Home » marketing (Page 7)
Category Archives: marketing
Selling Cinderella on YouTube
Sure, it’s a jacket, not a glass slipper, and this time the one that got away is a guy, but “Heidi’s” Cinderella story is clocking up hits rapidly on YouTube:
It’s a romantic tale, of one girl looking for the guy whole stole her heart after a brief exchange in a cafe … he left his jacket behind, but stole her heart. Now, using YouTube, she’s reaching out to try and find him. As stories go, it’s got pretty much everything, but it’s just a little too cute. Indeed, “Heidi” has already managed to cobble together a website to promote her quest and it’s a bit too professional; these photos are more about showing off Heidi and the jacket than about trying to genuinely connect with someone. In the post-LonelgGirl15 era, people that tend to be too good to be true tend to raise an eyebrow, and The Daily Telegraph seems to have found the likely viral marketing engine under the hood of this tale:
The Sydney protagonist is 24-year-old Elizabeth Bay shop assistant Heidi, who is adamant the incident was absolutely real and says she is desperate to find her mystery man with the laptop. With the help of a graphic-designer friend, she recorded a video for YouTube titled: "Are you my man in the jacket?” Within four days, more than 60,000 people had watched the pretty blonde put her heart on the line and plead for the handsome stranger to come forward. … The problem with this story is that the label on the jacket is linked to a mainstream fashion house. And it’s a label that doesn’t exist. At least not yet. The Sunday Telegraph has learned that the Australian company is on the verge of launching its first menswear line. Heidi swears she is not involved in a guerrilla marketing campaign. "I just picked up the jacket,” she insisted.
Could a new line of jackets called Heidi but about to hit the market? 😛
Update: It’s been confirmed that this was indeed a viral marketing video.
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 11th 2009
Links for January 11th 2009:
- let the remixes begin (UPDATED) [Lessig Blog] – Lawrence Lessig appears on The Colbert Report promoting his new book, Remix… remixes ensue!
- tiltshiftmaker.com – Transform your photos into tilt-shift style miniatures – “Tilt-shift miniature style photos are pictures of real-life scenes that are manipulated to look like model photographs. Now you can easily transform your existing digital camera photos into tilt-shift style miniatures using tiltshiftmaker.com.” (A fairly minimal setup, but with the right photographs, these can look impressive.)
- Mouthwash linked with increased cancer risk [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “Dental experts are warning mouthwash could cause oral cancer and should be made available on prescription only. A review published in the Australian Dental Journal has linked mouthwash containing alcohol to an increased risk of developing the deadly disease. The alcohol in mouthwash is believed to allow cancer causing compounds to attack the lining of the mouth more easily. The review author, Michael McCullough, is an Associate Professor in Oral medicine at Melbourne University.”
- Whopper® Sacrifice – Sacrifice 10 friends from Facebook for a free WHOPPER® – Latest Burger King promotion is pretty web-savy: use Burger King Facebook application, delete 10 Facebook friends (and the application tells them you’ve done so) and get a free burger.
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 8th 2009
Links for January 7th 2009 through January 8th 2009:
- How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR (Good advice.)
- Apple Drops Anticopying Measures in iTunes [NYTimes.com] – In moves that will help shape the online future of the music business, Apple said Tuesday that it would remove anticopying restrictions on all of the songs in its popular iTunes Store and allow record companies to set a range of prices for them. Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels — Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so. In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents. Instead, the majority of songs will drop to 69 cents beginning in April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for $1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99″
- Raid Gaza! Editorial Games and Timeliness [News Games: Georgia Tech Journalism & Games Project] – “Raid Gaza! is a new editorial game about the Gaza crisis. Like editorial games should, it takes a strong position. But unlike so many, it also offers coherent gameplay that is related to the conflict it critiques. … The game is headstrong, suffering somewhat from its one-sided treatment of the issue at hand. But as an editorial, it is a fairly effective one both as opinion text and as game. It is playable and requires strategy, the exercise of which carries the payload of commentary. It’s release on user-contributed animation and games portal Newgrounds came on 30 December 2008, only three days after the Israeli Defense Forces launched airstrikes as a part of “Operation Cast Lead.” The rapidness with which the game was developed, combined with its relatively sophisticated ability to mount commentary through gameplay, underscore one of the biggest issues with editorial games.”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 6th 2009
Links for January 6th 2009:
- Digital guru Clay Shirky’s media forecast and predictions for 2009 [Media | The Guardian] – “The question is who figures out the business model that says it’s better to have 6 million passionate fans than 7 million bored ones? That is going to be the transformation because what you see with these user groups, whether it’s for reality TV or science fiction, is that people love the conversation around the shows. The renaissance of quality television is an indicator of what an increased number of distribution channels can do. It is no accident that this started with cable. And the BBC iPlayer? That’s a debacle. The digital rights management thing …let’s just pretend that it was a dream like on Dallas and start from scratch. The iPlayer is a back-to-the-future business model. It’s a total subversion of Reithian values in favour of trying to create what had been an accidental monopoly as a kind of robust business model. The idea that the old geographical segmenting of terrestrial broadcasts is recreatable is a fantasy and a waste of time.”
