We’re experimenting a lot with Facebook, from the conceptual to paid advertising. As for the latter, these placements are proving to be some of the most cost effective in our arsenal right now. The ROI is pretty incredible.
eConsultancy just posted a great article on advertising via Facebook.
We are fans. I mean, we like.
A friend emailed me about an article entitled “Closing the Digital Frontier” in The Atlantic and wanted to get my reaction. Here’s what I wrote back:
I still believe the web is the modern day Wild Wild West; in fact, I call it that around the agency. What we’re seeing now is the adolescence of the Information Age. An equally awkward time for those who create content and those who sell it.
Here’s my take, from a media standpoint: the media (newspapers, magazines and to a much lesser extent broadcast) didn’t take the web seriously enough in its infancy. It was something “they” didn’t understand, and it was thus cast off. To be nice they called it “added value” to their offerings. Content was free, because that was fair market value for online content. Now they are trying to move to charge advertisers more and creating paid content sections for visitors.
The real problem is: how do you shift from an environment in which the content is free to one in which you charge for it?
Meanwhile, companies like Apple and Google were visionary enough to understand the coming seismic shift in consumer behavior. Apple and Google have figured out how to monetize the web, and it isn’t magical–they each basically framed a conduit to corral and distribute the massive amounts of content in an orderly fashion. This creates value. If I want a song, I go to iTunes. If I want anything else, I go to Google.
The move from free to fee is going to be interesting to watch. I suppose you could call the last fifteen years or so “product sampling,” but that’s probably a stretch.
Yesterday was the first Tuesday of October. You realize what that means, right? You don’t? Well you best get with the program. It was Red Tuesday. This month we were lucky enough to have Greg Lawson of the New York Times Regional Media Group come down and speak to the brains who live and work here at the Square. The topic was behavioral targeting, and, trust us, there were many mystics spilled and tricks revealed.
Basically, we know what you are doing right now. Yes, you. In the snuggie. Watching Glee on Hulu. We know that you have been thinking about taking a vacation with your girlfriends in Florida. And now we are going to sell you a vacation in Florida. BOOM.
Now you know we know.
Establishing an agency viewpoint on social media has only led us back to a core fundamental of great advertising: you are going to be more successful if you utilize media in concert with an idea or concept that engages, entertains, provokes or generally creates an emotional connection.
Most advertising isn’t liked because it doesn’t give the consumer credit for having intelligence. This goes for traditional media and nontraditional media. Being on the radio to simply be on the radio is okay. Being on Twitter to simply be on Twitter is okay too. To be successful, you’ve got to bring an idea to the table.
For Zea Restaurants’ latest campaign, our creative is simple: their take-out is so good, you’ll find any excuse to order. So on Twitter we’ve created a feed that offers humorous, daily excuses not to cook. You can read and follow it here. Rather than reeling off menu items and prices (Zea’s food is a great value), we’ve chosen to entertain and deliver the value message implicitly. And who doesn’t have the daily, mental tug-of-war over cooking or not cooking?
The bottom line is social media is still media. It’s another channel to your consumer, albeit a two-way (or multi-way) conversational channel to your consumer. You don’t like having conversations with boring people or salesmen, do you? Then don’t talk like that in your advertising, traditional or otherwise. Instead, treat your consumers like people. Entertain them, enlighten them, emotionally connect with them, and they’ll become more than your consumers. They’ll become fans.
We’re big fans of inventing new ways to utilize media. Taking something to which people have become accustomed and shaking it up is a good way to stand apart from your competition. Do what gets talked about, right?
I think there’s a natural progression pattern in media: introduction > early adoption > maturity > manipulation. It’s kind of a Darwinian way to look at things. Now that YouTube has reached maturity, emerging are several creative examples of its manipulation. Here are two that have done so beautifully.
First there’s Yooouuutuuube. It allows you to watch videos frame by frame simultaneously. Why? Because it’s awesome, that’s why. Here’s a screen shot of one of my favorite spots, by Sony:
Another site, which can be filed under “wish we’d done that,” is for Charlotte, North Carolina, ad agency BooneOakley. Rather than the typical drivel most agencies litter the web with, this site tosses convention aside. Instead, it’s built entirely in YouTube. There are not enough superlatives to describe it. See for yourself.
Intelligence (or what many label too often “genius”) is merely looking at things differently. Come on kids. Let’s invent.
