Touching Pantene commercial

Got this from Kats Tan via Facebook. Amazing ad - love the lesson permeating through the ad, and how subtly Pantene appears in the commercial.



My 3 key take aways from this:
1. An ad that has a strong lesson to share, in a moving manner, will always fly virally.
2. Even if the brand is not mentioned explicitly, people will make the connection. (at least, some people will and explain to those who don't.)
3. On the story in the ad - Never give up your passion! Fight for it! Almost reminds me of my write up on grit.

Oh - the classical piece is Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel.

The Black Button - short film, highly recommended

Amazing short film shared to me by Paul Garilao, a video entitled "The Black Button." I won't spoil the details, but I agree with Paul's description that this can be a good way to describe salvation (the Biblical one).

How to embed flash/SWF files in blogspot/blogger

While creating my last post (engaging and funny Pringles ad! - must see), I faced an issue of how to embed flash files properly in blogspot. The menu buttons when you create your blog post only support image or video, but it is not impossible to embed flash files.

Two easy steps to embed flash (SWF files):
1. Host your SWF files somewhere - I uploaded mine in Google Pages.Take note of the URL of your SWF file. You'll need it. (As example, mine is at http://donelle.gan.googlepages.com/blankCanBeBlank.swf)

2. Edit the HTML in your blog to embed - You'll see that right to the left of Compose, there's an "Edit Html" tab. Click that and put the following code:

Change the URL to your own SWF file location, and change the width and height as needed.

That's it!

Manny Pacquiao vs Ricky Hatton - Street Fighter style!

This is a blasphemy to Chuck Norris - how dare they put his character as one of the fighters in game?

The other fighters in the game include Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Stephen Chow, Bruce Lee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal, James Bond, Rambo, George Bush, Tony Blair, FVR, Erap, and Ferdinand Marcos!

Now that's a game I would really play!

International media pwned by student's fake Wikipedia quote. FAIL.

This is startling proof of how increasingly dependent traditional media outlets are on the internet, and how they are doing this without the proper checks and balances. An Irish student recently made up a fake quote in the Wikipedia entry of musician Maurice Jarre a few hours after his death. Although the quote was spotted and removed by the Wikipedia community within a few hours, dozens of media outlets had gotten the news and used it on their articles.

So far only The Guardian admitted their mistake.

While the internet makes things faster for everyone, that doesn't mean everything available is reliable. People - especially the media! - have to be vigilant.

FAIL.


The whole article is here.

Britain's got talent: Susan Boyle and Flawless

update: I think Shaheen Jafargholi, a 12 year old singer, has a decent chance of winning as well. Amanda said she got the "goosebumps effect" from the kid. She felt this from Paul Potts and George Sampson as well, she said.

So far, the 3rd series of Britain's Got Talent has produced 2 internet sensations. (If there are more, let me know.) These 2 auditionees evoke differing feelings.

1. Susan Boyle - who can forget this reaction of Simon Cowell?
If you still haven't heard Susan Boyle, then you must be living in the stone age. According to itv.com, Susan’s rendition of I Dreamed a Dream already has 100 million video views, "making it the most viewed video clip on the planet… and all this in NINE days!" Here is of course Susan's hit audition video, and her less-mentioned Cry me a River.

Susan is a classic example of the very old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover" and I agree when Amanda Holden said, "I am so thrilled because I know that everybody was against you. I honestly think that we were all being very cynical, and I think that's the biggest wakeup call ever. And I just want to say that it was a complete privilege listening to that.

2. Flawless - An amazing dance group that reminds me of the Jabbawockeez. The only thing I'd say about them is their quote "chase the dream, not the competition!", because it's better if you just watch them here!

Flawless is an example of young, raw talent buckling down together to produce something amazing. This is something many young people can learn from, like me. I'm not a dancer but I'm trying that in my own venture.


I think Susan is a huge favorite to win the third installment of Britain's got talent, following the footsteps of Paul Potts, and George Sampson. BGT judge Piers Morgan does not think Susan is an auto-win though in his blog.

Before the internet, no one can gain fame this fast, no matter how much of an underdog success he/she may be. The internet can make or break a person in a couple of days.

Facebook's "25 random things" is a "virus"

Having seen a number of 25 random things being written by my Facebook friends, reading this article was very relevant to me. Its main point is that the behavior of the 25 random things simulates that of a virus' growth, in fact it "was strikingly similar to a virus outbreak, including mutation and epidemic progression."

