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Digital Culture Links: July 28th 2010

Links for July 21st 2010 through July 28th 2010:

  • How Twitter Is Being Used In The Election Campaign [National Times] – Axel Bruns offers a quick look at how Twitter is being used in the Australian politician election campaigning to date: short version, the candidates aren’t doing brilliantly well and #ausvotes is the real hashtag, while #ozvotes is all about electing wizards! 🙂
  • Julia Gillard Impersonators On The Rise [National Times] – There are a lot more fake Julia Gillards on Twitter than the real one (currently our PM); most of the fake ones are much funnier, and all of them get that Twitter isn’t just a broadcast platform (the real one hasn’t figured this out, yet).
  • Old Spice Sales Double With YouTube Campaign [Mashable] – Apparently social media + charismatic actor + great scripts = advertising gold: “You know those YouTube videos with that manly Old Spice guy and his hilarious responses to Twitter fans? Of course you do. So does everybody, it seems, because Old Spice body wash sales have increased 107% in the past month thanks to that social media marketing campaign. We already published stats from video analytics company Visible Measures that made it clear that the Old Spice guy was a hugely successful initiative from marketing firm Wieden + Kennedy, achieving millions of viral video views quicker than past hits like Susan Boyle and U.S. President Barack Obama’s election victory speech. The statistic of the 107% sales increase over the past month comes from Nielsen…”
  • Amazon’s ebook milestone: digital sales outstrip hardbacks for first time in US [The Guardian] – “In what could be a watershed for the publishing industry, Amazon said sales of digital books have outstripped US sales of hardbacks on its website for the first time. Amazon claims to have sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hardback books over the past three months. The pace of change is also accelerating.”
  • Skin Whitening, Tanning, and Vaseline’s Controversial Facebook Ad Campaign [danah boyd | apophenia] – An insightful look at a controversy that has sprung up about a Vaseline ad on Facebook, aimed at India, for a skin whitening cream which offers a preview of a whitened face. boyd does a great job of showing how racism is often culturally and historically specific, and that Americans who are deeply offended by the ads really need to engage with how the ads are read by the Indian internet users who are targeted. boyd stresses that most histories of racism and the meaning of skin-colour are deeply problematic, but the main point is that these operate quite differently in different places and cultures, and that these contexts need to be taken into consideration.
  • Gay zombie porn gets festival flick [The Age] – Film censorship returns to Australia – gay zombie film in peril: “The Australian censor has banned a film from screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival for the first time in seven years – a work described as ”gay zombie porn”. Festival director Richard Moore received a letter yesterday from the Film Classification Board director Donald McDonald, stating that L.A. Zombie, the latest offering from Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce, could not be screened as it would in his opinion be refused classification. The festival is not generally required to submit films for classification, but after reading a synopsis of the plot of L.A. Zombie, which features wound penetration and implied sex with corpses, the Classification Board requested a DVD to watch, and then refused to issue an exemption. It is the first film to be banned from the festival circuit since Larry Clark’s Ken Park in 2003.”

Old Spice 2.0 – Day 2

Continuing from yesterday’s post about the impressive Old Spice replies social media campaign, I just wanted to highlight two more examples since they replies have continued into day two of the campaign. The first, a reply to knitmeapony’s request of an answering machine message shows just how clever the script writers are on these clips: the Old Spice guy carefully delivers a clip with can so easily be remixed into any number of customised answering machine replies, with strategic pauses between audio bites of numbers and phrases, making this a really easy clip to remix! Like so:

Or the equivalent for a man’s man’s answering machine:

The other clip which I really liked was to Isaiah Mustafa’s daughter, Hayley, who wondered why the Old Spice man looks so much like her dad:

It’s worth noting that while this clip is public, it’s unlisted, so not visible on the main YouTube channel; initially, it was only found by those who saw the tweet. Having some clips only available via specific media platforms gives Old Spice reply fans even more reason to join all the Old Spice social media forms!

Meanwhile, Marshall Kirkpatrick over at Read Write Web has a look behind the curtain at How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made; Kirkpatrick gets a certain amount of access to the production team, so it’s worth having a read. Also, Boing Boing note that there’s already been some ‘competition’ for the Old Spice man, but that’s a little generous.

