Lessons Learnt from the Fake Storm

Marketing in Rambles 2: Lessons Learnt from the Fake Storm

Now that the media storm (he he!) has died down, I feel I can talk about the fake tornado incident without putting my head on the block.

It’s amazing what one email from a seemingly credible source can do. It created one of the media events (maybe anomalies is a better term) of the year: the tornado that never was. Even I, a fellow colleague of the guy who will probably be sacked for his email prowess, hit the tarmac at 3pm and burnt that diesel all the way home, closed all the windows and brought in all the outside furniture. In my defence there were some ominous dark clouds around, very rare for a warm Joburg afternoon!

So anyway, the economy grinded to a halt, the radios went mad and the roads jammed up, all because of the year’s most effective viral marketing email; whether the author knew it or not. Could this be turned into a case study on effective email marketing? I think so.

The recipe for a successful disaster:

Take a relevant topic, send it from a trusted source, at an opportune time (there was a tiny tornado just outside of JHB the day before) give incentive to pass it on and hey presto you’ve got a successful viral campaign! How can you use these parameters to create a successful campaign in your environment?

Were the results measurable?OK, asides from the panic, chaos and doomsday comparisons.

Some of you will know what I do for a living and will know that I have access to the Netcare website stats so without giving away too much information, hits for the day went up 750% compared to the averages, the webmaster’s mailbox got jammed, and the search facility, press release and emergency section of the site have never seen so much love. The search words around the website were pertinent as well: ‘storm’, ‘freak tornado’, ‘traffic chaos’, ‘are we going to die’? Now if he was selling something on these emails via the website, the email originator probably would have got a promotion but instead he will probably get the sack which is measurement enough of a successful viral campaign under such circumstances.

What do I think of all this? I’m not loving it, some dude in the admin department pulled off the company’s best viral campaign ever, doesn’t say much for my skills.

Tutorial: New Media Marketing for Old Media Marketers. Part 3.2

New to the tutorial? Click here to start at the beginning.

Part 3.2 Youtube

Here’s a thought that might help you understand the paradigm shift from the old internet to Web 2.0:

‘The adoption of Web 2.0 is like moving from a totalitarian Internet to a democratic Internet.’

Let’s break this down:

The old internet was made up of sites that put information on that they thought was relevant without readers’ input. This also meant that they could exclude any information which was contrary to their efforts. Hence you have the scenario where websites are dictating to you, much like the way Hitler used wave his finger when addressing a crowd. Web 2.0 sites, on the other hand, leave it to the users of the site to create the content, so in fact the content is by the people for the people and there is no control over the direction the content will follow, it seems to ebb and flow with the voice of the community. The people also determine what is popular and what isn’t by different forms of what is basically voting, although this simple concept takes on a few different names in the Web 2.0 space (depending on what voting service is used) such as: Rating, Digging, Stumbling, bookmarking, tagging and yes even voting sometimes.

Youtube is a Web 2.0 site and is a great example of content created by the people for the people. But you may be thinking: ‘Well all I do is watch videos on Youtube so how is that Web 2.0?’ The answer is simple really, if you sign up (for free of course) with Youtube, you will see a whole lot more functionality which is the true power of the service. So firstly videos are uploaded by regular people like you and me (we call them users) which is very Web 2.0. You can also rate a video which will contribute to its popularity and is nice and democratic, you can email a video to a friend, post it on Facebook or even put it on (embed is the technical term) your blog or website all of which falls under the social networking side of Web 2.0. Make sense? I hope so!

Coming up in Part 3.3, we’ll either be discussing blogs or podcasts depending on my mood at the time of writing it.

Oct Social and Blog Site Stats (USA)

The visitors stats for the top social networking stats and blogging sites in America have been released for October. Read it here

In line with keeping this blog local and international flavour, like biltong on a baguette, does anyone know where we can get these stats on SA usage?

Marketing in Rambles 2: Lessons Learnt from the Fake Storm

Now that the media storm (he he!) has died down, I feel I can talk about the fake tornado incident without putting my head on the block.

