I’ve kept an eye on the trends this week and decided to review brand appearances weekly. So here we go.
Saturday:Affliction Clothing got a boost as it was featured in the CBS Elite CX Saturday night fights. The fight caused a LOT of the main search terms for the day. Sunday: no brands. however, a lot of searches for TV shows as people use the weekend to catch up on their downloads. Monday: quite a few searches for people looking to get registered to vote in various US states along. Citicards were a popular search, possibly because they have started to cancel dormant cards. Samsung Sway was the only other brand, a new phone that was released that day. Tuesday: People were looking for In and Out Burger, which appeared to be celebrating its 60th birthday,. Bill Me later, an online payment system, hit the headlines with iwantmymancave.com, a competition to win a kitted out Man Den. Finally, Blend Tec, the lovely company behind Will it Blend videos were also being looked for. Wednesday: Halo 3 Recon was popular, as Microsoft announced a new version of the game. Olive Garden, the family chain of restaurants appeared to be very popular for no reason that I could see and In and Out Burgers were still trending high. But the overall biggest trend appeared to be for grocery coupons, in various permutations, as people looked for ways to save money. Thursday: no brands today; CSI and associated terms were the most popular entertainment property as the series returned in the US.
A fun little timewaster game from netflights. Holiday Flings is very simple, even I can play it but it’s fun and addictive.. You get to enter into a draw to win a trip to Sydney. Be aware, it plays music that is very cheesy but very catchy.
Volvo are sponsoring the Ocean race that starts next week. Tehy’ve released a couple of new models to promote the race, tie in to the brand and have also put together this really sweet game. Guide the characters around the different scenarios to rescue the yacht over at Rush.
Screenshot from site
I like this game a lot, it’s engaging, it gets you involved and you want to replay it to beat your time. They have used the same techniques for the game as they have for the interactive car tours on the site as well.
As well as that, the Ocean race also has a game, but this is a lot longer. Join up, create your boat and set it sailing. This is a long haul game but you can win a car at the end of it. This idea is good and they’ve got 2700 boats signed up at the moment, but you’re going to have to be pretty dedicated to stick it out to the end. It’s a lovely combination of gameplay and realworld data, all brought together on a virtual earth.
The Volvo Open 70 fleet will race around the world, starting in Alicante on 4 October 2008. Now is your chance to race against them and your friends online, in real time, using live weather data and following the real race course.
The highest rating and only product video this week is not an ‘official’ product one, but a review of the new Nokia 5800 Phone. This is the first touch-screen phone from Nokia that was released last week; it was also high in the search trends chart over the weekend.
Elsewhere there’s a lot of politics, a LOT of political spoof from SNL plus a sprinkling of wrestling. A quiet week overall.
Sony are one of the brands associated with the new Bond Film, Quantum of Solace. They’re running a promotion with win a $1million in the US, through their site Mission for a Million, through a contest taking place over the next few weeks.
They’ve followed the model of many brands building a film promotion over the last few years (Volvo and Pirates of the Caribbean springs immediately to mind) by providing a game/puzzle based mechanism to get to the prize. This is pretty strightforward - successfully complete the weekly missions and get entries into the draw. Each mission will give you clips from the film and other promotional stuff.
Good in principle, but on evidence of the first mission it has to be one of the most clumsily branded I’ve seen of this genre. Well, not sure of clumsily is the right word, but definitely, obviously, in your face. The same guy behind this would also be asking them to make the logo bigger in other media. At first I though the branding would be quite sweet, with the Sony coloured logos being used in the wait bars, but I was sadly mistaken.
The first challenge is to watch a piece of video, with a ‘timelimit to download. Of course, the first time you try it, it;s too slow, so you get this:
Screenshot from site
Next you have to answer some questions, one of which is to do with the video you watched and then something like this:
Screenshot from site
There are good ways of integrating your product information into promotions like this, but this is not one of them. It just made me laugh!
Kodak bring you Make Me Super - load up your face picture, tell it your name and you’ll get a video with a catch themesong all for you. Created by the same team behind Elf Yourself, EVB San Francisco, this is in a very similar vein but still a lot of fun. My favourite moment - when the model spins round, but leaves the head facing forward witht he body spinning beneath it. Crack me up everytime
The campaign is in support of the Kodak gallery, what is by all accounts a pretty good photosharing site. The site gives you the option to load up your picture to your Gallery (or create an account)
What I think
The videos are hilarious, especially given what I’m supposed to be super at (baking, shopping and remembering birthdays, all of which my family will vehemently deny I have any skill at!). It’s funny and very sharable and the link to the product is good.