From the same article, Lauren Ancel, a biology professor at the U of Texas explains that "'25 Things' authors can be seen as 'contagious' under what’s known as a 'susceptible-infected-recovered' model for the spread of disease." and that "on average, each '25 Things' writer inspired 1.27 new notes."

I've actually thought about writing my own version of 25 random things as well. But I find no use for it, so I won't succumb to the virus.

If it employed a marketing message, then this is truly viral marketing.

Lenovo's amazing Olympics web campaign

I came across a wonderful blog post by Lenovo VP of Global Web Marketing David Churbuck. (Yes, he blogs about his marketing executions and other thoughts). As many of you may know, Lenovo was a global partner of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. With this partnership in place, it is good sense to infuse the Olympics spirit in Lenovo's marketing. I believe that this particular execution counts as one of the best examples of social media marketing.

The big idea is simple, but let me use David's own words from his blog:
What [if] the main event were the athletes themselves? What if, using Google’s Blogger platform and YouTube capabilities, Lenovo could offer any athlete a way to share their Olympic experience with their fans, family, friends, even the world?

The background
The hackneyed strategy for Olympics sponsors, according to David, was to build an interactive program driven by a PR story or a raffle. However, for Lenovo, that was not enough: in fact, to David, it was a checklist item, not a strategy. As a "young brand seeking recognition as a global technology innovator on a global scale" David concluded that Lenovo needs more.

Note that the athletes mentioned here are not just the superstars like Michael Phelps or Shawn Johnson, but they focus more on the "normal" athlete - the no-named athlete to the media, the athlete who will not win a medal.

The execution - let me share the online components (of course, traditional media was there)
1. Equipping the athlete bloggers - To enable the athletes to blog, Lenovo gave away over 100 IdeaPad laptops and a video device. The qualification is that the athlete is passionate and a credible contender.

Chasnote reported,
Lenovo has created 100 athletes’ blogs in an attempt to align itself with some less mainstream sports, such as field hockey and modern pentathlon. It gave the athletes laptops and video cameras to chronicle their preparation for the games. We wanted to do something that shows our tech prowess, not something that uses the Web as billboard,’ said David Churbuck...

2. A microsite at http://2008.lenovo.com called the "Lenovo Olympic Podiumpowered by iGoogle gadget technology. It's basically an iGoogle page with content focused on the Olympics. As the official Lenovo blog stated,

The Podium is a highly customizable experience built on iGoogle gadget technology, where a user, once signed in, can change the appearance and layout of the page and add custom modules, or gadgets, or related content. Existing Google account holders will automatically sign in to the system The team has focused on the creation of gadgets that stream content dynamically from:

News sources

Olympic athlete bloggers – we’re recruiting more than 100 athletes to blog on our new IdeaPad line of notebooks

Map interfaces using mashups of Google Maps and the Olympic Torch Relay route and the Beijing Olympic venues

YouTube videos related to the Games

Picasa photos from the Games

3. A Facebook campaign that allows people to identify with their countries, check medal tallies, and read blogs of athletes. It's shown strong success: downloaded more than 200,000 times.
Facebook allows for a wide spectrum of branded activity. On one end, you can just go for simple banner ads that can reach many people (impressions) but will have very little interactivity. Or one can create a specialized application that has high engagement and equity but will only reach very few people. I feel Lenovo has done amazing in this aspect, managing to hit it somewhere in the middle, with high reach and also high engagement. From an equity standpoint, it showed Lenovo's tech prowess (they enabled the athletes to blog). Also, this campaign has generated a lot of buzz (this blog is an example! and months after the 8/8/08!)

I believe it is hard to outdo what Lenovo did, but this shows the potential of partnering with well-recognized activities.

Pepsi's consumer-centric strategy and reapplication

From my previous Pepsi blog entry, I mentioned that Pepsi is focusing on digital marketing. From this wonderful source, Harry Hui, Pepsi’s chief marketer for China said that Pepsi's global strategy is to become consumer-centric. Hui elaborated that for Pepsi's marketing direction, "the overall move is from Brand centric to consumer centric; projective to engaging; static to customized experiences; episodic contact to each communication is a link to the next; one-way to viral and community enabling."

