Agencies like nothing more than reinventing the agency site. We've seen the drab, Flash-heavy, barely usable site recast as a blog, a YouTube channel, a Facebook page and a Twitter stream. Now, TBWA goes with the slideshow. The shop created a new "storytelling platform" that underpins the site. The end result looks a lot like a slideshow to me, although it does have the flexibility of showing work in a coherent fashion with a mix of media. Overall, the navigation can be a tad confusing. It's still quite a bit better than your run-of-the-mill agency site with a runaway pencil.
Is the Flash-powered agency site obsolete?
There's something interesting going on with agency Web sites. Ironically, many of the shops that pioneered immersive Flash sites for clients are turning their backs on the high-tech immersive approach when it comes to their own sites.The Barbarian Group, EVB and Juxt Interactive are going this feeds-over-Flash route.
Big Spaceship, creator/builder of HBO "Voyeur," is the latest shop to use a simple WordPress blog to show off not just its portfolio but feeds from its blog, Twitter and Flickr accounts (including lots of photos from something called Moustache Day 2008). The idea is to show the company's thinking in real time rather than treat the agency site as a static art piece.
The bonuses: a WordPress site is cheap and easy to update regularly. Meanwhile, traditional shops are still generally going immersive. McKinney, Leo Burnett and BBH are examples of what some call Flashturbation. It all comes down to the purpose of the site, whether it's to impress potential clients, new hires or just be there in case someone gets lost coming to the office.
The agency site reborn as YouTube channel
It was inevitable. BooneOakley, an independent shop in Charlotte, N.C., has scrapped its Web site in favor of a YouTube channel. Visitors toBooneOakley.com are redirected to YouTube, where they are greeted by a three-minute clip showing the story of "Billy," a marketing director who hired an agency owned by a holding company, got fired and then got killed by his pissed-off wife. The site has links to work and partner bios, and it uses the YouTube ability to embed links inside videos. It's an interesting approach to build a Web presence directly on a platform rather than a stand-alone destination, but you have to wonder about choosing only video as a way for BooneOakley to tell its story. The news section, for instance, is a video clip about the Obamas using the agency's initials in naming their dog. And while YouTube's "hotspotting" is a clever way to move around to different videos, the navigation is far from straightforward. I kept having to click back to the Billy intro video to get to other parts of the site.
Agency sites reborn on Facebook, Twitter
BooneOakley won praise for ditching the tired agency site in favor of a clever YouTube channel to show off its stuff. With social all the rage, Grey Stockholm has taken the next step: It's traded itsdedicated agency site to go all-in on Facebook. There, users can "Like" Grey, see work, comment on posts and do the regular Facebook things. Not to be outdone, Argentine shop Kamchatka has recast its site as a Twitter account. Actually, several. Each section of the site has its own Twitter handle. On the surface, this makes lots of sense. Facebook pages are getting more and more powerful, and plenty of campaigns are ditching the microsite in favor of the Facebook platform. Twitter is the current belle of the ball. But at the same time, both sites feel unnecessarily gimmicky. Thanks to APIs, sites can have all the social functions of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without having to choose one or the other. It would seem to make more sense to integrate all sorts of social tools into a destination site rather than choose one platform over another.
Brands will do just about anything to get people to like them, particularly on Facebook, where it means the promise of viral passalong. Corona Light is dangling an interesting offer. Like the brand on Facebook, and your photo will soon appear on a 150-foot digital billboard in Times Square. The beer brand, with help from Pereira & O'Dell, is collecting the photos now, and will run them on the board from Nov. 8 to Dec. 6. (You can set it up to automatically post a photo showing your image on the board after it appears.) It will be interesting to see how the effort draws in fans for the brand, which currently has 38,000 Facebook Likes. (One note about the execution: For some reason, the application requires you to upload a photo from your computer even though Facebook probably has dozens of photos of you already.) This isn't entirely new.Time magazine ran a similar promotion for its Person of the Year issue back in 2005.
To see at the happy crowd at Bistro 17 (facebook|website) on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, you’d never think that just 3 months ago, they were close to shutting down for good. Owner Anna Buckingham says,
“Business was so slow at that point, even during the tourist season, that we were wondering if we should call it quits.”
But now this French-themed restaurant with mouth watering brie and an obsession with containers and dogs is a word-of-mouth sensation and always busy. In fact, they’re one of the few restaurants doing really well in the off-season
. From closing to thriving… To what do they owe this remarkable turnaround?
Fortunately for Anna, one of her regular patrons runs a Hilton Head Island Facebook page with 65,000 fans. Anna tends to make friends with all her customers. So they teamed up, and created this winning combination:
I’ve used this tactic myself in the past. When I was helping a Myrtle Beach hotel group grow its fan-base, we partnered with a large (200,000+ fans) Myrtle Beach destination Facebook Page to run a contest. The hotel group only had about 2,000 fans before this co-promotion. Within 24 hours we had crossed the 5,000 fan threshold and had 1,000 new emails from people who had indicated they were interested in receiving discount stay offers.
