year!
And with a new year comes the tradition of the ‘Top for 2011′ lists. Today, AdNews announced their picks for the Top 10 Australian TVCs for 2011.
Beverage brands led the pack with ads from Johnnie Walker, Strongbow Cider, Tooheys Extra Dry and Hahn Super Dry. However the Sydney Opera House and Earth Hour also feature, along with NAB’s Unpopular, Melbourne International Film Festival’s Potato Peelers and WA Office of Road Safety’s Enjoy the Ride; there is certainly an ad for everyone. Not sure I agree with the inclusion of Coles Down Down Big Red Hand campaign but you can make up your own mind on that one!
While I do love the Enjoy the Ride ad, I have to concur with AdNews on number one, my top pick is also the Nocturnal Migration TVC from Tooheys (above). The combination of Prodigy and some cool-looking deer out on the town, mirroring a potential Saturday night for us human urbanites, makes me want to hang out with the Toohey’s Stag this weekend!
Click here to watch all of the TVC’s on the AdNews website.
No CommentsExplorer, Achiever, Socialiser or Killer: Which player type are you?
December 20, 2011 by
The creator of the very first MUD, Richard Bartle states that every gamer can be broadly classified as one of four player types. What player type are you?
Are you getting excited about discovering new areas, creating maps and learning about hidden places? Are you engaged by obfuscated achievements and love digging up for information? Then you are an Explorer. Explorer-type gamers have a drive to discover the unknown and make for the best QA testers.
Do you like gaining points, raising in levels or achieving other concrete measurements of success in a game? Do you like seeking treasures and fulfilling missions? Then you are an Achiever. Microsoft’s Xbox Live uses the Gamerscore to reward Achievers, who can get points by completing difficult “Achievements” in the various games they purchase. They can, in turn, compare themselves to other gamers from around the world.
Are you the type of player who likes interacting with other players or empathizing with computer-controlled characters with personality? Are you engaged by newsfeeds, friends lists and chat? Then you are a Socialiser. These players are likely heavily invested in online forums and social networking sites and make for the best recruiters.
Are you thriving on conflict with other players and even the computer-controlled characters? Are you engaged by leaderboards and rankings and focus on winning in direct peer-to-peer competitions? Then you are a Killer. In many organizations, the correlation between “Killers” and salespeople is obvious. Most sales organizations directly pit salespeople against each other with clear goals, and this has been gamified informally for years before the term was coined and the buzz began.
The ‘player type’ influences both how a player interacts with games and what they are looking to get out of them (beyond simply ‘fun’ or ‘escapism’).
No CommentsHow to bring players into the game…
December 13, 2011 by
…and even more important: What makes them stay in the game?
Game mechanics are rule based systems / simulations that facilitate and encourage a user to explore and learn the properties of their possibility space through the use of feedback mechanisms.
By Raph Koster in ‘A Theory of Fun’
There are many types of scorekeeping you may already be familiar with, e.g.
• Points: motivate players to participate if they have been given a reason to care about these points (example: Miles & More)
• Badges: give players a way to brag about what they’ve done indirectly and also add challenge and character to a game (example: Foursquare)
• Levels: can be tied to unlocking content on a website, or used simply as a motivational note to keep players progressing forward (example: MyStarbucks)
• Leaderboards: motivate players by trying to reach a higher amount of points or status (example: Farmville)
• Challenges: give players direction and usually implies a time limit or competition (example: Nike +)
• Progression bar: motivate user to complete task (example: LinkedIn)
Different interconnected game mechanics and reward systems make up the game as a whole. The right combination of the above leads to a successful game like Nike + which motivates its users through points, badges and challenges.
What it’s done that works so well is take something that people can find challenging or hard to get motivated for.
Nike is a brilliant example to look to for how gamification can be used to directly reward consumers with a more tangible concept, as opposed to randomly attributing points and rewards that aren’t seen as something.
Let’s play!
No CommentsENGAGE TO PLAY AND PLAY TO ENGAGE
December 6, 2011 by
Engaging an audience means getting them thinking, reacting and actively involved. It transforms their understanding and learning experience. When we are young, we all learn about the world around us through playing. If applied the right way, playing with games and simulations can be a powerful tool for engaging an audience of any age.
“Gamification is the use of game design techniques & mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences.
Gamification strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in connection with non-game applications.” Source: Wikipedia
For the best examples of gamification in today’s economy, one should look first at social networking websites like Facebook, auction sites like eBay, and other innovative online service providers like the DevHub Website Builder site, as well as games like Farmville, MyCokeRewards and MeTyoon. Using these sites and games as a blueprint to success in gamification efforts, getting the benefits of game design and customer loyalty could be a snap for any company with a creative approach.
Games are amazing – they involve their users like nothing else and in return people lavish them with their time, money and attention.
Today games represent unprecedented opportunities in experiential marketing. But why? Why to “gamify” a marketing strategy?
1. Involvement: Gamification can raise involvement by increasing site returns, new visitors and registrations through reward systems and incentivized word-of-mouth efforts.
