Social Media
MySpace U.K. Makes Music with Facebook
Johnathan Hills and the guys over at Domani Studio have not been resting on their shiny new FWA of the year win and have been busy with the recently launched site for MySpace U.K.. The site turns to either Facebook Connect, you read that right, or the new MySpace version of Connect called MySpaceID to allow users to create personalized videos with major music stars like 50 cent, Alicia Keys and Lostprophets. It’s honestly one of the best external uses of Facebook content I have ever seen as your profile photo is seamlessly integrated into the videos that were all shot specifically for the site to be able to create the effect. It os funny to login, choose some of the video clips and then call a friend over to see their reaction. Now is MySpace could just figure out a way to make their actual site as cool as this experience…
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Skittles.com Ends Social Media Experiment
Less than a year after Skittles launched their social media centric clone of Modernista.com they have re-designed the site yet again. This new version again looks to go against traditional conventions by foregoing navigation in favor of a long scrolling web page. I found it surprising that in spite of the page length there is very little content and even less interaction available. There are some photos include a clown in an astronaut suite, links to their Twiiter accounts and a YouTube video but that is pretty much it. Wrigley’s also launched a new microsite called ShareSkittles.com where you can upload video to a randomly paired interactive montage of two people sharing Skittles.
Though the content is light it looks to create a strong interactive platform for the brand that looks to make much better use of the medium than what we saw with the previous generation of work. It is also worth noting that this work is the first to come out of Wrigley’s new roster of digital agencies after they replaced Tribal DDB, Agency.com and Digitas with Firstborn, Big Spaceship and EVB. The three agencies collaborated on the Skittles work, with Big Spaceship handling Skittles.com, Firstborn building ShareSkittles.com and EVB doing their soon to be launched Facebook campaign.
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Use Facebook to tune your hetero-dar
It’s said that to find out who someone really is you should look at their friends. Stockholm Pride used that thought as the foundation for their new site that focuses on heterosexual norms affect the everyday lives of homosexuals, bisexuals and transpersons by gauging how “hetero” you are by analyzing your Facebook friends. The number is generated by giving the site access to your Facebook account and then it takes a minute to go through all your friends and give you a hetro percentage. It is also interesting because when you number is generated you can also see all the hetro percentages of your friends.
After going through the experience and getting my percentage I was left feeling that the site could have been a lot more impactful and effective if it would have exposed the logic and stereotypes that were used to generate the percentages. The promise of the site was to deal with the heterosexual norms affect the everyday lives of gay society but telling me I am 59% heterosexual without the context how that stereotype was created makes the number feel hollow. It’s only effective if I am so prejudiced that the mere suggestion of not being 100% heterosexual would effect me. So while the use of Facebook data is new and unique, something as simple as a report card style breakdown would have given me some insight and enlightened and that would have been much more effective. I hope they grow and revise this foundation to make it more hard hitting because then I think it will really turn into something special and effective.
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Social media content compose Grammy nominated artists
I can say with almost complete certainty that the launch of a new awards show Web site has never created the least bit of interest on my part until today and the launch of the Grammy Awards new site WereAllFans.com. The site creates pseudo photo mosaics of 11 featured artists from Dave Matthews to Beyonce out of YouTube, Twitter and Flickr content that was tagged with each of the artists. Each image only borrows from the photo mosaic aesthetic but is more of a semi-transparent image imposed over top of all of the content. Putting the social media content into this format takes it from the thing we have started to overlook because it is so ubiquitous on every site to an interesting and compelling experience that makes it fun to explore. You can look at all the content at once or narrow it down to just site through the simple control interface at the bottom of the page. ‘Join the Conversation’ lets you sign into any of the sites and post your own content with the correct tags so that your content will appear on the site for your favorite artist.
The other half of the site is the The Fanbuzz Visualizer that is a real time data visualization that monitors the daily and total social media buzz for each of the Grammy nominated artists. This experience isn’t nearly as well done as the social media mosaics as I found it littered with technical and design problems. I started with Today’s Posts and was only able to drag and scroll down the 3D list once in 10 tries. Frustrated with that experience I switched over to Total Posts that changes the view to a 2D list and I found that I could click and drag to scroll the content. That relief was quickly replaced by a new frustration as I found that if I kept my browser window in it’s normal more vertical shape the artists and the results were cut off to the point where I couldn’t read a lot of it. After some exploring I realized I had to change the window to a more horizontal shape and that would force the content to zoom back so I could read it. So while it would have been nice to see the same level of innovation and polish put into both halves of the site, the social media content mosaics make it worth checking out.
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Domino’s Turnaround builds up then destroys their pizza and brand
By now you have probably seen the new Domino’s Pizza campaign from Crispin Porter called The Pizza Turnaround where Domino’s monitored consumer comments about the brand on social media channels and according to this feedback they created new pizza recipes. Crispin did a great job with the TV spots and a slightly longer form documentary because it makes you want to give Dominos another chance. My wife who is a serious foodie even turned to me on the couch the other night after one of the spots aired and said ‘I always hated Dominos but after that I would give them another chance.’ The advertising did everything you could have asked of it because it changed people’s opinions and created an intent for them to act on it. Pop the champaign, make room on the trophy wall and tell the client to increase the advertising budget because we have a winner… or do we?
