Getting consumers to create ads was BIG in 2007, peaking with a slew of such ads shown in the almighty Super Bowl of that year. But, it is still alive and kicking in 2008. In fact one of the Bowl advertisers that ran consumer generated fare last year, Doritos, now has claim to what might be the cheapest ad ever made.
The ad for Doritos in the UK was made for just over $12 by Matt Bowron and John Addis and isn’t half bad.
Just when you thought consumer generated content (CCG) was dead, and had just been a fad that peaked with the crappy offerings by the likes of Doritos and Chevrolet (man, that one sucked) in the 2007 Super bowl, rebel-rousing grassroots organization MoveOn.org goes and launches a call for entries for a CCG for Prseidentail hopeful, Barack Obama.
Now, remember it was MoveOn.org who launched a CCG contest around the 2004 elections called “Bush in 30 Seconds.” The goal was to explain key points about W and his policies in, you’ve guessed it, 30 seconds. The overall winner, called “Child’s Play,” was created by adman Charlie Fisher from Denver and featured young kids working crappy jobs - at the grocery store checkout, changing tires, cleaning offices, working in public relations (alright, that one didn’t make the cut) - with endline “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?” Nice. It was a great idea well produced. An entry that compared Bush to Nazi Germany had been rejected after it received complaints (from Nazi Germany).
This time around MoveOn.org are calling for entries that put the subject of the 30 second film - Mr. Obama - in a positive light in an attempt to “help him across the finish line” and win the Democratic party nomination. The panel of judges include such liberal luminaries as Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jesse Jackson and Oliver Stone and the winning ad will air nationally.
All of this leads me to wonder…
Will Barack himself have to “approve of this message”?
Will MoveOn’s move lead to a resurgence of interest in CCG campaigns?
Will the winning ad in fact be created by an adman, demonstrating once again that it’s not really consumer-generated at all, but Moonlighting Adman Created content (MACC)?
Will Hillary and McCain respond with some MACC of their own?
Will residents of Florida and Michigan be eligible to compete?
We threw Blockbuster into the collective wind years ago, along with The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Contempo Casuals. The glory days of Blockbuster are long gone…long, long, long gone. Once upon a time it was actually cool to have a Blockbuster card. That Cookie Monster Blue and Big Bird Yellow…oh, the good old days. Nobody bought movies back then, we rented them. And most of the time we rented them from Blockbuster. (Unless we wanted one of those movies..then we forked it over.) Want a relaxing night at home? You went to Blockbuster. It was a Blockbuster night, ahh.
Now RETURNING the video, that was the hard part. Who could do it on time? And the late fees! More people were in collections over those fees in the 90s than for missed car payments. (Or maybe not, but doesn’t it feel true?)
Of course that was a different time. Today, orphaned by its corporate parent Viacom, those fat late fees a distant dream, Blockbuster has become passé. Want a relaxing night at home? Now you pick up the latest DVD at Target. Or on demand from the cable company. Or if you’re cool (and you know we are), you get it from Netflix.
On one hand, the company caught up. They’ve worked hard, and invested millions, in staying relevant. Their online rental business is arguably better than Netflix’s. They’ve dabbled in digital downloads and streams. But on the other hand… Blockbuster is boring. Over. U-N-C-O-O-L. A Van Damme in a Gyllenhaal world. (Awww, poor Jake. What? Too soon)
While Netflix is on its way to becoming a verb (the holy grail of branding!), Blockbuster is fading away. How many consumers know the significant strides the company has made? And worse, do they care?
Then it happened. This week during Bravo’s Project Runway the little engine that could, did. Mr. Tim Gunn took the designers on one of his wildly entertaining and slightly over the top field trips to SPANDEX WORLD. During the field trip, the designers were introduced to the Divas of the WWE. (By “Divas” they mean incredibly terrifying women who could easily take all of Britney’s bodyguards.) Gunn informed the designers that their challenge was to create outfits for the wonderful women of the WWE – every designers dream.
In order to get a feel for the Diva’s “style” the designers ordered old WWE clips from Blockbuster! Not only was the Blockbuster envelope on the table (glorious blue and yellow ablaze), but the designers even dropped verbal Blockbuster plugs. Go Blockbuster! Blockbuster has a real chance to shed its stagnant image, to move beyond tired commercials (“Rent Over the Hedge on DVD!” Woohoo?), and make an honest connection with their present and past customers.
Blockbuster isn’t a dinosaur struggling to stay alive! Blockbuster gets it now, and gets it better than anyone they’re competing with. Let’s keep it going, buddy! Product placement is all the rage these days, but it is only one step in the giant and winding staircase Blockbuster needs to walk up.