- NIN’s CC-Licensed Best-Selling MP3 Album [Creative Commons] – ” … Ghosts I-IV is ranked the best selling MP3 album of 2008 on Amazon’s MP3 store.Take a moment and think about that.
NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks? One explanation is the convenience and ease of use of NIN and Amazon’s MP3 stores. But another is that fans understood that purchasing MP3s would directly support the music and career of a musician they liked. The next time someone tries to convince you that releasing music under CC will cannibalize digital sales, remember that Ghosts I-IV broke that rule, and point them here.”
- Twitter accounts of Obama, Britney Spears hacked [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “The Twitter accounts of US president-elect Barack Obama, singer Britney Spears and other prominent figures were hacked on Monday (US time) and fake messages sent out in their names on the micro-blogging service. Twitter founder Biz Stone, in a post on the official company blog, said a total of 33 Twitter accounts had been hacked including those of president-elect Obama and Rick Sanchez, a CNN television anchor with tens of thousands of followers. “We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue,” Mr Stone said. … Twitter, which allows users to post real-time updates of 140 characters or less, has an estimated 4-5 million users according to a recent study. Launched in August 2006, it has been embraced by a number of celebrities including president-elect Obama, who has more than 150,000 followers, and four-time NBA champion Shaquille O’Neal of the Phoenix Suns.”
- How Windschuttle swallowed a hoax to publish a fake story in Quadrant (Margaret Simmons, 6 Jan 09) [Crikey] – “Keith Windschuttle, the editor of the conservative magazine Quadrant, has been taken in by a hoax intended to show that he will print outrageous propositions. This month’s edition of Quadrant contains a hoax article purporting to be by “Sharon Gould”, a Brisbane based New York biotechnologist. But in the tradition of Ern Malley – the famous literary hoax perpetrated by Quadrant’s first editor, James McAuley – the Sharon Gould persona is entirely fictitious and the article is studded with false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims and a mixture of genuine and bogus footnotes.” [Margaret Simmons’ Further Blogged Thoughts] [Windschuttle’s Response]
- Facebook under fire for racist rants [The Age] – “Facebook has come under fire from Australian users for ignoring racial vilification on the site and failing to remove blatantly racist groups even though they have been flagged as offensive. Sydney-based Facebook user Alex Gollan, who has campaigned against the racist groups, has been threatened with violence and fears the site could be used to rally people if another incident such as the Cronulla riots flares up. The site permanently banned one offender this week but only after the issue of racism on Facebook came under the spotlight following revelations that Scots College and Kambala students had created anti-Semitic groups on the site.”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: December 22nd 2008
Links for December 18th 2008 through December 22nd 2008:
- Better Than Free (Manifesto by Kevin Kelly) [ChangeThis] – “When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. Well, what can’t be copied?” (A very timely and insightful look at what can be ‘sold’ in an era in which all media can, by and large, be obtained through various channels for free.)
- Australian Internet Filter Will Target BitTorrent Traffic [TorrentFreak] – “Previously thought to be limited to HTTP and HTTPs web traffic, the touted Australian Internet filter will also target P2P traffic. In response to a comment posted by a user on his department’s blog, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has admitted that BitTorrent filtering will be attempted during upcoming trials.”
- New Vision for Perth Community TV [TV Tonight] – “The Australian Communications and Media Authority has issued a community television trial licence in Perth for two years. The successful applicant, West TV Ltd, will provide an analogue television service, to be known as New Vision 31. New Vision 31 expects to commence broadcasting within the next six months.”
- The creators behind JibJab [Ourmedia] – “…a 4-minute video interview with Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, the founders and creators of the wildly popular animation site JibJab.com, conducted at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Calif. Gregg and Evan talk about how their business has evolved over the past nine years, what business models are working for them, and how their use of social media propels the site forward.”
- Warner Music pulls videos from YouTube [Australian IT] – “Warner Music Group ordered YouTube on Saturday to remove all music videos by its artists from the popular online video-sharing site after contract negotiations broke down. The order could affect hundreds of thousands of videos clips, as it covers Warner Music’s recorded artists as well as the rights for songs published by its Warner/Chappell unit, which includes many artists not signed to Warner Music record labels. The talks fell apart early on Saturday because Warner wants a bigger share of the huge revenue potential of YouTube’s massive visitor traffic. There were no reports on what Warner was seeking.”