I went to the campaign site today to dig around a little more before I wrote this post about how successful the campaign has been when that feeling and my intent to actually try the new Domino’s came crashing down around me. On PizzaTurnaround.com you find the previously mentioned documentary, one news story and a Twitter feed that displays tweets with the tag #newpizza running down the right hand column. As you start to read down the column you quickly see that people’s love seemingly only extends to the campaign as I did not see one positive comment from anyone who actually tried the pizza. The first four found Tweets I read were “Tried the new Dominos pizza….. In my mind, collossal fail.”, “Meh it was ok…”, “im not feeling the new crust. i miss the old dominos.” and “not so great. Since when did “add more garlic/butter” = make things better?! Blech.”. That noise you hear is my intent to try the new product exiting stage left.
Using social media to give brand transparency to consumers can be a powerful tool but it has be used carefully and thought out to work correctly. In this case you are asking consumers to give your brand another chance and your advertising delivers that intent but it is a tenuous opportunity. From the time when you create that intent until the time when it gets paid off you can’t have any bumps in the road because the bond to the brand isn’t that strong yet. These Tweets are big bumps that are going to break that bond and kill the opportunity. I don’t know why this site didn’t take it’s cues from the video it was supposed to support and MAKE IT A TWO WAY DIALOG! Your video said you were listening to consumers and you were responding so why did that stop once the campaign launched? It makes the video feel like just an advertising stunt and that the brand really isn’t listening. You have a chance here to be transparent and let people post their thoughts BUT Domino’s has to be part of the conversation. They have to address these comments and not let them destroy what they are trying to build. It is the only way this is going to go from a quick fix to a real long term solution that will restore their business.
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IKEA turns Facebook into their own showroom
IKEA has come up with an innovative digital campaign that turned one of Facebook’s basic functions into a promotional tool that they used to promote the opening of their newest store in Malmo, Sweden. The campaign started with a profile of the store’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson who then uploaded pictures of the store’s showrooms to his photo album and any “friends” who tagged the products with their names then won those items. The word quickly spread through Facebook and users started embedding links and images in their profiles and news feeds. So with nothing more than some photos and a great idea they got thousands of consumers to willingly promote IKEA and its new store.
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Tobi.com uses AR to bring the dressing room home
Everyone hates having to wedge themselves into a cramped dressing room flooded with never flattering fluorescent lighting but you now have another option. Zugara’s has created an augmented reality dressing room app called Fashionista and is being used by online clothing retailers like tobi.com. You turn on your web cam and then move an AR marker forward and back in front of you to scale the clothes to fit your body. Once that is done you can use positional gestures to see other clothing options, approve or disapprove of your choices or take a photo of your favorite outfits. Your approved choices are moved into your basket and the photo can be uploaded to Facebook to get your friends opinions of your selections.
In the past we have seen augmented reality used in mildly useful ways like the United States Post Office box sizer where you can determine what box you need to ship you gift but this starts to take it to another level. You can clearly see the potential of what this could mean to online shopping as it takes the content off the flat page and makes it interactive and more importantly – makes it personally relevant. I find the opportunities for this type of augmented reality execution really exciting unlike previous executions that were more gimmick than concept.
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Orange smartly uses social media to create Friend-o-Meter
The U.K. mobile provider Orange has created one of the most interesting uses of Facebook and Twitter connect that I have seen recently. To promote the launch of the social media focused Motorola DEXT mobile phone they have created a site that quizzes you on ten questions to see how well you know your friends on Facebook and Twitter. The way they use the data is really smart as the questions aren’t the obvious ones you would expect and use things like friends upcoming events events, like and dislikes to create challenging questions that will really test how well you know people (I only got a 45%). You leave the experience thinking that maybe you need to be better connected to those sites and that information which us exactly the point of the experience. Since Facebook seems to be unable or unwilling to give advertisers the tools to be able to create meaningful experiences on their site then this direction may be able to save them from themselves.
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Mountain Dew Crowdsources Agency Review and Selection
PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew is taking a new tact on their agency review for their $100 million-plus business by letting consumers pick the winner. A contest beginning this month will allow any agency, independent film company or individual to submit 12-second clips outlining their ideas for marketing three new Mountain Dew products. Consumers will then vote for the top talent, whom will be awarded the business. This is not their first venture into the area of crowd sourcing as the three new products names Distortion, Whiteout and Typhoon were created by consumers through Dewmocracy a Facebook-based initiative designed to open up product development to consumers. And when you look at the number it is obvious that this tactic is working for them as the Dewmocracy brands accounted for 25 million cases in sales last year which equates to nearly two hundred million dollars.
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Estee Lauder gives women a social media close up
Estee Lauder is the latest brand to tie their product to the wide spread adoption of social media. Starting next week they will be offering free makeovers and photo shoots at its department store cosmetics counters coast-to-coast to produce photos women can use for their online profiles, blog or Web site. You will also see in the fine print that they understand the power of the medium and the potential exposure as you can get your photo done with no purchase required. I still think creating these types of assets for consumers to use in social media is really smart as it gives not only a lasting brand presence but puts their branding into a context thats feels much more personal than any ad ever could. It will be interesting to see if we all starting seeing these photos in our friends lists as quickly as saw the Mad Men Myself creations appear.
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