It’s amazing what one email from a seemingly credible source can do. It created one of the media events (maybe anomalies is a better term) of the year: the tornado that never was. Even I, a fellow colleague of the guy who will probably be sacked for his email prowess, hit the tarmac at 3pm and burnt that diesel all the way home, closed all the windows and brought in all the outside furniture. In my defence there were some ominous dark clouds around, very rare for a warm Joburg afternoon!

So anyway, the economy grinded to a halt, the radios went mad and the roads jammed up, all because of the year’s most effective viral marketing email; whether the author knew it or not. Could this be turned into a case study on effective email marketing? I think so.

The recipe for a successful disaster:

Take a relevant topic, send it from a trusted source, at an opportune time (there was a tiny tornado just outside of JHB the day before) give incentive to pass it on and hey presto you’ve got a successful viral campaign! How can you use these parameters to create a successful campaign in your environment?

Were the results measurable?OK, asides from the panic, chaos and doomsday comparisons.

Some of you will know what I do for a living and will know that I have access to the Netcare website stats so without giving away too much information, hits for the day went up 750% compared to the averages, the webmaster’s mailbox got jammed, and the search facility, press release and emergency section of the site have never seen so much love. The search words around the website were pertinent as well: ‘storm’, ‘freak tornado’, ‘traffic chaos’, ‘are we going to die’? Now if he was selling something on these emails via the website, the email originator probably would have got a promotion but instead he will probably get the sack which is measurement enough of a successful viral campaign under such circumstances.

What do I think of all this? I’m not loving it, some dude in the admin department pulled off the company’s best viral campaign ever, doesn’t say much for my skills.

Google finally releases it's mobile plans... but it's not a phone

No there is not going to be a G-phone much to my disappointment. As much as a marvel the I-Phone may be, I am not pretentious enough to own anything Apple makes so I was looking forward to a handset that would come packed with innovations synonymous with Google.

Instead they are introducing a sort of Open Social (Open Mobile maybe?) software called Android (how very Star Trek) and it will be on units across more than thirty partner type networks by next yea.. YAWNNNNNN....

If there is no G-phone, I am not bothered about who Google holds hands with really, so if you want to read more about it, check out this article from Marketing Vox

It’s War! MySpace join Google to take on Facebook and Microsoft!

It appears that the battle lines have been drawn in possibly the biggest battle in Silicone Valley since the Apple Mac / Microsoft race for the personal computer in the 80’s! (OK, so there was no real silicone valley back then but you know what I mean).

In what seems to be a blatantly aggressive strategic move, Google have recruited MySpace to join Open Social and closed the door in Facebook’s errrm, face. This, for me, is the pivotal moment where the battle for social media, quite possibly Web 2.0 and probably even the future direction of the Internet was declared.

It’s the allies of Google, MySpace, LinkedIn and all those other little guys versus superpowers Microsoft and Facebook. It’s almost as if China, Russia and all those other little Asian countries declared war on America and Britain! My only question on this one then is: “Where is Yahoo!?” If they don’t pick a side here, their hopes of owning any of the social networking space may be over. But I can’t see them siding with Google, can you?

For more insight into these developments check out this article from Marketing Vox

Who am I listening to? Part 2: Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson: For Immediate Release

For Immediate Release is a podcast presented by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson and is described as being at the intersection of PR / communications and the online world. I sometimes find this description a bit limiting as there is certainly a lot more discussion than online PR and communications as they delve into all sorts of (relative) topics and especially things within this environment that I may not have thought of before. I usually get turned off by PR blogs / casts as it’s not really my field of interest as but this is one of my favourite podcasts, it can’t be ‘too Pr’ can it?

I would also say that FIR (as it is commonly referred to) is a leader in podcasting in terms of listeners and innovation. It sounds to me like they have the largest listenership in the We 2.0 / marketing-esque podcast environment but what really sets them apart is how they involve their audience. It’s the only podcast I listen to where the listeners are able to leave voice comments about a topic which are subsequently played during the following episodes.

