DASI

In recent times, the word “Fail” has wormed its way into much more common use, thanks in no small part to our American cousins. There are numerous sites and blogs dedicated to ‘The Fail’, all of which basically take great pleasure out of seeing someone attempt something, and get it undeniably (and often painfully) wrong. For a great example in the corporate world, step forward that great bastion of American sporting excellence: Nike.

Nike have been involved with some truly inspirational digital projects in their time; in particular Nike+ (developed with RG/A) set the bar when it came to taking digital out into the real world. Which is why it’s so surprising to come across stories like this one in Brand Republic. In a nutshell, one of Nike’s biggest US basketball stars, LeBron James, was at a skills academy with a group of college players and proceeded to get ‘dunked-on.’ In English terms, I imagine it’s the equivalent to the cheeky school kid ‘megging’ John Terry before slotting it home. It appears there weren’t that many people there at the game and, other than being well appreciated by the few that were there, the moment passed fairly quickly. However, someone at Nike felt there was a chance that their prized asset could have his image tarnished and promptly got all heavy handed – demanding the footage from those journalists at the event.

Now, as we all know, there’s nothing better at stirring up the desire for something than being told you can’t have it – it’s human nature. My grandparents used to call it the ‘sh*t with egg on it’ effect (as in, “If I had some, you’d want some”) and anyone who has a partner who turns down an offer of food, only to have them sit and pick the lion’s share off your plate knows it all too well.

When you multiply this SWEOI effect by the power of a big brand and the ease with which information can now spread, it’s no surprise that Nike now has a bit of a PR disaster on its hands. Inevitably, the footage found its way onto You Tube et al and now over a million people have seen it, fuelled by the numerous mentions in the press and blogosphere. As with the United Airlines guitar breaking video, (see 2 posts ago) the little man quickly becomes the powerhouse in these situations.

What this really shows is the incredible importance of truly understanding the implications of your actions in a world which is now unbelievably connected. It’s no longer a case of just pushing your message out to the consumer; the way you conduct your business is in the public eye and rest assured if you screw up, you’ll not be able to sweep it under your lovely branded carpet.

Surely these moments are what the ‘LeBron James Skills Academies’ are actually all about? The chance to play against a legend, and perhaps get that one moment on which you can dine out for years, the one to tell the grand kids. They should be embraced and championed; after all, he’s just another bloke, albeit a 6ft 8” highly paid one. The rumour is that it may have been that James himself was behind the initial request and if that is the case he needs a reality check, and Nike and his advisors need to grow some basket balls.

By playing Big Brother, Nike has managed to spin a story of minor amusement, from footage in which it’s actually pretty hard to make out what’s going on, into a fairly major embarrassment – it even had to give the tapes back. For proof, you only search “LeBron James Dunk” in Google, above all his amazing performances; the top result is coverage on this very story.

An epic fail indeed.

The cheeky looking chap in this video is Dave Carroll, who has managed to show once again the power of the consumer in today’s user generated world. Dave is musician of (by his own admission) fairly limited success but this month he’s been seen over 2.5 million times on You Tube, all because he decided to take out his frustration at what he saw as poor customer service in the form of a song.

His guitar was smashed by baggage handlers last year, by operators working for United Airlines. Dave claimed for the damage but United were less than helpful, something I imagine they now regret, as his song ‘United break guitars’ has become a worldwide sensation in a matter of days and is now firmly in the mainstream media, even making it onto that most treasured of US TV shows, Oprah. Unless United now manage to do something of EA Games/Tiger Woods type miracle response, (Click here if you’ve not seen that example) they’re going to have to sit and watch as their brand takes a trashing around the world, even if it is in a nice, jovial country style.

To me, this is another top example of the internet showing how the balance of power has shifted back towards the consumer- ‘disappointed of Tunbridge Wells’ can now take on the big boys and win. It’s also a fantastic example of how, no matter what your brand offers, the internet can seriously affect it whether you like it or not. The tools freely exist to champion and trash people, products, in fact anything- look at Susan Boyle for God’s sake, she’s even known as SuBo now, so if you’ve not at least considered how you’re going to react if you’re the centre of the next story, you’re potentially in for a steep learning curve.

Twitter screen shot showing Habitat anger.

Part of my job is to know what’s going on in the giant melting pot that is the digital market place. The beauty of the medium is that news travels fast and if you take the time to look you’ll always find things to talk about, and generally people will listen. Of course the flip side is that if you get something wrong, you’re in for a proverbial shoeing of which this is a classic case in point.

