2 obsessions that have me bamboozled

1. Usage of the movie Downfall in the mocking of any advertising scenario
Well, I think Mr Servant of Chaos Heaton did it first with the Age of Conversation. He got lots of backlash, really for no reason. He started a trend.
There was something recently with George Parker and Enfatico's actual downfall. Good work
And then there is this lovely shot at iSnack2.0. Great writing, really solid.

I am loving this Downfall obsession. It is making great appropriation of content and there are lots of others out there that aren't just marketing related.
As soon as a brand gets involved as the instigator, this whole phenomenon will be toast!

2. The dancing Flashmob

What is the deal with this?
Those prisoners in the Phillipines doing it was cute and great. They have nothing better to do with their time, it just fits for them to become a dancing ensemble.
And Improv Everywhere have been doing it for ages with free people. They are/were great.
Then there are lots of other dancemobs, everywhere. They aren't that good anymore, it's getting very "boy who cried wolf".
With this latest dance mob, I at first thought Oprah just wanted to get on the bandwagon, because she does that. In fact she loves doing that- taking things from people and making it her own. But only at the very very end did I notice it was for T-Mobile. They love this shizz. But is it really doing anything for their brand? They just tack their logo at the end of selected song. It's sucking. T-mobile- stop it. Please. For the love of god. Let the prisoners have their candy back.

Unhappy little Vegemites vent their fury over iSnack 2.0

Julian Lee, SMH It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. But no sooner had Kraft trumpeted the name of its new Vegemite variant, iSnack 2.0, than it was met with almost universal condemnation by customers.

i-GeValt iSnack2.0
When I saw this campaign, I thought 2 things:

1. I've seen this name that flavour thing before - Smiths is doing it with the chip flavour thing, and they copied that with Walkers Chips. Winegecarribee library even had their own renaming competition for their young adults section and they did it back in June to win an iPod. The list should go on, but 3 is enough, enough to make it unoriginal. (there's a crap load of others here)
2. If I've seen this scenario before, it's been a case of that meeting room discussion:
   "We'll, this is working pretty good in the market right now, why don't we do it too. If all is going well for them, the laws should dictate that it goes well for us."
   Wrong iSnack 2.0. The first law of new media is that if you copy something without appropriation or amendment it will be doomed to fail. Not only because it is a copy, but because you have put no thought in to how your brand should behave in conjunction with the particular activation.
   The second law is that the consumer is 7 steps ahead of you. If you do something that the consumer is doing now, their ADHD won't handle a repeat.

And it's great that Vegemite has shipped 3 million jars of the cheesey vegemite spread, and in the end this discussion will blow over by the end of the week. BUT, and the big but, is why do agencies take the lazy route and recommend things to their clients without thinking them through properly? Or, for that matter, attempt the new stuff? Australia is lucky enough to have a relaxed enough consumer community to really push the envelope and here you are trying the tried, true and boring! Step up to the plate, use your options and make happy little vegemites proud!

...and I'm taking a holiday from cliches.

Social media guns or bums?

Apparently the rule is that If you are a social media “expert” you yourself need to be active and on top of every single social media offering.

But really?

But why?

Of the top 3- blogging, tweeting and managing a Facebook profile with the prowess of a gossip magazine editor, there is not much time left in between.

Not only do I not understand how the apparent social media gurus get any work done, I also see it as a massive problem in immersing oneself up their own asshole. Basically ye guru feels the need to create such presence, be such an opinion maker, creator of their own image that I feel they forget what really matters- an understanding of the real world!

By being so focused on creating a presence within the social media community, the real world suffers. The real world, as in your audience, aren’t stuck up this internet hole. They don’t sit in front of their computer screens for hours on end, seeing which 3 people commented on their latest blog posts and if it was even coherent. The vast majority of them have real lives, and tend to live them, with balance.

The thing that I think social media peeps forget, is they themselves live in a passion point. I’ve spoken about passion points before- these are the lynch pins which guide any execution in the new age. In the social media guru’s case, the passion point happens to be the fulcrum of the social media sphere. An unusual scenario, but the social media gun must recognise these subtle differences- how the real people absorb and use platforms to participate and interact around their own unique passion points. This allows a marketer to tailor and use platforms for their ultimate objective, creating new rules and rationales about these platforms.

But the bums...the bums are so intent on watching the social media sphere like a hawk. They dive bomb on anything new and analyse it from every angle and that’s all they do. The problem is that they look at these activations in isolation and the weakness becomes the lack of perspective. The blinders are on and they miss all the things that real people see. It’s a problem and a shame.

If you take anything from this, let it be a step back. The advent of new technologies has created a base for us to adapt and meld into the existing realms of human behaviour. There are no rules or guidelines, only learnings .Without this type of approach the onset of young, arrogant bums who fail to see these vital nuances, is inevitable.