Archives for July 2013

July 19, 2013 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

5 Things For July 19: Sharknado 2, Cheerios & PBS

Not to pat ourselves on the back, but this week’s collection of online marketing news stories that you might have missed is totally rocking. Don’t believe us? Then by all means, read for yourself — and feel free to post your favorite stories of the week in the comments section, too!

1.) Cheering for Cheerios: The biggest non-troversy of 2013 might be the Cheerios ad which featured a mixed race family (and drew criticism from, well, morons). The comments got so out of control on YouTube that the video was removed by Cheerios. Cheerios fired back by essentially keeping the ad the way it was and defend its casting choices. Now a viral video featuring kids’ response to the commercial has single-handedly shut the whole controversy down with brilliant wisdom like “Some people just fall in love like that” and “Underneath it, you’re literally the same. You have organs and a heart.” Score? Kids: 1, Bigots: 0.

2.) Shanghai Surprises: TimeOut’s Shanghai edition actually wanted to have its cellphones stolen. The magazine placed cellphones all over the city and the lucky thief who swiped the phone got a first-class tour of Shanghai. From fancy dinners to crazy old jazz hotels, these lucky thieves scored more than just a lame phone, while TimeOut got to show off its legendary tour guide skills.

3.) Bring on the Clam Kings: A reality show about a family who tans together? Another about Long Island gardeners? What’s this world coming to? Fortunately, those shows are spoofs. A series of very funny fake commercials for Clam Kings, Meet the Tanners and Long Island Landscapers are part of an online campaign cooked up a New York PBS station. These videos are done just right and almost convince you these horrible shows might exist.

4.) Follower Frauds: Ever wonder how small companies wind up with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers seemingly overnight? This interesting post by PCWorld has all the dirt on the folks who buy and sell Twitter popularity. A must-read for Twitter marking specialists.

5.) Sharknado, Sharknado, Sharknado: This beyond awful, made-for-television movie, which aired on July 11, has us all still yammering about Sharknado. An instant camp classic (thanks in large part to social media), Sharknado will now have a sequel to be released in 2014 and SyFy channel is asking viewers to help name it via Twitter. Our faves so far? “The Wizard of Jaws,” “Sharkpocalypse” and, of course, “Sharknado 2: Sharkalanche.”

July 18, 2013 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

‘Save Walter White’ Saves Digital Marketing

Just when you think the creativity well has run dry in the world of online marketing, a fast-thinking brand comes up with something truly clever. The brand in question is AMC. This should come as no surprise, seeing as how past social media and digital campaigns for The Killing, Mad Men and The Walking Dead are the jaw-dropping kind of originality we marketing types gnash our teeth over and whine “Wish I thought of that!” Yet an online campaign for Breaking Bad might be one the best examples of digital engagement we’ve ever seen from the network.

When we last left the meth-cooking world of Breaking Bad‘s Walter White, things didn’t look so good. Although things in this darkly comic show never look great, the mid-season finale that ended with Walter’s cancer accelerated and the authorities moving in really painted a bleak picture for our favorite anti-hero. Yet AMC and the National Cancer Coalition have found a way to turn Walter’s misfortune into something great for real-life cancer patients. Save Walter White is an online campaign supposedly started by his son on the show, Walt Jr. Back in October 2012, AMC turned Walt Jr.’s website from the show into a reality and posted a real-life “Save Walter White” site. It looks and sounds like a fundraising site created by a teenager with phrases like, “This surgery is the one chance there is to save his life. And we can’t afford it. And every day that goes by is one less day I’ll have with him.” Upon first glance, the site is merely a clever promotion for the show.

But the website goes way beyond just standard TV show promotion; when sympathetic visitors to “Save Walter White” click on the designated “click here to donate” button, they are directed to the National Cancer Coalition website’s Breaking Bad page, where fans really can donate to the worthy cause of beating cancer. Since October, the site has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars — and we’re excited to see how much more it raises when Breaking Bad returns in August.

This dual-purpose promotion is pretty darn clever, but we want to hear from you, readers: What online marketing campaigns have made you say, “Wish I thought of that?” Sound off in the comments section!

July 18, 2013 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Use Your Powers For Good: Fighting Online Negativity

With a week of depressing news and a never-ending supply of online haters, it seems like negativity is just part of the Internet game. We blog creation ninjas and social media experts are told we should just learn to get it over it or go work in another field. But is that the only solution? Can our brand’s positivity thwart the mountain of nastiness that exists online?

“The world has gotten too mean for me, it’s just too bitchy. All the websites and all the blogging and all the people giving their opinion and their hatred… it’s all so mean-spirited, it’s all so critical,” says actress Mary Louise Parker who says online negativity is a big reason why she’s considering giving up acting altogether. “It’s sport for people, it’s fun to get on at night and unleash their own self-loathing by attacking someone else who they think has a happier life — or something, I dunno,” she said in an interview with news.com.au.

Looking at our newsfeeds on Monday morning after the Trayvon Martin verdict, it’s hard to argue with Parker’s logic. It felt as if nobody had anything positive to say, so they decided to spew their crap online.

Yet we in content marketing land might have a solution. Every good blogger and SEO nerd knows that a constant flow of new and dynamic content creates more links to our brand and helps boost our Google rankings. So when you think about it, there’s no reason that this branded content can’t add something positive to the online conversation. In other words, create posts that mean something. (Spammy, robot-written posts, by the way, fall under the category of Internet garbage, too.) Teach your readers a new skill. Give them a clever solution to a common problem. Inspire them with art, quotes, design, humor and memorable writing. After depressing events, challenge your brand to push out positive social media posts to brighten your followers’ depressing newsfeeds. Your brand can stand out for offering something brilliant, hilarious or unusual (and not for being an Internet dumpster). Maybe choosing to create fun-to-read and fascinating posts won’t save the world — they certainly won’t cure the Internet of hateritis. But it can’t hurt either.

July 17, 2013 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

How Many Views? Facebook Will Never Tell

Facebook marketing experts, even the ones who aren’t also paid advertisers, know something regular Facebook profile owners don’t: They know how many page views they get. Thanks to Facebook’s analytic tools, branded page bosses get a pretty good idea of how many folks visit their pages on a daily basis. Brands of any size can use these helpful guides to see which Facebook posts were fan favorites or which ones were fails. Yet why can’t your mom or that guy you went to high school with have access to the same type of information? Buzzfeed wondered the same thing, and now Facebook has chimed in, too.

A blog post from Buzzfeed’s Charlie Warzel entitled “The Number Facebook Doesn’t Want You to See” explored the possible reasons Facebook won’t let non-page administrators have access to analytics tools.

“Sure, there are indicators,” Warzel writes. “‘Likes,’ comments, and shares are the currency of social media and offer positive reinforcement to let you know if a post has resonated with others (and to keep you coming back for more). The only problem with this feedback, according to a new study, is that it doesn’t tell the whole story — in fact, it tells very little of it.”

Warzel goes on to quote Stanford assistant professor Michael S. Bernstein, who notes, “When you post on a social network, it’s almost like trying to give a presentation from behind a curtain. You know who’s invited and supposed to be listening, but you don’t know who is actually there in the room.”

Warzel then mentions that these data do exist, but that only Facebook and its advertisers have access to it. To be fair, however, so do small businesses or anyone who runs a page. Lars Backstrom, a Facebook news feed engineer, called the article “just plain wrong” and claims that after extensive research, Facebook concluded, “people are way more interested in seeing ‘who’ liked their posts, rather than just the number of people who saw it.” Backstrom says if enough users had wanted or asked for number of page view, Facebook would deliver it.

But let’s hear from you readers: Are you interested in knowing the page views of your personal page? Or are you done with Facebook and all of its analytics? Tell us in the comments section!

July 15, 2013 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Blog Like the Big Brands: New Belgium Brewing

Every Monday, we showcase a different big-time brand that has mastered the art of branded blog creation. From Coke and Levi’s to McDonald’s and Target, our weekly post looks at how mega-companies use blogging to help increase digital presence while enriching the brands’ narrative. Today’s case study shows that blogging can be an equally powerful tool for new and/or expanding brands like New Belgium Brewing.

