El Gaffney

Obama Baton: We’re Just Faster

It’s hard for big companies (and agencies) to compete with the speed of inspired individuals.

While the examples are certainly focused on politically-motivated people, I think the same is pretty much true for most organizations. It’s hard to be nimble. It’s scary to launch and learn. It takes a lot of constant monitoring and hands on responding.

This week has been a solid one for Obama Baton. Just over two weeks since the original idea was had, we’re building momentum and an audience of supporters, many of whom are following on Twitter and joined our Facebook groups for New York and Chicago. We’ve also received some really nice shout-outs.

Yet, when it comes to the spreading of an idea, we can’t even compare to “That One”. Within a day of the second Presidential debate—when McCain referred to Senator Obama using the term in quotes—this site was live and selling “That One” gear. They recognized the meme immediately when they heard it, and now their Facebook page already has over 21,000 fans.

My final example (not to be confused with the final countdown – via @lilmissjen) of a person compelled to create by Barack has got to be Mike Cuffe with The Obama Experiment – via @darrylohrt. And though it may have taken longer than the above creations from idea to execution, he has promoted his work with a video of art speed painting.

Lastly, I want to wish good luck to Kevin, who will be running the Chicago Marathon this Sunday with Obama Baton. Thanks everyone for your support. Please continue to pass it on.

Tags: Friends, marathon, obama, obamabaton, running, viral

This Is Not Quite How You Do Viral

But it’s not all that bad either. There are definitely some things working here—although “working” (as defined by ad/marketing people across the world as number of views on YouTube) remains to be seen as this most recently uploaded version only has about 300 views as of this posting. But taking a more comprehensive “view” of this viral attempt, I appreciate a few things:

1. Solid Timing: With the French Open just starting, tennis and Rafa are top of mind for (a handful of) sports fans.
1a. It seems Kia has been able to make this connection to one of the Grand Slams without actually paying for an expensive sponsorship of the tourney at Roland Garros.

2. Rewarding the Crossover Fan: Kia uses this top tennis star to promote its sponsorship of Euro 2008 soccer (yes, my readers are still predominantly American). Yet I’d venture to guess that many European soccer fans know Nadal. Some may also know (and Nadal fans of course know this and his Uncle Tony’s past as a professional player) the Spaniard (not THE Spaniard) used to play futbol in his youth (’cause he’s so old now). Anyone who has seen him on the tennis court has likely seen him sport some nasty foot skills. And word is his dream was to play striker for Real Madrid.

3. Catchy Title and Interesting Execution: “Nadal vs. Alien” is short and sweet. I know what I’m about to see but have no idea what I’m about to see. Therefore when both he and this alien take the form of MTV Celebrity Deathmatch claymation, it is unexpected and grabs my attention. The sound effects/Nadal noises are also pretty entertaining.

Yet for all this stuff that “works,” one main thing is just not that cool. Let me direct you to the video description to the right of the video in image above. Yup, see that right there. Yup, there. Where they Kia (presumably the company or agency is user “euro2008kia”) refer to its own video as “viral.” Not so fast my car-y. (Pronounced Car E and in the creepy voice of the Wicked Witch of the West. It is not pronounced like Carrie – sorry all you SITC fans.) Anyway, this may not be the best move to make your video go viral. If you have to say it is, it probably isn’t (like “cool”), and the corporate speak (even though you’re not hiding that it’s an ad, we really don’t care if you didn’t buy broadcast media) is a bit of a turn-off.

I do like that Kia actually responded to viewer feedback and made changes quickly (assuming it wasn’t just some last-minute changes based on a senior marketing guy or gal’s feedback) but truthfully you should have anticipated that having Nadal put his foot up a mini-Nadal’s ass would stirred the pot. Either stand behind it (not so close and toes on the ground) and let that controversy propel you to this viral status you’re so hoping for or put the more tame one up from the start so you don’t have to start from scratch with the number of views. A bigger number equals greater security that you’re passing on a gem. (Don’t worry others thought it was funny too!)

