Contagious ideas by PSST : spreading 2.0 innovation (editor = jérémy dumont, strategic planner, france)

Olympic Games in China - Viral Marketing

We’re all aware of the problems faced by the International Olympic Committee and the Chinese government in the run up to the Olympics. Overwhelmingly negative media coverage, disrupted processions, political wrangling and boycotts… and that’s just the beginning. It’s not our job at Contagious to comment on politics as big and complex as this, but we would like to share with you this little exercise in branding we came across whilst a Contagious staffer travelled through China last week, and which is now causing ripples this side of the world. 

On Wednesday last week, MSN China offered users of their Instant Messenger service an opportunity to demonstrate their support for their country. They created a small icon – a red love heart – and placed it next to the word ‘China’. An article appeared on their site claiming that MSN China was calling on "Chinese people worldwide to use the red heart to express their love for China and to support Beijing's Olympic Games". The result? A small yet definite badge of allegiance for the Chinese people. A way to state their pride and patriotism as China takes its place on a world stage. And a really, really smart branding tool for MSN.

Industry buddies in China inform us that the change came slowly at first. By mid-morning on Wednesday, a few employees from throughout the industry had added the badge. By lunchtime, the avalanche had begun. By the end of the days, millions of people had added the badge in a significant show of support. And by the time we sat down to scribble this out, the number had reached around 3.5m, with more expected to follow.

Instant Messenger applications are wildly popular in China, with homegrown service provider QQ now boasting a staggering 300m registered users. A spokesman for MSN China acknowledged thecampaign as part of a wider branding strategy for MSN China – yet admitted that the idea for the campaign had come not from within the company, but from some of its users who were keen to demonstrate their support for their country in a non-aggressive way.

Although MSN isn’t an official sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, this kind of initiative demonstrates how far removed brands are from the dry, corporate bystanders of yesteryear. It’s dynamic, it’s emotional, and what’s more, it gives people a platform to express themselves without MSN ever actually having to make their own feelings on the matter known. This is no bad thing, given the wild fluctuations in policy and perception occurring in the run-up to the event. A representative for Microsoft told Contagious: “The usage of ‘I heart China’ in Windows Live Messenger incorporates the heart shape emoticon, which is a standard emoticon made available by Microsoft to all customers to use in any way they choose. Emoticons made available by Microsoft and third-parties can be used in many different fashions, and are reflective of customers’ opinions, but do not necessarily reflect the views of Microsoft or its affiliates”.

How’s that for bullish neutrality?

By means of conclusion, a small aside. There's also a lot of really interesting discussion about what's going to happen when people try and liveblog the Olympics. The whole point of the web is that stuff is reported as it happens. How the hell is this going to be monitored/regulated?

Oh the swings. Oh the roundabouts. We live in interesting times, people.

Nice Online campaigns from Adidas, Cadbury...

A couple of tenuously related automotive stories this week, lumped in together because there’s just so much going on! First up is Honda’s latest integrated effort courtesy of Wieden + Kennedy London. The campaign, entitled Drive Every Drop, is designed to draw attention to the environmental value of making our fuels more efficient, and promotes Honda’s super-efficient  i-VTEC engine. Anyway, on the website visitors are invited to contribute towards a road trip across Asia by registering their details. For every person registered, a drop of petrol will be added to the journey. Doesn’t sound terribly green though, does it? Couldn’t they just pretend to drive to Asia, or make a video game instead? www.driveeverydrop.com

Anyway. The campaign’s being supported by some nifty animation from National TV at Not To Scale, in which the road trip is squeezed onto a single rotating drop of petrol. It’s really rather lovely, although those without any prior knowledge of the campaign might be hard pushed to recognise the journey for what it is. The animation’s also played out online, where you can find more information on the campaign and register for a reminder for when it all kicks off in May. There will be blogs, and web films, plus those contributing to the site will be able to help steer the journey with suggestions and feedback.

Go here to watch the animation: www.nottoscale.tv/main.html

And also! The Cadbury Airport Trucks spot (the follow up to the virally brilliant Gorilla) is turning out to have slightly more legs/wheels than we initially thought. At sheeny shiny website www.aglassandahalffullproductions.com, Cadbury Dairy Milk are offering visitors the chance to win the little truck from the ad – you know, the white and orange dude who wins it by a nose. Head to the Tricked Out Trucks’ section of the site to pimp him out in a style of your choosing and then await the judge’s decision. The winner will receive not only the truck tricked out exactly as you designed it, but a year’s insurance so you can drive it round town without fear of third party fire and theft. Mockery comes as standard.

