I thought about writing this post in 140 character Haiku- but that would be tough and time consuming. Twitter is fast and instant. The simple answer to “What are you doing” can be the ultimate test bed for concepts to our attention deficit audiences. Want to find out what people think: test it on your followers.
Leading tweetheads can make hits magically appear on a site in minutes with a 140 character or less tweet with a link. Launching a new product? Want to test a headline? Tweet the variations to different audiences and see what hits show up. A whole new practice of market research will appear- with the ability to get almost instant feedback.
Soon PR and ad agencies will be evaluated by their social network juice. How many people can you connect to who will work as brand evangelists? Crispin Porter & Bogusky launched Subservient Chicken for Burger King when the agency was 150 staffers- by just emailing their friends about the site. Quickly, the site ended up on top of the viral site hall of fame list. Now the agency is at 600+ employees.
While Twitter is still only reaching a small subset of the population at large, it’s reaching the all critical early-adopter, influencer crowd. So along with client lists and credentials, maybe hiring an agency should also involve checking out their social networks. Friends, followers and connections are the new currency of media power- and a great 140 character (or less) headline will be critical.
At what lengths will an agency go to spend a clients hard earned money. If you are Crispin Porter + Bogusky, to Greenland, Thailand and other far away places to make a spot called “Whopper Virgins.” The concept is brilliant- do the ultimate blind taste test, find people who’ve never eaten a hamburger, and may not even know the difference between McDonalds and Burger King.
So far so good. But then after a very expensive shoot, and a brilliant, entertaining short documentary, you fail to let the world find the site online as discussed in Ad Age:
…Whopper Virgins, its latest endeavor, may be the best yet… if you can find it.
The Whopper Virgins experience begins with a TV commercial with a brief teaser that directs you to WhopperVirgins.com. … it’s running heavily during weekend football games. Go to the site and you’re treated to a video of Burger King running a Whopper vs. Big Mac taste test with people in Romania, Thailand and Greenland who have never eaten a hamburger before. It’s poignant and amusing, if you can tolerate the implicit ethnocentrism.
What if you don’t remember the exact Web address and Google it? You still better remember the domain name. While whopperVirgins.com ranks first in Google for “whopper virgins,” it’s invisible when you omit the plural.
There are three areas of neglect here:
* The domain: WhopperVirgin.com is a parked domain filled with ads for Burger King store listings, Virgin Mobile gifts, Virgin Atlantic flights, Virgin Islands vacations and Virgin Mary checks.
* Search engine optimization: The microsite doesn’t appear on the first three pages of Google results for “whopper virgin” searches.
* Paid search: While reviewing Google’s listings over several days, there hasn’t been a search ad running on “whopper virgin” queries.
This is a major missed opportunity. Google Trends shows that recently, the volume of searches for the singular and plural versions have been nearly equal. “Whopper virgin” searchers must either go to an intermediary site or refine their search. Why can’t consumers ‘have it their way’ and get to Burger King’s site even if they’re off by a letter? This multimillion-dollar branding campaign could have covered all its bases with a $10,000 search marketing investment. As it stands now, Burger King risks frustrating consumers instead of serving up one whopper of a video.
We’ve been preaching the same thing, ever since Crispin did the expensive “Manthem” spot. In fact, most ad agency sites are just as oblivious to both search and accessibility. Both of which should be critical to any client and their budget.
Before you approve a large web budget, you should first, try to google your agency. Go to www.google.com and type in: site:youragencyurl.tld like site:thenextwave.biz
If they don’t have more total results than we do, start wondering (especially if there are more than 2 commas in your budget). We’re happy to evaluate digital strategy for any one who is about to spend a gazillion dollars on an online based campaign like Whopper Virgins.
In case you want to see it- try it right here, instead of going to the site that does nothing for search. http://www.whoppervirgins.com/
update- 2017- here’s the video from the flash site
It only takes 3x longer than an Apple ad to say absolutely nothing about why you should buy Vista- or believe Microsoft is anything different than the company that has ignored it’s customers for, well, since day one.
Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates meet in a mall at “Shoe Circus” and do exactly what Seinfeld is best known for- talk about nothing. As they walk out of the mall, after Bill has flashed his Shoe Circus Clown Club membership card, Seinfeld asks for a sign about the amazing future those geniuses at Microsoft have been dreaming up- just to get Bill to wiggle his ass on camera.
That shot is probably the most honest part of the whole spot: since Microsoft has been showing us their ass for as long as we’ve used their operating system and software. Software that crashes, software that attracts viruses like shit seduces flies, and a user interface that has never been intuitive- making the complex - harder. For the life of me, why does an end user need to know about a “registry?”
The Mojave Experiment was an attempt to do a “Pepsi Challenge” for Vista- only it was Vista in both cups. The website can’t be watched on a Mac- so forget about getting those customers back- and, it showcases one of the key problems Microsoft refuses to face: computing standards make for a better computing experience. From the earliest days of Mac vs PC it’s been the fundamental unique selling proposition that makes Mac’s the brand that can charge a premium and generate loyalty- once you learned how to do something in one program, it worked for all of them. Microsoft keeps thinking that the reasons users don’t like their software is because users are stupid- instead of realizing it was never about the software- it was about what you as a user, could accomplish with the software.
CP+B may have finally met a challenge that great ads can’t solve. This was only the first salvo. However, if Apple decides to release their OS X operating system to run on all Intel based PC’s for $249 (about double what they charge to run it on a Mac) Microsoft’s stock will fall faster than GM’s when gas hits $5 a gallon (as if it could fall much more).
In the end, we still come down to the old adage: “It’s not creative if it doesn’t sell.”
“Hi, I’m a Mac” from Chiat/Day has doubled market share for Apple in the last 2 years, while Apple is still charging a premium on their hardware. Go look at the comments on the YouTube spot above- and repeat after me: “I’m a PC and I’m leaving the building.”
Part II: a 4.5 minute showing Bill and Jerry trying to hang out with the “little people”- now Bill is doing the robot. Smacks of desperation.
I was in a session on launching viral campaigns with a bunch of non-advertising people (and a few ad people)- all very web savvy, and it was interesting to me that campaigns were being talked about without any reference to the agency that did the campaigns.
Yeah. Believe it or not, no one cares who did the campaign except those of us in the business. But, out of the examples, 2 were Crispin Porter+Bogusky work.
First was the story of Subservient Chicken. The amazing penetration of this site were evident when probably 80% of the room raised their hands when asked if they’d visited the site. The idea of trying to get a major US corporation to post a site that has a guy in a chicken suit wearing a black garter belt, a la online porn peep show was a gutsy move by CP+B. The presenter knew BK’s sales went up- but didn’t know if it specifically sold chicken.
To confirm that: here is a bit from an AdWeek analysis of the campaign:
Dissecting ‘Subservient Chicken’
But, aside from Web traffic, did the campaign actually drive customers into stores to buy the sandwich? About a month after the TenderCrisp sandwich debuted, BK reported that sales had steadily increased an average of 9 percent a week. Since then, Geis says the company has seen “double-digit” growth of awareness of the TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich and “significantly increased” chicken sandwich sales. And the TenderCrisp does sell better than the Original Chicken Sandwich.
The second mention was the “Safe Happens” tv spot for the Jetta. Not necessarily a “viral” campaign, since it ran on broadcast TV- but, it did make an impression through viral sharing.
This spot is the absolute antithesis of the typical car glamor spot that Detroit favors. Showing a real life situation and the car having an accident would make Detroit uncomfortable (although crash test dummies and a test sled have been standard fare for years). It makes you wonder why Detroit never approved this type of work- especially since their main knock on foreign “small cars” was always that they aren’t as safe as the boats from GM, Ford and Chrysler. There was a lot of discussion over the graphic nature of this spot on broadcast- which effectively multiplied the effect of the buy. Some even argued that the fact that the Jetta’s brakes squealed and didn’t stop like ABS, avoiding the wreck - could backfire.