2. Interaction: Marketers need visitors to spend time with their content and brand in order to foster engagement. Using gamification, marketers can set up the action-reward dynamic for specific engagement they want to increase.
3. Intimacy: Consumers are able to connect with a brand more intimately when they’re interacting in real-time versus visiting a static brand website. And more importantly, gamification provides a fun and rewarding environment for consumers, which often increases brand affinity.
4. Influence: Word-of-mouth marketing has taken off recently, and companies have realized it can have a significant effect on brand visibility. Gamification taps into WOM by giving users incentives to include their friends.
It’s worth remembering that, as with any new marketing or communication strategy, the audience comes first. Don’t ‘gamify’ because it’s new and cool. Do it because your customers will care.
No CommentsMarketplace for experiences
November 15, 2011 by
Recently I posted an article about online marketplaces, see ‘Baked in’ Social Media, and more specifically the movement toward using of one’s ‘real’ identity on these sites. Using the Facebook mechanic to demonstrate one’s own authenticity and therefore the authenticity of a product or service offering has, as predicted, become ‘baked-in’ and of huge importance in new online marketplaces.
A prime example is a new site called Gidsy. A “community marketplace for authentic experiences”, Gidsy allows experience “hosts” to advertise and sell unique experiences in their city; anything from a weekend living off the grid to a guide to building your home cocktail bar. Users post an event, name their fee, attendees pay, and Gidsy takes a 10% cut. By providing a reliable and convenient way for people to connect through experiences, the site provides a means to find something special and unexpected to do; claiming to be ‘a great way to make new friends, meet interesting people, and connect with them after an activity’, it is also a way for travellers to find something different to do in a new city.
Facebook comes into play if you connect your Facebook account to your Gidsy account; details are provided about which activities your friends have done and shows you the things they liked. The site places emphasis on naming (and showing the profile of) the individual organising the experience, for the obvious reason that the individual plays a large part in making the experience what it is.
According to VentureBeat, co-founder Edial Dekker says: “Individuals run the Gidsy marketplace, so Gidsy activities end up being very much about the hosts’ personalities and quirks. The experiences are better because they’re expressions of an individual’s personality and passion. Instead of attending a yoga class at a gym, for example, you’ll find an expert on Gidsy offering candle-lit yoga classes on a rooftop.”
This is certainly applicable to experiential marketing – your creative concept, design and activity could all be spot on, but unless you have brand ambassadors and staff that add to the experience, the execution will fall flat. It will be interesting to see the kind of ‘personalities’ Gidsy produces. While the site currently only has experiences in Berlin and New York, you can host an event anywhere, even if Gidsy hasn’t set up a city page for where you live yet.
I’m looking forward to seeing some Gidsy experiences in Sydney soon…
No Comments
Today (as you can see) PLAY is taking part in the 11Eleven Project .
November 11 this year gives us a date of 11/11/11 – a once in a thousand years occurrence, so the 11Eleven Project are recognising the occasion with a once in a lifetime creative project:
“As soon as the clocks in your country tick over to midnight on 11/11/11, you are free to unleash your creativity for all 24 hours of the day! If you have access to a film/video/digital camera, mobile phone, microphone, internet, or anything else that you record on and upload onto a computer, then you are invited to take part in the biggest creative project of our human history. We are asking anyONE and everyONE to take part. There are 196 countries in the world (and thousands of languages) and ideally we’d like submissions from ALL of them, although we know some may be more tricky than others – but we WILL get them.
On this day, we want you to film, photograph, record some music, capture sounds, or blog/Tweet. When we have all your submissions, which will have to be uploaded by November 22 (we’ll give you 11 days to do it, seeing as it’s a good number for us), we will then go about the long process of creating a number of awesome pieces of work. These will include a WORLD MUSIC COLLECTION, a PHOTO BOOK, and the big one, with all of the film and sound entries that we receive, we will be creating a 2 HOUR DOCUMENTARY that will show how the world lived on 11/11/11.”
So visit the website , get your phone, camera, recording equipment ready and start getting creative on 11.11.11.
No CommentsBack to basics: the rise of sustainable experiences
November 4, 2011 by
While the notion of sustainability certainly isn’t new, there are increasing numbers of small businesses, individuals, and groups who are developing experiences that inadvertently tap into sustainability and more specifically, localisation.
Sustainability as a business practice is ‘trendy’. That isn’t to say I am discrediting those corporations who have developed initiatives to support sustainable business practice, in fact I applaud them – rather with this article I aim to pinpoint the above mentioned smaller communities who (seemingly) unintentionally create experiences supporting the larger ideology of sustainability without the industry pressure to do so.
Two positions that clearly go hand in hand are localisation and sustainability. Movements like that of Slow Food or even the simple garage sale are perfect examples of this; supporting the art of making sure the actions you make today can be repeated over and over again (sustainability) and the idea of buying local along with the knowledge of where products come from and how they are produced (localisation).
A fantastic instance I stumbled across recently on Tumblr is MilkMade Ice Cream, an initiative in NYC. The founding milkmaid Diana was fed up with the lack of flavor and unnaturalness of ice cream so bought an ice cream maker, got in touch with local farmers, foraged for local ingredients and started making her own pints. Twice a month, she creates one-off, seasonal flavors that are hand-delivered to her limited membership base in NYC.