Habbo’s Global Youth Survey

Seen in Contagious Magazine

To gain an insight into what those elusive teens think and what they spend time doing online, Habbo has conducted its Global Youth Survey, questioning 58,000 teens aged 11-18 over 31 countries, including Europe, US and Latin America.

Emmi Kuusikko, director of user and market insight at Sulake, the company behind Habbo, highlighted some of the key trends from the survey for Contagious. The objective of the research was to understand teens, their lives and motivations, including media usage. Teens are becoming increasingly web savvy, with instant messaging the top way of staying in touch with friends online, used by 76% of respondents. Alternatively, although still important, email has seen a dip in usage, although 72% of teens still hold accounts. Its usage is favoured for more ‘official’ communications with parents and employers.

Mobile has seen the biggest and most exciting growth since Habbo’s previous survey in 2006, with phones being increasingly used as entertainment devices – 71% of teens now listen to music via their mobile, compared to only 38% in 2006. Similarly, 70% use their mobiles to take photos and video, up 11% from 2006 and 64% play games via the mobile, up 14% from the previous survey. Mobile’s more exciting functions for brands, including surfing the net, emailing and sending instant messages, and used by over a quarter of teens. In the UK, mobile leader in the US and Europe, these increases are even more significant. Nokia remains the number one mobile brand globally, but its position is threatened by Sony Ericsson and Samsung – in the UK, the brand has slipped to 3rd most popular below its rivals.

Social networking’s proliferation has been hampered, particularly in Latin American countries, due to the dominance of English-langauge social networking sites, suggesting that localised social network sites.

is important for teens. 40% of the teens did not view social networks as an important part of their communication experience.

Brand-wise, although the teens like to experiment with their choices, brand familiiarity is still a big draw, placing old favourites like Nike and Converse at the top of the teens lists of shoe brands, while seeing newcomers such as Bench and Primark break into the top five clothing brands.

From the results, Habbo broke down typical teen web users into five typical personality types, which were evenly split around the globe, although there were variations from country to country.

Achievers made up 35% of the UK’s teen population, at the expense of the traditional group. Their characteristics are ambitious, strong minded and materialistic, valuing material wealth and success, with a lot of friends despite their more self-centred personalitities.

Rebels have the greatest urge to gain independence and stand for things other than their parents. They are not willing to compromise on having fun and gaining experiences in their fast-paced lives but are still ambitious, aiming to become rich and famous.

Traditionals value ordinary life and see themselves as honest, polite and obedient. This group is keen to help others and are less ambitious and hedonistic compared to other groups.

Creative teens share the positive traits of traditionals, but focus on creativity, valuing education and being influential amongst their peers, while being active, enjoying socialising and travelling.

Loners are the most introverted group, with less real world friends, and the internet playing a larger role in their social lives. They tend to have fewer interests but are deeply involved in them. Although not seeing themselves as active or self-assured, they are more open minded than Traditionals and Achievers.

http://www.sulake.com/blog/entries/2008-04-03-Global_Habbo_Youth_Survey-mobile.html

Current Tv + O2 = UGC²

Seen in Contagious Magazine

The equation is simple; take the famous Generation Cash (as trendwatching.com used to call it), and promise them money, an audience and the chance to be noticed by a production company in exchange for creative work and engagement and what do you get? The first ever British Viewer Created Ad Message (VCAM).

Current, the Emmy-winning independent media company run by Nobel prize winner Al Gore and business partner Joel Hyatt, and the UK’s most innovative mobile service provider, O2, repositioned themselves as hubs managing relationships between clients’ creative briefs and the people creating content.

The first project will ask contributors to create a spot for the O2 Bluebook: Nothing is Lost campaign. Bluebook is a free service that backs up and stores contacts, photos and SMS messages from your mobile. The challenge is to communicate in 60 seconds the frustration of losing all your contact details – who hasn’t experienced that pain at least once? – and what life would be like knowing that you have an automatic backup even if, like me, you’ve lost your handset 13 times.