The Pitch
Could have done with a link to the product and the site. The only link was to Will Farrell’s video.But there were lot sof assets provided to share, even if I ended up making my own screengrab.
A very simple idea. Use Microsoft’s Live Search and get something back for doing so. You go to Search Perks, download a Perk Counter and get tickets/points for searches. At the end of the promotion you redeem the earned points for prizes - “from frequent flyer miles to music downloads to XBox 360 games”.
Screenshot from site (as supplied by Microsoft/PR)
What I think
I’m in two minds about this. As a loyalty programme for a search engine, this works. For most things that most people search for, search engines tend to return the same set of results. This is aimed at your regular casual web users, running Windows and IE (in fact, it only works on IE, so I can’t try it out), so for many, this will add benefit to their usage. The search team are also offering other benefits, such as this cash-back scheme with eBay. It works for the users, it gives something back whilst not really impacting what they are doing.
But understanding the reason why they are offering this paints a different picture. As a company, they are so far behind the market leader and the chances of them increasing share (in short term, I never make long term predictions online) is low. Looking at the promotions, my guess is that the Live Search team are being measured on traffic, not revenue, as they are speeding money to get traffic. The tactics they are using are about short-term gain, hoping that exposure to the product will mean some people will stick.
The Pitch
Plenty of information but I had to chase images to be used as there were no assets included in the email; however the request was answered promptly with the items I needed.
As a follow up to the bloggers meeting that Smirnoff sponsored early this week, the agency has sent through the recipe for ‘my drink’, the Big Apple Moscow Mule. They’ve also got video on how to make the drink
Image sent from Smirnoff
(Yes I know this is yet another post about Smirnoff, but a..they did a good job on this and b…I used to work on the brand, still like it and own shares!!!!!!)
Leading Hotels of the World ran a promotion this week, where they were offering hotel rooms at $19.28 per night - not bad for 4-5 star hotels. They had 150,000 sign ups and thought they were well prepared for the web-based sale. Unfortunately, it all went wrong and their servers fell over, so nobody got anything.
Overall, their response to this was pretty good. They sent out an email pretty quickly with an alternative method - fill in a form and email it, in a first come, first served basis (from a fixed starting point). This was obviously a quick-meeting, what do we do type solution as it is leaves the door open to people who did not pre-register as required. A further follow up email stated:
Thank you so much for your continued patience with The Leading Hotels of the World. We are extremely sorry for the inconveniences we have caused and regret to advise you that the USD 19.28 email promotion scheduled for tomorrow October 2nd shall be postponed.
Although our original back-up plan provided a viable solution for the 150,000 people who were registered, it was met with some confusion over submission procedures and timing. In addition, we have become increasingly concerned that a large number of non-registered respondents plan to submit forms which would inundate the system and greatly diminish your chances of securing a USD 19.28 rate.
So it’s all on hold until they think of another way of doing the promotion. From a brand perspective, this could be really bad, leading to reduced confidence in something that is all about luxury and premium service. But I think their email communications kept people informed, were apologetic and sincere enough to ameliorate the problem.
What else could they have done?
Better stress testing? Yes, but stress testing on back-up servers doesn’t always translate to what happens in the real world on production servers. They knew the number of registered users - my guess is there were a LOT more people hitting the site trying to book.
Alternative methods of communication on a different server? Have another way of getting the message out in a different place. Email is the obvious, as they used, but you could have a blog, a Twitter feed or something else.
In fact, having a more personal place to share news and thoughts would be good - I don’t want to download pdfs to read what is going on
I like this new site from Cadbury’s, put together to promote their new chocolate bars of cranberries/granola (why not call it muesli?) and apple crumble crunch.
Choose your ingredients, hit the button and see if the parrot likes it. Get a good combination and you may get your own bar. In the end though, this is a ‘grab your details’ site, as you have to sign up to get a chance of getting a bar. It’s not a very clever site though, as you can keep trying ingredients, being successful and you keep getting asked for your details. Surely, they could tie things together in a session so you only get prompted once and then remember the combinations? So the stickability is limited, as it gets boring after the second time!
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