I’d definately snap up a bag of baby carrots if they were in junk food style packaging – its almost like a psychological thing that junk food packaging = delicious food!

Check out this site

However, funny Chatrouletteisms aside, imagine if you have something to market. It has huge  potential, perhaps not on a large scale but recording people’s reactions could then produce engaging virals…. what a plan! Check out some of the best I’ve discovered on the web:

The Last Exorcism

This one, I feel, is the most successful of the Chat Roulette marketing campaigns. A pretty, young girl is flirting with her chat partners. Suddenly, her head drops and her eyeballs start bleeding and rolling back into her head, she then launches for the camera before a link to the movie appears on screen. This has generated an absolutely hilarious viral that I’ve already forwarded on. Have a look – Be warned that there are swear words and its quite loud!

Doctor Pepper

The UK arm of this class soft drink decided to have a little fun with Chatroulette users by offering them an April Fools  gag. Randy users were tricked by a hot blondie cheerleader into dancing like a puppy dog and showing off their ‘guns’. Just when they think they may get to see a little bit more of their flirt companion,  her slightly less attractive friend  replaces her breaking the news that it was in fact a prank by Dr. Pepper. The resulting highlight reel (below) got around 200,000 video views in under a week.

Harley Davidson

This campaign was a lot more simple. Simply print out an advert and display it on Chatroulete, taking advantage of the 500,000 daily users. The agency claimed that each reaction was a smile. What a cost effective way to get your message across

So there you have it, a creative new way to get your message across! Have you seen any similar campaigns? Get in touch! I’m fascinated!

]]> http://themarketingmonster.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/chat-roulette-marketing-machine/feed/ 1 images splursty enhanced-buzz-14156-1265131661-8 enhanced-buzz-14158-1265131458-6 enhanced-buzz-14156-1265131149-7 http://themarketingmonster.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/time-for-a-quick-vira/ http://themarketingmonster.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/time-for-a-quick-vira/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:49:14 +0000 splursty http://themarketingmonster.wordpress.com/?p=141 ]]> Just a quick one today!

Came across this amazing viral – apparently it surfaced around the time of that vile eastern european girl throwing puppies into a river.

How amazing is this dog? After viewing a horrible act of animal abuse, its good to see a happy dog doing something hilarious that it seems to enjoy!

Have a look, with already 1.5million views, I guarantee it will be infesting newsfeeds everywhere soon.

Of course theres a lesson to be learned here, you just never know when something is going to go viral!

Before you read the rest of my post, tap your address where you grew up into TheWildernessDowntown.com. Use the Chrome browser, because it’s Google-powered. Close other programs if you can (its ridiculously slow if you like me have something like Adobe Illustrator running!). And whatever you do – DON’T. CHANGE. WINDOWS.

I’ll show you some screenshots from my experience… unfortunately my angry Mac wont let me download Chrome so I used Firefox but I don’t think it would’ve made too much difference… a little faster perhaps? Also my second problem was that even though I can locate my childhood abode on Google Maps, I couldn’t find a postcode for it! I used my current home address instead.

Opening Scene – A person running down a road

WOW! A birdseye view of a building site (obviously a little bit old) and a picture of my estate

I assume it must be a google maps glitch because I don’t live in a tree but the camera starts panning around your childhood home at this point…. just not my home unfortunately!

This is quite cool, you can then write a letter to your childhood home and then use a host of social media portals to send the video as a postcard… I wonder if birds use facebook?!

The video was directed by Chris Milk for Arcade Fire track “We Used to Wait,”. It basically incorporates footage of your childhood home and the surrounding street from satellite or street view. One critic described it as “the melancholy of the music, unexpectedly reviving your own sense of childhood isolation”… I wasn’t THAT inspired but it was a good track and an imaginative use of HTML5.

Of course, back to the collaboration, this isn’t just a promo for Arcade Fire’s latest, The Suburbs. It’s also a “Chrome experiment” – it works best on the GOOGstah’s browser, if not exclusively.

Apparently HTML5 is going to give Flash a run for its money, I can’t really comment at the moment because I haven’t seen it at work yet due to my Angry Mac! As soon as I sort out a download though, I’ll be back to report.