Lastly, take a look at the bottom right of the image above. There is another upload of 11-seconds from this same user. I don’t really get this. Are you worried that the web viewer is too starved for time to watch 2-minutes? This one actually has a stronger call to action at the end. It doesn’t just show the site url and expect you to visit. It gives soccer fans a reason to visit—”Win a ticket” Euro 2008. Can someone tell me why this less than 2-second CTA didn’t appear in the 2-minute version? I know it wasn’t that it didn’t fit into the traditional TV commercial time space because this isn’t a TV ad! Did creatives convince you a promotion take away from the coolness, emotion, integrity and thus brand equity of the spot? Jokes!

Either way, I applaud Kia’s entering the online space with something unexpected (definitely different from their good but mostly forgettable TV spots). This, I just realized, does deliver on their tag-line, “The Power to Surprise.” Now imagine if they started taking this tagline more literally and using it as a platform for communications (if not product development, etc.). That could be fun.

Watch the full two-minutes of “online viral content,” which I’m calling Rafakia (not to be confused with Rafiki from The Lion King) because I like mashing up words to create new terminology, here.

Tags: kia, nadal, viral

This Is How You Do Viral

A few months back Absolut Vodka approached Zach Galifianakis to make an ad for them. He said, yes…as long as he could do whatever he wanted with no restrictions. Then they said (wait for it), yes!

There is a reason Absolut approached him in the first place. Likely they felt that his type of humor connected to their target of LDA-25. (That’s a guess, and LDA = Legal Drinking Age for anyone who has not worked with a liquor, spirits, alcohol company.) Sure there were definitely a few rules in place, such as: no underage drinking, binge drinking or death. But otherwise, AV gave him the creative freedom. They realized that there’s no worse way to lose authenticity and relevancy with your audience than to change (even subtly) his brand of comedy!

Zach enlisted Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Coincidentally or not (depending on Zach’s motive for bring those two in), the sign-off to their show is Tim’s father rich saying, “Abso…lutely” and their production company is called Absolutely. (Apologies followers for having to use the term awesome.) And as of now, the first in a series of I hope more than two has around 55K views on FoD, where it was first launched. Don’t let that (low?) number fool you, though. It has 280K on YouTube as well as 138K on MySpace. The second, which was added about two weeks ago, is at about a quarter of that total number. But even if it this number didn’t even reach that illusive 6-digits (the 100K view mark on YouTube I’d say is the metric lots of clients set), I’d call this a successful foray into the world of branded entertainment.

BONUS: As you’ll see, the comedians (I’m assuming) even came up with a great tag-line for the content: “In an Absolut world, friends would get together more often.”

Here’s Part 1:

And Part 2:

Tags: absolut, comedy, viral

Everything I Need to Know About the Internet, I Learned at ROFLcon

Attention, class. ROFLschool is in session.
Come on. You’re telling me that you wouldn’t have felt like you were transported into a scene from Good Will Hunting too? (That’s too as in as well, not too as in the sequel like Look Who’s Talking Too. And thank goodness for that because you can’t mess with a classic.) The conference was held on MIT campus classrooms and lecture halls but instead of Professor Gerald Lambeau lecturing at the front, we were graced by the presence of such “Masters of the Internet” (TM pending) as the guys in this picture below.
That panel about Making Money on the Internet included (from viewer’s left to right): Andrew of Rocketboom, Alex of Million Dollar Homepage, Kyle of One Red Paperclip, Ian from Chuck Norris Facts, Andy of JibJab, and Joe Mathelete of Marmaduke Explained. Unlike one of the audience members, I learned their names. I also learned (from Alex of MDH), “If you try enough times to be a fluke, you’ll be a fluke eventually”; Andrew of Rocketboom had an ah-ha moment about the democratization of media (like in Wayne’s World) and asks himself wwbbllivf (what would boingboing look like in video form?); Kyle of ORPC now helps the Canadian government “think outside the box”; Ian of CNF is being sued by Chuck Norris after revitalizing Chuck’s career; and a story’s novelty an lead to attention that people are willing to pay money for.

