Category Archives: Strategy

Old Spice reveal: Fabio challenges Isaiah

Posted on July 26, 2011 | 1 Comment

It seems like I and a lot of other interweb folk have been truly had – see my last post. In a very clever way W+K and Old Spice are pulling our leg: Fabio, the usurper of the scented throne has been copying the famous Responses with mixed results. But now is throwing down the gauntlet, challenging Mustafah to step up.

Respect to the creatives for reinventing the game and playing with social media in a new way. Because naturally Mustafah accepted the challenge and there will be a showdown.

As you can see from the Mexican wrestling-style announcement, it will be hand to hand combat in the bath (mano a mano in el bano). I am expecting a duel of wits, long flowing hair versus presidential abdomen, taking place in the ‘Internet Arena‘.  It is about to go down in a good 7 hours (high noon EST in the US). Now ask yourself, who do you want to win ?

Addition:
The rules of this video combat are easy. Go here and by watching, sharing, commenting and tweeting the support-video of either camp you contribute to the outcome. My choice is the incumbent, no surprise there.

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Posted in Advertising, Social Media, Strategy, Video

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Connecting the dots

Posted on March 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

Tonight I walked past a billboard that made little sense to me. I couldn’t get my head around the combination of image and headline, simply because I hadn’t seen the accompanying television commercial. Out of professional interest I caught up with said TVC and now understand the still image taken from it, the one that eventually became a print ad. Some people are unhappy about the ad. But irrespective of its quality, there will be many more people ‘not getting the connection’. And they won’t bother finding the missing link.

AAMI Fair ad

AAMI Fair ad (image by You Are Doing That Wrong)

My point is that consumers have become so skilled at avoiding our ads that we can no longer assume they will connect the dots in our campaign. One execution is all they might ever see. At the same time we need to fill a lot of new and diverse touch points with our creative idea.

connecting the dots

'Teeth' by Thomas Hawk

What does this mean for the production of our creative idea? Naturally we want to keep its integrity and at the same time stay flexible on where it’s going. So we should produce it in one go and at the same time give it room to move. Crafting a spectacular film for TV does not exclude a second crew filming the same talent for Facebook or YouTube. Adding a green screen to photo shoots creates new options for print and online. Automatically record all your Twitter conversations and you are building a database that can later be harnessed for PR.

So let’s keep the creative production ‘open’ and thereby make every execution fit nicely into its environment.

This post also appears on the blog of our new MOJO website.

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Posted in Advertising, Strategy

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Facebook mythbusting by SOAP

Posted on July 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

This SOAP presentation is currently going gangbusters on Slideshare and deservedly so. All points are valid and true, my favourites are 2, 4 and 9. Actually, I regret not having written something like this earlier, as our hands-on experiences are very similar to theirs. Oh, and on the same day Amnesia have posted a story from their P&O cruise ship facebook page. It is unusual to see such a steady stream of posts, continuous threads of comments and obvious community feel to a group of facebook fans.

Reminds me to share. more. knowledge.

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Posted in Social Media, Strategy, user generated content

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Content Strategy towards a semantic web: data for living a summer lifestyle.

Posted on July 6, 2010 | Leave a comment


Rachel Lovinger from Razorfish gives a good overview over how content strategy helps “machines get what we are talking about and searching for” – my 5-second definition of the semantic web.

The semantic web of XXXX ?

Our work for XXXX is all about publishing interesting content, revolving around living the good life, using all of the brand’s sponsorships such as V8 racing XXXX Angels or Rugby League as assets. Earlier in the year I have commented on this Bannerblog “brands going social” post by Ash from Soap on the underlying strategy.You can also have a peek at our case study on it:

We are already connecting XXXX’s output to supporter blogs, facebook pages and other publishers of similar content, establishing connections, collaborations and traffic/consumption/engagement with a mutual benefit. Which together with our SEO is hopefully creating a small semantic web for XXXX.

Now in conncetion to Rachel’s presentation: I wonder what a piece of semantic web for the Australian summer life style would look like? The government of New South Wales has recently held a competition around applications that use freely available data to foster better community life. So XXXX’s service could possibly provide a holistic data view on where high quality of life can be achieved = affordable, sunny, peaceful and with an option to go fishing, surfing or having a beer with your mates!  Admittedly, it is only a sketch and a simplistic set up, considering Australian real estate prices even a dream scenario. But with something along these lines XXXX could the enabler of said service, being utility and brand experience in one.

