Old Spice : smell like a real man !

Do you know Isaiah Mustafa ? (born February 11, 1974)He is an American actor and former NFL practice squad wide receiver.Mustafa is widely known as the main character for a series of Old Spice TV commercials, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. Let’s tcheck these famous ads below !

Why did I made this compilation ?

Because this add campaign is a perfect exemple of a Viral campaign !

The campaign, which stars The Most Interesting Man in the World 2.0 Isaiah Mustafa, launched in February centered around the theme “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The original ad attracted 19 million views to date across all platforms!

« According to Visible Measures, “Old Spice Responses” — a.k.a the string of custom-made vids — is one of the fastest-growing online video campaigns of all time. The company compares the endeavor to some of the most popular viral videos to date below, and how they’ve grown over the course of 24 hours (to be fair, “Old Spice Responses” had a time limit attached, so there was more urgency to participate with this particular string of videos than there was to get in on, say, the Susan Boyle craze). » Mashable july 2010  Even Obama’s victory speech didn’t get so many views ! 

The viral campaign :

What is a viral campaign? What is funny about this kind of way to advertise is that you cannot really control it, since there is a question that nobody can answer before the launching :  » who knows if this ad campaign will be viral?  »

The easiest way to define viral is : the capacity of an ad to be shared and diffused around all over the web, so that it becomes really popular. Usually, the best way to measure the impact of a viral campaign is to look at the « views » figures that most of the time Youtube provides.

In this case, Isaiah Mustafa made the brand reach a really high level of views. I believe that it was just enough humour, enough sexy attitude  and of course communication. The target was also well defined : « hello ladies » That is actually crucial in an ad campaign.

I don’t believe that this new image and new way to communicate is going to be as famous as the previous one, because it is less targetted and womans wouldn’t feel concerned. The ad has just came up so let’s see…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where brand’s names come from ?

 

They have simply invaded our everyday life and most of the time we don’t know what their significations are, and what is their story? What is the reason of such a name?

I want to talk about the brand name origins and especially the mosts common ones. The Website boredpanda.com did a great job and tell us about 32 different brand names. I’m gonna pick up 10 of them : the most  popular and tell you their stories :

Virgin : When Richard Branson has gone into business and sought a name for his company, one of his assistants told him, « Why not Virgin? We are completely virgin in the business.  »

 Starbucks, according to Starbuck, one of the characters appearing in Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Pepsi : According to pepsin, an enzyme that helps digestion.

Abbreviation of a Danish expression « Leg Godt » which literally means « to play well ». But Lego also means « to put together » in Latin, which, according to the firm, would be a coincidence.

IKEA is a mix of the first letters of the company founder, Ingvar Kamprad and the first letters of the name of the house and the village where he grew up, Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.

The site belonging to Echo Bay Technology Group, its founder, Pierre Omydiar, wanted to save it under the domain name Echobay.com. A name already used by a mining company operating. Omydiar shortens this name, which became EBay.

Derived from coca leaves and kola nuts used as a perfume in the recipe. John S. Pemberton, the founder, just changed the « k » in « c » to smooth its brand name : Coca Cola

According to the Japanese name for the Buddhist deity of Mercy, Kwanon. In 1935, the company removed the « k » to make his name more Western.

Taken from the name of the brand’s founder Adolf Dassler, whose nicknamed was Adi. Adidas

Skype, abbreviation derived from the original concept: sky-peer-to-peer. Originally called Skyper, the brand name then became Skype.

According to the deity personifying Victory in Greek mythology, Niké. The comma represents the flight of this deity. Nike

What we can learn about the brand names is that it’s only a word, and the question coming up after you chose your brand name is how you are going to advertise and witch message and image you want to « stick » to this word. At the end, if this word that doesn’t make any sense at the beginning means something in people minds, it means that you succeeded in building your brand identity.

Barack Obama on Tumblr for 2012 !

President Barack Obama is well known for having used social networks to advertise for his previous campaign. After tacking advantage of Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, Tumblr is targeted ! News tell us that he has just signed up for a Tumblr account, and 2012 is definitely his goal.

« Accordingly, the Barack Obama Tumblr, run by the 2012 election campaign staff, is meant to focus on user submissions, behind-the-scenes shots and grassroots support. » Mashable

Tumblr, sometimes written « tumblr. » is a microblogging platform, created in 2007, which allows users to post text, images, videos, links and sounds on his tumblelog.
Tumblr allows users to post text, images, videos, links and sounds on their pages. Creating an account is a free service. In the same way as Twitter, Tumblr uses a subscription system. The user can in fact decide to follow the flow of other accounts Tumblr. On his page, he can also share the ticket of another user by using the « Reblog » function. When Tumblr is unavailable, it displays a page with « Tumbeasts », which are green beasts born from the imagination of the designer Matthew Inman, creator of the site The Oatmeal. This is a reference to the beached whale (the « Fail Whale »), which shows the crashes of twitter.

