Couldn’t resist posting this classic. Highlights include the restaurant and the kid near the end.
Retro Commercial – Radio Shack Cell Phones – 1990 – The most amazing bloopers are here
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They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To
New channels on YouTube
Do video? You need to know this…
Deadline Chasing
Liking this. Wonder if 3M have seen it?
Gone in 60 seconds
Actually it probably took under 60 seconds for most people to make up their minds about Dominos after they saw this video:
It has been doing the rounds since the start of the week and crossed over into offline breaking news as it topped the “most viral” lists. The stars of the show soon found themselves fired and nicked, and Dominos hastily had to ramp up its online damage-control efforts, one element of which was a video from the boss:
I thought this video was a pretty good response and imagine it has gone a long way to helping repair things. It’s good that they’ve tried to respond using the same medium that ultimately hurt them, and tried to engage on other platforms as well. Just slightly odd that he talks off camera (as if to a reporter) — surely this is a personal address/appeal to customers and should have been straight down the barrel.
Anyway, here are my thoughts:
It doesn’t really matter whether this is a franchise, an isolated incident or an event taking place in the US – the internet is global and this damages the brand globally. Consumers don’t necessarily know or care about the detail. The only thing that matters is you could be sitting 8000 miles away and now never go to Dominos again. Ouch.
A picture paints a thousand words. If ever there were an example of how powerful video can be in terms of a reputation story, this most be high up there.
Popular conscience. A story like this one around food hygiene is the stuff of legend– what people fear could go on inside a kitchen being shown as “true”. Doesn’t really matter if it is a hoax or joke. The perception is that this is what goes on. This kind of stuff inevitably flies online.
The power of one. In the old days it would have been much harder for one person (or I guess two people here) to damage a big brand like Dominos so much and so quickly. Nowadays it takes one person with a video camera who probably thought they were having a laugh. Compare with footage of the cops at the G20 protests.
So what lessons?
- Monitor the internet proactively to identify issues at an early stage
- Respond quickly using all means available to push the message out. The video started things here but the conversation quickly spread to Twitter and beyond meaning the company had to engage on other platforms as well.
- You can’t separate online and offline. This didn’t just happen on the internet, it quickly hit the papers and TV as well.
- If you are already involved in online conversations then you have a head start on someone who has to build from scratch. Just as in the offline world it takes time to form relationships with people you want to influence.
It can take a tough lesson to show the internet can be make and break. But it’s never too late to start thinking about that digital strategy.
Jump for justice
A picture tells a thousand words. Here’s what struck me as a good example– a judge in the States who literally leaps to the defence of a witness.
Sound familiar?
This video is becoming a fast riser out there in digiland this afternoon. Very clever– and made me think how increasingly we’re treating ads, particularly video ads, as content in their own right to be consumed and shared. Sure, ads have always been a talking point, etc etc, but one of the big lessons of the internet age has been that content alone is now not enough: it’s what we do with the content, where we distribute it, who we engage with it, that really makes the message fly. As well as making things easier, the internet has made things a lot more complicated.
Getting creative
At something like £2m for a 30 second TV spot, SuperBowl ads pull out all the stops. Here are the three I was most impressed by:
(With this one, it’s the way they cleverly make suggestions about Mercedes, BMW and Lexus)
(This is simply brilliant in its no-nonsense approach — watch for the safety briefing)
(You’ve just got to love the drama of this one, particularly the voice over)
PM forgets to turn his mobile off
This video on the BBC website brought me a Friday smile — even the Prime Minister forgets to turn his phone off.
Worth watching to the end…
Holy web 2.0
No, that’s not a line from Batman, it’s a reference to the Vatican’s online activities — the latest news is that the Pope is starting up a YouTube channel.
The last Pope was a bit of a digital evangelist, something I learned in the 18 months I spent (on and off) producing his obituary while I was at Sky News. Slightly morbid perhaps but they even have a webcam feed from his tomb.
.
And there’s an immense amount of religious digital buzz around sites like Facebook with groups of people who become fans of religious figures and saints. There’s even an app with daily prayers.
What I find interesting is the way people are sometimes so surprised to find out all this is going on. I guess religions are about like-minded communities forming bigger communities and spreading the word peer-to-peer. ‘Send-to-a-friend’ is just a modern version of the missionary idea.
Plenty of people are offering opinions about how Obama is using the internet to ‘spread the word’ – it’ll be interesting to see how the Pope grows his digital strategy. Perhaps a Twitter confessional is next on the development list?
[I use this Pope example simply because it's in the news today and and it made me think about how communities are using the web to communicate. Plenty of other religions/religious communities are using the internet to communicate as well and offer equally interesting examples.]
Now cats are going mad
Someone needs to tell this fella that cats are supp0sed to chase rats, not the other way round…