facebook ridiculousness, part deux

and so it continues. I got this gem today:

all i can say is. W.T.F.. that does not look like english to me, and I am decidedly not japanese.  The only part of that that i understood gets cut off with ellipses!)  The suspense is killing me! the pokemon what? Why is pikachu leaping? This is a cruel joke, when they tease you like that, i just HAD to click on the ad..

and i landed here: http://www.pokemon.co.jp/corporate/

I can only surmise that this is the pokemon company, based in japan. everything is half english and half japanese, everything i click on leads me to even more undecipherable web pages and some pictures of cute imaginary creatures.

My eggs are worth $8K and I like pikachu. Is this Facebook, or is this South Park?

Facebook thinks I'm an Asian Egg Donor

I just got this ad targeted to me on facebook:

.....

Where to begin?? Let's start with the copy:

"Asian Egg Donors Earn $8K"

I get that they're trying to customize this ad somewhat to my ethnicity by putting "Asian" on there. But, 1. does this mean if I were of another race, that I would earn more or less? Does my ethnicity equate my monetary potential in this market of egg donors?

Let's move on to the image:

Decidedly "Asian"?? I think not. Asians don't all look like that - there are over a billion people in India who don't look like that picture. If I were Indian and I saw that ad, that would be of no relevance for me whatsoever. Now you can argue that the company is using a less inclusive term of "Asian", which I guess includes women who share similar features as that model in the picture. Which now presents a problem with the egg donation clinic's ethnic categorization - did the company inadvertently admit that they don't think Indians are Asians?

Now let's talk about the targeting. I'm assuming this company went about facebook targeting the same way a lot of us do - select from Facebook's menu of options and then add some keywords. They probably entered some common Chinese/Japanese/whatever they think is "Asian" names - and I guess my last name (which is a pretty popular Asian name) fit into the category they are targeting. However, I wonder if they considered the fact that I may be adopted, or that I may be half Asian, or I married an Asian guy. But I guess this sort of crass targeting fits into their overall way of thinking, as demonstrated by their equally crass definition of "Asian".

Well done, egg donation clinic. I hope you are paying on a cost per click basis.

Creative + Media = Awesomeness

Every once in a while you come across a campaign that is just so right in every sense, this is one of them:

http://creativity-online.com/work/lionsgate-the-last-exorcism-chatroulette-promotion/21047

Lionsgate's coming out with a new crappy movie "the last exorcism", I think the movie execs knew that it was going to bomb at the box office, so they came up with the best solution ever -- put the most amazing marketing campaign behind it to drive excitement. I'm pretty sure that's the strategy that was stated in the RFP.

Anyways, where do we even begin?? There's so much crap out there in the ad/media industry that I get so excited when something good actually happens. Let's start with the creative. Everyone knows sex sells, this little trailer has got it. SOoooo simple! But I bet it took the creative shop lots of beer and long nights to come around to that. Moving on, media (much more exciting). This placement takes into account at least 3 different hot trends in media and churns out a perfect marriage of them:

1. online video
2. Social media/viral sharing/earned media vs. paid media
3. Branded and integrated content

Video is attracting more and more attention as an effective form of online advertising, blend this with a video populated with interesting content, as well as the natural inclination of users to share content online, and this is the result.

This campaign is a great media campaign, because it leverages the unique capability of the platform of chatroulette to further extend the creative messaging -- no other site can do this except for chatroulette. The planning behind this is exactly what I think we should really strive to answer as media strategists - what is unique about this specific site that we can utilize for our campaign? So many placements are thoughtlessly distributed, too many ROS units, too much clutter. This one really stands out.

Love this campaign.

Mainstreaming

I'm watching "So You Think You can Dance", and one of the judges mused at the fact that they have 3,000 audience members in the Kodak theater "watching dancers!". The implication being that Dancing is popular now, it's "in" now. Which got me thinking, can you mainstream everything now? I mean look at our TV programs these days: Top Chef (cooking? Why would you spend hours watching people dice onions?); Dancing with the Stars (old people trying to dance?); Project Runway (fashion is great, but nearly 4 million viewers per week? 4 million people watching designers cut and glue fabric together...); the Biggest Loser (watching a whole bunch of people running on treadmills)...all these shows turn mundane or otherwise niche activities into the feature presentation. What is it about these shows that keep drawing millions of viewers every week? Methinks it's a combination of good editing (HUMAN DRAMA!!!), and peer pressure.