I do wonder if there will be any more of these clips.  There are still some gems in the second day’s replies, but they also seem to be running out of steam here and there, repeating their jokes a bit.  Perhaps the Old Spice man needs to rest after a job well done, leaving the tantalizing promise of a repeat performance weeks or months down the track?

Update: It’s done; I must ride my jetski/lion into the sunset …

Old Spice 2.0!

When Old Spice is mentioned, if anything comes to mind at all, it’s … old. And not old in a dignified or wise way. That’s all changed for me today, as I’ve just seen evidence that their current marketing campaign is one of the cleverest commercial use of social media I’ve ever seen (thanks to a post from mUmbrella). The story begins with this well-produced, amusing advertisement for Old Spice:

Apparently it won some awards and so forth, but it’s still just a normal tv spot. 

Then, today, things started to get interesting on the Old Spice YouTube channel (with links on Twitter, Facebook and even Reddit) as Isaiah Mustafa, in his Old Spice role, started replying to comments from people online.  First off, a big media nod to Ellen DeGeneres, and it seemed like there might be a series of carefully scripted replies to recognisable celebrities and media platforms (all amplifying the Old Space brand, of course).  But then the Old Spice marketers did something really clever: the replies in the videos shifted aim, towards non-celebrity, ‘ordinary’ internet users who’ve made comments somewhere (YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc) about the Old Spice ads. Suddenly, that netherworld of social media comments, which so often feels like screaming into the wind, brought a deluge of replies from the Old Spice guy. Over one hundred Old Spice replies were uploaded in 24 hours, the vast majority of which are in reply to comments made today. Just as impressive, the writing team have obviously enjoyed their energy drinks, because the scripts were hilarious, endearing, ironic and certainly every single reply is worth watching. 

No doubt the most notable Old Spice reply will be one done in reply to jsbeals’s request to pass on his marriage proposal; the story ends well as she apparently said yes! However, what really impressed me is that the masculinity of the Old Spice ads, while driving the marketing pitch, is also deeply ironic (which rather suits the a brand of this vintage), poking particular fun at its own notion of ‘being a man’:

The Old Spice replies are also littered with internet-driven humour, with a particular take on the age old pirates vs ninjas debate, a good poke at stupid YouTube handles in the form of a decent robot joke, an hilarious jab (and brave) jab at 4chan, /b/, and anonymous,  and lots of other references to please us all.  My favourite quirky video, though, was this seemingly innocuous reply to a tweet that came from Isaiah Mustafa …

tweet_isaiah_meta
and got this reply:

The funny thing, of course, is that Isaiah Mustafa is the guy in the ads, in the bathroom … in a towel (and I guess we know what’s under that towel now: the iPhone from which he’s tweeting to his own account!). Indeed, Mustafa has been a great sport, going along with some very quirky scripts that he’s obviously delivered very quickly. When the boundary between a game, a conversation and an advertising campaign becomes so thin, it’s everyone who wins. Old Spice 2.0 has certainly made me laugh today and I’m sure I’ll be reading about the Old Spice replies in pretty much every news media I go near tomorrow!

Digital Culture Links: March 25th 2010

Links for March 25th 2010:

  • The bosses who snoop on Facebook | Maxine Frances Roper [The Guardian] – I’m not sure I agree with this article, but the tensions between public and private spaces versus public and private as a technological setting are well articulated: “The practice of employers running internet searches on employees is now so widespread that employment agencies offer advice on “online reputation management”. As one such site puts it: “Even a family recipe for picked gherkins can influence an employer’s opinion of you.” But just because it’s possible for employers to unearth background information that once would have been the preserve of the most diligent East German spy, does that mean they should? There is a common belief that people who share information online are deliberately seeking attention, and therefore have it coming. Yet thinking that anyone with an online presence is out for publicity is as boneheaded as the idea that anyone who dresses up nicely is out to have indiscriminate sex.”
  • How the internet will turn the world upside down [mUmBRELLA] – The *very* near future: “Talk about demonstrating the scary power of the internet. In this near-future science fiction story, blogger Tom Scott shares a scenario that could very easily become a reality. It centres around how one short video clip uploaded onto the web spreads across the world like wildfire. It results in a flash mob, which turns into a riot and then ultimately, several deaths. Now, keep in mind this is not a real story. But the incidences Scott mentions in his story have all occurred – just not at the same time. At least not yet.”