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Posted in apps, Strategy

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Advertising agencies on Facebook: do you practice what you preach?

Posted on May 26, 2010 | 7 Comments

At Holler we started redirecting all visitors of our company website to our Facebook page. While you can still access our “regular” site (moved to an “On Holiday” address), most visitors stay on the facebook version. Even people without a facebook account (a.k.a. 0.23% of Australia) can see the customised tab we built in FBML. I was recently interviewed by the editors of SHIFT! in Japan on this topic and thought it might be interesting to hear other people’s experience and opinions. Here are a (very few) places and activities I stumbled upon:

International

  • AKQA and Big Spaceship are very popular (in number of fans) and spread lots of case studies, job news, awards and thoughts this way
  • Razorfish/NeueDigitale in Germany (one of my former work places) is very chatty and shares 3rd party links
  • R/GA use it a lot for recruitment and conference & media appearances
  • SapientNitro post work and industry news from any of their many offices

AU / NZ

  • Resn distributes their many award and job news
  • Digital Eskimo and Visual Jazz mostly draw their blog feeds into their  (non vanity URL) pages
  • Bullseye are either heavy on the BBQ or Blackmore’s news
  • Circul8 also redirect their URL and run a similar gamut of posts to Holle
  • Pusher run (against FB guidelines) as a person rather than a page
  • RMG Connect had integrated Facebook Connect on their playful “regular” site (unfortunately now dissolved into the video-laden JWT site)

Surprising is that many international networks don’t seem to do anything on FB or when they do have a page take it to any interesting level. I would like to do a quick survey of AU/NZ agencies on Facebook. Which ones do you value and became a fan of? What are success criteria, do you think you would “buy” fans through FB-ads and promotions? What is the best tonality for clients, talents, employees alike?

Here is my bit about “Holler’s what and why on Facebook”

Holler on FB

Holler on FB

Background:
In my experience agency websites are a one-time affair for users. Even your own clients never return to check up on your latest and greatest work. This leads most agencies to start putting out a newsletter, and it is uncanny how soon those slow down to a trickle and get abandoned. At Razorfish/NeueDigitale I started a podcast which died an unceremonious death after one episode (doesn’t really qualify as a podcast really). The NetX newsletter was dumped after three issues. A newsletter suggests that all content has to be fairly significant and important to the business of the reader. Internal culture and social news hardly feel appropriate – which is strange because creative agencies’ reputation thrives on how much extra-curricular and non-commercial things go on. And it is an important decision factor for talent as well as clients.
Facebook on the other hand is a place where the private and public sphere mix harmoniously, where social and commercial infos can blend in one stream. Holler has been servicing different brands in Facebook for 2 years now and 2 of our staff are full-time content and community managers.

Strategy:
Since we can communicate more often about all aspects of agency life in Facebook and because we know how to move in this space, we decided to redirect hollersydney.com.au to our Facebook page. Any visitor is welcome to still check our “regular” site onholiday.hollersydney.com.au

Execution:
We built a customised tab in FBML displaying a little time-lapse film of our studio, 4 pieces of work and a bit of the usual “This is us” copy with a hint at getting in touch or (dare we say it?) “become a fan“. (Note to self, the line”click that Fan button” should say “LIKE” by now).
This is the page that every new (non-fan) visitor of Holler would land on. Updates happen naturally on the Wall, if a post needs more links, space and integrated media we use our customized Tumblr blog.

Results:
Since we switched to a Facebook page the amount of fans and job applications from talent have steadily increased. We can stay in touch with this growing audience on an ad-hoc basis, in a casual tone and without worrying if messages fit a certain category. It is hardly an accurate measurement but we believe that our rating of second hottest digital agency in the region is also a result of more people staying in touch with our work as well as culture.

Addition (29/07/2010):
Geekvertising collated a list of the likes/fans of UK and US agencies split by networks. I reckon it is time to ask the people running these page for a more qualitative analysis, using the amount of interactions per post, photos, intervals of postings and so on. Admittedly, the effects of these pages on the agencies might only be supported by anecdotal evidence (e.g. better qualified applicants).

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Posted in Advertising, Strategy

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