I clocked in about 60 tweets over the course of the 2 days, which I think was both respectful of the speakers and my followers. However, I understand that conference-tweeters can be annoying if you’re not there or if you don’t care about the subject. So in the future you may want to make use of twittersnooze, which allows you to temporarily block individual twits you’re following. (thanks to @chroma for the find)

As I was saying though, I thought it was worth revisiting the >140 characters posts I sent out to the to find the best of the bunch and add a bit of context to a few. (Because if I didn’t copy/paste some shit, there’s no way this post would have been completed.)

First things first, I got to the conference. Then I found a great seat in between two groups of peeps I didn’t know. See:
But instead of sitting there with eyes buried in screen awaiting the first speaker, I sat there with eyes buried in screen to conduct a little experiment…

-@roflcon virtual introduction – two guys sitting next to me in red and black and in front in hat with kindle – whatup!

And as I reported, it “took less than three minutes to make non-virtual intro with dudes next to me after they saw it in tweetscan”. Tweetscan and Twemes are both really great tools for connecting with other twittering conference-goers, not just to meet them in-person (though this is something I always find gratifying and took advantage of over lunch to catch up with Katie and Kristen from Wexley and Conner from Fallon for lunch (as reported) – advertising peeps unite!) but to increase your insight intake (let’s go planner speak!) in panels you’re attending or missing based on your “track” selection.

Yet all this twitter action, blog posting, live commenting, etc. in Wi-Fi enabled conference halls and rooms has a had another—arguably less positive—effect – the lack of visual attention paid to the speakers. Surely, there’s no way Prof. Lambeau would stand for it. But for a conference that brought the Internet together, it was kind of a given. Still it led me to consider how I would have handled a job moderating a panel or giving a keynote (a boy can dream)…

-new presentations skills r going to have to b taught to connect w/ a connected (twitter, laptop, etc) audience

I have to point out that I was excited to see Anil Dash based on this and he did not disappoint. He was quite a good moderator on a heavy-weight panel that included from Drew of Fark, Alexis of Reddit, Matt of Metafilter, and DJ Pretzel of OCremix. And we all were quite impressed when the panel finally got rickrolled. Here I learned that Timbaland isn’t quite as cool as I thought he was and started to better understand the distinction between aggregators and curators as well as how communities often reflect their creators. For example, Fark sees itself as the chef at a great restaurant – sure he didn’t make all the ingredients but he’s cooking and serving it up in a unique and compelling way.

A highlight for me was definitely seeing the Brothers Chap, who are behind the infamous (using this term to mean “more than famous” like Steve Martin assumed El Guapo was in Three Amigos) Homestar Runner…and one of my favorite characters of all-time, Strong Bad. These guys have never “sold-out” and never will. I remember checking out their site back in my first agency job, thinking they would be great to create something for Crunch Fitness and seeing an FAQ to advertisers that said something to the effect that they are happy just doing what they are doing. But besides for hating ads, these guys hit another interesting theme of the conference:

Inspiration can come from where you least expect it. So next time you’re considering hitting up a museum or movie, consider a “depressing shopping center – an inspiringly depressing one” like where they work. Or consider soaking in your boredom and then creating something to eliminate it (like Chuck Norris Facts, which actually started with Vin Diesel facts on a lonely Friday night for the then high school senior). Making something you find really entertaining or useful was the key for many of these people’s success on the Internet. (Million Dollar Homepage, on the other hand, was all about making money from the start!) And once you’re inspired to make something, remember that “perfection is the enemy of credibility.”

Alice Marwick gave a fantastic talk about celebrity and how Internet celebrities fit into the framework. As David Weinberger said, “We know how fame works in a world of scarcity, but we’re still figuring out how it works in a world of abundance.” Thankfully I don’t have to describe the types of promoters out there, the public image vs. public appearance phenomenon (see Magibon) or pseudo-celebritis because Alice was kind enough to post her notes on her site. Awesome! Definitely worth a look, and back to that presenting to a digitally-inclined audience point, she may find a new career in it. Bonus points for Heidi and Spencer example as well.

