Thomas Cook vs lowcostholidays.com

Am I the only person on twitter who thinks that it sends out the wrong message? 

So by now, everyone’s heard the story of how poor young ‘Thomas Cook’ was bullied for sharing the same name as the holiday service provider and took to facebook to try and persuade them to give him a free holiday for his plight. Thomas Cook, quite sensibly said no but were then ‘given a lesson in social media’ by lowcostholidays.com who swooped in, like one of the heroic eagles in LOTR, to offer poor Thomas Cook a free holiday instead. And making it a whole week – instead of a weekend. Heavens, aren’t they generous, like a sun-tan-providing fairy Godmother?

It’s not that I don’t like the execution - I don’t like this because I think it promotes the wrong sort of behaviour. 

Some of you may have a similar story a few weeks ago. Where a young man (names Shane Bennett) wrote to Samsung asking for a free Samsung S3 and attached a drawing of a dinosaur. Samsung politely refused with the completely understandable logic of ‘if we gave everyone a Samsung for free we’d soon be out of business’ and craftily attached their own drawing of a kangaroo to ease the poor lad’s pain.

Good for them – they stuck by their morals (and business acumen). They still managed to go viral and people praised them for their understanding reply. Months later, after the many positive responses they received Samsung sent another letter to the young man thanking him for generating them some great PR and as a bonus – a Samsung case cover with his original drawing on it. One off, individual and original, but not likely to make them look like a pushover - a good balance.

I don’t doubt that Thomas Cook could have handled this current situation better and they should have taken full advantage of the opportunity there. I also don't doubt that lowcostholidays.com did a great job in assessing their social media market and have generated a fair amount of publicity.

But for one thing, how do we know that he is actually called Thomas Cook? Perhaps, like the runaway freight train that was the Chris Moyles ‘Toby Lerone’ feature that plagued many a tv/radio presenter, there will now be a spate of people tweeting nestle and claiming to be named ‘Amile Keeway’ or Viagra producers claiming to be named ‘Drew Peacock’ in the vein hope of free merch.

Lowcostholidays.com swooping in just seems a bit desperate - quick offer him a free holiday, love me, LOVE ME! It sends out the wrong message. It reminds me of when I was a waitress at a pub called ‘The George', we frequently got customers saying ‘My name’s George do I get free drink’ to which the answer was also a polite but resounding ‘no’. But hey, it worked for Thomas Cook. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to change my name to Aston Martin…


Added note: lowcostholidays.com had to withdraw an online ad campaign last year that asked viewers if they had even been 'Thomas Crooked' which is mentioned in the above article, they were legally obliged to pull the campaign for being defamatory and breaching ABTA's code of conduct.

Chocolate Brownies: Another Baking Post

I'm deviating from current trend of ranting about advertising campaigns to share with you, a little slice of heaven - if you will. Now I've made these several times and every single time - they've gone down like hotcakes (or hot chocolate brownies).

So here I share my recipe for the best non-shop-bought Chocolate Brownies you've ever tasted. So bake, eat, sit back and watch the love come rolling in.

• 225g Unsalted Butter
• 100g Dark Chocolate
• 200g Caster Sugar
• 3 Large Eggs
• 50g Plain Flour
• 50g Cocoa Powder
• Pinch of Salt
• White Chocolate Drops

To Decorate:

• 20g White Chocolate (melted and drizzled)
• 20g Dark Chocolate (melted and drizzled)
• Icing Sugar (to dust) 

   1. Heat oven to 180c.

   2. Put the butter and chocolate into a pan and heat slowly over a small flame until it's a beautiful chocolatey liquid of goodness. Something likes this;

   

   3. Put the sugar and eggs in a bowl and mix well.

   4. Whisk the above pictures saucepan full of buttery chocolate goodness in with the less-appealing bowl               of sugar and egg mix.

   5. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and salt into the bowl, a bit at a time, and mix thoroughly. Then stir in the white choc drops.

   

   6. Transfer the mixture into a 20.5cm greased square tray (make sure it's relatively deep).

   7. Top Tip - Bang the tray a few times to expel any large air bubbles.

   8.  Bake for 25 mins. You'll know when they're done when you poke a skewer or some-such long pointy device into the middle and it comes out clean. It should however still look squidgy - means they're moist, like all good brownies should be!

     

      

Enjoy and try not to eat them all at once.

The Orabrush Story - The importance of a brilliant brand campaign.

So I first stumbled across Orabrush during my exam period - I was probably waiting to watch a video of a man laughing at a goat climbing a ladder or a poptart cat flying through space when I was made to watch one of Youtube's obligatory 'unskippable for the first ten seconds' ads. Except I liked the ad so much I watched the whole thing, and then rather than watching the video I had originally intended I watched more videos about the Orabrush and I was fascinated.

