FRANKthoughts

Our good friends at carsales.com.au & Lookout Mobile have teamed up to bring sports fans the ultimate AFL and NRL iPhone applications for free in 2010.

Last year both apps were available @$3.99 and were the two most downloaded sporting apps in Australia. Aussie Rules live was also the 3rd most downloaded paid app in 09!

All the popular features of 2009 have returned like goal score updates and live text commentary, through to your team’s ladder position and fixture, with the inclusion of in-app integration of footytips.com.au and detailed player stats for the last 10 years.

The carsales.com.au sponsorship is the first of its kind in Australia, in which an iPhone application is available free, in return for sponsorship – “we are huge supporters of both sporting codes and innovative technology solutions and this was a way for us to show support to both mediums”, said Shane Pettiona, Chief Operating Officer of carsales.com.au.

The 2010 Aussie Rules Live & Rugby League Live apps are now available for download so hit the Apple iTunes App store today.

Enjoy & GO PIES!

The new ad for ANZ is starting by showing us “a bank” that is very good at ignoring their clients. I really like the lady actress there – she’s so good you’d think she’s working at your branch! The script is so clever, so bizarre and almost too real. Then, in the last five seconds, the ad becomes somewhat like science fiction.  It shows us the ANZ way – a guy/girl (they switch depending on customer’s sex) is welcoming the customer to the branch with a smile and the tag-line “we live in your world”. Wow, I’ve been a client of ANZ for the last seven years and NEVER was I greeted by anyone there. The result? the ad leaves you with the bitter taste of “no truth in advertising” while reminding you that “living in your world” means treating you the same but with a new logo.

But the ad isn’t the only thing broken. It’s the brand communication strategy that needs fixing. If you’re going to claim to be “living in my world” why don’t you have something about it on your website? in branches? How about having a real person helping people out on twitter?

I don’t catch many TV ads these days thanks to Windows Media Centre  but the occasional one slips through when I am not paying attention. I was first drawn in to the latest AAMI Safe Driver Rewards TV spot by the tongue-in-cheek use of an annoying yet comfy Gen X classic ‘What about Me’, and the twit who crashed into the shop .. whilst tweeting…

Then as the stereotypical scenarios rolled out it kept me engaged and entertained. It also appealed to me because, like everyone else, I am the most responsible, safe and best ever driver in the history of driving and it annoys me that I pay for other people’s stupidity. A strong product built on a solid insight. And a well pitched campaign (even if they do drive ‘lorries’ at Badjar Ogilvy) that has generated some good early social media chatter.

After just two weeks there have been over 7,700 youtube views with over 60 positive comments . (they couldn’t all be from the agency could they?)

A quick search of Twitter reveals a similar picture of overwhelming positivity:

can’t get rid of the soundtrack in AAMI’s latest TVC out of my mind “what about me….” it’s been playing in my mind whole night…”

Lol at the aami add lol “I was twittering and drove into thr corner shop” :p

You know that car insurance add for aami, does that dude say he was twittering away before he crashed into the corner shop? Lolol

♫ ♫ ♫ I was twittering away when I crashed into the corner shop ♫ ♫ ♫

What about me it isn’t fair .. Cldn’t help myself AAMI TV ad LOL Lol -AAMI Insurance Ad – What About Me?

And ofcourse the odd whinge (can’t please everyone):

Anyone else cringe over the new AAMI TVC with “What about me?” song (orig by Moving Pictures)? The talent can’t sing, the song is wrong.

With so many fans of the ad I wonder what AAMI are going to do to nurture them? How about a simple facebook ‘what about me’ fan page where they get people talking about their own experiences and scenarios. Maybe incentivise them.

Does this campaign strike a chord with you too?

On the weekend I took the kids to see Fantastic Mr Fox. What a wonderful film! It would have to be one of the best ‘kids’ films I’ve seen – quirky, unique, non-stop entertainment underpinned by George Clooney’s brilliance! (Not the point of the story but I thought you should know).

The movie theatre was three quarters full of predominantly Dads with their kids and we all sat through the ads and trailers waiting for the film to begin. Not usually a hotbed of media innovation, the average movie pre-amble is a fairly straight forward affair: first the cheap ads, then the expensive ads, a few movie trailers, a Village or Hoyts plug, lights down and off we go.

