My latest guilty pleasure is Katie Price Signed (probably unsurprising coming from the girl that religiously records Jeremy Kyle everyday). Last week’s episode however, was actually educational from a PR’s point of view – that’s dedication for you. It was all about creating viral clips. The final nine hapless contestants were tasked by the Grande Dame of page 3 to “create buzz”. Each group were given 200 quid, a camera phone, a location and told to make a film that would go viral – other than that there were no directions. Whichever clip when posted on t’interweb garnered the most hits would win.
Chaos ensued as only two group members were allowed to star in the video and the other person had to film – inevitably this ensured that the point of the challenge was missed. Instead of spending the eight hours available to them coming up with a creative concept which might warrant spreadability, they bickered about who would be front of camera.
The results were pretty woeful. One group did a skit on Prince William and Kate Windsor (nee Middleton) on their honeymoon night, another also centred on the sex sells theme and spent the afternoon dressed as nuns flashing anyone that passed by and the third took the comic route of having someone dressed in a sumo suit exercising on the edge of a pond who was given a shove by a very Jim Carrey Riddler-type character. Despite being allowed to send the clip to one contact per group to spread the word and get the metaphorical ball rolling between them they didn’t manage even 1,000 hits. As one of the judges waspishly commented: “About as much buzz as wasp flying into a window”.
This just goes to show that creating a viral isn’t easy. What you may consider funny, isn’t to other people. The key is to think about what would make you forward something onto your friends. The programme rightly said that ad agencies (and indeed PR agencies) are increasingly turning to viral as a medium as it is a cost effective route to gaining wide scale awareness – however it is only cost effective if it does create wide scale awareness – otherwise it would probably be cheaper to place an ad in Downstream magazine (a specialist title for the Oil and Gas industry) which has more reach.
Viral isn’t easy and it just goes to show that not everyone with a camera can generate buzz; it is all about understanding how to get the clip correctly seeded out so that it does get those all important views. It is here that PR comes into its own. We have the skillset, the contacts and the heritage in creating conversations – both online and offline.
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Tags: Creativity, Digital, Katie Price Signed, TV, Viral Marketing
Posted in Consumer communications, Creativity, Digital PR, Eulogy!, PR industry, TV, Virals | No Comments »
A couple weeks ago, the Monkey Shoulder team took a trip to Harvest at Jimmy’s for the final instalment of team Monkey Shoulder’s Monkey Shoulder Tree House festival tour. We’d already had the pleasure of hanging out with the team at this year’s Big Chill, so who were we to turn down another weekend of fun?
Festivals are a notorious hot-bed of brand experiential activity. Everyone from Sony to St Tropez were doing the rounds this year peddling their festival wares and getting mud-laden consumers to engage with the brand. The alcohol sector in particular was saturated with brands trying to create fresh festival activity and vie for media attention. But none (in our opinion) was so clever as the Monkey Shoulder Tree House.
The Monkey Shoulder Tree House is a giant tree house bar crafted from reclaimed whisky barrels. It plays host to tree stump chairs, tables with board games carved into them and banging DJ sets to have it large to (believe me I did!). This year we also enlisted the services of the Graffiti Kings to tag free Monkey Shoulder t-shirts for punters. This went down an absolute storm with people queuing all the way down the gargantuan Big Chill hill to get their hands on theses beauties. Key learning: giving stuff away free attracts the crowds; making it personalised brings in the masses.
As well as the free stuff, the MSTH offered a cool place to chill out, enjoy a drink and generally set up camp. What really appealed to people was the inviting nature of the MSTH. Everyone from the bar staff, the security guards to us PRs were all on hand to help muck in by way of getting people drinks, entertaining small children and dancing with bleary-eyed festivalgoers. It was a great place to hang out and had a hedonistic vibe that no amount of money can create.
It wasn’t just us who enjoyed it though…check out some of these great reviews, check out some of the amazing coverage we were able to secure. It just goes to show that a really good idea can make it across consumer, b2b, trade, regional and online all quite easily.
The Daily Star
Birmingham Mail
Marketing
The Drinks Business
and even RyanAir’s magazine
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Tags: drinks brands at festival, experential pr, monkey should festival tour, monkey shoulder treehouse, monkey shoulder treehouse 2010, Monkey Shoulder whisky, where is the monkey shoulder treehouse
Posted in A bit of fun, Creativity | No Comments »
Intel and Vice Magazine have partnered to create a new hub for innovators and artists called The Creators Project.
Focusing on artists, musicians, film makers and writers in the digital age, the project is aimed at championing all manner of creative talents, and has the backing of famous names such as Mark Ronson and Spike Jonze.
Intel’s philosophy is clearly that if it promotes the good things that can be done with digital technology, then more people will be encouraged to buy their stuff, while the more creativity Vice sources, the better it is for the magazine.
In the meantime, we get some interesting content, videos and interviews to take a look at: everyone wins. Along with the site itself, Vice and Intel are also holding loads of events across the world. Make a note in your diaries for July 17th, when The Creators Project hits London – no doubt some pretty exciting stuff will be going down.
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Tags: Creative campaigns, creators project, intel, Vice
Posted in Creativity | No Comments »
TUACA is a delicious Italian spirit that has been part of the Eulogy! portfolio for several years. Our latest PR campaign initially focused on achieving product placement in consumer magazines with recipes for the signature serves, but eventually we found ourselves within the online space – a new foray for the brand.
The key messaging behind TUACA has always been about ‘discovery’. This is reflected in TUACA’s UK launch. Initially discovered by a Brighton snowboarder who tried it on the slopes of Colorado, and then returned to tell all her friends about it, TUACA is all about word of mouth.
Since then, TUACA has always been the darling drink of the snowboarding community. Admittedly it’s a very niche audience – but while other brands may try to shed cult status and go for a more mainstream approach, TUACA uses this to its advantage. Because it’s a drink for the type of person who likes to discover a secret and pass it onto their friends, online PR and word of mouth is a perfect platform.
In the last year, TUACA has built upon this notion of discovery and word of mouth by launching the first-ever TUACA Traveller competition.
The competition offered one person and a friend the opportunity to win a two-week snowboarding trip undiscovered slopes across Europe. The site was hosted by snowboarding enthusiasts’ site Mpora.
To support the campaign, team TUACA launched the TUACA Traveller Blog. The blog is written by the winner and was supported by video content of his adventures picked up by sliding sports sites like Gone Boarding and Life’s a Beach.
We are now looking forward to further cementing TUACA’s presence with the sliding sports industry for 2010, including regional activity in our key cities. So watch this space because TUACA may surf up on a shore near you soon.
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Tags: Best Job in the World, Best PR Campaigns 2009, Blogger Competitions, Eulogy clients, Italian liquors, Snowboarding, Travel Bloggers, Tuaca
Posted in Client service, Creativity, Eulogy! | No Comments »
