Last night I participated in a panel discussion at Election Dissection by Third Tuesday Calgary. The event was put together by Doug Lacombe and Troy Wason and took place at Melrose Cafe and Bar. Over 80 people had a chance to listen to a panel of 3 (DJ Kelly, Stephen Carter and Alex Zagoumenov) and engage in a few great discussions. In this post I’d like to share a few points I made last night. I hope this post is also useful for those that didn’t have a chance to make it last night.
My campaign story
I was introduced into the campaign by Jo Williams of NotYourAverageJo.com. Jo had a friend “on the inside” who needed social media people.
Became part of communications team lead by Lois Lockwood of Scout Communications, the agency of record for Barb Higgins’ campaign.
Worked closely with Shannon Larkins of BlackCoffee Communications, the media relations person for Barb Higgins campaign for Mayor.
Responsible for building and managing the digital communications platform: social media monitoring, website maintenance, SEO, paid search, email campaigns, social profiles support and online community outreach.
What follows is a list of 7 lessons I learned going through this campaign. The idea here is NOT to blame or make excuses. I want to make sure that the lessons I learned in this campaign can be applied to any business.
7 lessons learned through the campaign
Start early. Looking at this election starting 6 months in advance is not a bad idea. It’s important to understand that you can’t build a community of likeminded people at once. And without a community of committed users a product is nothing.
Have a strong product. As many of the attendees tweeted last night, if a product is not complete, it doesn’t matter how much money you put into advertising this product. My point is that with time and the right team anybody can be developed into a great candidate / product.
Have a strong message. Is your message worth sharing. I can tell you from experience that 7 platform points do not build a strong message that’s worth sharing. Also, ensure that once you have a strong message, you provide tools like AddToAny or ShareThis that simplify sharing.
Plan, plan, plan. Some will say that with social media it’s impossible to plan because you don’t have control over it (control is with the audience). However, you should be able to know the product, audience and the message, the competition and the key players. Once these are clear, you should be able to anticipate a number of outcomes and plan to execute on.
Know your audience. Speak their language. Be where they are. According to Stephen Carter, Twitter was not the primary choice to start the campaign. Instead they started with CalgaryPuck and Beyond forums where Calgarians with strong opinions live.
Work with your audience. It’s no longer us (selling) versus them (buying). Today, you should be in business of creating fans and empowering them to speak for your product on your behalf. You will probably start with a small group of customers (your family, circle of close friends, small group of customers). Work with these groups, educate them, provide with updates, make it easy for them to share with their networks.
Grow from within. Grow by starting with audiences that are close to you, educate them on how to share. And if your message is resonating with them, they will spread it. Running multiple accounts and tricking the system does not work in the long run. Social media is not a broadcasting channel.
I’m proud that I had a chance to be on the team and met so many wonderful people both inside the campaign and outside. Barb was a strong candidate and would have had a huge chance of winning if we all started earlier. A stronger campaign won. And I’m eager to continue learning and sharing what I know with you!
Dove Campaign for Beauty is one of my personal favourites done by Ogilvy & Mather, also one of my most admired agencies. I thnk they were one of the first hugely successful viral campaigns mainly due to its extreme masnifesto agains main stream culture. Great campaign overall, awesome creative work and music. I wonder where the music is coming from.
Here’s what I got from the video details on youtube.com. Director Tim Piper Ogilvy, Yael Staav (soft citizen). Soho – post production, Rogue – editing, Vapor music – sound and mixing, Gabor Jurina – photography, Make-up – Diana Carreiro, music – Flashbulb and Vapor. Ogilvy creative team: T Piper & M Kirkland. Thanks Dennis Lewis and Malcolm Poynton for starting it and Ogilvy Toronto and New York for expanding it. Go Dove. Great brand. Great people. Just want to recognize the people once again!
Although it’s been some time since this campaign was released, there’s still a great deal of SEO that’s being relevant. Comparing to the Sony Bravia Balls campaign, this one, when searched on google, brings up the actual websites for this campaign as a first listing. Although the URL is clightly longer than usual, it was been displayed prominently through carious media associated with this campaign.
Great concept, great execution. SEO, SEM and viral components are very strong. Following this commercial there were a number of others like this:
This on DailyMotion.com:
As well as a few that were more of a humour play on the initial Campaign for Real Beauty:
Above is another great commercial. I will not be able to comment on the contents of the integrated marketing campaign as it was awhile ago. However, the commercial is amazing. I can definitely say that there was a huge viral component involved but not the SEO of the campaign. I just searched for sonybravia on google and got the youtube and ebay links in the related searches. This leads me to think that although there as a strong viral component, SEO and drive to website was slightly weaker.
Learning
Great colour play. Beautiful production. Feel free to read some notes on rendering here: http://vimeo.com/3703357
Great sound and motion play! Awesome track “heartbeats” by Jose Gonzalez.
Again, advertising is connected to the product key selling points: colourful, realistic, hi-def.
Because of the power of song within the audio-visual balance, Jose Gonzalez got extreme recognition. This is a great example of promoting musical talent. Event today, I’m searching google and finding a lot of curious questions from people about who this guy is. Great move!
It’s not that often that you run into a great commercial. This one from Pfizer shocks even more: well made, very emotional and the craziest part it’s from a pharmaceutical company Pfizer. The campaign is called “More than Medication”.
The site where all traffic drives is http://www.morethanmedication.ca. The site engages with useful information both covering the viral component of the campaign and giving users valuable articles and communication tools around health and wellness theme.
The campaign is backed up by strong SEO and SEM efforts targeting “health and wellness” searchers. On top of targeting health and wellness audience in Canada, the campaign is very strong as viral. People want share it with their friends. I’m still looking for the agency responsible for this campaign. I will update the post once I find it. Help will be much appreciated.
Learning
Advertising / marketing campaigns touch several different media of delivering information.
Advertising is no longer a one way communication, there has to be feedback.
Advertising is no longer on its own, it has to go in tandem with business model.
The message here is composed of sound, colour contrast and the concept.
Agencies are becoming ever more creative with the ways to communicate the message. For example, who would have ever known that Pfizer (medication) will start talking about More Than Medication. The message touches of very personal strings of the audience. Great campaign.
This particular video uses great sounds / feelings transition within the commercial.
Great play on colours too!
Hi, I'm Alex and I blog about online marketing matters including SEO, social media marketing and life in general. Feel free to browse, comment and connect!
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