    (This clip would give Cory Doctorow a run for this money.)
  • Nestle’s Facebook meltdown [Thought Gadgets] – A Nestle public relations disaster using social media. A good how NOT to guide.
  • Social Networking Rants Against Exes Turning Up In Court [Techdirt] – Another reminder that the web never forgets: “For many people, it’s natural to treat social networking platforms as being the equivalent of just talking — rather than being any sort of formal written communication. Of course, the big difference is that everything you type can be accurately saved forever — and, potentially, used against you in court. Obviously what people say out loud can also be used in court, but in an argument between, say, a broken up couple, a yelling fight just becomes a screaming match. In the social networking world, it can become evidence. Two recent stories highlight this. The first, from Eric Goldman, is the “disturbingly humorous” transcript from the court concerning a blog post about a woman’s ex-husband …”

RepoMen

While I fear the upcoming film RepoMen is unlikely to live up the the dystopian promise of its premise (the repossession of artificial organs from people who’ve defaulted on their repayments in a not-too-distant-future), I love some of their promotional posters …

repomen1

repomen3

Digital Culture Links: January 21st 2010

Links for January 19th 2010 through January 21st 2010:

  • YouTube to test movie rental service [The Age] – “YouTube announced it will begin testing an online movie rental service on Friday to kick off the Sundance Film Festival in the US. Five independent films from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance festivals will be part of a “small collection of rental videos” to be available to US users of the popular video-sharing website in “the weeks ahead”, according to YouTube. “Making content available for rent will give our partners unprecedented control over the distribution of their work – they can decide the price of their videos and the rental duration,” YouTube said in a blog post. […] The move represents another step for Google in generating revenue from YouTube, which it bought in 2006 in a deal valued at $US1.65 billion ($A1.82 billion). YouTube will also be stepping in as a potentially formidable contender in the growing market of online distribution of films that includes videogame consoles, Apple’s iTunes shop and US DVD rental giant Netflix.”
  • Open Letter From OK Go, regarding non-embeddable YouTube videos [OK Go] – Despite making their name on YouTube, OK Go’s label (EMI) won’t allow their new videos to be embeddable. This is silly, the band agrees, and tries to explain to fans: “The catch: the software that pays out those tiny sums doesn’t pay if a video is embedded. This means our label doesn’t get their hard-won share of the pie if our video is played on your blog, so (surprise, surprise) they won’t let us be on your blog. And, voilá: four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we’re – unbelievably – stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It’s like the world has gone backwards.” [Via]
  • Rock Band opens to user-created songs [Music | guardian.co.uk] – Selling user-generated content is now possible using the Rock Band online store, but the process of preparing a song for the service is complex: “submitting music to the Rock Band Network Store isn’t as easy as uploading an MP3. Acts must convert their recordings into the game’s special format, compiling an array of sound files, lyrics and tablatures, as well as instructions for camera angles, lighting and choreography. This requires specialist programming expertise or the services of a contractor, many of whom charge about £300 per minute of music. Once the files are ready, they can be listed in the Rock Band store for anywhere from 99 cents (61p) to $2.99 (£1.83) per song. Currently, user-created songs are only available to Microsoft Xbox players while the developers, MTV Games, keep 70% of the sale price. “We expected this to be an initiative that would appeal to unsigned artists,” [said] Paul DeGooyer, MTV’s senior vice president for electronic games and music”
  • YouTube confirms worldwide deal for live Indian Premier League cricket [Media | guardian.co.uk] – “YouTube has confirmed its first live major sporting deal, announcing today that it will host live Indian Premier League cricket matches in the UK, and casting into doubt the value of British TV broadcast rights. The YouTube deal involves every country outside the US – a significantly larger scope than reports had suggested. It was thought that YouTube would only stream live matches to countries that did not have TV deals with the IPL. The two-year deal gives the Google-owned YouTube the exclusive rights to stream IPL matches online, with the two companies splitting revenue from sponsorship and advertising.”
  • YouTube Search Accounts for Nearly 28% of All Google Searches [Reelseo] – Still wondering why Google purchased YouTube? “…YouTube not only had 50% more searches than Yahoo web search (3.918B vs 2.629B) and 180% more searches than Bing (3.918B vs 1.399B), but the number of searches at the online video giant made up almost 28% (27.95) of the total searches on Google sites for Dec. 2009.”

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