ToddCop's Now Wait A Minute

So often we have a great idea for a campaign, but the questions inevitably comes down to “How do we make sure it succeeds?”

The same was true for French division of Amnesty International and their recent drive to collect signatures civil rights abuses by military forces. This year the organization decided to turn each signature into a note of an ever-expanding song so that authorities could actually hear the scope of the protest.

That’s a great idea. They even got a famous Israeli musician to create the song. But how do you get the message out for people to join the effort without investing heavily in advertising?

The answer here, and so often overlooked in many campaigns, is to take the message out of advertising and engage the audience in a more organic fashion. When are you most focused on the nature of a song? When you can’t name that tune.

Amnesty International partnered with Shazam, the wildly popular mobile app that listens to a song and identifies the name and artist. Sometimes Shazam can’t work its magic. But rather than delivering its standard error message, in this case it delivered a powerful call to action:

“Valentina Rosendo Cantu could not make herself heard either. Assaulted by soldiers, she asked for justice but the authorities refused to investigate.”

With one click users could add their names to the petition. And click they did.

More than 257,000 (and climbing) signatures were gathered, a 500% increase. The resulting song was made into a CD that Amnesty International now distributes.

It was a great success, not only for the protest, but for Shazam too. While some TV ads have linked to the app for marketing efforts, this program demonstrates the utility of the program as a gateway to extended communication.

Here’s a video case study of the Shazam extension. And you’ll find the supporting web site here. But be warned, it opens with a rather unsettling animated video message.

Think forward a couple years. Is it possible your debit card will be from the Facebook National Bank? What about that proof of insurance in your car, will it be from LinkedIn National?

Laugh if you will, but there’s good reason to see banking and insurance in the near future for social network. Gartner Research analysts dig in deep on the possibility in their industry predictions for 2012. Actually their prediction is that at least one of the social networks, likely Facebook, would be active in the financial services field by 2014.

So what’s going to move Facebook from global water cooler to financial services giant in just two years? You. Well, actually you and the other 800 million users who are laying bare your lives.

You can’t be surprised, are you? How many bankers would kill to know when their customers have a baby, change jobs, get married or divorced? What insurer wouldn’t want customers to waive their hands up high every time their life situation changed, they moved or started thinking about a new car?

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There’s a battle about to break out and it will rage behind your back. Actually just behind your head shot, on Facebook.

If you haven’t made the jump yet to the new timeline format profile, what are you waiting for? Aside from the visual difference between the old profile and new photo-intensive design, the new layout represents a fundamental shift in how you project yourself.

Until now Facebook has been about a snapshot in time. What are you doing now? What did you snap a picture of last night? What topics/pages do you like? Sure they were archived, but really the past was lost. There was no context.

Welcome to the new profile

Now you have a canvas on which to tell a much richer story. And it starts with a big 310X833 pixel cover image that goes behind your head shot. For now, most people will put a pretty picture there, maybe from a vacation or some idealized scene. (If you want to get creative here’s a handy guide.) But that won’t last.

No, it is only a matter of time until the brands you love will recognize that you’ve got something they want. You’ve got a billboard where you can profess your passions, and they want in. [Click here to read the rest of this post]

Weh-Ming Cho and his 11 horsepower snowblower of ecstasy.

It’s the biggest blight online, dull boring copy. Let’s face it, you may watch a half-dozen videos a day, if you have lots of time to kill. But you’ll read thousands of words, maybe tens of thousands and little if any of it will do anything more than lull your brain into a coma.

So let me share with you how to make your copy jump off the screen and give the reader’s grey matter a big wet sloppy kiss.

Start by selling a snowblower. You don’t have a snowblower? No problem, let’s take a look at how one Canadian went about selling his on a northern version of Ebay.

Weh-Ming Cho, a resident of Moncton, New Brunswick (think far, far north east) could have snapped a picture of his snowblower, dropped in a few specs and slapped on the $900 price tag. Instead he wrote this: (The post is 800 words, you can find it here. I’ll share some highlights.)

Do you like shoveling snow? Then stop reading this and go back to your pushups and granola because you are not someone that I want to talk to.

Let’s face it, we live in a place that attracts snow like Magnetic Hill attracts cars, only that ain’t an illusion out there. That’s 12 inches of snow piling up and, oh, what’s that sound? Why it’s the snow plow and it’s here to let you know that it hates you and all the time you spent to shovel your driveway. Did you want to get out of your house today? Were you expecting to get to work on time? Or even this week?

-snip-

Here’s the deal. I have a snow blower and I want you to own it. I can tell you’re serious about this. It’s like I can almost see you: sitting there, your legs are probably crossed and your left hand is on your chin. Am I right? How’d I do that? The same way that I know that YOU ARE GOING TO BUY THIS SNOWBLOWER.

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Getting a little confused, and annoyed by the 4G hype in commercials by cellphone makers and service providers? Wondering what the fuss about 4G really is all about? Here’s a piece I wrote a while back that tries to put it all in practical perspective. I share it here for de-mystifying value ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Picture this, some time in the not distant future you’re walking down the street of a in a foreign city, your cell phone extended in front of you like Sherlock Holmes holding a magnifying glass.

Across the screen there are pointers identifying the landmarks, translations of the signs, ratings of the local restaurants, and a video feed of your friend who’s been here before pointing out where you want to go, and avoid. Welcome to the world of 4G in the not so distant future.

“In the past we talked about going online. It used to be an actual activity,” said Charles Golvin, a principal analyst at Forrest Research. “No we won’t go online, we will always be online. With 4G we will have a broadband connection with us, all the time, no matter where we go.”