The video that distracted me so much and pervaded my waking thoughts for the next few days was 'Orabrush: The Movie'. The video dramatised the story of the Orabrush and I found the whole thing so interesting that I felt compelled to research the company. 


Like all great ideas, it began as a small marketing campaign thought up by the 75 year old inventor of the Orabrush, Robert Wagstaff, and a marketing student from a local university. It soon went viral and had 15 million Youtube views, Orabrush then went on to create more Youtube videos and even launched their own channel, which now has over 39 million views. Their campaign was soon picked up by a manager of Walmart in the local area who decided to stock their product. This then expanded from one Walmart store to all the Walmarts in Utah, and then to Walmart headquarters who asked for the Orabrush to be stocked nationally.

This, for me, highlights the impact that effective use of social media can have, Orabrush went from selling no units as a small business in Salt Lake City to selling millions of units worldwide purely through Youtube and other social media channels (they have had over 300,000 downloads of their iphone app, ‘the bad breath detector’). What had started out as a marketing campaign directed at the general public soon became an effective business to business campaign. The Orabrush story demonstrates the importance of an effective marketing campaign along with the growing power of social media and internet media channels.

Not to mention it has a guy dressed up like a giant tongue. What more could you possibly want from an advertising campaign?!

Watch the video that started it all:

Babies, Meerkats, Monkeys and Breasts - Spot the odd one out

Right it's time for a rare serious discussion.

Obviously in the digital age it’s more important than ever for brands to be seen as engaging and interactive, to be ‘down with kids’. With all the social media flying around it’s even easier for brands to engage with their customers as witnessed by facebook’s new brand pages. Social media is undoubtedly important as it allows brands to effectively monitor and respond to their customers, but I can’t help but feel that too many brands are using it unnecessarily. After all, really great brands have been around longer than the internet.

Yes it’s important to be up to date on the latest technology but many brands are using social media just because it’s what everyone else is doing not because it’s effective. For example, one of my biggest peeves is tv ad characters on twitter. I get the idea, but they’re trying to emulate the success of such massive twitter characters as The Queen or Feral Pigeon; but with brand engagement. They’re not funny, they’re not organic and they’re not effective.

 1)   Huggies – Alfie the Baby: 610 Followers

Tries to be entertaining with his cute little ‘baby waves’, however is ultimately creepy. Now it may just be me, but a baby commenting on current affairs is not my idea of hilarity.

-       Desire to have kids = dramatically reduced

-       Desire to buy nappies = none whatsoever

2     2)   Compare the Market – Aleksander Orlov: 52,604 Followers

This is slightly more entertaining with his humorous use of poor English and a little but cuter than Alfie. However this: ‘Today I bring Sergei beetle juice, I squeeze the beetles myself. I hope he enjoy.’ just doesn’t do it for me.

-       Need to correct poor English = Mild

-       Need to change my car insurance = Non-existent.

 3)   Vision Express – Bud the Monkey: 73 Followers

Again I get this what it’s trying to do, but it’s just trying too hard.

‘Just cooked the most amazing Sunday lunch. Really looking forward to eating it.’ With a link to a picture of a banana. I just did not see that coming. My sides...

-       Urge to have a banana = abnormally high

-       Urge to buy spectacles = nil

What worries me is that they are actually PAYING someone to do this. Can I be paid to do this? As apparently monkeys, or indeed meerkats can do it.

Now before you accuse me of being a negatron, I’m not. There are some truly great examples of brand social media interaction, my current favourite being Boobstagram.

Boobstagram is a french movement (cunningly) devised by two men to raise awareness for breast cancer. Simply email or hashtag boobstagram with a pic of your bra covered boobs and watch said breasts be uploaded to their website, twitter and facebook, along with MANY others. Based around the strapline ‘Showing your breasts on the internet is good, showing them to your doctor is better’, it’s going to have a certain appeal to women (and more than likely a higher proportion of men) but it’s a truly effective campaign. For one thing it’s organic – it’s not just some guy on twitter pretending to be a monkey – it’s almost completely user-created. It’s also entertaining, memorable and therefore effective.

-       Desire to upload a pictures of my breasts = unlikely.

-       Desire to show my breasts to my doctor = high.

Hobbs' Top 5 Weirdest Advertising Campaigns: March Edition

Number 5
Amour - Fantasies Happen
Agency - Dare

Advertising a pay-per-view adult entertainment channel on public television? Risky. There's nothing explicit here but plenty of amorous suggestion, portraying typical 'adult' situations but with a twist. Nothing happens. Reminding you that real-life is boring and good things only happen when they're scripted. Great.