To misquote The Graduate: “I want to say one word to you. Just one word. INTERNET.” Digital distribution is the future, and right now no one, not the Yahoos nor the Studios nor the Bit Torrents of the world have a lock on that business. So why not Blockbuster? They could even could even partner up with Time Warner and put their content on demand. (We totally need to be Blockbuster execs.) This is Blockbuster’s chance to leapfrog NetFlix in the next generation of media.
And what about social networking communities? Lets get (channel Olivia Newton-John here vi-i-i-ral! Currently there is a Blockbuster application on Facebook that has less than 300 subscribers. I know people with more friends on Facebook! (And some of them kind of suck.) This is an easy, efficient, and effective way to reach a huge, relevant, impressionable population. Build an application that allows users to compare movie tastes with friends, order rentals online, and (when possible) download/stream content. This is doable! You’re Blockbuster, you still have the money, the relationships with content creators (Studios, Networks, etc.), to make it happen.
Blockbuster needs to articulate a forward-looking and innovative message that puts the company in the future of entertainment. It just takes some smart PR, a little bit of Punk attitude and stop talking about late fees already, dudes.
Okay Punk Marketing Legion, since my last post was so looooooong, I’m going to keep this one short. I wanted to share something I came across while trolling the InterWhatever. Cooked up by German agency Jung von Matt/next, it’s somewhere between a bill board, a graffiti mural, and a really GINORMOUS video game:
Hamburg-based funny-named agency Jung von Matt/next unveiled a graffiti wall with embedded interactive qualities. (So much better than those silly walls that shout out to you in the U.S.)
Billed Nextwall, the 30m-long unit features embedded Semacodes. Snapping a pic of a Semacode with a cameraphone unlocks hidden videos, mobile wallpaper and social features, like the ability to write to friends on the wall’s “digital pinboard.”
Passersby can also download an info guide on the wall via Bluetooth. Anyone that snaps a photo of one of the wall’s characters can use it as a coupon in nearby shops.
After reading this, I got so excited (ooh!) about multitudinous possibilities for mobile marketing.
Can you imagine a scavenger hunt-type game played across a whole city (or a country) with these things?!
Graffiti laden or not, the newest interactive billboards offer wild ideas that will keep intrepid Punk marketers awake at nights. Go get ‘em.
In 1985 Coca-Cola launched New Coke to replace the original version, which had been losing market share to arch-rival Pepsi for some time.
The Coca-Cola Company’s research had showed consistently in blind taste tests that Pepsi was preferred over Coke because of its sweeter formulation and they came to the, completely logical, conclusion that if they were to reformulate the product to taste sweeter, the decline in market share would be stopped. They tried a number of new product formulas and eventually hit upon one that beat Pepsi hands down in those all-important taste tests.
On April 19 2005 the company let the media know that it would be making a major announcement on April 23 regarding its product, and Pepsi correctly guessed it would be a change in the formulation of its flagship product. Then director of Pepsico’s North American operations, Roger Enrico, gleefully took a full-page ad out ion the New York Times declaring they had won the cola wars. Neh neh ne-neh neh.
On April 23 Coke made the predicted announcement that they would be replacing old Coke with New Coke. Shares in the company went up. Then the consumer backlash started. Pesky people, those consumers. Within a few short weeks a vocal minority, who didn’t want the product they had grown up with to change, became, well, more vocal. And soon Coke headquarters was being flooded with hundreds and thousands of angry letters. Even Fidel Castro, a longtime Coke drinker, declared New Coke to be a sign of American capitalist decadence.
The protests from consumers and bottlers got too much for Coke and in July 1985 it announced its decision to revert to its original formulation, which eventually became known as Coke Classic. By the end of 1985 Coke Classic was outselling both New Coke and Pepsi. Sergio Zyman, head of marketing at Coke during that time (and still in the job when I was working there), later said: “Yes it infuriated the public, cost a ton of money and lasted only 77 days before we reintroduced Coca-Cola Classic. Still, New Coke was a success because it revitalized the brand and reattached the public to Coke.”
In other words, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s have taken a leaf out of Coke’s play book for their “Whopper Freak Out” campaign for Burger King. TV commercials and an 8-minute web film show what happens when customers in a Nevada Burger King are told that the Whopper is off the menu. The web film goes further, showing reactions from customers when, instead of being served the Whoppers they have ordered, they are given products from McDonald’s and Wendy’s.
Research from IAG Research, revealed in Ad Age today, indicate that the “Freakout” spots are among the most highly recalled ever, ever, EVER.
It’s a brilliant campaign.
I love the fact they used what happened to Coke in 1985 to create a whopper of an idea, demonstrating in the most entertaining way possible how BK customers really feel about their Whoppers (if you see what I mean).
Here’s the secret formula they used for the campaign:
Great insight derived from marketing history + big idea executed well + understanding of the media = holy grail.
