You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2008.
Lookbook is the next obvious step in the whole street style blog movement. Instead of wandering the streets snapping people this site sits back and lets the kids (most posts are from people between 17 and 27) send the photos in. Users then use online natural selection to pick the hottest looks. Kind of a hipster version of amihotornot (for those of us alive in 2001 that remember this).
If you’re not impossibly cute, under 30 and with a wardrobe full of skinny jeans/quirky vintage frocks fergeddaboutit.
Quite interesting to read Hugh Mcleod’s (of Gaping Void) interview with David Brain (CEO of Edelman Europe). David was joint CEO of Weber Shandwick when I worked there. This in particular stood out:
4. We’ve had this conversation many times before in private, allow me to take it public: You and I both believe that in this hyper-digital, post-Cluetrain world of ours, the PR industry has a huge opportunity, simply by taking huge chunks of business away from what was traditionally the domain of the large advertising agencies. I’m thinking the work Edelman did for Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty would be a good example of this. Care to elaborate on the business model?
Everything these days is work in progress. Customers and stakeholders know that about the companies and brands that are part of their life, and yet many of those companies still seem to over-use the mass communication vehicles of the industrial age, presenting a perfect ‘image’ or a ‘lifestyle’ and looking for aspiration or approval. So much advertising, direct marketing and promotion (and some PR to be fair) is a one-way street and that just does not fit the world I see around me. PR, or good PR at least, was always about things like relationship, influence and dialogue (in the old days focused more on the elite few maybe, but now with the many as well) and so PR now has an even more central role in helping companies align with stakeholders and customers by properly engaging with them. Thankfully many firms and brands are seeing this and many PR people (in agencies and in-house) are embracing this new mandate and the responsibility that comes with it. Every day the false certainties peddled by the old-school advertising agencies look more and more out of place and time.
Yup agree! Good PR is about creating public conversations about what a company or brand is/does and so (with some homework and common sense) is naturally suited to the new digital media environment.
Also liked this answer:
10. What advice would you give to a bright young thing wanting to break into the PR business? More specifically, what advice would you give today, that you wouldn’t have given say, a decade ago? In other words, for a young person just entering the trade, how has the world changed in the last ten years?
Be involved and have a voice. When I got into this business in the early Jurassic period those two things were much more difficult to do. But society has changed and it is easy to express opinions and debate and join with like-minded people to pursue your interests. It does not all have to be online, but obviously much of it is now. And we look for that. Someone who is interested and passionate about something and who contributes. I still expect new joiners to be passionate about news, culture and politics in the traditional senses too, but what you read through your aggregator and via your community is as important as what you can buy at the news stand (OK not the most original point, but you would be amazed how many people still come to interviews with no views on news and no understanding or participation in social media). One other thing that has struck me about people joining the business now, especially in the US and the UK, is that they are amazingly conservative about their careers. Many look to progress through the ranks in small linear steps, I guess because the business has become so big and so structured. One of the most difficult things is to find people who will take a risk and go live in the Middle East or Moscow or China and I find that so hard to understand having lived and worked outside my country for seven years . . . something which broadened my horizons significantly.
Nokia created a good example in how to run a corporate blog with their Nokia Conversations blog this year. For me there are two rules for a decent corporate blog which this gets right:
1: Put someone with an editorial eye in charge of it to think about what the reader would actually find interesting about your company (and write it up without sounding like a corporate drone)
2: Take a bigger picture view of the industry your in and write about the trends and how your company fits in.
Sample posts:
Will our skyline change with Augmented Reality and intelligent buildings?
Cool survey results from Nokia Maps guys!
This second one is quite interesting. On one hand this is a classic PR survey idea but I like some of the facts it digs up about which is the most easy city to get lost in (London is the biggest Lost City apparently).
Also like how they’ve create a press bulletin board in blog format.
Having mentioned crowdsourced marketing in my trends for 2009 I thought this was pretty interesting. Current TV is a (mostly) user generated web and satellite TV channel/media company. Think Wayne’s World 2.0 run by Al Gore. The production of the more popular clips is pretty much what you expect from a professional channel (such as MTV for example).
One of the most interesting aspects of the whole thing is the user generated ads the station runs. Basically a brand provides the brief and then lets Current TV users generate the ad. A whole bunch of resources from production hints to music and sound clips are provided and the best ones (as chosen by the brand) get aired.
Check out this example for Nikon ( HP, L’oreal, T-Mobile and Toyota have also all given it a shot).
As its the season for High Fidelity style lists these are my favorite alt marketing/PR/whatever you call it hits for 2008.
Woad – By Boudicca
The best bits of brand marketing are where its difficult to tell where the product ends and the marketing starts. The launch of a perfume made of invisible ink was built to grace a million fashion blogs. Which it did.
