Hoi Polloi

Lost keys for Nissan integrates grassroots and online

I like how Nissan's agency, True, used grassroots and online for the Nissan Altima campaign. Also, they find a simple way for keys to become a novel medium.

It's a targeted campaign, at a very specific demographic, in just six cities.

It's reasonably low-budget, too. All it's taken is 20,000 sets of keys, intensionally 'lost' at some 50 locations in clubs, stadia, and other popular venues in those cities --presumably where this demographic inhabits.

The concept: To illustrate the benefit of keyless entry in the Altima. The key tag describes the benefit, saying "If found please do not return." There are also instructions to visit AltimaKeys.com to renter for a prize. The site talks of the "Next Generation Nissan Altima has Intelligent Key with Push Button Ignition" and why the owner hasn't been "paying attention to my old keys."

Which brings me to the point I try to make all the time: the need to integrate (translated: connect) anything we do to, so that it leads back to the communication objective, and not just enhance the coolness factor of our creative. Like keys, which by themselves are not very sexy (in the marketing world where branded trinkets, and branded foreheads, and even underwear rule) we often have great opportunities with which to connect to targeted audiences, but they hide in plain sight.

The other thing that's not often said, for fear it will upset too many people, is that memorable branding is not what you slap on to objects, but what you get people to do with your brand. If they see your logo and do nothing about it, it's still an impression, not a brand experience. You want your audience to start a conversation, with others, and ideally with you as a result of your message.

AIM's location tracker could be useful for small groups

AOL's back in the game now innovating in the social media, and it's not just it's support of a YouTube killer, and partnerships with NBC and MySpace that's interesting.

It's Location Finder, for AIM users, still in beta, will use Wi-Fi hotspots to triangulate a user's position, much like the way GPS would do, but with more accuracy. This needs work; unless the user 'teach' the software by specifying their location it will not be accurate. But with the right inputs it could do better than what triangulation achieves now, using cell phone towers.

Which makes me wonder what this might do, if Twitter could add a similar feature. After all, the major interest in Twitter is the ability for groups to connect and keep tabs on each other. I could see a huge interest in a micro version of Twittervision.

Hacking Clinton with brand Obama

So, the Hillary-meets-BigBrother video is the new way of Swiftboating a candidate. This time with a strong dose of branding, and clever video editing.

Hard to miss how the woman who flings the hammer at Big Sis is carrying an iPod!  And of course, there's the modified (though older) Apple logo for Mr. O at endframe.

We're gonna see a lot more of these viral tactics. I won't be surprised if being 'YouTubed' becomes this election's new verb for unseating a candidate. I wonder what Orwell, who once defined advertising as 'the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket' would have said about negative (but clever) advertising like this.

PR Slice and Clipmarks nifty Firefox add-ons

Those Firefox extensions keep getting more interesting. I've been a huge advocate of the Social Media Press Release from Shift Communications for some time now, and this latest extension for the browser form PRX Builder helps writers, big time. Why, because it reverses the process of the SMPR, by allowing you to strip out the elements of the media release and only get to the parts you want. Meaning, avoid the fluff, or even the parts that you may  want to skip for the story.

Twitter is 'snack food' and more

Steve Rubel puts it well, calling Twitter media 'snack food' for our attention starved world.

Indeed, it will become a lot more than this, six months from now -if it is not grabbed by Google or some company who sees more potential than what it is now. A thoughtful post about what Twitter could be, by Andy Carvin, is something that I have been thinking about. Not just for public emergencies, but watchdog organizations, could set up Twitter accounts and have people send it updates, that would then be picked up by news organizations, and become a real time indicator of a breaking event or story.

Once Twitter finds its way into search, it would become something else entirely. For now, let's watch this experience play out....

Conservapedia - a wiki battle heats up

It's always a welcome thing when alternatives to the mainstream pop up. I loved Wikipedia, because it proved to be a a malleable alternative, albeit sometimes flawed and insufficient. It's grown up to be a phenomenon in its own right, and is now what, er mainstream folk turn to.

So Conservapedia looked interesting, but when you look closer, it's a bit too obsessed with being the uncola, to Wikipedia's real thing. If you look at some of the debates, where editors battle over the creationist/evolution argument, they seem to be tripping over themselves as in this article pending deletion, how 'quote mining' is the problem.

