Pressing the Online Flesh – MySpace Impact

MySpace recently launched its MySpace Impact channel for politicians and non-profit organizations. It is a space where politicians, political and social organizations can list their official myspace pages.

Compared to places like USA and the UK, Australian politicians have been fairly slow to utilize social media (take a look at Hilary Clinton’s myspace or Barak Obama’s myspace as great examples). And it seems in this case, the Aussie Pollies have been dragged online – kicking and screaming. An interesting note – Labor MPs currently outnumber Liberal MP’s by 2 to 1 on myspace. And John Howard, the Prime Minister, has refused to signup. At last count, only 28 individual federal political candidates for the upcoming election now have official MySpace pages.

Ask any politicians what the value of a personal handshake is? There is a reason why politicians in this day and age still hit the pavement in their local electorates and go door-knocking. Social media enables politicians to make a form of personal contact with voters on a massive scale. In addition it also engages a particular segment of voters – Generation Y and builds on the perception of the politician as a real person, an authentic person and someone open to new ideas.

Check out the table below (that I plan to update every fortnight) regarding how well each of the politicians are utilising this space…



Liberal Party Candidates Total Friends: 616
Liberal Party Number of Myspace Candidates: 5
Labor Party Candidates Total Friends: 9617
Labor Party Number of Myspace Candidates: 10

Connex Trains to target cure for cancer

On the 26th of July Connex Trains, one of Melbourne's largest providers of public transport will be setting aside $1 from every train ticket sold for the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in their fight against cancer. Its a worthy cause and great to see a company kicking some profits over to help out a non profit, but campaigns such as this always attract the question "is this due to social responsibility or is the company after some positive marketing spin?".

There is no doubt that Connex has had a lot of bad press in recent months so they could certainly use some positive attention but according to their website they are hoping to hand over just $50k to cancer research, a figure im sure is not too far off what it has cost them to put together the television advertising campaign, change the print on the tickets, etc. But them if Connex put out a press release saying "we just gave $50,000 to cancer research" would anyone notice?

The thing that I find strange is that according to this document, just one of the 16 lines that Connex runs, handles 60,000 passengers per day. With a few rough calculations (number of passengers for each line, minus the number of pre purchased tickets, etc) 50K sounds a little low.

Gizmoz avatars to take centre stage at the MTV music awards

So it seems that the new animated avatar site Gizmoz have teamed up with Taco Bell to create a user generated advertising campaign which will apear in this years MTV Music Awards. Whilst there seems to be no prize money involved, this is a great opertunity to raise the profile of gizmoz at the same time giving Taco Bell an inexpensive advertising avenue that takes the user community under their wing.

The competition goes a little somthing like this. Members of Gizmoz use the sites to create an animated 3d figure based on a photograph of themselves, they then use the animated avatar to create a 30sec add spot for entry into the competition. I was a little sceptical when I first had a play with the Gizmoz technology assuming that it would not work quite as well as the demo clip, but it turns out the technology behind the site actually does quite a good job of compiling a 3d image of ones face and animating it with eyebrow and mouth movements to give life to the figure.

From an advertising point of view its quite a smart move from Taco Bells marketing department. By asking users to create a CGI ad Taco Bell can avoid problems such as shakey camera work, bad lighting, etc and thus ensure the quality (to an extent) of the entries. How well the final ad is received from the television audience doesnt really matter in this case, the true value of the competition is undoubtedly the time the content creators spend thinking about why they like Taco Bell and what they should say to appeal to new consumers.

Is Coke Being The Real Thing? Authentic Marketing?

In the previous post Jake mentioned that we would be keeping an eye on the Diet Coke User Generated Video competition. In his next post, Jake will be doing a comprehensive analysis of the site and competition so far. I just wanted to talk about one thing on this site. Check out some of the comments posted for one of the videos in the competitions;

• I thoroughly enjoyed this production. i felt the need to quench my thirst with the sparkling joy brought on by these performers
• The walks/struts also gave this production a sense of attitude which, again is another strength of this masterpiece.
• This is a clever yet friendly approach to the culture and effects of diet coke , for the young , the old and the funky.
• A good use of a little bit o cash . A lotto FUN.
• What is funnier than this ad is all the fake positive comments below. Lame.
• That was drivel. unoriginal, routine, pointless special effects, unfunny, self riotous stereotyping, a bit cruel and pompous.
• Ah, am curious, how many of the people who commented were involved with this film? Seems that some felt the need to rate it several times...
• Well! (pause) bit like an advertisement really...

