There is a new ad idea for social media, called WOMI – Word Of Mouth Impression. Developed by a company with a name that says it all: Social Media.
It functions like a mini-application that spreads in my own social network of contacts and friends, and I wonder: does it do that automatically, whenever I interact with it? Here is the description of Techcrunch:
WOMI campaigns present visitors with ads asking them for some kind of input either though a multiple choice question or using a text field. SocialMedia then uses this input to customize ads which are shown to the user’s friends on the same social network.
For example, if an ad for Star Wars had a call-to-action asking if I was on the Light Side or Dark Side of the Force, it could take my response and then present my friends with an ad that said “Jason is on the Light Side, how about you?â€. In turn, their responses are passed on to all of their friends, making this among the first kind of advertising with a viral element.
This is spooky, unless they definitely ask users before they present their friends with the answers to the multiple choice questions. It’s like a facebook app that spreads as soon as you launch it, without even asking.
If however, the user stays in full control, it could turn out to be rather interesting. Especially if you get to see all your friends responses later on, too. People love to see how they compare in polls and questionnaires. This can be a huge playground for brands. More effective than regular applications/widgets in a sense, because of the „classical“ advertising component: „pushing“ these polls onto the profil pages of friends and contacts, instead of just mentioning in some news feed „XYZ installed application ABC“.
Traditional media no longer produces „predictable“ results and sometimes completely fails to activate certain target audiences at all. Hence brands are increasingly adopting social media tactics and moving into the social media space. This is no news. But for the big brands social is still very much a test lab. There are many marketing Euros ready to be spend on new ways to engage the target audience, but there are (yet) not many proven ways to spend these Euros effectively.
Related to this, two blog posts by Tom Smith caught my attention in the last couple of days:
This was around the idea that big brands shouldn’t be active in social media, as the presence of big business will destroy the consumer driven spirit and purity of what the social revolution stands for.
Big brand involvement for some feels like a sellout. However, now that social media is mass market, I strongly believe that this viewpoint misses the big picture. I believe that we all benefit as consumers from big brands being in social media.
1. Social media drives complete transparency
2. Social media drives quality product
3. Social media can be a great customer service channel
4. Social Media creates products that we want
5. You control the relationship
6. Big brands keep our access free
7. Big brands have interesting stories to tell
8. Users drive the content and conversation
Good food for thought, even though I think the example given for the customer service channel is a bit far fetched – I wouldn’t consider a twitter dialogue good service… But hey, some might like that.
I just wrote a fun post about the post election hang over many supporters allegedly face according to „the onion“, and just two seconds later I see this hint in one of Jeremiahs tweets: http://www.change.gov/
The team of Obama just launched a new site. A site that will run (at least) until the time of his presidency. It features a blog, information about his main agenda points, as well as a platform for his supporters to tell their story:
The story of this campaign is your story. It is about the great things we can do when we caome together around a common purpose. We want to hear your inspiring stories from the campaign and Election Day.
It’s amazing the way Obama, Biden and their team leverage the web and hence involve „their community“. If Obama continues in the same perfectionist way with all the other items on his agenda, then the USA will be on a very good path during the next 4 years.
I have written about the notion of campaigning vs commiting and the fact that social media is not about short lived campaigns but more often about building up conversations and long term relationships.
The online part of the election campaign of Barack Obama was one of the most sophisticated social media campaigns I have seen in a long time.
But in politics, everythings is timed. Everything builds up for the election, then there is the big climax, as we have seen last Tuesday, and now the campaign is over, done, dusted. Obama is already busy putting his cabinett together (he must not loose time addressing all the problems that his predecessor caused in the last 8 years!), and there is no involvement of the Obama supporters any longer.
The pressure is gone, and all the most active supporters have nothing to talk about, nothing to live up to any more. Here is a television news report on the sad victims of post election hang over:
At the beginning of the video it says that the agency was asked to create online advertising for Doritos. Sounds like a typical briefing, but the agency instead came up with something completely contradictory: a tool that removes online advertising (and let’s you fill the space with something you like instead).
The idea behind this:
what if the internet was just like a bag of Doritos. Filled only with the stuff you like.
Great idea to achieve awareness on regular media sites without actually pushing ads in your face. Here is the case study video:
Wo ich sonst so bin...