Wanna quickie?
Provocative title. Provocative stuffz. Dammit, embed grrrrr! YOUTUBE VIDEO Of MILNE/MAYNE PUNCHUP: Got a new lease of life – I posted it up in November last year. Since News journo, Milne, started attacking (in writing) Politician Rudd for being drunk at a girlie bar, his attack on Crikey’s Mayne (physical) is getting a fresh airing…
Provocative title. Provocative stuffz.
YOUTUBE VIDEO Of MILNE/MAYNE PUNCHUP: Got a new lease of life – I posted it up in November last year. Since News journo, Milne, started attacking (in writing) Politician Rudd for being drunk at a girlie bar, his attack on Crikey’s Mayne (physical) is getting a fresh airing – views are going up (well over 4,000 now) and comments (a couple a day). The long tail of naughtiness?
Diet Coke’s user generated advertising (Quickie – Australian campaign) is a bit weird. I can’t embed the “Short Films” (read: product placement videos) on MY blog page. I wanted to put the winning one here for you to see. Think about that for a moment, before you click through to their site. I can only send or post the link to people who may or may not follow up on it. All so that Coke can add-up their traditional statistics – pageviews. Yet if they had offered the movies as “embeds” or even “widgets”, the filmmakers could’ve done their own marketing campaign. Tell a hundred friends to embed, view, comment on the film then come to the site to vote if they wanted to. Even if only 25% of the people come to the site, that’s another 75% that willing saw an ad for diet coke on a remote site. Really good ones will take off on YouTube. I just don’t see Dietcoke.com.au getting 4 million views do you? I personally would prefer 4 million views of an ad than counting a few thousand visitors to a site. Clearly I suck at marketing – I figure it’s more important to get the brand out there than count the number of pageviews. It’s not like Diet Coke are selling advertising space on their site now, is it? And aren’t there little tracking cookies that let you know how many times a video has been emailed around etc. I think they used them in the BIG beer ad. And if the consumers are creating anti-ads, well they are probably already up on YouTube (no I haven’t checked).
Scrapbook for Firefox – allows me to download a whole site. I’ve used other tools- actual applications – but this one does it as a browser button. Way to go to back up this bloggy. 🙂
You are so right about the whole embeddable link thing wrt Pepsi. But I would say, don’t blame the brand manager (yet). Blame the agency.
Most of the agencies just don’t want to know about social networking… and yet some of them are making the right noises about moves in that direction.
I suppose that the ad business is just like every other business I have been in – filled with people staring in the rear view mirror as they accelerate down the highway…
Now back to your blog so I can link through to the Pepsi ad!
“The most amusing part of the site (apart from its failure to load quickly) ” that reminds me – the Matrix-y one with the girl in the RED dress never finished loading. I didn’t try the others.
(and that my friends is what we in the industry call “shameless self promotion”) don’t worry about that dear, look at the next post up – gratuitous self advertising abound. 🙂 BTW I didn’t take any of my ideas from your blog – I just happened to notice the ad on TV and checked out the site. I’m usually pretty vigilant with hat tipping and acknowledging. Just in case you were wondering. 🙂
But… the agency NEEDS those click-thru stats to “prove” that the campaign was worth the money spent. Plus it provides an easy big-dick number to quote in reports.
With a ubiquitous product like Coke, with ubiquitous branding, it’s very difficult to match a specific promotional activity to a specific sale. Hey, with so many different promos at once, it’s hard even to link any specific activity to a general increase (or not) in sales.
I think the logic goes something like this: We need a number to measure to prove that we were effective. Here’s a number we can measure. We’ll use that. Look, the number is big. We are Good Boys and Girls.
*puzzled* but it’s still possible to track. Embed means a remote page displays the video – you just count video views. That’s how YouTube does it, isn’t it?
Plus I count both readers of my page *waves to mum* AND those who use the RSS feeds. Ok embedding might not give you the remote viewers IP address (and country) but still…
I often wonder if Ozin30seconds would’ve had more than 160 entries if they had worked with YouTube and/or allowed embeds. Next year, I hope they open the distribution channel up – if submissions go from 160 to thousands then they will know that peer-to-peer marketing works. So what’s more valuable – bringing customers to a website so you can count them (they already know your brand) or getting word out there so there is more user generated ads? I would’ve rated the latter higher if I was Coke.
The CokeFilms site is a pretty average attempt at a touchy-feely interaction with their customers. Over on the Nudge Marketing blog we have been following this story here and here and also discussed it in episode 2 of the Gen Y Marketing Podcast (and that my friends is what we in the industry call “shameless self promotion”).
The most amusing part of the site (apart from its failure to load quickly) is the range of comments that have appeared, almost undoubtedly from marketers involved in the site. I highly recommend checking them out for a laugh.
I totally agree with you on the embedded video issue, when the site first launched they didnt even let people look back over previous days videos..
Jake Nudge
haha I just saw your most recent post as yes ok you win the self promotion competition 🙂
I think its our collective duty as bloggers to stick the boots in on disappointing attempts at user generated content sites like this one. If they had bothered to speak to someone that regularly uses Youtube (and I would have been happy to charge them an exorbitant fee) then it could have actually been quite a cool site… oh well, next time maybe. 🙂
If they had bothered to speak to someone that regularly uses Youtube (and I would have been happy to charge them an exorbitant fee)
Job Description: We are looking for an experienced slacker capable of phaffing around on Facebook and MySpace for hours with nothing to show for it. Must be dedicated to viewing stupid videos on YouTube and flicking through Flickr fotos leaving almost-humorous comments. Requirement: skilled to sit for 12 hours straight playing virtual world MMORPG games while mentally preparing a blog post. Desirable: the ability to ignore an important deadline for submitting a conference paper, because of debating the merits of Pownce (boring) with friends (sorry, social network) on instant messenger. Willing to pay a fortune. Contact DietCoke.
*blinks*
Hey! THAT’s ME!!!
@Laurel: You’re quite right, it’d be possible for the ad agency to track things every which way. And I think you’re spot on about their failure to use P2P marketing.
However my experience with ad agencies is that they’re still very much oriented to TV and they don’t get teh intertubes. For Coke, the $5M TVC with a $kazillion media buy occupies a lot more of their thought than the “below the line” stuff like this.
Plus they want to Be In Control Of Everything. Using YouTube and P2P means they lose control of the “brand experience” — and Coke is arguably the most anally-retentive of all.
Plus their creatives tend not to speak even with their own IT people. One Sydney agency actually changed Internet hosting providers earlier this year without bothering to tell their IT manager!
On the low entry numbers, I reckon the main factor is sheer overload. Everybody and their dog is running a “send in your video” competition, and people are being more selective about which ones they bother with.
My last point can be summarised as: “I can make a video and show my friends on YouTube, why do I need to involve Coke?” Especially as the terms and conditions probably hand copyright ownership over to Coke.
I know the latter is the main reason my partner, an artist, never enters those sorts of competitions. For the chance of maybe winning, you lose all intellectual property rights forever.
Hiya Aussie, I came here after Googling “Diet Coke “Time for a Quickie” Ad Camapaign”. Because I really wanted to know who was responsible for those absolutely-bloody-awful ads I’m seeing on the Sydney Herald site. I find them incredibly tacky, cheesy, amateurish, off-the-pace – just LAUGHABLE. “Time for a Quickie” may have got a chuckle thirty years ago but today it just looks like what it is – some wanker’s idea of a good advertising slogan -straight from The School of No Idea.
I’m an Aussie in Paris. You can find me atWelcome to Wallyworld.