Founded in 2007, this platform counted nearly 6,6 million people registered in 2010. In August 2011, the Wall Street Journal valued it at $ 800 million, so that to my mind Barack Obama is managing very well his next campaing, since the potential of people who could vote for him is quite wide.

Google vs China, round… 10000th

Google has for a long time been fighting against China in order to work properly. In 2010, some hackers hired by the government tried to attack the giant in order to fright him and make hime go out of China. These attacks failed and Google is still alive.

The expression freedom in China is still a worldwide debate. This is one of the most restrictive country in the use of web and the question is : are we able today to live without internet or at least with a « fake internet » that limits you at one and only one way of thinking. With the social Medias blowing up, untill when Chinese people will be able to contain their opinions?

With no big surprise, the Chinese government and the authorities decided recently to reenforce the control of the web one more time.

According to the Global Times, Beijing has launched a program to strengthen controls over 10 years, in particular to prevent the publication of rumors on the web that could tarnish the image of the party. Exit to freedom of expression: Chinese Internet users will now expect to be censored even more on social media, which today more than 500 million adherents in the country.

Social networks are actually helping Chinese to report various abuses and injustices found in everyday life, such as the arrest of  too influential web surfer that conveys ideas « contrary » to the principles of government.

For many people, this restriction aims to reenforce the control of the party on social media a year before the arrival of new leaders to power. How, in such a globalized world can we steal people opinions like they do? That is the question.

Adarsh Pallian : After Geotoko, Hootsuite !

Thanks to Kwantlen and Pamela IP, I had the opportunity to meet one of these brave entrepreneurs who hard believe in their idea and work on it to make it real.

It was a conference given by this awesome guy : Adarsh Pallian. Co-founder of Geotoko, this start-up had a really good start since it was based on a trendy concept : the geolocation. As described on the web-site : « Geotoko is a location-based marketing and analytics platform made for businesses and brands to run real-time location-based promotions » so, it would enable a brand to measure the impact of promotional campaigns across multiple location-based services.

A short summary of what he did before :

Adarsh has always been fond of creativity and social networks. Definitely convinced that our future will be composed of internet and sharing, his experiences are organized around that.

He first graduated at the university of Manitoba where he’s been studying Computer science. Then he got hired as a creative director Stock-Trak Group Inc for one year and a half. Following that, he worked for Bull Ship Press, an online newspaper but it was his last job as an employee. What Adarsh want is to be the chief executive.

With a friend he decides to create his first brand : Chart.ly : « a social charting platform enabling users to discover and share charts, graphs, and videos ». The problem is that he was not the first to develop such a concept so he failed.

Then Adarsh went to works for his own account by creating Pallian creative : « a design studio specializing in highly-usable financial websites and mobile application ». For 6 years he worked for himself and enjoyed. But it was not enough and he wanted to create his real own brand : After spending hours on this project Geotoko was born in May 2010.

The issue

Till these past few months, Geotoko was still growing. More and more followers, more and more people using the app… And something happened : Hootsuite the big unifying social media came to him and made a redemption proposition. He accepted and is today working for Hootsuite as a director of apps.

I actually have to say that I’m not sure I would be able to do what he did. Am I enough strong and do I enough believe in my ideas? This guy succeeded because he was hard working and  taught me that everyone can succeed too but you must keep going even if obstacles stand in your way.

A video to value the customer and advertise by the same way

The Japanese giant Sony announced all over the web he was preparing something for October 5, 2011, targeting PlayStation 3 players.

The news has just arrived, it’s a little movie! You will be able to recognize your best heroes and how would they have been in the reality if they’d have existed!

It’s a real tribute to players : Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, not to mention God of War … The video is particularly successful because this is real people that embody Snake, Altair and others. The similarities are incredible and the most experienced of you will recognize without difficulty the characters present in the video (special mention to Kratos more real than reality!).

Thanks to this video, Sony want to thank its players and advertise for the recent price decrease. Youtube one more time take part to the advertisement campaign and social medias confirm their purpose !

Sources : Minutebuzz.com

Wikipedia and HTTPS !

Wikipedia has announced the introduction of navigation via HTTPS secure within its pages. Encyclopedia wishes to reassure its users and visitors about its intentions and gain a « big trackers » like Facebook.

The HTTPS « allows you to visit our site without anyone to track your browsinghabits or steal your credentials when you connect » explains the blog of the Wikimedia Foundation.

An implementation that comes from Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) statements, who responded last week on the Huffington Post about the new features of Facebook and particularly the sharing of readings. « What I just read on Wikipedia is my business … You should feel safe knowing that all you want to learn, you’ll find on Wikipedia without worrying about what you accidentally share on Facebook  » he said.

