It seems like every business on earth is looking to get the consumer involved with their marketing efforts these days.
We’ll get them to submit videos, write stories, come up with our advertising.
We’ll incentivize them with prizes, cash and a money can’t buy experience.
I spotted this today on my feed from BoingBoing and, well, just loved it.
The Post Office on the island of Molokai in Hawaii allows visitors to post a coconut anywhere in the world. They have a selection you can choose from for free, or you can bring your own if you like. People are encouraged to get creative and decorate their nut. For an island of 7000 souls, without a dedicated tourism organisation, I thought this was a wonderful way to spread their message and involve people in telling the story of their visit. They don’t need an incentive, being part of a little magic by posting a coconut is more than enough.
This probably didn’t even start out as marketing, or at least doesn’t feel like it did. Maybe that’s what we should be striving for as we facilitate talkability with our clients.
I remember a few years ago in Shanghai, pitching a gaming company an idea of launching a game on the megalithic buildings on the Pudong side of the Bund, with real life gamers having a chance to play in a way they could never have imagined. It never got off the ground, but I was stoked to see the launch video from London of Crysis 2 on DigiBuzz yesterday.
Console gaming is now a truly ridiculous immersive experience, I wish some of the publishers and consoles here would break out of the “in-home” experiential sets, take things to the streets and really make a splash.
I’m a massive fan of the concept of popup. Be it the restaurant we ran here in Sydney on behalf of our client, Positively Wellington Tourism, or one of my idea’s from running my own agency up in Shanghai (albeit, executed in London), the idea of surprising people in their everyday lives with something physical in an unexpected space is one that obviously connects.
I guess that’s whay I’ve been so impressed by my friend, Jason Chan, and his involvement with one of the most ambitious popup executions I have seen, Greenhouse by Joost.
The Greenhouse started life two years ago, in Melbourne, with a large temporary gallery space nestled into the sharp and hard lines of the then new Federation Square. The project had at its core the concept of sustainability, from materials used in construction, to the re-appropriated jam jars from which you sipped your coffee.
Last year, this time in Perth, Joost once again used a combination of found and sustainable construction materials to build a slightly more compact Greenhouse, with a stronger focus on food and beverage and locally sourced ingredients to match the construction.
Now in the third iteration, Greenhouse once again is providing Joost with a playground for his ideas on sustainable construction living buildings. This time though, the project is not a bespoke build for a single unique location, this time the Greenhouse can travel.
Three shipping containers provide the core of the structure, housing kitchen, convenience and storage. The framing of the two level restaurant and bar fits into these containers as it makes the trek from location to location. Plywood cladding and the plants that literally cover the structure will be sourced locally as the experience unpacks in Milan, Budapest, London and a long list of other prospective locations. The striking herringbone floor of the Sydney expression recently functioned as a set of factory conveyor belts, now cut down to rectangular tiles.
Food wise, local ingredients rule. Flour is milled and bread is made daily on site, using a wood fired oven. Milk arrives farm fresh in a bucket to be processed into cheese and yoghurt. Kegged mineral water forms the basis of house made lemonade and tonic. Cut down brown bottles serve the beer, jam jars the wine and cocktails.
Oil from the deep fryers powers the onsite generator. Local straw bales line the walls as insulators. The furniture all is made from something else, billboard canvas covers the tables. Some folk are calling this the greenest structure on the planet right now.
What all this adds up to, is something very special. It is this unique story that has given them access to the fantastic site on Sydney’s foreshore, with views of both the Opera House and the Bridge. It’s a multi million dollar site that if you were simply flogging a product, it would be near on impossible to secure and would eat up the budget. So unique is the offer from JAson and Joost, Sydney’s Harbour Foreshore Authority has come to the party with funds not fees. London is offering Trafalgar Square, it is quite simply amazing.
How do you build out and idea for a client that gets this type of support? Is it even possible to do?
That’s what will be ticking over in my head for the next week and year.
The Sydney visit of the Greenhouse by Joost last for six weeks, get down there and enjoy it.
Do you sometimes have trouble remembering dreams? you know they are fantastic and filled with wonder, but how do you articulate what you’ve seen?
Never fear, the internet has answered the call, through this fantastic, playful piece of interactive design. You’ll need a webcam, and to be an active listener if you are going to get the thing started.
I’ve been a fan of BoingBoing pretty much since I first learned how to double click a browser and tap in a URL.
The Directory of Wonderful Things started life as a physical printed periodical, the type of thing that carried advertiosing for mail order x-ray specs, sea monkey and dehydrated Andean mummies one suspects.
It was however, the internet age that turned magazine into a media powerhouse that pushes eyeballs and a a slightly fringe agenda right across the world.
Reading the stories, I kind of imagine a dispersed team of well connected mavens, constantly searching for the next big thing, aggregated up into a multi-faceted megalith. Surely these independent internetters can’t be swayed by the dark arts of a PR pitch, can they?
While I suspect an unsolicited phone pitch might not make it past the switchboard (if you could even find a number) and a boilerplate email might languish in the spam filter, it turns out there is a way, to get a relatively tame product (a tongue scraper), that isn’t particularly new, past the defenses and into the limelight.
It’s called personality.
How are you bringing the brand and products you work for to life as you pitch them in?
I think sometimes when we are crafting stories for our clients, we forget that their potential market is not actually the entire audience.
Sometimes, the best way to make the people whose attention is valuable actually pay attention is not to approach or talk to them directly, but to alienate, provoke and otherwise abuse the people who are not valuable.
It’s for that reason I love the campaign for the launch of Dead Space 2, embedded above. Rather than try and convince gamers (a notoriously difficult group to reach and impress) that their new game is ultra violent and/or fantastic, they videotaped Moms and their reactions to seeing the footage, and sharing that online (with some rather liberal OTP media buys)
Games that are violent and M rated come out all the time, one’s that cause this type of reaction from mothers to enter the media consciousness are much more rare.
The product at the end of the day, will have to stand up, but they’ve at least gained permission to speak, and a little attention.
Interesting little TEDx talk from Vienna. Covers the changing context of context, subverting subversion and pranking pranks.
Warning, Johannes describes himself as a melancholic postmodern leftist. If that bugs you, you’re unlikely to get through the first ten minutes to when it gets pretty good.
The concept of altering context to make a message transcend the bounds of a channel and truly run riot is pretty cool, if you ask me.
I think a lot about what it is that makes me so excited by working for a PR firm. As such, I think it all really boils down to a single idea, a shared core competency if you will.
PR is an industry built on an ability to tell great stories.
At our best, we should know the brands we work with so intimately that we can bring our skill set of just frankly being grand at telling stories and crafting clear and understandable communications fully to bear.
It sounds pretty simple really, so what are the things that make the difference?
1) Bring the facts to life, don’t just make a list.
2) Use character to make your story stand out from the crowd.
3) The title of your story will decide if it gets read.
4) Remember that telling stories isn’t limited to the media or journalists, humans love stories and will keep on telling the good ones again and again.
I am the Creative Director at Hill & Knowlton in Sydney.
I've worked in a few different parts of the agency world and ran my own shop in Shanghai for a while, launching super premium products into the world's largest marketplace.
I am fascinated by what's coming next, how new networks offer a company like H&K the opportunity to flex our earned media muscle and deliver great work for the clients we work with and the brands they breathe life into.
I write about campaigns that work and some that don't, from Australia and around the world. Sometimes the world of social media will hold me in its sway and occasionally I'll just post something that inspires me and hopefully you as well.
Please comment, I'll respond to as many as I physically can.
It seems like every business on earth is looking to get the consumer involved with their marketing efforts these days.
