The FCL trophy

A congratulatory letter and some goalie gloves (for those who don’t know why) accompanies the parcel, sent to Suarez’ club Ajax Amsterdam in true Chaser-style. How good would it be to see the delivery recorded! Dear FCLsters, two requests: please put a modified version of the letter up on your facebook page so we can all re-post it on Suarez Cheatbook page. And secondly, this re-purposed Nike of a trophy needs a name!

I am sure other players like Christiano “Colt Playces!” Ronaldo will give it their worst for this honour as soon as 2012.

Sizzle was a massive collaboration of agencies such as Holler and creative local inviduals. And happened to be a massive success, with many registrations coming in at the last minute. A couple of weeks later the council where I live organized a similar event which semi-failed: calling a council telephone number to have your name put down on a list that closed 3 weeks in advance of the event just wasn’t working for too many residents.

So now Darryl is talking to councils, sustainability organisations and influential people across Australia to make this modern garage sale a national event. Rachael Botsman from Collaborative Consumption who recently gave a TEDx Talk in Sydney is already on the steering committee.

Get in touch on the Sale Trail site and talk to Darryl if you are able and willing to lend a hand.

I mean, I am pretty sure she has a real name but to most of her 717,026 subscribers she might be “CommunityChannel” or “Miss CC” for all I know. OK, I realize I am sooo behind and have now checked and paid a bit of attention – her real name is Natalie Tran and she has her own Wikipedia article.

Anyway, props to her for producing this great series of entertaining videos and racking up 267,717,726 views at the age of 24. Her trajectory reminds me of Dave King‘s idea of starting a “Social Media Stars” agency – or as he put it, “those people out there with an audience and a bunch of distribution mechanisms already built-in”. I wonder how far that scene has progressed.

Natalie Tran

Nat might have a proper agent or she may not. Anyone worked with her already? Or have you met any interesting social media celebs lately? And with that I don’t mean gurus who expressly “practice social media” instead of just doing interesting things.

Reminds me to share. more. knowledge.

I’ll tell you a secret: I was getting a bit bored by the Digital Choice columns. Bored by descriptions of uploads, downloads, widgets, gadgets, tweets and posts followed by a screenshot. The latter usually small in size and framed by a browser, making the work appear complicated and even a minimalistic layout look cluttered. I don’t mean to attack any individual of the previous authors, more the format. Hasn’t digital matured enough to now debate the idea rather than the execution?

A Digital Choice column on AdNews

So this column features a campaign that is explained in five words: MyNRL makes rugby fans proud.

100,000 Australians became part of it in the space of 48 hours, 200,000 after 2 weeks with a total reach going into the millions – all boosted by a lavish media spend of zero. At the core of MyNRL lies a small facebook application that lets you do only one thing: create a personal jersey in order to back your state at the Origin games. Unite with your friends and tease your enemies. Simple as that, no fancy footwork, the thing is not even in 3D.

My NRL app on facebook

As the makers put it: “Timing was everything”. They seeded to the 16 NRL teams two days before kick off, with a single post on each of their Facebook walls. Its live game commentary made facebook punters part of the event, jump up from their sofas, sledge the opponents and show their pride.

This is all far from cutting edge stuff but it still racked up a huge score. Several details made it so compelling and (dare I say it) “viral” that the idea spread like wildfire. And it continues to do so even though the Maroons have resoundingly won offline as well as online. You might have noticed agencies hiring content and community managers – this is one field those guys would love to play on.

Before you think I am only talking about saving media dollars – I want to celebrate a beginning rather than a final result, the promise of something good to come. MyNRL has only begun because it has created a huge community in a couple of weeks.

And sponsors must be tripping over themselves to join the scrum.

Additional comment: I see plenty of opportunities to work with this community on facebook – congrats to Aden Hepburn from IdeaWorks for a project that took off like Lockyer’s 50-yard field goal in yesterday’s Maroons’ whitewash of the Blues.

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.

But this one really flattened me (in the wrong kind of way).

DM floss

FCL logo

Our friends from across the road, HOST have spared no over time to not only watch all games, but also around 20 people note and analyze with bleary eyes what goes on behind the back of the referees. Not that the guys in black are having a particular successful time anyway.

Firstly, I find agency initiatives like this are a sign of a healthy internal culture – and that builds a good reputation and attracts as well as retains the best talent.  They are doing it for fun because they love football and because it deserved to happen.

Secondly, quick, off-the-cuff projects like this (and without a real client) allow you to showcase abilities in strategy, creative, digital, social media… you choose what you want to show off in as core competencies. And apparently with 2 weeks of development time in the case of the FCL you can also prove how agile you are.

An FCL screengrab

Thirdly, you might be lucky like HOST that brands came on board once they’d built it. Skins sportswear because it fits with their brand positioning of Cheat Legal and radio station Triple M because they found it funny and appropriate for their audience.

Without any media budget the word got out through classic PR and blogger outreach – targeted football communities, influential bloggers, the Irish (as major victims of hands-on rule interpretation they were very receptive). The essential integration across platforms (Twitter, Facebook, blog) was important to distribute content, facilitate conversations, and recruit people into the campaign.

FCL on The Spoiler blog

Strategically, there’s an interesting human truth at its core. The World Cup isn’t just about the football – the cheating and (lack of) gamesmanship causes just as much conversation and discussion amongst fans, gets the public involved, and can last long after the goals have gone. How Les Bleus got through to the South Africa and how then Thierry Henry (“Hand of Frog”) and his fellow drama queens managed to implode and eliminate themselves proves more memorable than a lot of game results.

Preliminary results: 33,000 visits, 2,500 people from over 120 countries around the world playing the game, 430 mentions in social media, and some nice coverage form traditional media as well (several radio stations and The Age picked up the story). As they themselves put it: “What could a big global brand (and media budget) have done with this cheeky idea?” Does anyone know of a similar campaign going on right now?

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

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).

But help exists in the shape of limiting the visibility of updates. I had known about the feature but not used it much. So when I stumbled upon Crystal Castles and wanted to share their tour dates (the band is bypassing Down Under as many international acts do) I chose to hyper-target the update. Written in German and only visible to those Berlin-based friends I considered to be into Crystal Castles style of music.

Crystal Castles facebook update

If you want to be this flexible, the posting procedure gets a bit silly (or maybe I have overlooked a more convenient way). See below the two parallel windows that allow selecting relevant names/friends.

But to keep the value of facebook up, I fear I must not only do selective reading but also practice considered sharing. Or else I might get paid out by friends in Pringles latest social content campaign “Help the Oversharers“.