You can find a truck load of blogs talking about how companies artificially inflate traffic stats, monitor and doctor comment, message boards, spam forums.

The reason to get involved in social media and User Generated Content is to present your brand as Authentic. As consumers, that is a big part of what we are all after. Authenticity - or at least the appearance of AUTHENTICITY. This is the reason why I will pay $100 for U2 concert tickets. Use Google over Yahoo. Travel to see the Mona Lisa instead of a print.

Don't destroy these honest, noble attempts to interact with your customers with old dubious marketing techniques. Don't restrict comments. Don't obviously spam comments and message boards. Don't advertise subvertly. YOU WILL BE FOUND OUT. Because of the way social media, blogs and forums works these days, and the level of sophistication and cynicism of consumers, you will stand out like a fart in an elevator.

(check these couple of great post on authenticity by Seth Godin. here and here)

Can Diet Coke find some love from the Youtube generation?

Diet Coke are dipping their toes into the user generated content arena with a new website showing short films made by local up and coming directors, but can Coke find a place in the hearts of the Youtube generation?

In an era where audiences are embracing the freedom of video on demand, Coke seem to be taking a step backwards in posting one movie each day at the set time of 11am. From what we can gather it seems that Coke are trying to link the morning tea break with their daily video release and this isn't such a bad idea accept for all of those people that take their morning break before 11am. The site is only new so we are yet to see if previous days clips will also be available for viewers to go though at their convenience.

It is interesting to note that Coke have chosen not to dive in the deep end but rather dip their toes into the user generated content pool by keeping control of the videos that appear on their site. This obviously avoids any "negative brand connotation" clips appearing on the site, but many new media marketing experts believe that user generated content initiatives must be totally open, warts and all before users really start getting involved. Companies that enable comments on their corporate blogs run the risk of negative remarks, but part of the appeal of interactive marketing is the company's preparedness to be transparent in interacting with their customers. Those few companies that think they can control their public perception by deleting negative comments soon find themselves berated in dozens of blogs and forums sites.

We will keep an eye on Diet Cokes campaign over the coming weeks and keep you all up to date on this little marketing experiment by one of the worlds biggest companies.

Gen Y Marketing Podcast - Episode 1

So we have been hard at work recording the Gen Y Marketing Podcast of late and its now available for you to listen to here. If feedburner does the job it says it does then it will also be available on iTunes in the comming week or so.

This week on the Gen Y Marketing Podcast we take a look at the following:-

Marketing News this week:-

• RTA's new ad to target young male drivers
• 12% of Senior marketers see value in consumer generated content
• Text my t shirt and the t shirt responds?
• Greenpeace beams their message to the world
• 7 eleven joins the Simpsons joke and rebrands to Kwik-e-Mart

Feature Discussion this week:-

• Ambient Marketing - What works and what doesn't.

Campaign focus:-

• "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" Ads - preaching to the converted?
• itsyourfuture.com.au - making manufacturing sexy?

BigPond - Customer Service Slobs

A Phone Call I had with Bigpond (Telstra) yesterday

(BigPond / Telstra Phone Rep) Emily: Hello, welcome to Bigpond. How can I help you?
Me: Hi Emily, how are you?
Emily: Good thank you, how can I help you?
Me: I have an DSL home account with bigpond, and I have reached my monthly download limit.
Emily: ok
Me: I was wondering if I could buy a data block to up my speed until the next refreash cycle. Do you guys do Data Blocks
Emily : No we don’t
Me: you don’t
Emily: No
Me: hmmm
Emily: whats a data block?
Me : right. Thank you…

Just another great example of customer service representatives more eager to end a call than provide good customer service and solve a customers problem. Seth Godin does some great post on this (one of my favourites here…)

It is astronomical how many companies are guilty of this. Yes, cost are a concern, but we must realise that every touch point of our organisation is a marketing opportunity (however subtle or instantaneously unfruitful).

Heres an idea – perhaps instead of calling your company's customer servives reps just that, perhaps call them customer problem solvers or customer mechanics, or customer Einsteins. Change your reps view of themselves, how they view their job and how they exceed at their job (satisfiing customers rather than measuring number of calls taken) and make them feel empowered to help people. Its true – but helping people is rewarding and empowering – even if it is your job.

Aside: for some info on how telstra views its customer reps (and ultimately their customers), check out the Four Corners report here!)