Sometimes innovations in technology make you scratch your head on how that technology is being used. Fox News has a report on a project from the University of Central Florida that uses an avatar based game to teach teens about sex. Teens wear motion capture suits and then are put in virtual social situations (via their digital avatar) to learn how to deal with them. Yes, this is real and not a joke. I’ve embedded the video below so you can see for yourself….
Odds are, by now you’re familiar with Old Spice’s social media campaign “heard round the world”. Here’s a great piece on how they did it, and here’s one compiling the stats.
It seems like this has already blown up pretty much everywhere on the internet but if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s one of the most ingenious integrated campaigns to come around in quite a long time. Using the Old Spice Man Who You Want Your Man To Smell Like, W+K has created a character that has gone beyond TV and crashed the social media party on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – and just about everywhere else. And the best thing about this is how simple it is. Select user comments on Old Spice are selected and then posted as a YouTube video response – with often hilarious results. My personal favorite is the serenade of Teressa Iezzi and Ann-Christine Diaz from Creativity (embedded below). What’s ingenious about this campaign is how it’s suddenly turned everybody into Charlie from Willie Wonka in search of the Golden Ticket. The Golden Ticket being a personalized video response from The Old Spice Guy after posting a comment on one of Old Spice’s social media channel (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
You can view the rest of the YouTube videos here and an Adweek write-up on how they pulled it off here. It’s risky when brands try to create a personality that can extend outside of ‘advertising’ but this social media execution was done at the right time and targeted the exact right people – influential bloggers, high profile twitter users and even ‘normal’ people. The normal, average Joe’s being the main reason I think this is taking off.
The last time I can remember a well done integration of a ‘fictional personality’ and social media was Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down. Deep Focus helped give the character a voice on Facebook and Twitter that helped build the characters popularity even after the HBO season ended. How will this work for Old Spice? Who knows, but it’s definitely fun now and hope they can keep it going for as long as possible.
In the last week, I’ve now come across 1 website and 1 brand advergame that are requiring Facebook credentials to interact with the content on the site or to “Like” a brand on it’s Facebook fan page to play a game. Though Facebook should be considered for every interactive marketing campaign, I’m not sure the following 2 initiatives are approaching it in the correct manner. More thoughts below…
ZOOGAMI
For the first issue, I think this is a relatively easy one. The Zoogami site seems like a cool collective/collaborative experience but why are you forcing people to either have a Facebook account or log-in through one, to interact with the experience – especially when that experience doesn’t seem to require Facebook to experience it. I’ve included screenshots of the entrance page above that does not explain why Facebook needs to be used or what the experience is about. The consumer needs to know what they’re getting in exchange for their very tightly guarded Facebook credentials.
The second image above shows what you would face if you did log-in through Facebook Connect (which I would not have done if I wasn’t doing it for work and research). On top of all this, there’s no mention that you need a webcam to interact with the site before you give your Facebook details. Information needs be provided upfront to what the experience entails (use of webcam, why Facebook log-in might be needed for the social hook, etc.) It would be hard to imagine this initiative having a high engagement/log-in rate given these requirements.
THE EXPENDABLES FACEBOOK ADVERGAME
For the second example, the Expendables 8-bit game is promoted via a tab on the film’s Facebook page (above). However, when prompted to try the game, I’m required to ‘like’ it before I can even try it out to see if I “like it” in the first place. While using Facebook’s social hooks to help promote a brand and build a fanbase is a proven strategy, forcing someone to “like” something before they can play or interact with it is not an effective tacticand will most likely have a negative effect. In fact, I was looking forward to playing the game from Screen Junkies screenshot, but can’t seem to sell myself out to a brand for a Facebook “Like”. I definitely acknowledge the intent of this initiative (i.e. to build FB fan list) but if the game is well done (which it seems like it is from the Screen Junkies article), why not allow the game to be liked on the merits of it’s gameplay and thus fan page?
Facebook is a powerful community for interactive marketing campaigns, especially when extending an off-Facebook presence into the social network. However, though it might seem like everybody has a Facebook account, not everybody is willing to give up their details to brands. Offsite or on a fan page. It’s important to always offer an alternative for the end consumer, or most people are not going to give out this information and will move on to something else. At least with the alternative (i.e. experience this without Facebook option), the consumer can check out what the brand is offering and then make a more educated decision on providing their credentials.
Hopefully I’m not in the minority here but would love to get feedback on this as I hope it’s not a trend. Comment below or hit me up on @kobrakai on twitter.
We Are Organized Chaos (WAOC) is Zugara’s (www.zugara.com) interactive marketing and advertising blog where we’ll be featuring some great projects and discussing upcoming trends in the digital world. Work — good and bad — will be critiqued. Hope you’ll enjoy reading our insights and thoughts on interactive.