In October 2010 nearly 250 luminaries from economics, public policy, the private sector and elected office gathered in black-tie attire at London’s Museum of Science. They gathered to honor the recipients of the Economist Magazine’s coveted 2010 Innovation Awards.

Steve Jobs was honored for advancing consumer products; a chemist was lauded for devising a way to recycle billions of pounds of plastic. But it was the last prize, the Reader’s Prize, which focused not on accomplishments, but potential.

The Reader’s Choice Award went to 4G, the next generation of cellular networks, for it’s potential to “change society drastically,” Economist editors said. Futurist Alex Lightman, who first preached the value of 4G in 2002, was asked to accept the award.

“I’m going to time travel to 2020 with all of you and tell me what happened,” Lightman told the audience. “We did it! We connected 6 billion people at 20 bits per second, everywhere in the world. We created a productivity singularity. We enabled complete global connectivity, interoperability and adaptability, so that any one can buy, sell, loan or swap with anyone else… In 2020 everyone is above average compared to the dark ages of 2010.”

What is it about 4G that has created such lofty expectation?

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When did it become okay to lie in ads? I’m looking at you Nissan and your new “fictionalized” ad for the Frontier pickup truck. Shame on you.

Suddenly the car maker is no longer encumbered by the actual capabilities of their vehicles and feel empowered to create commercials with the truck performing heroic actions. Maybe you’ve seen the commercials where disabled jet liner lands its front wheels in the bed of Nissan that races to the rescue.

Click to see commercial

Never mind that the truck would have to be going more than 200 mph, and the massive weight of the jet would crush the truck which is rated to carry only 1,500 pounds.

A Nissan spokesman explained to The New York Times that the commercials are meant to “position the Frontier as a midsize truck that acts more like a full-size.”

“In order to get the message across we showcased the vehicle pulling off impossible feats, all in order to recapture the attention of the active and adventurous midsize truck audience.”

In other words, they lied. [Click here to read the rest of this post]

Ah yes it’s that time of year again when pop culture, holidays, and marketing collide in a whimsical bloodbath. But if you look closely, beyond the blank eyes and bared fangs you’ll find a great example of how to tap social media to advance your message.

I am talking, of course, about zombies. Yes, those brain-dead, flesh-craving former friends now out to turn you into meal. Aside from wandering the streets moaning and looking for a meal it turns out they are kicking butt in the online world.

This weekend the AMC kicks launches the new season of Walking Dead, the new pack leader for zombies. Couple that with the approach of Halloween and you’re bound to be sure to see a lot of references to the undead.

Being undead seems to be all the rage, but why use it as a hook for marketing your brand? Maybe that’s because the zombie phenomenon has taken on a life of its own, pardon the pun. It’s something we discussed here a year ago. And the fever has continued unabated.

Just ask the big (tasty) brains at Oxford University.

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Dear coffee shop owner,

I watched you try to kill your business today and couldn’t help myself from eavesdropping. As I sit in your mostly empty shop I couldn’t help but think about what a great little location you have, right on the main drag in a hip new mixed-use neighborhood, up the street from the theater, across from a major grocery store. Indeed, you have some good foot traffic, as evidenced by the dozen or so people who came in between 2 and 3 p.m. today.

But you probably missed that as you were head-down in deep discussion with the rep from Delta Sky Miles trying to sign you up for a $5k weekly commitment for their email program. You were concerned about the cost vs. the return of the program. Yet you’ve paid no attention to harnessing all that you already own to drive more business. [Click here to read the rest of this post]

There’s a certain weightiness of the phrase terminal velocity. It sounds so final, like the next step stop must be doom. So imagine my surprise as a teen when I learned it really means the limit of how fast something can fall, more or less.

But the phrase remains one of my favorites, and it has taken on new life for me in the world of marketing. I am convinced there is a terminal velocity of any marketing message, which I define as the fastest a message can spread before the inherent meaning is lost.

For example, Just Do It, has taken on a life of its own, but at some point it stopped being just about Nike shoes. Hell, it’s now even the title of a book about a couple having sex for 101 days. That point was its terminal velocity. To be sure, Nike continues to benefit as the Just Do It phrase spreads, and countless attorneys are making a mint with trademark enforcement. But as a drive to sell Nike product, the phrase has hit the wall.

So what? Well, think about it this way. You are playing the social media arena because you want to get more bang for your buck. Ideally your consumers will drive the marketing for you, increasing your reach while reducing your expense. Have you ever paused to consider how successful you can afford to be? [Click here to read the rest of this post]

There’s some crazy crap happening in marketing world these days, with snake oil salesmen falling from the woodwork offering their services to companies trying to crack the social media nut.

A former colleague told me her company was shelling out big bucks to some self-proclaimed expert who’s scintillating insight was to use social media monitoring to see what people were saying about the brand. This genius actually wanted the client to write his proposal because his time is too valuable to do anything for free.

Igor Beuker went even deeper into this emerging world of madness with a great post on the Viral Blog dissecting the weirdness in this space where companies tend to either relegate social media to interns or let themselves be held hostage by assholes. He notes that CMOs trying to do right by their brands are encountering a brutal sellers’ market if they want to hire an expert and arrogance if they seek assistance from a so-called social media agency. He notes that many of these agencies are refusing to participate in pitches, instead picking and choosing what clients they deem worthy of paying their bills.

All of this poses more than a passing interest for me as I ponder my next career move. After 14 years working for advertising agencies I find myself disheartened by the lack of desire to truly create value for consumers online. Perhaps the solution is in the world of public relations agencies, where substance is as important as style. Or maybe it’s time to work directly with clients, helping them find the valuable content lingering in their halls that social media demands. [Click here to read the rest of this post]