Posts Tagged ‘viral marketing’

Connected: The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How they Shape Our Lives

I’ve had a book on my desk for some time now, called “Connected (The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How they Shape our Lives)”. It was sent to me by the ‘nice and bespectacled people at Rubber Republic‘. (It conjures up images of them filing away books in a quiet library somewhere). I don’t know if they are bespectacled, but I do think they’re nice – they sent me a free book

Rubber Republic are specialists in viral and social media campaigns, seeding ’stuff’ (content) to influential audiences, getting ideas to spread online: Stuff like this.

The book idea follows the same simple ’seeding’ idea that works so effectively online – send the book to an initial group of people, make them feel special by getting the book first, let them read the book, and (hopefully) get them to pass it on to somebody else, distributing the message and exposure to the original sender. The difference being that with offline the idea is never really going to go ‘viral’ – it’s not possible for somebody to read the book and then send it to multiple friends – so the sharing element is a much slower process. (It’s quite a thick book too).

Send to a friend 'feature' - presumably by hand or post

It has had an effect though, and probably the desired effect. Without even having read the book, I’d already told several colleagues about the nice book idea, been back on the Rubber Republic blog and started following them on Twitter. The offline ’stuff’, in this case the book, has therefore definitely had a ‘return’ and has converted into an opinion that’s gone online (you’re reading it). It’s also had a much longer lasting effect on me than receiving something digital would have – it’s much more personal and intimate than receiving something digitally usually is.

This really does illustrate the power of including Direct as part of the marketing mix, and that offline and online can work really well together as part of integrated marketing campaigns.

So, thanks for the book Rubber Republic, and when’s the next one coming? And if only you’d include a ‘Send To A Friend’ on your Rubber Bullet email I’d probably pass that on too!

Now who wants the book next?

Mark

mark@accessadvertising.co.uk
@markhopetweets

As we all know, Macs are vastly superior to PCs. Seems like Microsoft knows it too. It has been discovered that the recent ‘I’m a PC’ TV ads were actually created on a Mac! Apparently, a Flickr user called LuisDS made the ironic discovery after looking at some of the metadata embedded in the video file. It was made on a Mac using Adobe CS3 software. Microsoft kind of defended itself by saying:

“As is common in almost all campaign workflow, agencies and production houses use a wide variety of software and hardware to create, edit, and distribute content, including both Macs and PCs.”

OK, they fobbed it off onto the Ad Agency, which as we all know use Macs. That’s not the end of Microsoft’s tale of deception though…

A new ad for a Windows only piece of software called ‘SongSmith’ has just been released. This lets the user start singing and the software creates a tune on the fly. Sounds fun, wish they had it for the Mac…

Going off the TV ad it would appear the software IS available for Mac users as it is shown running on a MacBook Pro!

They’ve attempted to cover the Apple logo with stickers but it’s still easilly identifyable as a MacBook. 20 seconds later it’s shown running on a real PC laptop that looks about 6 inches thick.

Here’s the ad. I’m sure the general cheesyness of the ad must be intentional, although why I can’t imagine. There’s a really funny part where one guy says “Microsoft huh? so it must be really easy to use”

Hmmm, pull the other one Microsoft, they’re probably running it on a Mac because it’s more stable at running Windows than regular PCs are.

It has been suggested that the placement of the MacBook is intentional so as to cause a storm and be a viral hit on youtube. Perhaps, but if that was the case you’d make damn sure you did a good job on the ad, make it on a Mac even.