Marketing ‘Gangnam Style’

The ever-inspiring SheSays (Hey, sexy ladies…) invited me to talk at their latest event on the theme of ‘Women Disruptors’ – women challenging the status quo. So naturally, I spoke about Marketing ‘Gangnam Style’. Love it or loathe it, Gangnam Style is probably the most disruptive piece of communication in recent times. It’s more than a music video, it’s a global phenomenon. So I figured Psy could probably teach us all a thing or two about how to disrupt (in a profitable way). My presentation touched on three themes: 1) The underdog effect, 2) Born to spawn, and 3) Experiment to innovate. Hats off to Psy.

 

 

 

Josh Groban sings Kanye West Tweets

I’ve seen people sharing this link on Facebook and Twitter all week. Come Friday I’ve finally succumbed and clicked on it, and boy I’m glad I did. This totally cracks me up. The best viral campaign of the year so far…

Your Whopper. Your Face.

Here’s one I missed from early 2010. Every time a consumer orders a Whopper “their way”, they get their face on the burger wrap paper. Great disruptive marketing. Did it sell more Whoppers? Probably not. Do more people get the “have it your way” concept? I hope so.

Social Spice thanks online fans and bloggers

Unless you’ve been stuck in a cupboard for the last 24 hours, you would have already heard about the latest social media hero case study from Old Spice. The story so far (for anyone who’s missed it), is that Isaiah Mustafa, the man your man could smell like, has been responding directly to YouTube comments, tweets, and blog posts in awesome personalized video messages. Go to the YouTube channel to check out all the side-splitting videos. There are many reasons why this is an awesome idea, but here are just a few…

It combines great advertising with excellent writing craft.

It appeals to people’s egos.

It feels very personalised (even if it’s not directly at you).

It rewards online advocacy (to the max!) for fans and influencers (even celebrities) alike.

It has in-built talkability (people are tweeting and facebooking in droves).

It’s in real-time which plays well to the growing demand for immediacy in our interactions.

It uses social media to create a genuine two-way dialogue.

I’ll leave you with Mustafa’s conclusion to this awesome social media story. Silver fish hand catch!!

Wheat Thins rewards unsuspecting tweople

When it comes to social media, it’s really important to reward your online advocates. Well US snack brand ‘Wheat Thins’ have taken this to the extreme with overt gestures to people tweeting about the brand. Tabatha Tweeted about Wheat Thins, watch the clip to see how they returned the favor…

If this entertained you, there are more videos you can check out on YouTube here. With half a million YouTube views on this video alone, the power of advocacy and word-of-mouth is plainly evident. Kudos to Wheat Thins for making such a powerful (yet simple) social idea that people want to pass-along (I did and we don’t even have Wheat Thins in the UK!). It’s one of those ideas that makes me think…

Patrick Collister on awesome response-driven ideas

Patrick Collister bravely ventured to AMV last week to talk to us planners about awesome response-driven communications ideas. And no I’m not just talking about DM, I mean participative ideas that get people to do stuff (often sought by digital comms). Here are a few favourites of mine…

Diesel ‘Quique The Head’

Branded entertainment at its best – and it goes to show that brands can do engaging longer-form content (which isn’t achieved often!). Skip to 1.29 for “the sneeze”.  

Football Federation Australia Viral Case Study 

An inventive viral campaign which not only engaged consumers, but solved a business problem by actually getting “bums on seats”.

Toohey’s Extra Dry ‘6 beers of separation’

A contagious on-the-pulse idea that was shared and spread around the world.

Walking on water (ish)

Every day creative agencies try to make “virals”. But very few actually create content that has true pass-along value.  But Hi-Tec’s new video ‘Liquid Mountaineering’ has been attracting a lot of attention on YouTube (almost 3 million views!), and it’s definitely worth sharing.  The video description goes…

“Liquid Mountaineering is a new sport which is attempting to achieve what man has tried to do for centuries: walk on water. Or to be more precise: running on water. We are developing the sport from scratch. By accident we found out that with the right water repellent equipment you can run across bodies of water, just like a stone skimming the surface.”

The pass-along factor comes from people asking ‘is this for real’?! It’s worth checking out. Very subtle branding, I wonder if anyone will remember…who was it again??

And if you need reminding as to what a “viral” is, check out this brilliant post.

GET OUT OF THERE!!

Nowadays people like to create their own entertainment, and today this video has entertained me – it’s just a montage of people from films saying “Get Out Of There!”. Simples 🙂

It reflects today’s changing media habits, whereby we’re no longer passive viewers of content. And you don’t have to be an expert to spoof, mix, mash-up stuff. What entertainment have you made recently?

Go here to get the list of films.

Sometimes it’s just nice to share awesome stuff…

If you watch anything super-cool today, watch this. PIXEL’s is Patrick Jean’s latest short film, shot on location in New York. The really exciting thing for me is the way it bridges the gap between the virtual and physical worlds, creatively explored by fucking up New York with 8-bits creatures. Look out for classic gaming icons…

Sour – another ‘crowdsourced’ music video

Bloc Party very recently ‘crowdsourced’ their latest music video ‘Ares’ (more info here) – the video is made up of fan submitted mobile phone footage.

Today I came across another crowdsourced music video…from Japanese band ‘Sour’. The result is an amazing eye-popping video shot on a bunch of web cams by fans around the world. It’s pretty amazing the amount of work and collaboration that went into this – and the result is pretty spectacular. I think this is potentially an interesting opportunity for brands as well us bands…

Via CrunchGear.