Just for the record, some of the inaccuracies of Conservapedia are highlighted in, where else, Wikipedia, here.

But more hilarious --or pathetic --is the fact that Conservapedia doesn't live up to it's objective, by inviting lame explanations, as observed by Comic Variance, and Wonkette.

As for freedom from bias, take a look at this entry for John McCain, and the subhead 'electability,' and you be the judge.

Twitter in the UK

Drew B at the Blog Consultancy, writes one of the most thoughtful explanations of Twitter --what it is, could be, and is not.

clipped from theblogconsultancy.typepad.com I think that Twitter is a tidal wave heading to British shores. If you'd have asked me four months ago what I thought of it I would have said somthing like what Stevo or Jonny are saying now. But then one day I got it, and I think it might just catch on with a lot of people over here soon.

Twitter, Dodgeball, Slideshare, Flagr...Oh my!

Location-based social networking, geo-tagging using digital sticky notes (via a mobile phone), micro-blogging and tagging, via Twitter. Just a glimpse of the social media explosion that is taking marketing and communications into a whole new era.

I've just signed up with Twitter, that's going to change the game of mobile blogging.
Then there's Flagr.com, a way for mobile users to 'flag' a location by sending a text message (or image) that is tagged with a description to a map.

I've seen a lot of neat small-group uses of Twitter. From simply saving your own list of URLs (from a cell phone via text) to your Twitter site, so you could visit the link later, to adding an RSS feed of your favorite Twitter site. The technology has had so much potential that there's a Twitter screen at the South By Southwest conference going on in Austin, TX. My personal favorite is a Twitter site by BBC tech.

Bum Rush the Charts campaign

Here's an ambitious project worth supporting. A group calling itself BumRush The Charts plans to propel an indie music band to the top of the iTunes charts. The date is March 22nd.

All they ask is for people to swing by iTunes.com and buy the song Mine Again" by the group Black Lab.

Thanks to Shel Holtz who featured this in the FIR Podcast and blog.

If you're not sure about making iTunes rich on this day, you'd be glad to know that there's a sizable payoff for the band. Moreover, the band will donate a big part of the proceeds to a college scholarship. The stats are compelling enough for me to want to support this. When a $0.99 cent song is bought from iTunes, if the artist is represented by a Big Music record label, 0.75 cents goes to the label, and just 0.05 cents to the artist! (Apple keeps 0.19 cents)

For this particular download by Black Lab, 0.40 cents will go to the band, and 0.45 to a scholarship fund (Apple will keep 0.14 cents)

Stengel's Second Life pitch - lame or clever tactic?

I suppose the theatrics of introducing Jim Stengel as a Second Life avatar, and then teleporting him back to his first life appointment at the AAAA conference last week, was a good way to get the attention of the ad industry --especially the ones who are still holding on to traditional media. Unfortunately, this trick (jumping back to earth from a virtual place) has been done before, and apart from the bragging rights of saying P&G gets Second Life, I am not sure this was the best way to lay the groundwork for the 'relationship' theme that he introduced. Or, rather, he use it to underscore his point.

His bigger themes were not about SL, however, but about 'constant connectivity,' relationships and co-creation --borrowing from the wikinomics concept.

"We're getting much more comfortable with the idea that consumers truly own our brands, and our brand messages. It may be a little scary for us to "let go," but in the end we must realize that what people say about our brands is valued far more than what we say.

Just for the record, the focus on building relationships is a recycled one --'touching lives and improving life' was a big theme two years ago.

Having said that, I have to say I am a huge fan of Jim Stengel, and have been following his mission to clean up the stables of old-style advertising by challenging agencies with new marketing. In 2004, he announced to a horrified audience that the 30-second spot was dead, and there was no 'mass' in mass media. I don't think he said anything as mind blowing this time, though, except urge agency people to keep stepping out of their comfort zone.

If I was him, I would have delivered my entire speech from Second Life, just to make the point that it was one of the discomfort zones we had better get used to. To get the Leo Burnet Avatar to lecture to him about what Second Life was all about ("Second Life is a virtual world which acts as a really big online brainstorm, yada yada...") was a bit lame, I think. Or maybe he was trying to tone down his antagonistic approach from previous years. Without the marketer hectoring the agencies about what they ought to be thinking about, he gave the agency a chance this time to make him look like newbie.

If this was the idea kudos to you Jim.