Some would argue that the relationship between Facebook and encryption of web pages has no real relationship, but the fact is that Wikipedia is clearly trying to build a better user confidence. I think that it’s going to be a good thing since spies are today everywhere !

Sources : Huffington Post

Oh my god what happened 2

This is 3 points that I wanted to underline on my blog concerning “Oh my god what happened”

The viral Campaign : Try not to confuse an aggressive YouTube video and a viral campaign: The main goal for a viral campaign is to make people talk about your brand. But even a good marketer is not able to say before launching the campaign that it  will effectively be a viral one since it depends on people’s reaction. If they forward it then it is!

When we have a look at the You Tube video of Tipex “shoot the bear” it made a buzz because it was really amazing and unusual to be able to interact on You Tube like they did, and it was also trendy since consumers want more and more to be involved in the campaign. They want to take part of it and have their word to say. We can compare it to social medias and journalism, by tweeting information they’ve become citizen journalism.

The writer ads that the key to be shared is to appear in Facebook’s status. The most reliable information today is probably your friend’s opinion toward a product or an idea.

The « On-demand society »: The author talks about the “on-demand society”. Everything has to be accessible and easy to use: a few cliks or a shortcut and the consumer is happy.

As for me, it can in fact describe the instantaneousness of people today. They want everything now and not later. We don’t take appointment any more, we just send a text message or a facebook one and that’s it. People describe their feelings in live via Facebook and tweet events out as they want to.

Beside this behavior, people become lazy since everything is accessible from anywhere: thanks to the internet, and this is true because I can recognize myself in there. Why should I go to the shop to buy my camera while I can get it on a website for cheaper?

The concept of “crowdsourcing”: according to the author is the faculty of using the power of the world’s crowd and outsources it. Google use it very well because it operates famous websites contents and make it available immediately for the public. Google has indeed well understood what people wanted because in this case it offers the widest list of websites on only a couple of clicks.

This concept is becoming unavoidable when we look at all of the open sources project that are growing : Android, Chrome store or open office. As the writer let us know Apple do it even better since everybody can develop any application and put it on the apple store. Thus, the developer earn money but Apple as well!

A little survey :

Oh my god what happened !! :s

A whole generation is changing and this generation cannot imagine living without internet, this book is really interesting and show us how internet is growing fast.

I invite you to check it out : http://ohmygodwhathappened.com/

Let’s begin : this is some dates that I think most of you forgot !

1969 : internet was born

1971 : the first email

1983 : the first cell phone by Motorola (4000$)

1989 : the WWW was born

1989 : invention of the MP3 format

90’s : DSL pushes internet

1990 : access to the internet with cell phone

1993 first CD burner

1995 : foundation of Yahoo

1998 : peer-to-peer music sharing tool (Napster), Google was born, Divx format, first MP3 player, famous peer-to-peer clients as emule or kazaa !

2001 : birth of Itunes and then the Ipod

2003 : Myspace and skype

2004 : World of Warcraft and birth of the king facebook !

2006 : the king open up : Facebook

2007 : welcome to… the Iphone

2008 : explosion of the meeting websites

Today everybody needs to be aware of what digital media is and should know how does it work.

Old executives have some difficulties to deal with new medias? They actually don’t trust in them and in the next few years, executives will be younger simply because they would need to be updated.

You have to live the new media to understand how does it work ! create a fb account, find old friends… You have to try things out for yourself. Tutorials can easily be found on the internet if you cannot understand how does it work, but what people need today is to be in the trend because if they are not so that the social link and network would collapse.

Brands must give the opportunity to its clients to interact with it : fb, news, buzz

They also should try to advertise without disturbing people watching a movie for exemple. Because more and more people know how to avoid commercials on TV ! They just go on the internet !

Medias still need to work together and in the same direction! They actually need to be combined in order to make synergies. If an ad works only on one of them, so that it is a bad advertisement campaign. And try to be sure that the ad campaign works for every country in the world, because the main power of internet is to be global but it can quickly become a drawback if you don’t pay attention to what you say.

Thanks to the internet, group targeting has become person targeting! You can know where they are, what they do, who they are and so on… Brands are able now to know what offer or product will be the most adapted to each customer. But brands, on the other way have to be careful and moreover honest! Making up reality on television, radio or newspaper is an easy thing to do, but now, leaks on the internet threat brands ! And not only brands actually, when we think about “wikileaks”, the famous community website, which denounces the American government…

These things are 5 points that I thought interesting in this book. It’s really funny to have a look at the part “history of internet” since we realize that time is going by really fast but at the same time it also reveal that all these digital stuff are not so old ! Amazing how technologies can evolve so fast.