- Australian couple served with legal documents via Facebook [Telegraph] – “In what may be a world first, lawyers from Canberra law firm Meyer Vandenberg persuaded a judge in the Australian Capital Territory’s Supreme Court to allow them to serve the documents over the internet after repeatedly failing to serve the papers in person. Lawyer Mark McCormack came up with the Facebook plan after it became clear that the couple did not want to be found.” (This sets a terrible precedent; how many dead social profiles do most people have that they never look at – that’s a pretty poor conduit for something as serious as legal notice!)
Annotated Links of Interest: October 26th 2008
Links of interest for October 24th 2008 through October 26th 2008:
- (SPOILER) What happened when the lights went out. [Whedonesque] – Joss Whedon talks straight to the fans about Dollhouse: “Sadly, this is not a naughty post. It’s just Joss nattering on again. I thought it was time to check in with you once again, gentle viewers. Or readers. Or pictures-looker-ats (that might be viewers). Also listeners, sniffers, haberdashers, Olympic hopefuls, the elderly, the youngerdly, and the mighty state of Oregon (go Oregon-based sports franchise!) Welcome all. Welcome… to me. What’s me up to? I’m glad me asked. Me’ve (I’m not doing that any more) been working on a little show called Dollhouse. Yes, perhaps you’ve read about how it’s blazing an untrammeled path to surefire success, with nary a hitch or a hiccup, just pure blazing blazery, comet-like and meteoresque. What’s that, you say? You’ve read other things? Dark, Yog-Sothothy rumors about shutdowns and delays? Poppycock! They’re true. But I never pass up a chance to say “poppycock”. “
- Flunking Spore – John Bohannon [Science, 322 (5901): 531b, October 2008] – Apparently Spore fails to live up to the expectations of scientists and the promotional material for Spore might have been a little disingenuous: “So over the past month, I’ve been playing Spore with a team of scientists, grading the game on each of its scientific themes. When it comes to biology, and particularly evolution, Spore failed miserably. According to the scientists, the problem isn’t just that Spore dumbs down the science or gets a few things wrong–it’s meant to be a game, after all–but rather, it gets most of biology badly, needlessly, and often bizarrely wrong. I also tracked down the scientists who appeared on television in what seemed like an endorsement of Spore’s scientific content on the National Geographic channel. They said they had been led to believe that the interviews were for a straight documentary about “developmental evolutionary” science rather than a video promoting a computer game “
- The Medium – The Hitler Meme [NYTimes] – The New York Times on that Hitler (Downfall) meme: “On YouTube, we’re in a bunker, and the enemies are always, always closing in. The ceilings are low. The air is stifling. A disheveled leader is delusional. This is the premise of more than 100 videos on the Web — the work of satirists who for years have been snatching video and audio from “Downfall,” the 2004 German movie of Hitler’s demise, and doctoring it to tell a range of stories about personal travails and world politics. By adding new English-language subtitles, they transform the movie’s climactic scene, in which Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz) rails against his enemies and reluctantly faces his defeat, into the generic story of a rabid blowhard brought low.”
- YouTube Enables Deep Linking Within Videos [TechCrunch] – “It’s not a big new feature but it’s certainly one that will come in handy: YouTube will now allow you to send users to a specific point in a video by appending a short tag to the end of a video’s URL. It’s pretty surprising that this functionality wasn’t available earlier, as Google Video introduced the same feature over two years ago. YouTube users have been forced to rely on third party services like Splicd to do the same thing. To specify a point, append a tag to the end of your video link with the following syntax: “#t=1m45s” (you can change the numbers before the ‘m’ and ’s’ to edit the minutes and seconds, respectively.”
- Woman in jail over virtual murder [BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific] – “A woman has been arrested in Japan after she allegedly killed her virtual husband in a popular video game. The 43-year-old was reportedly furious at finding herself suddenly divorced in the online game Maplestory. Police say she illegally accessed log-in details of the man playing her husband, and killed off his character. The woman, a piano teacher, is in jail in Sapporo waiting to learn if she faces charges of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating data.”
- Fan fury at Nine [TV Tonight] – Australian “Fans of Fringe who were unaware the show had been pulled from Nine’s current schedule got a rude shock last night and vented their anger in online messageboards. They were universally vehement in their displeasure with Nine’s programming. This site alone now totals 95 posts in one thread alone. Over on Nine’s own messageboard there were more furious comments: Fringe Dweller: C’mon channel 9, have some balls and tell the people why Fringe has been pulled! Oh I’m sorry, you don’t care about what people like. Maybe we could lose one of the four hundred different versions of CSI. God Bless ‘Two and a Half man’ where would you be without them. Maybe you can rename yourselves to Channel Two and a Half Men CSI Malibu!!! Why I’m at it, you pulled Fringe and we still have to put up with that The Strip crap.”
Tama Leaver dot Net by Tama Leaver is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.