While not in the Coors or Budweiser league in terms of size, New Belgium Brewing is a beer manufacturer with a passionate and dedicated following. The makers of the incredibly popular Fat Tire attract a younger, hipper crowd than those older, buy-what’s-on-sale beer drinkers. Therefore, blogging makes a lot of sense for the company. With over 400,000 fans on Facebook and 138,000 on Twitter, New Belgium doesn’t mess around when it comes to digital. The posts on The New Belgium Brewing blog speak directly to the brand’s cool, goofy, 20-something beer guzzling demo. Lots of moustaches, several silly outfits and a ton of wild and crazy company-sponsored events are the kinds of things readers will find in nearly every post. True, your brain won’t explode with new facts and information. But this is a beer blog, for goodness’ sakes. This blog is less about product information and more about the people who have a fun time enjoying the product. New Belgium’s “Relax! Have a Beer!” attitude sells the blog (and beer) in a few well-executed posts.

The brand’s use of humor, photos and focus on lifestyle are tips that the right company can really rock in a blog. But what we found to be inspiring here is how a lesser-known brand wisely employed blogging to help even more folks find them online. Many emerging companies make a big mistake by solely focusing on social media and ignoring blogging. With new online videos and commercials, it makes a lot of sense for New Belgium to use blogging to help round out the company’s digital campaign.

As we like to remind our readers, blogs are SEO gold in content marketing; each post you write with your brand’s attitude and persona will help more folks find you online. So get out there and make the kind of moustache-sporting, ridiculous-costume-wearing content your readers will certainly love.

July 12, 2013 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

5 Things for July 12: Daft Punk, IKEA and Facebook

We hear you off in the distance spouting off questions like, “Who sings that song in that commercial?,” “Those condoms say WHAT?!?” and ” What do you mean there’s another new search?”. Well, our five things you might have missed list has the answers to your questions and so much more!

1.) Facebook’s Graph Searches For Fans: On Monday, Facebook expanded the beta version of its Graph Search, enabling U.S. Facebook users to perform wider and more specific searches (while giving Facebook potentially millions more in ad dollars, natch). Graph lets users not only find their friends and family members but also the products or pages they’ve “liked.” The tool, although applauded by marketers and advertisers, is already under fire by pretty much everybody else. Says Max Wolff of Greencrest Capital, “Graph Search could be the stalker’s utility of the millennium, so the risk is that people start getting reached out to, and if some nontrivial portion of higher-income consumers jack up their privacy settings, Graph Search goes from good idea to big problem lickety-split.”

2.) “Lucky” for Durex: “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk is surely one of the biggest party anthems of the summer, and condom manufacturer Durex is capitalizing on the song’s success. “Get Lucky” condoms are being shipped as collector’s promotional items to retailers and entertainment VIPs. So obvious — but incredibly well-played, Durex.

3.) Now Hear This: UHAC (Union Hearing Aide Center of Canada) has come up with a really cool viral spot that claims to be testing your vision but is actually a hearing test. It’s informational online video creation with a clever and entertaining twist.

4.) A Doll’s House: From inside your ear to inside a doll’s house, we present the latest IKEA ad to get thousands of hits on YouTube. Sure, the doll is kind of creepy, and sure, the IKEA message of how organized your life could if only you use its oddly-named line of products is a well-worn one. But the Elayna Boynton cover of Aretha Franklin’s “One Room Paradise” is so darn good it almost doesn’t matter.

5.) eBaby: Busy marketers who hand baby their iPhone might think twice after reading this hilarious story. A 14-month-old girl accidentally bought a 1962 Austin Healy Sprite on eBay while playing with her daddy’s smartphone, making national news this week. At least she has fabulous taste in cars.

July 11, 2013 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

True Confessions: Can the Viral Video Confessional Work for Your Brand?