VCAM launched in US in 2006, and has generated significant revenue for Current with Sony, L’Oreal and Toyota already signed up. 100 submissions will be sought for each brief with four or five selected to air. With 30 million viewers and an internal survey that indicates that 92% of them are keener to watch more VCAM spots than professionally produced ones, the willingness of brands to invest in this form of user-generated content is understandable. If you add the viral element - where on average a video is shared with at least 3 friends - these 30M viewers could turn out to be more like 30 million cubed.

David Ridings, UK Director of Marketing, Current commented: ‘VCAMs are the opportunity for Current to further engage its audience across all aspects of the channel, from creating short films for transmission to channel promos. We’ve witnessed some incredible talent emerging in the US with the strongest ads succeeding in distilling brands, products or services down into very pure, simple concepts – showing a clarity of vision and purpose. We are delighted we now have the chance to launch the concept in the UK – especially with such a pioneering partner as O2.’

Despite some futurologists proclaiming the death of UGC this year, engaging an audience with consumer created content is still one of the most effective ways to show people that you care what they think.
www.current.com
www.thenewshub.co.uk

The paradox of free

Seen on Organic Frog 's blog

The paradox of free

Posted on February 27, 2008 by organicfrog

Both Chris Anderson (Wired) and the guys at Trendwatching have written inspiring articles about the notion of free:

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Free Love

They are both very interesting and praising how brands and businesses could actually be more relevant and even more profitable thanks to free.

You can watch the video of Chris Anderson discussing this point below.

(Well apparently taking about free doesn’t mean that you are enabling people to embed your video, so you can have a look at the video on YouTube!)

I am maybe just thinking out loud here, but although I am a big fan of the idea of a brand and/or a business giving free and useful stuff away, how could it work at a bigger scale?
For instance the free newspaper concept work because the advertising is paying for it. We live in a consumerist society and unless we change the whole model, someone will have to buy something at some point. Indeed if you push Chris Anderson’s argument to its paroxysm, how could we have every consumer goods at our disposal for free? And what would happen to the advertising supposed to pay for the freedom? There is an utopia in the everything for free idea.

I guess free isn’t the answer for all the problems the consumer’s society has had in the past but usefulness definitely is. I’d rather like paying for my Flickr pro account rather than having a free one with advertising and less functionalities… (This example works for me but not necessarily for others, however people will be ready to pay for other useful products / services)

Thoughts anyone?

[Pic Via

Burn Alter Ego on Facebook

Seen in Contagious Magazine

Has it been a while since anyone tagged hilarious photos of you on your Facebook profile enjoying an exciting night out with beautiful people in some glamorous venue? No? Perhaps it’s just us - however, thanks to a new application from Coca-Cola’s Burn energy drink, users are now able to create an alter ego which can be sent out to embark on such frolicking - the results of which are recorded on your profile page the very next day, compromising piccies and all.

Burn Alter Ego was created by Miami-based creative web developers iChameleon, in conjunction with Coca-Cola’s internal digital team in London. It allows users to paste a photo of their face onto an avatar which can then be tweaked and customised with a selection of trendy threads. This creation can then be made to party with your existing Facebook buddies, or be sent out to make new friends at the Burn Alter Ego bar. The next day, photos of their (or rather your) exploits are automatically uploaded along with details of the evening, documented in a special blog.

You can decide how often your own personal ‘Mr Hyde’ goes out to tear it up, however, as far as we are aware there is not yet a penalty point system in place for hangovers, so in theory, the more your avatar socialises the better. Indeed - as your profile is boosted on the Burn Alter Ego scene, more souvenirs are provided from each night out, along with new looks for your avatar.

There is no doubt that this is one of the most ambitious and technically advanced applications seen on Facebook to date. Just as relevant, is the fact that Coca-Cola has obviously chosen to ignore a big-hit strategy to promote their new product - instead placing their faith in the buzz created as a campaign like this courses through the social networking channels.

However, there are one or two aspects which concern us. A spokesperson for iChameleon describes Burn Alter Ego as giving users ‘the freedom to maximize your social life beyond reality.’ Is it just us, or does this questionably desirable prospect sound a little reminiscent of that preached by Second Life? Also probably one of the most common public gripes about Facebook is when people who you haven’t spoken to in fifteen years ask to be your friend - not to contact you or even post on your wall, but simply to bump up their friend count and seem more popular. With this in mind, do we really need an application which could potentially double this figure with even more tenuously-linked contacts?

Check it out and decide for yourself at:

www.burnalterego.com