They also have a very ingenious (possibly lazy) system by which the readers can use a Wiki to write up the show notes for each podcast themselves. Lazy or not, this kind of interactivity around their podcasts certainly answers some of those critics with too much time on their hands that question whether a podcast is a true Web 2.0 application because of it’s supposed lack of opportunities to interact with the audience.

If like me, you listen to marketing podcasts to stay up with the latest trends, FIR is definitely one to add to the ol’ subscription list.

As a side note, I have also bought Shel Holtz’s book ‘Corporate Conversations’ which I am looking forward to reading but I unfortunately picked up my copy of Spud (a South African comedy) first and now cannot put it down! I’ll definitely get around to reading it though Shel!

Classic SA TV Ads No: 5 - Vodacom dance like a white guy

Watch this classic SA TV advert: Vodacom's dancing like a white guy advert. Not that old but very funny, about Vodacoms new DSTV offering.

Classic TV Ads No: 2 - Castle Lager NY Braai

Watch the classic Castle Lager advert where the guys have a braai in New york. This one still gives me goosebumps

All out Assault on Facebook!

I love tag clouds, they give you an at-a-glance kind of overview of what’s hot on the Blogosphere at the moment. Two words that are out and out favourites activity wise over the past few days are ‘Open Social’ and ‘Facebook’.

Battle Front 1

It seems that the first real competition for Facebook is about to arrive in the form of Open Social, a conglomerate of social networking organisations including LinkedIn and most importantly Google as it is with Google that this gallery of goons becomes a super force strong enough to take on Facebook head on.

Who’s going to win this battle? Web guru, Vinny Lingham is confident that the super force of Open Social will kick Facebook into the outer galaxies of hyperspace, I’m not so confident however. Although the fundamental concept of open source is that it will be available across multiple platforms, which is how it should be, I am not sure how many people will be willing to leave the white picket fences of Facebook for any other platform. You see for me, the beauty of Facebook was that it brought people that avoided the Internet like a hook worm in their foot back online or online for the first time, kind of like what Harry Potter did for children’s books. 90% of my friends probably fall into this category and I predict they will stick with Facebook regardless of how good Open Social will be, kind of like how 90% of Americans have never left their own state cause they know it well and they are comfortable there. So if all my friends are on Facebook only, I won’t be moving either.

Want to know more about Open Social? Read this post by Marc Andreessen

Battle Front 2

All the hype around Facebook often detracts from the fact that the octogenarian of the social networking scene, Myspace, is still around and in fact still has a lot more members than Facebook so, in essence, more influence.

In this article, My Space is said to have raised it shaky hand from beneath the social networking pile and announced that a platform for the development of applications on MySpace is around the corner which according to Paul Gillin, New Media consultant, is a direct response to (I say attack on) Facebook. He continues: “MySpace is simply taking a good idea and adapting it... for them, it is a no brainer."

Who will win this one? My money is on Facebook. MySpace pages are ugly and cluttered enough already and now they want to add applications which as a general rule are ugly and cluttered.

Battle Front 3

In this article by Tom Hespos, Imedia Connection, questions whether Microsoft’s purchase of Facebook was for the right reasons (as a channel for its banner ads) and quite frankly, worth it.

There is a lot of general discussion from industry commentators, questioning how effective Facebook really is as a marketing tool and whether any major company has managed to prove that they increased bottom lines by advertising / activity on Facebook. I have however no doubt that if you are the right kind of fashionable / aspirational brand, that Facebook is a great place to grow your brand presence within niche markets. The Redbull Roshambull application comes to mind immediately.

All in all, I am still loyal to Facebook as I believe it does the basic things well. It is also the platform that woke me up to the potential of social networking. I think it has the potential to survive these attacks but it will all depend on how they respond and improve. They can start with RSS feeds on their group comments.

Classic SA TV advert no 1:Nandos Times are tough

Classic Nando's SA TV advert: "The best way to call someone an ambulance is to say you are an ambulance."