In an era rich with fake body parts and CGI effects, who would have thought that the biggest trend to come along in online video creation would be the truth? That’s right — we, the YouTube watching public, can’t get enough of folks venting their problems, telling off their boyfriends, confronting celebrities and generally speaking their minds in confessional viral videos. The recipe for these videos is a simple one: Add one YouTube poster with a chip on his/her shoulder, place in front of a video camera, stir and enjoy. The simplicity is almost embarrassing, but clearly it’s effective and incredibly popular. So we wondered, would folks actually watch branded confessional videos or does having a company behind them sort of defeat the whole purpose?

The power of the confessional video hit a fever pitch a few weeks ago when the world discovered a little video affectionately known as “It’s too damn hot.” The video features a woman who is fed up with summer’s insufferable heat and is filled with one liners now popping up all over your friend’s Facebook feeds. This world-class rant was removed from YouTube due to language, but lives on in social media infamy. It isn’t hard to see why. We responded to the video because the woman said what many were thinking and because she was talking about something timely. Without using expletives involving the Devil’s nether regions, every brand can tap into this kind of frank and funny talk as long as it is timely and stays true to the brand’s general messaging. Confessional videos are also widely used to talk directly to a celebrity or organization like this viral hit from Jim Parsons of television’s The Big Bang Theory. Brands can use this style of confessional video to talk directly to consumers and followers about new products or exciting news happening at the company.

Like all successful viral videos, confessional videos resonate because they feature content we relate to. Speaking the truth and speaking directly to viewers is an incredibly powerful way to deliver messages of all varieties. Popular confessional videos do share some commonality that is helpful for brands to remember. Keeping these videos under 3 minutes (1 minute and 30 seconds seems to be the real sweet spot) helps keeps viewers engaged. Also, while the confessional should be spontaneous and real, make sure you have a general plan of what you want to talk about before you sit down in front of the camera. Finally, remember that you can be real and honest without offending or blabbing on incoherently. Nothing turns viewers off faster than a brand that doesn’t know when to shut up.

July 10, 2013 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Nobody Likes a Twitter Bot

“Engagement!” is what social media marketing experts preach to brands when they first hop on sites like Facebook and Twitter. If a company isn’t engaging with its followers, then it really is wasting its time. For the first time in history, companies have a chance to talk directly to customers from all over the world and are eager to cash in on this opportunity. However, engagement can seriously backfire when a company doesn’t actually care about engaging with followers and instead relies on robotic arbitrary messages. Just ask Bank of America.

The much-criticized Bank of America certainly didn’t make things easier for itself this week when a series of tweets with a Twitter user named @darkmarkh went from bad to worse. After being chased away from police for making a chalk drawing in front of a Bank of America, @darkmarkh hopped on Twitter to vent about the company. The official Bank of America Twitter account quickly responded… by asking if @darkmarkh needed help with his account. The BoA Twitter account went on to ask other tweeters who hopped on the “bash the bank bandwagon” if they, too, needed assistance. “We’d be happy to review your account with us” and “I work for bank of America. Anything I can do to help?” were the sort of “responses” the series of extremely critical tweets received, clearly proving no human being was behind Bank of America’s Twitter account. Yikes.

While the series of tweets between robot bank and angry tweeters is comical (the whole thread can be seen here), there are some incredibly valuable lessons here for Twitter-for-business novices. First off, engagement on social media only works when both sides are actually human and really involved in the conversation. (Side note: You don’t have to be on auto-pilot to be robotically engaged. Live humans with lame responses to tweets are almost worse.) Also, knowing when to respond and engage is Twitter 101 but something even the big dudes screw up. Obviously, @darkmarkh was looking for a fight with BoA. By properly gauging what kind of conversation your followers are looking for, you can then choose whether to engage — again, a task made easier when you’re human. Lastly, figure out why you’re tweeting. If your brand is just on Twitter to be adorable and make hilarious remarks, fine. Many do it and are successful. But if your brand is really going to take and respond to customer complaints on Twitter, then you have to be prepared to answer questions in real-time with real people.

Archives for July 2013

5 Things For July 19: Sharknado 2, Cheerios & PBS

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‘Save Walter White’ Saves Digital Marketing

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How Many Views? Facebook Will Never Tell

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Blog Like the Big Brands: New Belgium Brewing

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True Confessions: Can the Viral Video Confessional Work for Your Brand?

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