Unjournalism

I’m sick of hearing about how awesomely funny the videos starring the “Old Spice guy” are, and I really don’t need to hear an update on how many bajillions of times people watch the 200-some YouTube videos. They’re very funny and clever and, apparently, effective. I get it. (If your power has been out and you have no idea what I’m talking about, BusinessWeek has a good summary of this wildly popular campaign.)

You know what I’m not sick of? Discussion of why this campaign was such a home run. I haven’t heard much along these lines, even after actually seeking it out. So here’s my attempt at filling the void.

Why did the live-response “Old Spice guy” video campaign work so damn well?

• They’re building on the popularity of a character from a successful Super Bowl ad. The creative team didn’t simply fabricate a character and hope he would catch on; they had already developed some rapport and somewhat of a personality for the character.
• The brand gave up some control. A small team was tasked with everything from monitoring incoming online messages to script writing to video production. They sat in a room and pounded these out in a couple of days. When an opportunity arises, take a team you trust and let them do what they do best. Be creative, smart and fast. Don’t bog the process down with the typical ad production run-around. This program, and others like it I’m sure we’ll see in the coming months, wouldn’t succeed without this kind of speed, flexibility and freedom.
• It’s about more than just “talking to consumers.” That’s expected these days. But when a fictional character, one with a bit of cachet stemming from a popular Super Bowl ad, talks directly to real people, that’s unique. When you can see and hear that character in a video, watch him speak your name and answer your question, it’s profoundly more powerful than, say, having a character like the Burger King or the Pillsbury Dough Boy “talk to you” via Twitter — especially when you’re pretty sure the Dough Boy is just some recent college grad who’s referred to as “the Web guy” in the marketing department because he was the only one who had a Twitter account before the recent campaign started.
• The good old ego stroke is a powerful thing. When you make a video just for Ellen DeGeneres (see above) or Ashton Kutcher (one of the most popular Twitter users), you can pretty much bank on a some extra reach for those videos. “Hey, a guy with great abs and a lot of Internet fame is talking about me! Aren’t I cool? [link to your brand's marketing messages]“
• Isaiah Mustafa, the actor who plays “Old Spice guy,” is a handsome devil. And those abs!
• The video are just plain funny. These videos aren’t commercials with a hint of funny; they’re funny with a hint of commercial. And that’s all you need. People share funny stuff. Voluntarily.

This campaign helped push this brand — which is perceived to be an old guy’s product, though this 27-year-old has used it for years — to the forefront of popular culture in less than a week. Have you started brainstorming how your brand can create some similar magic?

This post was originally published on the Fast Horse blog, Idea Peepshow

Tags: marketing, social media by Mike Keliher
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Chris Brogan pointed me to Mitch Joel’s “social media marketing best practices project.” The goals are two-fold:

• Push smart people all across the Web to document their ideas for best practices in social media marketing
• Drum up some link love for Mitch Joel’s blog (and doing so in a creative, compelling way like this demonstrates a social media marketing best practice, no doubt)

Brogan’s chosen best practice is “Learn how to listen. Simple, I know. But it’s a best practice. Here are five tools I use for listening, and here’s my take on listening to Twitter.”

Mitch Joel makes the case for consistency:

Consistency. Be consistent. In everything that you do. Have a consistent username that you use in all of your channels (mine is mitchjoel). Use the same photo, so that you are recognizable in all of these channels. [...] Don’t blast out five pieces of content or join three online social networks and fade away. Choose one, stick with it and keep at it. Be more like the tortoise instead of the hare. Slow and steady wins the race.

I could go on all day with ideas to help enlighten other social media marketers, but Mitch challenges me to pick just one. Brogan took my first idea, listening — the single most important item — so I’m going to go a very different direction and step away from tactical best practices.

My best suggestion: Spend some time getting to know people in “your community,” getting to know what’s important to them, what they talk about, what gets them excited, what you can do for them — without worrying about the return on your investment.

Don’t spend all of your time working without goals, investing time and energy without thinking about some potential return. But don’t spend all of your time thinking about ROI, either. It might be hard, but it’ll be worth it.

And really, working like this — getting to know people as people, without thinking so much about your own goals, without thinking about getting an R on your I — will have a positive ROI. So maybe I can sum up my idea in a more simple statement:

Be selfless and be patient.

(And I’m also instructed to A) point to some other folks who have written well on this subject and B) tag some folks who might be prompted to share some good ideas on the topic, so… Albert Maruggi, Chris Lynn and Jason Falls — consider yourselves tagged. You’re it.)

Photo courtesy of steefnat on Flickr

Tags: marketing, public relations, social media by Mike Keliher
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I’ve always wondered why every — yep, I’m pretty sure I really do mean every — credit card offer (“You’re pre-approved!” “0% interest!” “We’ll have sex with you if you sign up!”) I’ve ever received has come from Wilmington, Delaware. Don’t believe me? Start looking at the return address on the envelopes as they come in.Wikipedia, as usual, shines light on the subject, informing us that it’s a simple matter of a liberalization of banking laws that attracted these banks to the area.

Still, I wonder what the success rate of these offers is. I get nearly a dozen a week, and I’ve never accepted one. In fact, if I were looking to open a new credit card, I’d probably make sure to not use one of these mailed offers, just to discourage these bastards from dumping this stuff on people in future. Not that it’d have any real effect, unless…

Does anyone own www.StopSendingUsShit.com? Let the revolution begin!

clipped from en.wikipedia.org The city in the 1980s experienced tremendous job growth[citation needed] and office construction when many national banks and financial institutions relocated to the area after the Financial Center Development Act of 1981 substantially liberalized the laws governing banks operating within the state. In 1986, the state adopted legislation targeted at attracting international finance and insurance companies. Today many national and international banks, such as Bank of America, Chase, Barclays among others have operations in the city; typically their credit card operations.

Tags: marketing by Mike Keliher
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