I unfortunately missed Christian of Stuff White People Like, but his attribution to fame and fortune (luck) is captured here. Most importantly, you’ll learn he is a fan of Back to School, a favorite movie of this blog. I did get to see the LOL peeps in action, who were thanked on behalf of stoners everywhere. Their advice was to find memes with built in audiences and keep in mind that tiny iterations of popular stuff are more likely to be hits than breakthrough new ideas. And though the tail recursion for lolcode went way over my head, I found Adam Lindsay talking about how the passionate (computer science) community completely outpaced him in creating the code.

Marketers, here is your quote from “Cheez” the CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger:

Every second you spend on the haters is a second not spent serving your fans

I caught Justine of iJustine (whose audience is now mostly female believe it or not), Dino of Bert is Evil (who was contacted by the CIA), Ji Lee of The Bubble Project (who is looking for a way to do the bubble project over shitty commercials), Eric of ACLU (who was on fire) and Leslie of Gem Sweater (who sadly, I missed perform on Friday night). I laughed, though not necessarily while rolling on the floor, and I met some really interesting people.

I’ll leave you with a quote from ACLU Eric:

Ad people want to order a viral like it’s a cheeseburger.

And I’ll add “No pun intended.” Can’t wait for ROFLcon 2009.

Tags: conferences, roflcon, viral, web2.0

Movies Making Moves

I was on the cusp of writing about the marketing of J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield and Lost. However, three things made me decide to make this post more specific to movies:

1. Much has already been said about both. (In particular, I recently saw Three Minds post about Cloverfield and Brand Flakes post about Lost.)
2. Last night’s unfortunate and awful Golden Globe production make movies top of mind. (It was the first time I felt the real impact of this writers’ strike.)
3. I just saw this pretty excellent site for Be Kind Rewind. (Image below is from the Swede Yourself section.)
While this site is not novel in its idea or application, it is relevant to the movie and does follow the (tentative and changing) rules of viral success: make it personal, make it simple, make it slippery. (via Herd)

It has “pass-ability” like its predecessor, Simpsonsize Me—which I read had over 16 million hits and 700,000 photos uploaded in 3 days. It makes nice use of the actors, Jack Black, Mos Def, and Danny Glover like Snakes On A Plane did with Samuel L. Jackson—may have not have made money to match the buzz, but over 1.5 million calls were sent in week one alone. Even it’s not the most novel or cool thing out there, it does show that movie studios are investing in the digital space with interactive content. And they are showing they understand communities and community needs, whether its galvanizing an existing community (often times the case for a sequel or book adaptation or even leveraging a fan club of an actor). Kite Runner did both with its clubs for pre-screenings, celebrity-signed kite auction for charity on eBay, and other prizes.

I must say, however, that most fall short in continuing the relationship with movie goers. They create excitement, get people to the theaters, let the film speak for itself, and assume people will recommend to friends, family, coworkers, etc. Which is not a bad assumption. Lots of us love to talk about movies. However, there seems to be an opportunity to aid in this WOM by applying some time and effort to reconnecting post-seeing the movie, especially in the online world. Rather than have people leave and lose them, why don’t we extend the conversation and make it easier for people to share their thoughts (hopefully recommendations). Whether its through more related content (new side characer story-lines, for example), badges to wear with pride on your blog or Facebook profile (or even soundtrack samples), sites that are only accessible to those who saw them movie (make them answer a question from the movie) that offer exclusive merchandise or other experiences, etc., it is largely under-leveraged.

In short, viral shouldn’t stop at the end credits.

I remember feeling that way about Juno. I left the theater wanting to tell (just about) everyone I knew to get tickets immediately. Instead of sending a mass text though, I hit up Twitter and told 40 people rather than 140. I wanted to post about it and title the post, “Honest to blog” but couldn’t remember the line. My old boss, Nigel believed strongly in the power of highly repeatable thoughts. Most times they took the form of taglines. Movies usually have hundreds of little pieces of highly repeatable lines, stories, thoughts baked in. The more we can give a taste of this interestingness, interactivity, and i-(shit no i-word) how about “viral-ity” into our communications pre- and POST-viewing, the better.

There’s probably such a thing as over-promoting (think Jerry Seinfeld for Bee Movie) but overall it seems movies are again remembering the success of The Blair Witch Project—which grossed $248MM at the box office with a $25K budget.

Tags: movies, viral