On this occasion however we were all shaken out of our comfy daze by a unique and engaging piece of cinema advertising.

One of the expensive ads we saw during the pre-amble was a Federal Govt Spot featuring a melanoma surgeon removing a dangerous mole from a 22 year old girl’s back.

Fairly graphic stuff that had my 8 year old daughter’s hands over her face and my 4 year old boy’s eyes glued to the screen! The message was clear: protect yourself five ways in the sun and you can avoid ending up in his theatre.

A few more ads, a few trailers and just as we thought the movie would begin, the house lights went on, the curtain came down and a male voice began talking about the ad we saw a few minutes ago…. “Hey, that ad to do with skin cancer … was pretty nasty. Did he say 400,000 Australians are diagnosed each year with skin cancer? That’s like 2,000 cinemas like this full of people! They reckon that even short periods of time in the sun unprotected – like the length of the movie we’re about to show – could cause irreversible damage to your skin. So I guess the doctor was right …”

I looked around a saw that most people were listening intently, some nudging each other or simply sitting with puzzled expressions on their face. At the conclusion of this audio-only piece the room went black, the curtain went up and the movie promptly began.

A clever, unexpected piece of cinema advertising and an effective part of the government’s marketing communications mix executed well by the teams at UM and Val Morgan. We certainly took the government’s advice that afternoon at the local pool!

Do you notice the ads in the cinema? How effective do you think they are?

There’s nothing better than to start the new year with some fresh ideas. The Customer Learning Curve is showing that your target audience is made of different people in different stages of their relationship with your brand. Check it out and let me know what you think:

Is it the PR agency? the advertising agency? the marketing department? Whoever it is they need to practice what they preach. They need to be familiar with the tools, to know the language and have guidelines to follow. They need to have something to measure with both short and long term goals. They need to provide value for your customers and business. Can anyone do it?

Here’s something from Seth Godin in his post “Watch the money“: If you’re in the music business but you never buy tickets or downloads, can you really empathize with the people you’re selling to?… if you work for a non-profit and you don’t give money to charity, what exactly are you doing in this job?… Money is more than a transfer of value. It’s a statement of belief. An ad agency that won’t buy ads, a consultant who won’t buy consulting, and a waiter who doesn’t tip big—it’s a sign, and not a good one”.

If there is one rule when it comes to building your brand and business social assets it is to buy it from the people who invest in it themselves. They have probably faced the same problem you’re facing and have the hands on experience to build a sustainable social business solution. Do you think brands should have a community/social officer?

As a marketing communications company we owe it to ourselves and our loyal clients to stay abreast of the ever evolving communications-shift that is in play. One of my solutions to appear knowledgeable is to surround myself with people and companies who are pioneering change.

One such company is Lookout Mobile who make iphone apps, jointly managed by Patrick and Daniel. One of their hero app is Aussie Rules Live and they are one of the leaders in this emerging market.

I was talking with them yesterday and they remarked that app development is now in its third-wave, which intrigued me. Wave One…all the way back in July 2008 largely came from 3G backyard developers and in hindsight were kind of crude, but fun. Wave Two emerged with 3GS. The “S” is for speed and gave birth to funkier apps such as the compass, improved gaming and augmented reality. A great example of the latter is in this clip.

Wave Three is capitalising on “second-mover advantage” which revisits existing apps and simply improves upon them. Weather apps are a good example with Pocket Weather emerging as one of the most popular.

From an iphone owner’s point of view there are so many new apps emerging and that awareness of the best apps is largely through friends and “have you seen this app?” conversations. It occured to me that aside from itunes there is no destination which provides independent, user generated, reviews and views. Apps are currently ranked in the app store by 1-5 stars which is fine but limited. I thought such a site might be called iphoneappreview.com.au. To my surprise i was able to register this url, which i did yesterday. Dot com was taken and takes us here, a site developed by doshdosh and the wrong advice  it has over 14,000 app reviews and currently ranks 328,000 on alexa.

The iphone app market is in early stages of development and penetration and i figure with the right collective attitude and experience now is a good time to explore the opportunity to provide a UGC app-review platform as a destination in a market that is destined to grow dramatically. So is  there anyone out there who agrees with the opportunity and would like to contribute at this formative stage in the life-cycle of apps? Please let me know.