They engaged the Chinese consumers by focusing on their target market's passions: music, sports and interactive.

I present two case studies from the same source. I have personal knowledge of the first one, but none about the second one - and it also surprised me. :)

1. Create an ad
Proximity (a digital marketing agency) presented during the IMMAP (Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines) that in China, Pepsi ran a "create your own Pepsi commercial" contest.

Consumers create a script with actor Jay Chou as the main character. Then consumers choose the winner. The campaign was basically a website execution. the same source above revealted the contest stats. Amazing numbers:

• 28,000 scripts received
• 690,000 bulletin board posting
• 5 million online participation/votes

The winning ad is here:


2. Appear on a can!
Pepsi China also ran an "appear on a can" contest. Same mechanics as the Philippine execution. As Hui elegantly put it, "we wanted to create youtube on a can."

The China stats were:

• 3 million photos submitted
• 163 million votes
• 7.5 million bulletin board messages
• Pepsi also managed to get many celebrity endorsements for free, since they wanted to appear on the can.

It's quite amazing to see Pepsi rolling out the "appear on a can" initiative in the Philippines. Will we see the "create an ad" campaign soon?

Pepsi 'kada can: Be on the next Pepsi can

kada-can or kadacan is derived from two words: Kada from Barkada (meaning a group of close friends in English) while can stands for "Pepsi can." You guessed it right: Pepsi is holding a big user-generated content contest where the winners will adorn the next Pepsi can.


The mechanic is that a barkada needs to go to Pepsi Kada can booths, and bring an unopened Pepsi product to have their pictures taken for free inside the booth. They can also upload their pictures via Pepsi's website.

People can vote via text messaging or via the website. Then the really cool thing is: Barkadas with the most votes will be on the next Pepsi can! There are also other prizes for People's choice and other winners.

I see two interesting things related to this:
1. A few months ago, Pepsi also ran a mobile campaign where every hour, a lucky person can win an iPod by texting in the code found in every Pepsi can to a mobile shortcode.
2. Lucky Me is also having a "be on our next product" contest via its "Lid the way" contest.

It seems to me that Pepsi is focused on digital marketing initiatives. They have also won some awards in last year's IMMAP (Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines). I present an analysis about this in my next entry.

Lucky Me! Lid the way

Lucky me's "Lid the way" is a nice contest, promoted aggressively over the radio and out-of-home like billboards. The radio ad sounded hip, and it was the first time I heard a radio commercial bringing so much attention to the URL itself. There was even a short spiel saying "Lid-the-way-dot-com. L-I-D yan a (It's L-I-D)" since "lid" obviously can be mistaken as "lead."

(Although we can argue - why talk about saving the Earth when the plastic containers of Lucky me are non-biodegradable?)

When the site was newly introduced, the same radio ad played when the site first loads, but now the site has been revised, containing the finalists of the competition. There are some pretty nice submissions!

Obviously this contest can be done offline. But making contests such as this online has many advantages to my mind:

- Empower the consumer/creator
Somehow, seeing your work recognized and published serves to boost a person's ego. This will tie in to the viral component below: when a person sees his or her work posted, he or she will tell friends to visit it as well. If it is really good, these friends will also forward to other friends.

- Probability to go Viral
This is always best, because you reach people for free! People in the Philippines would probably link or mention the site in their social networks like Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, or discuss it in forums. However, this is something that can not be greatly influenced. Because bad news can also spread virally (take for example, the Dell "burning laptop" viral image below, taken from this source)

- Increased awareness for people who visit the site
For the people who were reached by the viral, they will also get the message that the product is trying to convey to them.

ExperienceWii - viral marketing on a whole new level (with Youtube)

Viral marketing, when done right has amazing potential to increase the awareness of consumers for your product. The example in this link is a stellar viral done with Youtube for the Wario game in the Wii. It's been uploaded just 10 days ago, and it's now gotten more than 2.1 million views.

Why is it so amazing? The whole concept of the viral was closely intertwined with the equity of the product being mentioned (which is a game): "Wario Shake it Up." And it also says something about Youtube, meaning they're becoming more experimental and creative in advertising on site. (check out this insightful Techcrunch article which talks about Youtube planning to monetize its homepage more)

I wouldn't want to give any more spoilers so just watch it. :) Here is a screenshot: