This is a very cool (marketing) act by rock act Blink 182.
It shows yet again that when a brand works with its fans rather than against them, when it respects the people who buy its products rather than treats them as if they are the enemy, then really cool things can happen for both parties!
Here's the band's spiel on YouTube - says it all really:
To launch our first single in eight years, AT&T helped us search YouTube for every instance of fans using our music without our permission. And then we rewarded them for it. This film is made out of clips from all those videos. Thanks for being a fan.
"If you talk or text during a movie, we kick you out".
The texter cracked it and left an angry retort on the cinema's voicemail, which the theater promptly used as the basis of its 'Don't text in the cinema' public service announcement currently screening before R-rated features).
By the way, at time of writing the YouTube video (below) had notched up some 350,000 views (no doubt helped along by a tweet from famed movie critic, Roger Ebert, who alone has 460,000+ Twitter followers!
N.B. if you have sensitive ears, you might like to check out the censored version (which has only 9000 views).
BUILD A COMMUNITY OF FANS - the Alamo Drafthouse has a solid following on both Twitter and Facebook, so when the boss blogged about this story (and posted the clip on YouTube) they had a ready made audience.
GIVE PEOPLE SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT - this feeds into the point above ... by creating and posting the video the theater gave its fans a reason to propel the story throughout their own personal networks.
HAVE SOME FUN - some brands might cringe at the thought of taking the piss out of a disgruntled customer, but for the Alamo Drafthouse irreverence is all part of the package, and what you see is what you get.
Annalisa plays a day-to-day role in the GM social media team while Andrea is corporate affairs manager based in South Australia and social media lead for the brand in Australia.
Rare Opportunity
It was a rare opportunity to get two perspectives 'from the trenches' - one international, the other domestic - of managing social media marketing for a major brand.
Both Annalisa and Andrea were refreshingly open with their answers and generously shared key learnings.
If you're interested in hearing first-hand how a major corporate is dealing with the challenges of social media, I think you'll find these videos of great value.
With all the noise about social media today, it's very easy to get caught up in the hype of Facebook, Twitter Foursquare et al.
So here's some sage advice for companies and organisations from the PR Warrior.
Ignore 'em!
DO NOT set up a Facebook page or open a Twitter account.
DO NOT blog.
PUT AWAY that video recorder and under no circumstances should you record a podcast or attempt to get involved in a geo-tagging service such as Foursquare.
Not yet anyway.
Okay...now, take a deep breath.
What is it you're trying to achieve from a marketing and corporate communications perspective?
Answer that question first.
Then - still resisting the urge to rush head-long into social media - start thinking about a few other 'big picture' questions:
What do you want people to think or talk about when they hear the name of your company or organisation?
What topics do you want your brand to be associated with?
What 'category' do you want to 'own' in the mind of consumers and stakeholders?
What conversations do you wish to ignite/be part of?
Content = 'building blocks'
Social media can be used for a lot of things including customer service, recruitment, brand communications and customer engagement.
Whichever way you slice and dice it, however, it still has a lot to do with content.
Think of content as the 'building blocks' of your social media efforts - in this case content could be a blog post, a free downloadable e-book, a video interview, a podcast, a tweet, a comment on someone else's blog...even a simple link.
That being the case, if you haven't thought through answers to any of the questions above, then you could be muddying the waters and not being anywhere near as effective as you could be with your communications.
Only then should you start letting the 'tools of social media trade' invade your headspace.
I love it when marketers commit to big, bold ideas. Promotional stunts that have the ability to cross boundaries are 'gold' if relevant to the brand.
This one, by Heineken, certainly fits the bill. It generated plenty of traditional and social media chatter - the ideal starting point for positive word of mouth.
It also fits in nicely with Heineken's 'Made to Entertain' proposition.
I'm not going to say anything more about it - please watch, and enjoy. Interested to hear from people whether you think it's an effective stunt or not.
Some poor dude who works at Sydney's Macquarie Bank - financial adviser David Kiely - was this week caught on television checking out several racy photos of supermodel Miranda Kerr (from her recent shoot for GQ magazine).
For those who don't know the story, Kiely's workstation was in the background of a live TV interview between one of his colleagues and Chris Bath of Channel Seven news.
If you squint, you might - just might - see Kiely in the background opening up an email and checking out pics of Kerr. At the last second, he spins around and looks into the barrel of the camera - sprung!
NOTE: we're not talking hardcore porn here but stuff you generally see on TV's Video Hits on a Sunday morning..or...the Daily Telegraph! See below...
Just wondering, if anyone at Macquarie Bank read the above issue of the Daily Telegraph while at work, would they be in trouble too? But I digress - this is not about HR but PR (I wonder if there's a HR Warrior out there?).
Okay, at time of writing, according to various sources, David Kiely is in hiding awaiting some measure of internal discipline. At the very worse, if the reports are correct, he faces the sack.
Meanwhile, Macquarie Bank has reportedly stuck to the corporate line that it "takes matters such as the unacceptable use of technology extremely seriously"...yeah, yeah.
Boring and Stiff
Looking at this from a purely PR perspective, it would seem that by putting out the regulated (i.e. boring, stiff, jargon-filled) corporate response - and then going into hiding and refusing to comment - Mac Bank has fuelled the issue.
Had the bank acted swiftly - and you'd hope that sanity would prevail and Kiely only gets a rap across the knuckles at the very worst - then the negative ripple effect ("Save David Kiely's job" etc) would have been severely blunted. As it is, all eyes - the media's and the social web - remain trained on Macquarie Bank.
The bank has stuffed up the classic PR tenet - be first to fill the page. If you don't, others will...as they have in this case.
In terms of brand and reputation, if this issue is about Mac Bank upholding "moral standards", don't forget we're talking about a company that is hardly representative of community attitudes. Remember, this is the bank that has a history ofpaying outlandish bonuses to its senior executives, to the outcry of the media and general public.
So what I take from this is that Miranda Kerr's bottom is not acceptable at Macquarie Bank, but paying the boss a $100 million nest-egg is.
"We actively think of the Macquarie Bank worker when we put our magazine together each month."
P.S. if you didn't get my suggestion re irony at the outset, it's that traditional media (TV) instigated the social media (YouTube) frenzy - albeit inadvertently. Normally these days, it's the other way around.
“You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media…The old media paradigm was PAY to play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to PLAY to play.” – Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky
An enlightening blog post highlighting the scourge of corporate waffle-speak and why those who perpetrate it should be, errr, shot. Guns at dawn anyone?
This was written in January but it's still a good piece - social media guru Jeremy Owyang has collated a range of statistics across Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc. It's a good 'social media stake in the sand' as at early 2009.
If you're interested in what's going on in New York in terms of social media, this is a good read.
The indefatigable Sam Mutimer has created @tweetupmellers, a hook-up for Melbourne-based Tweeps. Their first event was held this week - who attended? Find out here! If you haven't heard of Sam - or met her on Twitter or in the flersh, you will soon!
And last but definitely not least, Servant of Chaos (Gavin Heaton) serves us up some great excellent serious fare (Learning From Successful Blogging) but balances it with this crack-up Cup of Chaos! (See video below)
I tend to roll my eyes when companies and brands - generally through their advertising or digital agencies - proudly proclaim they're producing a 'viral video' and expect it's going to be watched by millions.
Now, there's nothing wrong with producing cool videos (or games) for the internet. Often it can be a good tactic (BMW did it successfully years ago - remember 'The Hire'?). But the number of times I've seen companies waste money on videos that quite frankly are pretty self-indulgent, well, let's just say it doesn't make sense.
Rarely can anyone predict what will 'go viral' (obviously you can 'tick the boxes' of humour/sex/controversy etc and hope for the best) - but usually, the videos that take off in a big do so because they engage the public in some way. Quite often they're raw and authentic.
Here are two examples of videos that have hit the big time in recent times. One has been a slow-burner, taking months and months to hit the tipping point while the other became an instant global hit within a matter of days.
A Lion Called Christian
The 'Christian the Lion' video was produced in 1971 but somehow bubbled to the surface some 38 years later and gone gangbusters, fueling sales of a book that was first published in the early 70s.
In short it's about two young Aussie guys living in London who bought a lion cub ('Christian') from Harrods and raised it in their home for a year before releasing it into the wild.
They returned a year later to Africa to visit Christian. Check out the video to see what happens next.
Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent
Then there is the Susan Boyle phenomenon.
The 47-year-old unemployed woman got through the first round of Britain's Got Talent in stunning fashion and subsequently has won hearts around the world for her performance on the show.
You've probably seen the video by now - it certainly cut a swathe through Twitter the other day! I can't include the video here because YouTube, for some inextricable reason, has disabled the embedding code - is this the work of the TV network, and if so, why? It's fantastic publicity for the show. Duh!
Like Paul Potts before her, Susan's video went viral extremely quickly, and then the media picked up on the story in turn driving even more interest.
Trevor Young has built PR Warrior into one of the world’s foremost showcases of what can be achieved at the intersection of public relations and social media.” - Brad Howarth, Smart Company, September 2011 More »
Recent Comments