Flicking through the sports section of the weekend paper I was held up by something unusual. At first I didn’t know exactly what it was. Was it the unorthodox ‘fireplace’ format that runs across two pages? Or was it the vastness of the ‘hard working white space’ in the ad? I’d been involved in both of these techniques before so it can’t just be these. There must be more to it. 

Ah hah! Then I realised that unlike regular newspaper ads this did not have a border. Subtle at first, it only took a split second for me to work out that it was an ad for a “Borderless” TV, but it was this split second challenge that had me engaged. In the heavily cluttered world of newspapers, this little example of media innovation was enough to arrest me, make me smile and get me interested in the new product, even when I am not in the market for a telly just now.

The media placement also added to the overall effectiveness of this marketing communications strategy. Newspapers are a highly relevant context in which to display interesting new products, and with Tiger Woods in town the golf pages would be heavily read. Also according to Morgan Plasma/LCD buyers are 32% more likely to play golf than the general population, and over 20% of them watch it on the telly, so a strong target audience composition amongst golf fans.

Great use of press, but unfortunately when I jumped on the web site  the TVs displayed have more borders than Mexico!  You have to dig pretty deep to find any tellies that look remotely borderless which is a bit disappointing given the cleverness of the print campaign. Perhaps a video on the site (and on youtube) showing the telly in action from different angles?

Back in June we first spoke about Guvera . Well  it’s finally launching in a few weeks…15 December we’re told. The Guvera model is based on engagement in favour of the classic advertising-interruption model. From their eDM “Instead of advertising being perceived as disruptive or annoying, Guvera allows the advertiser to align their brand with their customers passions, allowing the brand to become the hero that provides new ways to find and get music, for free.”

If you think about your own experiences in meeting people you’re more likely to end up talking with someone who is approachable and listens rather than someone who just wants to talk about themselves.

 The Guvera approach allows brands to be able to fast-track engagement via an understanding of consumer preferences across a range of crieteria. Registering with Guvera is like speed dating for brands. To register you’ll be asked about your prefences on holidays, sport, music, gadgets & things, web activities, countries, books, films, food and charities. Just the kind of topics any one might ask in getting to know you.

I’m currently reading Mike Walsh’s excellent book, Futuretainment. In this he says “The challenge/opportunity for brands to benefit from an engagement-approach is to shift their brand strategy focus and to start behaving like media companies. Great brands engage consumers through telling stories. By learning more about the stories that surround a brand we can form our own impressions of their products/services and what they mean to our own lives and experiences. As audiences fragment one of the few ways for brands to achieve mass awareness is for their message to be compelling enough for consumers to do the distribution for you.”

It’ll be interesting to see how brands manage this opportunity with Guvera. In this emerging era of brand engagement it is clear that some brands (just like some people) are socially inept and there are likely to be degrees of sensitivity between the one-night stand approach and building longer term relationships.

As Mike says “the future of entertainment is not advertising- the future of advertising is entertainment.”

This post is not about “social media”. It’s about media that is social. What’s the difference?

“Social Media” (Or earned media) is the collective term used for everything involving twitter/facebook/blog/youtube/flickr etc. It’s usually about listening, engaging and growing a community.

Media that is social is the sort of media that supports an idea by providing a community participatory solution. Here’s an example: Pavegen is the first commercial pavement that creates energy from people’s footsteps. The electricity produced is used to power signs, lights and information kiosks. The pavegens can be branded and will actually work nicely with a promotion leading people (literally) to a specific store.

It seems everyone is a winner: The brand gains publicity for the unique approach and saves on electricity bills. The consumer gets a better “experience” and the environment gets some help.

Here’s another example showing how The city of Denver is using parking meters to help raise money for homeless people in Denver.

It’s simple, Every time you put money in the meter you support food, shelter and care for the homeless people in your area. How many people will avoid paying for the meters now? How many people will feel better paying for their parking space? How good will the council look? Here’s from the Mayor: “This grassroots campaign is projected to raise roughly $100,000 per year giving the general public a constructive way to help Denver’s homeless. “The donation meter demonstrates yet another innovative way in which this community is responding to Denver’s Road Home and our commitment to ending homelessness” – Mayor Hickenlooper.

The real social media isn’t about twitter or youtube. It’s about people doing something together, a bigger idea and making things better.

Would love to hear about more examples of real social media. Got some?