Archive for the ‘Advertising, Marketing & Strategy’ Category
On Westfield’s Gift Card
Posted by Damian Damjanovski | Filed under Advertising, Marketing & Strategy, Web2.0 & Social Media
Okay, so first off, I have to admit, I was actually quite peeved about how all this panned out, so yes, this post will be slightly biased due to my anger towards Westfield about how they conducted this campaign.
There’s been a lot of back and forthing on the internets about whether this campaign was total spam, or whether it was just so awesomely virally successful, that none of us want to admit it.
I’ll try and cover this off as logically as I can in my furore.
1. Is the idea bad?
No. Hell no. The idea is great, I mean, who wouldn’t want to win a $10,000 shopping spree at the expense of Westfield! To enter all I need to do is click a button?!?! EVEN BETTER. I have to admit, I was tempted to click on the button to, you gotta be in it to win it and all that jazz. The campaign idea is a great one, it’s using a widely accessible platform, at the right timing, with some good media spend behind it.
2. Is the execution bad?
No. Well, ‘no’ except for one thing. You see, the execution on a whole is fantastic. The app is built well, the competition mechanism seems pretty solid, it all fits together quite nicely and everyone involved should pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
Except for one thing.
Why, oh why on god’s earth did you have to make the entry requirement a pro-forma status update? Yes, it does contravene the Facebook policy, but the real question is why is it against the Facebook policy.
Here’s my thoughts (Facebook hasn’t commented on any of this, so this is all my assumptions based on my knowledge of Facebook functions).
Most competitions of this nature (the ones that convene to the Terms of Service that have been put in place for a reason) require you as the user, to become a Fan of their Page. Becoming a fan of a page puts you within the FacebookDM reach of the brand’s page (i.e. they can message you through Facebook whenever they like) and allows the brand to go through the demographics of their fans, as well as specifically target Facebook ads to not only fans, but friends of fans.
So there’s heaps of benefits to the brand involved, yeah?
From the user perspective, if a hundred of your mates decide to all become fans of a particular page, then Facebook does you a solid and aggregates that information into a single Newsfeed line item.
The same happens for Events (so if 10 of your friends are going to a party, it’ll say “Damian, and 10 other friends are attending blah blah”).
Same happens if y’all join a group.
You know when it doesn’t happen. When you update your status, Making a Wall Post, or Uploading Photos. Unsurprisingly, these are all activities which are specifically sighted in the Facebook Terms of Service for competition mechanisms.
In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo.
View the full guidelines on Promotions here
http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
The point I’m getting to here, is that there is NO reason that Westfield and M&C Saatchi/Mark couldn’t have run the same campaign, with all elements the same, but made the condition of entry not a status update, but rather becoming a Fan on the Page.
If Westfield have (as they’ve stated) “worked closely with Facebook” on this Application, then Facebook needs to be much clearer to users (who helped guide much of the new Terms of Service) about when Facebook will happily break the rules for advertisers. And if they haven’t, then Westfield needs to fess up that it may have made a mistake, and may need to revisit how the entry mechanism works.
For what it’s worth, I think the campaign is a great idea, and was executed well, with a very good promotional incentive. I just think it would have succeeded just as much (if not perhaps more) if it didn’t use Status Updates to enter, and didn’t piss off so many people by doing so.
Cheers.
Note: Yes, I realise I am a marketer, and that much of this may seem “ironic” coming from somebody working in this industry, but I definitely think we as marketers needs to understand that there are lines that we’re not supposed to cross. Social media is still developing, and doesn’t have the legislative framework that surrounds SMS or email marketing, but we do have a very clear set of Terms by which we’re asked to adhere. We should try not to cross those lines.
I fell in love at the Apple Store
Posted by Damian Damjanovski | Filed under Advertising, Marketing & Strategy, Tech
It continually amazes me the level and extent to which people go to of their own accord to express their love for the Apple brand, it’s products and it’s stores.
This is really the kind of stuff other brands just simply dream of.
Below is an impressive little Hiphop piece which is about a dude who fell in love at an Apple store (and the video appears to be filmed in the Apple store, although the audio seems to have been dubbed after the fact).
Enjoy
Microsoft entering Social Media Monitoring space?