Good editing first -- you need the good editing to draw viewers, they have to be entertained, and what better entertainment than drama? There's an interesting post at Mind Matters about how when we watch TV, we get less lonely because we experience something called the parasocial relationship phenomenon:

• "Parasocial relationships are the kind of one sided pseudo-relationships we develop over time with people or characters we might see on TV or in the movies. So, just as a friendship evolves through spending time together and sharing personal thoughts and opinions, parasocial relationships evolve by watching characters on our favorite TV shows, and becoming involved with their personal lives, idiosyncrasies, and experiences as if they were those of a friend"

So good editing is needed in order to establish that parasocial relationship. A good show will presumably be successful at this, and thus draw some audiences. But still, no matter how good the editing is, it's not good enough to draw upwards of 2 or 3 million viewers per episode.

This is where peer pressure comes in. The social aspect of watching these shows are valuable to us--for 2 separate reasons:

1. Participation in social context: We want to watch Idol so we can discuss it over the water cooler at work tomorrow: "ohmygod i can't believe so and so got kicked off! he was soooooo good!" If you're left out of that conversation, then you'd feel pretty alone, right? So you might as well spend an hour watching Idol just so you can join some conversations at work. Before you know it, you're emphatically expressing your grief over the loss of Sanjaya on Idol.

2. Demonstration of social value: These shows, with their format of competition, judge evaluation, and finally audience participation, have taken a step further than traditional shows in that they demonstrate a social value. They not only make the viewers part of the show (via voting or what not), but they also provide educational value. Through watching a half hour of So You Think You Can Dance, I now know the difference between par terre and en l'air . Equipped with this knowledge, I can participate in conversations that involve the show and/or the steps and throw in my two cents and sound like I know what I'm talking about. In this way, I can show off and demonstrate that I know stuff and that I am interesting: one way of attracting others.

This lethal combination of good editing and social value is what makes shows like Top Chef successful. Now, if we can only convert that idea to advertising...good creative+social value? Sounds like a winning campaign to me!

The thing with Social Media...

I think the reason for why advertisers can’t reliably use social media as a channel is the fact that social media is too individualized and too customized for advertisers to create one broad strategy for.  Take Facebook, for example, more than 200 million active users.  That’s a large audience pool, and with the Facebook Advertising program, you can theoretically reach your target.  However, what I use Facebook for is different from what my friend uses Facebook for.  I am acutely aware that anything on there is public property, therefore, I am careful about what I am linked to.  I personally know and am friends with a majority of the 359 people I am Facebook friends with.  I delete inappropriate wall posts, and I keep my profile very grandma friendly.  However, a large percentage of my friends’ profiles are a lot more open.  While I am uncomfortable sharing anything personal on Facebook, they put anything and everything on there.  I think of Facebook as a tool to connect with people, they think of Facebook as an open diary.  People who use Facebook have vastly different views on exactly what it is, half the time, they don’t really know what it is.  For traditional outlets such as TV and Magazines, we know why people use them, and we can use this knowledge to reach them.  For example, by saying that someone reads US Weekly religiously, you can probably guess the demographic and psychographic characteristics of that person.  However, by saying that someone uses Facebook religiously, you can’t reliably say anything about that person.  There are so many levels you have to go through to figure out who that person is and how to target that person.  You have to look at what groups they are in, what applications they installed, what their interests are, etc.  And even then, you can’t be certain that they are interested at all in what you’re selling.  Today an LSAT ad popped up on my profile, I’m guessing that’s because I’m a college-age student and am a Political Science major and an a Fan of Obama and am in a group vaguely related to Justice and Law.  However, I’m going into Advertising, I have absolutely no interest in law whatsoever.  The ability to truly customize your own Facebook is precisely why marketers haven’t really penetrated the medium. 

Another thing that makes social media hard to crack is the fact that it’s always being updated.  Let’s stick with the Facebook example -- just a month ago, Facebook underwent a major structural change, the second in a year.  Its new design is a lot more Twitter-like, and hasn’t exactly been popular with its users.  Facebook, and social media in general, is constantly updating itself because at the core of it, it is technology, and is not meant to be fixed.  Social media’s instability in format doesn’t allow marketers to truly use it as a trusted channel with expectations of ROI.  Televisions may change its pixel depth and the thickness of the screen, but that doesn’t affect the way you use it – however, with each interface redesign, Facebook redefines the way it is used – the focus on feeds in its latest redesign is meant to encourage users to update their statuses more often. Therefore, it is hard for marketers to develop a solid campaign centered around an ever-changing platform.

While it is hard to effectively use social media as an advertising outlet, it isn’t impossible.  I think social media further pushes marketers towards engaging the consumer rather than just throwing stuff at the consumer.  The popular “whopper sacrifice” campaign successfully broke 233,906 friendships on Facebook before it was banned.  That’s more than a third of McCain fans on Facebook.  Even more amazing, the BK campaign only lasted a week.  This is just one example out of many that highlights the importance of the content and level of creativity of advertising rather than the superficial reach of it.  Also, perhaps shorter, more explosive campaigns are the way to go with social media. That way, you don’t have to deal with the constant facelifts, and you can invest less dollars for possible high returns.