But, once again, everyone in the room knew the spot. How many agencies get the nod two times in an hour by a non-agency pro. Case closed, Crispin Porter + Bogusky is doing memorable, discussable work and that’s worth a lot more to a client than the mundane dreck most settle for.
The other campaign that got mentioned was the Dove Evolution spot, that’s known by all in advertising-
but, the penetration of awareness in the room was at least half that of the CP+B work. (granted, the room was probably 65% male). Also note, the Evolution spot (from Ogilvy and Mather, Toronto) cost considerably more to make than Subservient Chicken (which reportably cost $30K). Unilever has since caught flack for being disengenuous for promoting Dove as the anti-sexification of women, while also running ads for the testostorone overloaded AXE body spray sites. Watch the following disection of Unilevers hypocrisy:
The description of the session, (which was so popular they had to move rooms):
“Everyone wants the benefits of a viral campaign, but few people really understand how to put the pieces together to create the best chance for success. Find out the most common mistakes companies make when aiming to go viral and how a little bit of brainstorming can set you up for success. Jennifer Laycock will walk you through the actual brainstorming process she uses with clients to help you gather information needed to put things together. She’ll also help you learn to identify “key influencers” within your industry and will offer concrete tips on the best way to approach them with your campaign.”
I was impressed with Ms. Laycocks reasoned approach to generating low-budget viral campaigns, and her worksheets for assessing how to put a plan together, however, there is no guaranteed formula for creating viral campaigns. Crispin launched Subservient Chicken by asking it’s own employees to write everyone they knew to check out the site and spread the word and it worked beyond the wildest expectations.
There is one thing that is guaranteed about good viral- that traces back to an old adage- there is noting that will kill a bad product off faster than good advertising. If your viral campaign is based on deceit, a poor premise, or isn’t able to be verified- you will have more problems than you started with (see GM’s effort for the Chevy Tahoe- when gas was only $2.50 a gallon).
We’re currently tasked with creating buzz and hopefully a viral for a re-launch of a retailer online and off, and it will be interesting to use Ms. Laycock’s process along with our own ideas in the coming weeks.
One thing is for sure though in creating viral campaigns, the winning ideas aren’t the safe ones.
Well, way back in 1988- “how big van we get without getting bad?” was the question on Guy Day’s mind- because Jay Chiat had famously asked “I want to see how big we can get without getting bad.”
Because, creativity isn’t something that comes with a formula, or on demand- and sooner or later, everyone runs into “Creative block”- or can’t come up with the one, really, insanely great idea that carries through for ever- you know, like “Just do it” or “Hello, I’m a Mac, And I’m a PC” etc.
So when über hip, super hot, Crispin Porter + Bogusky landed a piece of the Nike business from the super hot, über hip, old standby agency- Wieden + Kennedy, the ad world gasped. Was no relationship sacred? Were CMO’s so cutthroat as to divorce the one that brought them fame and fortune?
Well- today, after 13 months, and ONE tv ad, Nike pulled the plug on CP+B and went home to the old standby according to AdAge:
Crispin CEO Jeff Hicks confirmed the split in a statement, citing a mutual decision to go different ways: “We will forever be in awe of the company that is Nike and wish them nothing but the best.”
A Wieden spokeswoman could not be immediately reached. A report of the split first surfaced on George Parker’s blog Adscam/The Horror.
Nike first stunned the ad world last April by adding Crispin to an agency roster long exclusively dominated by Wieden. The pairing of one of the most iconic brands of all time with the hotshop was seen by many as a harbinger of trouble for Wieden, but the collaboration thus far resulted in a single TV ad, for the iPod-integrated Nike-Plus brand, which ran in December.
While Crispin Porter is still a wildly successful group of talented people, they aren’t the answer for everything, as Nike found out. With Burger King, VW, and now Microsoft- the burden of being a genius on so many major accounts, requires great management expertise to go with the creative. Growing an agency can be tough. Need proof- look back at Jay Chiat and Guy Day’s questions from way back.
Note to Chief Marketing Officers- there is a lot to be said for institutional knowledge, and a lot more to be said for treating your agency as a trusted partner. When the work isn’t good, remember to check out your own brief and assignment?