Posted by Damian Damjanovski | Filed under Advertising, Marketing & Strategy, Web2.0 & Social Media
According to TechCrunch Microsoft will soon be launching a real-time social media monitoring product to be called “Looking Glass”.
Microsoft is far from being the first company to try and capitalise on the desire of brand managers and marketers to know what’s being said about them in the social space and across the web, but they may be the first to actually have the resources, know how, and influence to be able to do it really really well and get some major market traction.
AdAge seems to have spoken with some peeps at Microsoft and gotten some decent details on where the product is currently at (Proof Of Concept stage) and when we can get our mitts on it (first testers will receive access at the end of this month, by invitation only).
Microsoft’s own advertising blog mentions the product, and it seems Looking Glass will collect information from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and a bunch of others. Sentiment tracking on the data seems to be included in the plan, but little detail is available as to what other features and filters will be accessible. So it seems for the moment it’s a wait and see kind of thing.
I for one am looking forward to see what Microsoft develops in the space, as there’s a need for some of the big dogs (Microsoft & Google) to get behind doing some Social Media monitoring stuff to add some validity and measurable value to the space.
Basic concepts of Copyright you should know
Posted by Damian Damjanovski | Filed under Advertising, Marketing & Strategy, Web2.0 & Social Media
Okay, so this has been quite a pet peeve of mine lately, and I thought it time I write something about it and vent with the world in the hope of getting it off my chest.
The topic of concern here, is copyright. More specifically, the use of copyright images. Even more specifically, the use of copyright images by marketing folk and the like in their presentations at conferences and seminars.
Now, much like most of you no doubt, I’m not trained in the legal profession, nor do I claim to be in any way, shape, or form and expert on the matter.
One skill I do possess however, is the basic ability to read and interpret language. With this skill I’ve managed to amazing things in my life, one of those things, is read the Creative Commons website and their different Licensing schemes. From reading their website I have been able to deduce, that the aim of Creative Commons is to simplify amazingly complex and dull legalese into an easy-to-understand and even simpler to use structure for licensing your content to others (and obviously, to use others’ licensed content).
So simple is their system, that the entire license can be summed up by a few simple pictographs, which quite easily represent the entire concept behind the licenses. I would reason to argue that a child, once taught the four basic license concepts, would be able to remember the symbols associated with each and recall what license it represents.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Creative Commons, I’ve outlined below what the license types are:
Attribution
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
Share Alike
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
Noncommercial
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.
No Derivative Works
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
With these four being pretty much the only combinations of license you can have, it all seems pretty simple right? If I share my work as “Attribution + Share Alike” that means you can do whatever the hell you like to it, as long as you acknowledge me as the creator, and if you create a derivative work, you do the same. Simple!
So my question is, why whenever I go to a fancy marketing or related event/seminar/workshop/conference/forum/breakfast/briefing do I find myself staring at a collection of images that are clearly sourced from Flickr, and quite often with the Creative Commons mark still on them.
To clarify, Flick allows users to opt to use Creative Commons, but by default gives a users photos a © All Rights license. Which means, without the express permission of the creator, you cannot use that image for commercial purposes.
But some users decide that they do want to use the easy-to-understand Creative Commons license. And so, next to their work, you will often see this image.
So, what does this mean? Well, as you can see, there’s the little “man” icon, which means you have to attribute who it belongs to. And the dollar sign crossed out, which means you cannot use that image for commercial purposes.
Hopefully, this little lesson has been helpful to all those folks out there who are blatantly stealing other peoples work and profiting from it, because that’s exactly what happens when somebody has specified in their license that you may not use their work for commercial purposes, and then you go ahead and include it in your powerpoint presentation anyways, because you just “really really needed a photo of a 18-year-old japanese girl laughing while talking on her mobile phone” and there was no other image out there. Perhaps you could instead contact the license owner and actually ask them if they’re okay with it? Or better yet, actually pay for images from services like iStockPhoto which are designed to help independent photographers and creators to actually make money of their work.
Another rant was written by my good friend Steven Lewis over at his blog on this very same topic, and he probably said it much better than me.
Note: I just wanted to clarify in case anybody out there did pose this as a question – Using an image protected by Creative Commons in your Presentation against the specific license is a breach of copyright if you are presenting in any commercial capacity, including for your job, as a consultant, or to a group of individuals who may be potential customers/clients.