If you didn’t see it last week, Habitat have been roundly slated for spamming people on Twitter by using the fash tags (#) to gatecrash the most popular trending topics. At its very worst this meant that offers for its furniture popped up amongst the discussions around the Iranian election. Unsurprisingly, this caused quite a stir, and is the kind of brand damage that will take more than a 10% voucher to undo.

Habitat sent an official apology to one of the blogs that first picked it up, which read:

“I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message.

We have been reading everyone’s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended.

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hash tags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again.

It has been really valuable to hear how users would like us to use Twitter and we are determined to do better for the Twitter community.”

Clearly something went seriously wrong somewhere along the chain of command here, and some very valuable lessons have been learnt. There wasn’t anything malicious in what they did, but it was naïve in the
extreme and as a result the very community they were trying to reach has absolutely voiced their negative opinion.

No brand should ever take social media for granted or make short cuts and expect anything more than at best short shrift. Thankfully these types of horror stories are few and far between, and there is nothing to fear in using social media for your brand, providing you do so with respect for the people that use it. There are some fantastically knowledgeable people out there now who can show you the ropes, but it will take some time: just because it’s free does not mean it’s easy.

The IBM Wimbledon campaign is generally one of their flagship online projects of the year. I’ve been involved in a couple of them in a previous role and there’s always a huge amount of effort that goes into them. This year, they’ve done something different, as the video above shows. They’ve developed a nice app for the Google Android phone, which utilises its camera,  internal compass and GPS function in a way which effectively gives the impression of image recognition.  It’s a nice project, and to me it’s just another example of how much the market has shifted in the last 18 months. The 2007 Wimbledon project was a celebration of 3D and rich media; I’m not sure there was any interaction with the users at all.  This couldn’t be further from this year’s focus which is complemented by a range of social media activities.

This shift is something every client needs to be aware of when considering their agency partners, and is an area I’ve been banging on about to anyone who’ll listen (I had a letter printed in Media Week a couple of weeks back on this very subject). Many agencies had to play catch up in terms of staff and structure when the digital land grab really kicked in, and this was an expensive and time consuming process. The problem is that the market has continued to evolve at a frankly mind -blowing rate and those agencies that had invested heavily in being able to offer the high-end microsite and super rich production of 2007 are now potentially again geared incorrectly for today’s world.  The danger to the client is that agencies by their very nature will, on the whole, want to sell what is in their ‘tool kit’  and if their agency of choice is still trying to catch up, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be getting the best solution to your brief.

What this all means to the client is that knowing your potential agency partners inside out is key. It’s a market of incredible choice, so being thorough in terms of research and asking a few probing questions has never been of more importance.

My.IKEA from Robin Westergren on Vimeo.

Following on from my post last week, is this little beauty. More proof that once you understand the technology properly, then you can really be creative.

There’s a few other nice (and more importantly useful)  examples beginning to appear now for AR which is a sign that the technology has reached a point where it has established its own niche and isn’t just being used as an extension of another idea.  I had a conversation along these lines with Scott Seaborn, Ogilvy’s head of mobile technology recently.  He’s an incredibly enthusiastic chap, with a real passion for mobile; the type of champion that less established areas need. His belief is that for a completely new medium to become really established within advertising it might take as long as ten years.  During this gestation period, the new technology will evolve from just being used as another format for an existing area, to a standalone channel, one that has independent briefs and ideas.

We see smaller versions of this all the time within the digital space- new ideas and technology emerge, and for a while they’re seen as cool but very few people make them work commercially. Some never get past this stage and eventually begin to fade (you could argue Second Life is in this group) but for others there’s the penny drop moment; when the technological possibilities are matched by an understanding of them.  This time is when you get the mainstream uptake, and to me this feels like where AR is at the moment.

Clearly for clients, it’s hard to know when to invest some of that precious budget into relatively uncharted media waters – too soon and it will whizz over all but the early adopters’ heads, but too late and you’re just a ‘me too’ brand.  It’s not an easy balance, but with a good agency partner and a little luck the potential rewards are great. One thing is for sure though; the worst thing you can do is stand still…

Hello! We’ve developed a new brand and as a result, its time for a brand new blog.  The thing with the digital market is that the rate at which things evolve means there’s always something interesting to see or hear and through Digital Agency Search I’m fortunate to be in a great place to have a wider view of the market than most.  The blog will give me the opportunity to put some of my thoughts on the industry down on paper (well screen) and share them with anyone who takes the time to read them, as you are now.  I’m not going to sit on the fence in standard intermediary fashion, as that’s not going to be interesting to anyone, so my aim is just to give an unbiased take on the things I see whether that be agency, client or something I’ve spied over someones shoulder on the tube.  Right, enough of the pleasantaries,  time to get some real posts underway.