Cheeky Chappy and Visual Artist Brandon Bloch has put this new gadget to the test… against professional competitor – the latest Canon EOS 7D that retails for well over £1500. You can see the playful yet surprisingly detailed review below.

The video concludes:
“Is the Barbie as good as the 7D? …No, but it’s amazing for what it is.”

However, the work makes for a strong plug in favour of Mattel, which would do well to learn from Brandon’s shining example if it’s serious about targeting ’net savvy kids or immature adults like me who really wants one!

This viral is complete with:

1) 1 x aggressive amateur cameraman

2) 1 x Nostalgic star cameo

3) Wild stuff occuring, to turn on your “trainwreck ahead!” sensors

Changing camera angles, endless product shots (the Reebok Runtones) and over-generous brand mentions are incorporated to subtly (…?) advertise the brand within this viral and get you wondering if its a fix (well duh! if you havent guessed by now). You even get a random example of how the Runtones improve muscle tone!

And because some dopey Viewer may mistake this for a brand’s attempt to pass for real amateur footage, Reebok makes sure to hit you with it at the end – with not one slogan, but two.

“Runtone: Get Stronger with Every Run.”

“Reebok: No More Chicken Legs.”

Congratulations on an epic piece of advertising Reebok!

Note to creatives: If you plan to do online video work for a client ever in your career, it helps to consider the difference between a good comedian and a bad one.

This week, Nestle announced it is to launch the first new advertising push for mint brand Polo in a decade.

Nestle will launch a brand spanking new £2.5m online, outdoor and PR driven campaign to “reinvigorate” the brand.

The campaign, created by CHI&Partners, focuses on two types of Polo mint consumers – ’Suckers or Crunchers.”

The brand has been targeted at “medium to light buyers”,which make-up the majority of Polo consumers but are currently only responsible for 27% of sales of the mint sweets. It is these consumers that Nestle feel are more responsive to instore marketing.

The refocus of the campaign plays on emotional reasons for buying the brand by re-establishing its zany, fun and silly ’personality’, rather than more rational thought processes, such as a need for fresh breath, which dominates mint advertising in a highly competitive sector.

“Polo is a truly iconic British brand that consumers love, but consumers haven’t heard from us in a number of years, so we’re going to re-ignite consumer love for the brand by reminding them about the playful mint with the hole through the campaign “Are you a sucker or cruncher?” says a Nestle spokesperson.

The campaign will run nationwide in convenience store and motorway service station locations and on MSN, Facebook and Yahoo online.

Purely For research purposes only,  I did purchase a pack of Polos just to see if I was a sucker or a cruncher. I also found out some fascinating things about them!

For example, apart from being a refreshing mint,  Polos are said to be able to cure travel sickness if you put your tongue through the hole whilst eating them. I have yet to try this but internet reviews rave about this! They also help aid morning sickness in pregnant women using the same technique!

However, there has always been an urban legend going round that eating Polos reduces the sperm count in males – but I have heard no scientific evidence either for or against this theory…

So I ate a Polo, I was impressed with how mild the mint is (as I’m not a particularly big fan of strong mints) the aroma also left a pleasent smell in my handbag.

Onto the verdict, am I a sucker or a cruncher? Well…. I did attempt to crunch it but it was really hard to do so (I assume it requires strong gnashers!) But then again sucking it till it got thinner and thinner got ridiculously boring so I crunched it near the end of the experience… so what does that make me? A Suurrrruncher?

Perhaps I’m not the correct target for this campaign but at least I now know that not only is a Polo a refreshing mint but also a cure to sickness, and a potential contraceptive…!

Enjoy

Just For Men – Touch of Grey

This is a bit of an oldie, and American…. but oh my dayyyyyyzzzz how could this have possibly ever been aired?? More to the point, what kind of man would fall for the manipulative rubbish it dictates?

The target market – I’m assuming is down on their luck extremely middle aged men? This advert preaches to them… “if you have a nice fake salt-and-pepper ‘do – the women won’t be able to resist your mix of energy and experience”. Well I dont know about the other ladies but I’m sold!!!