“The trickery of Boudicca’s perfume Wode (derived from “Woad” a deep blue plant extract used in tribal marking paste) is that despite its appearance in a classic spray paint can, when sprayed, a vibrant cobalt blue mist appears and automatically begins to fade and within seconds, all that is left is the scent.” From Dazed Digital
Topshop and H&M Podcasts/YouTube channels
Fashion retailers in South Africa are notoriusly backwards (with a few notable exceptions) when it comes to marketing and PR. Overseas Topshop and H&M provide great examples of how brands can create their own media channels.
Whilst other brands were amping up the bling, pimping rides and trying to look urban and cool for da youf , Innocent went the opposite way and re-created Village Fetes in the middle of cities. Genius. Blog looks cool too.
Consumers approach most brand events with parasitical contempt. However I don’t know how you could approach Nokia’s reinvention of the roller disco with anything but a big cheesy grin.
Car launch disguised as an alien crash site. Complete with secret government agents. This is the kind of shit I got into PR for. Whoop whoop. Again this was blogger crack – they just can’t say no.
And I’ve covered these already in my brand trends for 2009:
Well it did win grand prix at the Loeries for frick sake. But this is an example to all brands that you gain far more credibility for creating a platform for underground creatives than hijacking the latest trends and whinging on and on about your own products.
I had to eat my hat after this turned out to be a stealth launch vehicle for Woolworth’s Twist label. History books will record it as South Africa’s first ARG.
ok so i’ve mentioned this twice already… Probably my favorite of the year. Love Jozi created a fake chinese rip off label of itself and then sat back to watch its fans leap to their defence. Priceless.
2008 was the year of the t-shirt. Here is a quick flashback:
It’s impossible to describe how loony urban black kids (and a handful of white kids and aging marketing execs/bloggers) have gone for this brand. I’ve been running a fashion blog all year and Ama Kip Kip was by far the most commented on and read story (100+ comments last I checked). They’ve suceeded in creating an underground cult label out of what is actually a very simple slogan (it means coloured pop corn). Part of their success was (probably unintentionally) being very difficult to get hold of.
Behind the best marketing campaigns of anyone in South Africa in 08. The T-shirts are quite nice too.
Oh yes very clever. Where’s mine?
Springleap (and Threadless)
Spreading t-shirt love online for the kids.
aKing T-shirt design competition
Can’t say I know what the band sound like but the t-shirt exhibition was quite nice.
Jamhuri Wear representing the motherland in the big apple.
I ran around Matjiesfontein taking photos of t-shirts (must really keep the blog going…)
I added pop-ups to my list of brand trends in SA for 2009 – which I stand by as we’ll definitely be seeing more of them locally. PSFK rightly sounds a note of caution (ok they tell us to stop completely and do something more original). Although the pop-up is still relatively new to most South African consumers I think there is a real danger of too many brands jumping on the bandwagon without bothering to think of an interesting twist or taking the trend somewhere new. Personally i’ll still come along to the pop-up roof top mini golf party accompanied by a 12 piece gypsy band and dancing girls (if you’re planning one do let me know).
Interesting to note Peroni have launched a “pop-up bar” in Cape Town (according to the Cape Times) the idea is that it serves beer and will dissapear in a month or two. Given the rate at which Cape Town’s bars and restaurants go out of business i’m not entirely sure people will notice anything new here though.
The photos are now live from the pop-up salon we (Atmosphere) ran for ghd. The idea is pretty simple we took over 3 spaces (a gallery, a photo studio and a fashion venue) in Cape Town, Durban and Joburg and then gave selected consumers and media a hair and make-up make over + champange and some products. Once the make over was complete they went into a self- portrait photo booth (see example above).
We were really happy with this campaign not only did it get great press (including a few TV crews) the girls really loved it. Just shows that pop-ups aren’t just for icy cold hipsters. For more pics and background visit ghdstylelounge.co.za (site produced by Cow Africa)
It seems like a side effect of the recession is that people have more time on their hands to make things like this Fake Karl and the Darth Vader Twitter feed I just mentioned. What ever happened to just spending more time in the garden. As enjoyable as they are real life is always so much more fun so I point you towards Gavin Rajah’s blog.
Joining a new social networking service is a bit like the first day in a new office or school: half awe at how cool and savvy everyone else looks and half appalled at the collective madness of it all. Ah how I remember those heady, scary first few days of Facebook… I signed up for Twitter a couple of days ago and i’m hoping I can get through the first week without a bogwash.
I’m quite interested in The Shorty Awards: a competition started in the states to find the best twitterer in the world. Apparently its one of the most searched phrases on Twitter at present. I guess it make sense – keeping to the point in an interesting way is not an everyday human skill.
From The New York Times Bits Blog:
Gregory Galant, Sawhorse’s chief executive, says the idea behind the awards is to promote a unique form of communication that facilitates creativity and direct expression. “There’s a long history of one-line content dating back to the Ten Commandments,” he said. “By forcing you to make it short, omit words, it makes us all into better writers and occasionally forces a more profound statement than one with no word limit.”
Surprising early leaders include people impersonating Darth Vader and Sarah Palin and one real person, the actor Stephen Fry.