Number 4
Huggies - Alfie the Baby
Agency - Ogilvy and Mather

In complete juxtaposition to number 5, Alfie the baby and his brother are promoting 'what happens in Huggies, stays in Huggies'. There's something intrinsically creepy about applying a slogan used more commonly on lads' football tours and stag do's to some nappies (The Hangover, anyone?). Although I do get the tenuous connection. This, coupled with the cutesy pie tweetings of Baby Alfie, just kind of freaks me out.

Number 3
Homeless Hotspots
Agency - BBH Labs

Clarence - clearly loving life

Getting a homeless person off the street? Giving them a chance to make money? Giving them a purpose in life? Sound's like a great idea! But wait, at this years SXSW, BBH gave these homeless souls 4G connectivity so that people attending could get better signal for their phones to tweet about what a revolutionary idea BBH had had. However, this caused a lot of controversy. BBH insist they wanted to put a face to the homeless by forcing people to make conversation in order to get a password, code, grail or whatever so they could get flaunt where they were to all their friends on foursquare. But a lot of people didn't see it like that, dehumanising them, reducing them to mere machines, they'll be taking the job of the talking clock soon. I think I'll leave it up to you decide on the ethics of this social experiment, but you can't deny it's a little weird.

Number 2
Cadbury's Creme Egg - Make them Goo!
Agency - MCSquared

Eight giant Creme Eggs in bullet-proof glass containers were moved around Ireland just before Easter. The eggs appeared to be quite content in their containers until people crowds began tweeting at them #tweet2goo. The more tweets the egg got the more agitated it became until eventually in an Alien-like fashion they exploded. Oh and you could win an ipad or something. Sound's pretty cool, right? Well yeah I guess it is, who doesn't want to see a giant egg explode? I just think it's weird because I don't, never have and never will understand why they all commit suicide? It's eggstraordinary... Sorry.

Number 1
Skittles - Touch the Rainbow
Agency - DDB Chicago

There is little I can say to explain the weird to you, so I feel you shall just have to experience the weird first hand. Mostly the monobrow one. Now Skittles never had normal advertising but a bad outbreak of skittlepox and a slightly rapey skittle encounter in the library are hard to be outdone. Especially the monobrow one.


Contract the Rainbow.


Pluck the Rainbow.


Crank the Rainbow.

Can you go Viral by pretending to go Viral?

Have you ever wondered how to make a video go viral?

It's something I think about maybe a little bit more than I should. What is it about a boy being bitten by his baby brother that makes the internet go crazy? Or how a looped video of a poptart cat flying through space and pooping rainbows can be so mesmerising?

Obviously there are a number of factors, Kevin Alloca (Youtube's trend manager) identified many of them in his most recent TED talk. The three most important being:

• Trendsetters
• Communities of Participation
• Unexpectedness

With over 48 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute, what is it that makes one cat video stand out from another?

Well American rapper Yung Jake tries his best to both explain how videos go viral and go viral himself with his most recent rap song 'e.m-bed.de/d'. Described by the Fast Company as a 'meta-commentary on the act of going viral' it's a truly amazing watch.

He's clearly put a lot of thought and effort into it. I would embed the video on here but it's definitely better to experience the full effect on the specially made website, designed to look like a Youtube page, that hosts it. 

As the video plays, various webpages relating to the song pop up at appropriate moments in the narrative. You can watch the Youtube views go up whilst you watch the video, view Justin Bieber's twitter mention of the vid and see 'The Daily What' announce the 'Yung Jake of the day' next to the video. 

Ironically enough I was unable to find the video on Youtube. I suppose having only been uploaded a few days ago it's unlikely to have gone viral yet, but with a mention from the Fast Company hopefully it's only a matter of time for Yung Jake to experience the real viral treatment. 

If not, the maybe virals are harder to understand than is possible for a cleverly put together video and rap song to convey. 

Yung Jake - e.m-bed.de/d/ http://e.m-bed.de/d/vid.html

Keep Calm and Carry On Blogging

I'm definitely really fascinated by the way that memes and other social concepts spread across society and rise to the peak of their popularity and then suddenly drop out of public favour. For me, the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' slogan is one of the most fascinating, as it is undoubtedly an integral part of modern British Society.

Over the past decade the infamous slogan has appeared everywhere, led to massive ranges of merchandise and spawned thousands of copies and parodies. Whether you love it or hate it, it has become an iconic symbol of quintessential Britishness.

This video is just the perfect way to show the history of the slogan; with picturesque images of English railway stations, Penguin books, model trains and a lovely English accent voiceover.      It really helps us to understand the patriotic but also silently frightening origins of the poster and the real resonance that phrase original held.

I believe it still holds that resonance today, because if you ignore all the parodies it's a piece of advice relevant to any time period and any situation. Which may help to explain its staying power.