Closer to home and in a similar vein is Food Connect. Founded in South East Queensland, the organisation delivers local, seasonal produce from farmers living within a five hour radius of Brisbane who are paid a fair price for their hard work and who are encouraged to farm using the most sustainable methods possible. Additional branches have recently been replicated in Sydney and Adelaide with other locations opening soon.
Moving away from food and produce, is The Clothing Exchange, a professional swapping service that promotes the simple notion of swapping instead of shopping for a better wardrobe. Similar initiatives include online marketplaces eSwap, SwapAustralia and Oz Recycle, or the yearly Australia-wide Garage Sale Trail.
As I said while it is promising to see large organisations make a move to become more sustainable, it is equally encouraging to see communities move away from mass produced or distributed products to support grassroot movements. Making the choice to support local can be more expensive and less convenient but the experience makes it worthwhile!
No Comments4 Consumer Marketing Fallacies to forget before your next campaign
November 2, 2011 by
When was the last time you bought a product because there was equity in the advertisements key message? Or because the tone of the campaign really resonated with your frontal lobe? Let’s kick the marketing jargon and really address how consumers think.
1. Consumers think in a well-reasoned or linear way.
Often the assumption is made that consumers consciously contemplate the individual and relative value of an object and then process that information to arrive at some judgement. Of course rational reasoning is part of the purchasing decision but we sometimes forget that, typically speaking it is the emotional side of the brain, which exerts the first force over thinking.
2. Consumers can readily explain their thinking and behaviour
Ninety-five percent of our thinking takes place in our unconscious minds; this means that forces which not even consumers are aware of shape their behaviour significantly.
3. Consumers mind, brain, bodies and surrounding culture and society can be adequately studied independently of one another
In reality, consumers do not live their lives in the silo-like ways by which they are often categorised. There are crossovers – we do not all fit neatly into one Roy Morgan consumer profile.
4. Consumers can be injected with company messages and will interpret these messages as marketers intend
Consumers do not passively consume messages; they create and fix their own meaning. An ad might tell consumers that the recommended number of annual dental check-ups and reasons to visit the dentist every six months. A consumer may be able to tell this message back to friends, but they may interpret it with cynicism, confusion or even anger.
What does it all mean?
Don’t feel dismayed – it’s not time to put down your tools and stop work. Understanding the intricacies of how the consumers’ mind works is no mean feat, but there are ways to improve the overall approach. Don’t stop when you know what…find out why. The market research results might show that consumers prefer red candy to blue candy, but the really important truth to discover is why?
Gerald Zaltman provides plenty more insights in his book How Customers Think.
1 CommentYouTube 10 most watched & shared ads this month
October 31, 2011 byDo you want to know what ads people are watching and passing on to their friends?
Use this as entertainment, or as inspiration if you are thinking of making a viral video.
1. Party Rock Anthem-Kia Soul Hamster Commercial
First they drove. Then they rapped. Now they’re dancing to LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem.
2. Official Ojai Valley Taxidermy TV Commercial
Commercial created by YouTube sensations Rhett and Link as part of “commercial kings”.
3. 100 Years / Style / East London
100 years of East London style in 100 seconds.
4. Carlsberg stunts with bikers in cinema
What would you do if you came into a movie theatre and everyone there was an intimidating biker? The correct answer is to summon your courage and sit down anyway.
5. DC Shoes: Ken Block’s Gymkhana Four; The Hollywood Megamercial
GYM4 surpasses the high-production style of Gymkhana TWO with even more spectacular effects shot in the backlots of Universal Studios, California.
Filmed over the course of five days, director Ben Conrad
(Zombieland and 30 Seconds or Less) and his team at Logan deliver a Hollywood caliber production complete with pyrotechnics, massive stunts and a series of unbelievable tricks.
6. Human Slingshot Slip and Slide – Vooray
Rope + Quad + Tarp + Tube = Viral Video
Nice and cheap and has received over 3million views for clothing company Vooray.
7. Back For The Future
It was an ordinary evening at Lone Pine Mall. All Kevin Durant (NBA player) wanted was a new pair of shoes. Then the space-time continuum showed up.
Bill Hader, Christopher Lloyd, Tinker Hatfield, Donald Fullilove and KD star in a film about the most famous shoes never made, in an effort to support the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research.
8. Back to the Start
This short film / advertisement depicts the life of a farmer as he slowly turns his family farm into an industrial animal factory before seeing the errors of his ways and opting for a more sustainable future. Both the film and the soundtrack were commissioned by Chipotle to emphasize the importance of developing a sustainable food system.
9. The Force: Volkswagen Commercial
Yep it’s still going strong…
10. Byturen.com
Bus company Movia, which runs a late night bus mostly for clubbers and party folk, tapped agency Bocca to create an interactive video. At first glance, everyone looks pretty and poised — what you think you look like when you’re drunk. But on mouse over, the video changes to what you really look and act like with a few under the table.