The £50 million marketing campaign launched will bring at least 1 million British people together and help strengthen a community spirit inspired by the Olympics. Cadbury, which is the Official Treat Provider to London 2012, (I still find it quite bizarre that a fattening chocolate bar is sponsoring an athletic event!) is inviting the nation to divide into two teams—the Spots and the Stripes by picking a side at the dedicated SpotsvStripes website (launched on 02.08.10). Each user who signs up to the website has the opportunity to win points through games and what not, contributing to an overall score for their team. Users also have the opportunity to upload videos of themselves doing events for a chance to earn extra points.  I’m a Bonified Spot incase you’re interested!

To add to this already impressive Brand Experience, Cadbury will be taking Spots v Stripes on a tour across the UK, visiting the biggest cities (Glasgow, Leeds, London, and Birmingham, one after another) for two days with a kit of the most silly yet contagiously funny games—good old classics from Kiss Chase to Eye Spy, Arm Wrestling to Slide Dunk. During the tour, which will kick off on 21st August, Cadbury have recruited the help of two thousand Spots and Stripes volunteer ambassadors to get the participants involved into the campaign and support the gaming drive.

The work behind the campaign is phenomenal with agencies such as Fallon, Drum PHD, Brave and PrettyGreen all collaborating to produce this monster of a Social Marketing Campaign.

On 7th August, Cadbury will officially launch their new ‘Glass and A Half Full Productions’ advert created by the Fallon agency. The 1:30 minute spot features the residents of the underwater world, which are trying hard to grab a strange-looking green underwater plant thing. Eventually they all lose to a faster and cheekier stripy and spotty duck that  grabs the desirable thing and escapes by flying out of the water. As an advertising enthusiast I think this is great work. The stripy/spotty duck winning the prize at the end made me smile. However, as a consumer, I don’t find this ad particularly inspiring and its not consistent with the overall Spots v Stripes marketing campaign which is a shame.

Overall though, I think this is a fantastic campaign which will really demonstrate to other brands the power of social media. I’m keen to get involved and see the results.

Over and out.

P.S. See below for PrettyGreen’s experimental marketing campaigns

On the 21st July, Flipboard made the list…. Which list? You know! THE list… Twitter’s trending topics. And that’s not a shabby start for the self proclaimed “World’s First Social Magazine”. In fact, the hype was so hot around the App’s launch that the rush to grab a piece of the action meant that servers everywhere were crashing in a struggle to meet the demand.

So what is Flipboard all about? Available on the Apple iPad, Flipboard takes advantage of the gadget’s sleek simplicity and combines social networks to produce a constantly live, bespoke magazine suited to the owner’s taste.

Flaunting a stylised RSS reader, the free app connects to the user’s social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to lay out the content shared peer-to-peer in magazine format. Creating an always-on newsfeed, photo uploads, status updates, shortened URLs and retweeted links come to life on the iPad screen in touch-controlled magazine format.

For a detailed specification of Flipboard’s usability, take a look at the Wall Street Journal’s review at All Things Digital.

For the anti-social among us, who would rather not share their world in 140-character chunks or share at all for that matter, the nice folk at Flipboard have also selected a bunch of influential streams and Facebook pages to provide content for a series of ready to access pages, including pages such as FlipTech, FlipStyle etc, and links to existing sites such as Mashable.

The USA based startup has plenty of capital behind it, founded by Mike McCue of Tellme fame and Apple’s former iPhone engineer Evan Doll. Big investors such as KPCG, Index Ventures and Ashton Kutcher have already invested $10.5m into the company. Almost immediately after its launch, Flipboard announced the acquisition of Ellerdale, a web intelligence company tasked with ensuring that spam is no longer and only the most relevant of content is taken from the daily streams of web banter.

McCue said: ‘With over one billion messages posted every day, social networks are quickly becoming the primary way people discover and share content. We believe the timeless principles of print can make social media less noisy, more visually compelling and ultimately more mainstream.’

What a fantastically modern media portal! I think its key to get this across to the younger adult generation who tend to tweet and interact online with friends a lot more than others. Also, marketers and creative agencies should look to Flipboard for inspiration, imagine a world with no more print magazines but interactive Flipboard ones instead. These can be teamed with videos and sounds instead of pictures and links to shopping sites from fashion pages. Lets get this ball rolling!

www.flipboard.com