And it’s worth it to partner with smaller pages, too. Previous to this contest, we met another local marketer who had a Myrtle Beach themed page with 8,000 fans. He generously re-posted our contests for a few weeks and helped us gain hundreds of new fans.
Radio Style Call-In Contests
You’ve heard these all your life. I had too, so it was kinda thrilling to participate in one. And they work surprisingly well on Facebook. This means we should try to repurpose tactics that worked before the Internet and find out they work with the Internet.
Complimentary Alcohol? How Can You Go Wrong With That?
You have to be careful. Choose the wrong alcoholic drink, and you attract the wrong crowd.
But Bistro 17 chose to give away bottomless mimosas with breakfast. They’re not the first restaurant in the world to do this – in fact, none of what we’re talking about is completely new, but it all fits together and it gets more business. Fortunately, people who just want alcohol don’t tend to be attracted to the bottomless mimosa concept. It’s a common brunch item, and it fits the Bistro 17 menu. It’s also the kind of sparkly incentive that attracts more people and adds to the social lubrication that makes it fun restaurant to spend time at.
Passions and Promotion
Anna would shoot me if I didn’t mention her passion – Bistro 17 is dog friendly. They have dog bowls and treats on hand. She says,
“When people have their dogs here, they talk to each other more, and it’s a completely different place.”
For the business, it provides a unique advantage – one that increases social activity, which will solidify customer devotion and increase chances for word of mouth activities.
For example:
What can we learn from this to apply to promoting other local businesses? Having a secondary passion helps promote a local business.
Lessons: Social Is The Common Theme
If you haven’t noticed, being friendly and building relationships is core to all of the strategies mentioned above.
Make Friends: People with large Facebook pages don’t post your stuff for free if they don’t like you.
Focus on Service: No matter how much you promote a service business, if the people aren’t friendly, you don’t have service, and you won’t be able to keep or multiply the customers.
Alcohol makes people friendlier – generally
Use Social Objects: Both the Bistro 17 doggie dishes and the patrons’s dogs are social objects – they make conversations easier to start and they warm the heart. Smiles are more likely. And smiles at restaurants are good for business.
Latest global campaign for Absolut Vodka, Absolut Glimmer. It's a global initiative where brand have changed the iconic bottle shape for the first time since its conception. The campaign concept is "Make the present exceptional" and the design idea is about dressing the bottle for this moment in time. In today's world, where everything can be recorded, copied or streamed by the press of a button the "here and now" is the new super exclusive. To celebrate this Absolut created a glimmering Absolut Bottle that only will be available for a short time.
Advertising Agency: Team Family Business, Sweden
Creative Directors: John Lagerqvist, Mårten Knutsson
Design: John Lagerqvist, Fredrik Lindquist
Copywriter: Tove Norström
Original: Christian Styffe
Fotography: Jens Mortensen
Nike’s clever involvement of in-store and online players in the Air Show demonstrates perfectly the potential of customer facing brand activity.
If someone told you to blow into your computer’s microphone to make a shoe fly in Buenos Aires, you’d either think they’d been drinking heavily, or had fallen for some new internet hoax. However, Nike’s latest in-store promotion in Argentina requires visitors to do just that, and take part in the Nike Air Show.
Without wanting to spoil the magic, Nike has used microphones, magnets and a little bit of internet magic to promote the Nike Air identity in a very literal sense.
JDates's stroke of genius was to team up with a popular women's fashion chain, and promote their services in a fun, useful way that afforded customers a level of discretion in a potentially sensitive area.
Valentine's days are the perfect time of year for dating sites to advertise for subscribers to their services. In Israel, the Jewish equivalent of Valentine's day (called "Tu B'av") occurs in July, which coincides with the end of season sales period for retailers.
JDate, a local dating agency decided to take advantage of the fact that the sales period means increased traffic in stores, and so teamed up with clothing chain Mango in an inventive in-store promotion partnership. Like all the best ideas, JDate's idea was simple: To provide assistance in the one area that Israeli women still needed help - zipping up the backs of their dresses. JDate provided this assistance with the use of specially branded tags which acted as a coupon for a free one month subscription to the dating site. The tags helped single women zip up the clothes they tried on - meaning that JDate could help single women find a date, and an outfit. The tags were removable, in case customers decided they already had the perfect outfit.
The activity ran for the two weeks immediately prior to Tu B'av, and more than 300,000 Mango customers were exposed to the campaign nationally. 2,000 tags were taken by customers and JDate saw traffic for this period increase by 13%, with new subscriptions increasing by 15% - a new high for the summer period.
The activity was also covered heavily in fashion magazines, blogs and social media networks.
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Nike’s clever involvement of in-store and online players in the Air Show demonstrates perfectly the potential of customer facing brand activity.
Valentine's days are the perfect time of year for dating sites to advertise for subscribers to their services. In Israel, the Jewish equivalent of Valentine's day (called "Tu B'av") occurs in July, which coincides with the end of season sales period for retailers.
