Five steps to achieving viral reach on mobile: Step two

Cater for as many consumers as possible

What is viral reach? I see viral reach as a piece of content  that’s passed on from one person to the next because they see some kind of value in it or have been entertained by it and want to share it with someone whose opinion they care about. People who send on viral content want to be seen as cool or in the know.

When we started 7Dffrnt Knds of Smke we knew that mobile was a viral touch point and we therefore knew that if we were to be a successful mobile ad agency we would have to produce viral campaigns. Though, we also knew that just because consumers have the ability to pass something on doesn’t mean they will.

Brands don’t make viral campaigns, consumers make campaigns viral.

Whatever you are putting out there has to be worth sharing and easy to share.

So therefore the checklist we refer to when launching a campaign is as follows:

1 - Is it a creative piece – does it add value, is it entertaining, is it well crafted? 
2 - Does it tie into the brand’s objectives? It must deliver ROI. 
3 - Is it supported by media? If no one knows about it how will they pass it on? 
4 - Is it easy for the consumer to share, and will the person they are sharing it with be able to experience it?   (Otherwise what’s the point of sharing it in the first place?)

      Mobile marketers keep going on about mobile media vs. traditional media. Stats keep being passed around shouting about how everyone has a mobile phone and how there are more mobile phones in SA than television sets. All the brand really cares about is how this equals reach and sales.

If a brand is launching a mobile campaign where all the above points have not been checked then the campaign is not going to achieve the kind of reach the brand needs. Thus mobile continues being the ugly step child – despite its wonderful features and beautiful personality.

The evolution of the mobile industry is really interesting. As technology gets smarter it gets easier for agencies to divert from true creativity (in a traditional sense) and instead come up with clever technical solutions that have the potential of engaging a few hundred thousand consumers as opposed to millions of consumers.

Just take a look at the sudden explosion of brands asking for app development. Sure, apps are cool and people with smartphones love downloading these nifty gadgets, but is the brand really going to be happy spending a couple of 100K on something that gets them into the pockets of 10,000 people because it’s too much effort to download the app and it only works on smartphones? What does the brand think about mobile after a campaign like that? What does the mobile budget look like next fiscal?

The argument from the agency during post campaign might be that the brand is ahead of its time and that SA obviously has to catch up. The same argument could be applied to why campaigns that require consumers to make their own TV ads to win a prize, don’t work.

What if that same brand invested that same amount of money and built a mobi site that contained some really entertaining, well-crafted interactive videos that worked on 14,000 different handset models (smartphones and non-smartphones) and ended up reaching 1,800,000 consumers – wouldn’t that be a better result for the brand, the agency and the industry?

Now I am not saying that brands should favour mobi sites instead of apps, what I am saying is that clients and agencies should take care of the brand’s foremost objective – reach as many consumers as possible within the target market.

The more accessible the campaign is, the wider the audience and the more consumers there are sharing the experience with each other.

Bottom line is, the more mobile campaigns achieve viral reach, the more brands will realise the power of mobile and why it needs to be given the same level of attention, love and budget traditional channels receive.

About the author: Ryan Gandalf van Jaarsveld is the MD of 7Dffrnt Knds of Smke, SA’s first mobile-only, full service ad agency.

Follow Ryan on Twitter on @RyanGandalf or follow 7Dffrnt Knds of Smke on @7DKS

So we were wondering why our Internet stopped working...

Five steps to achieving viral reach on mobile

Step number one: Merge left and right brain thinking

By Ryan Gandalf van Jaarsveld, MD 7Dffrnt Knds of Smke

I remember three years ago standing in my lounge chatting to a friend of mine who works at an advertising agency. She was telling me about how they build brands for Revlon. The fragrance analysts, or whatever you call them, come up with something that smells great and lives in a small glass bottle filed under some kind of laboratory name. The “P719X5”, or whatever the guys in the white coats decide to call it, is then handed over to the ad agency so they can come up with a name, CI, packaging and a campaign to launch the product into the market.

It immediately got me thinking about the amount of work the agency must go through to get this right. After many hours of research, design concepts, copywriting, reverts and focus groups, “Dark Night”, or whatever the guys in the slip slops decide to call it, is ready to hit shelves backed by an ad campaign that makes the consumer aware that anything they thought was solving their perfume problems before this moment was a total misconception and that they shouldn’t only thank their lucky stars that “Dark Night” has arrived but also get down to their nearest Clicks and buy one immediately.

It was at this point that I had to ask why.

Why does a brand that gives this much attention and perceive this much value in advertising their product, not invest the same degree of attention, love and budget when advertising on mobile?

And then it hit me, like that sinking feeling you get when you’re on the way to Durban, driving your father-in-law’s car, seeing the petrol light come on when you are at least 100km from a filling station and realising the sparks coming from behind you are from the tyre on the trailer and dad forgot to pack a spare.

Advertising agencies are successful because they merge left and right brain thinking.

I then realised why mobile agencies are not getting the same respect the traditional agencies are getting and why their results are so shoddy (and if you argue that the results aren’t shoddy then why is mobile still getting such little budget compared to traditional media?).

Concepts that are born from mobile agencies are created by people with marketing minds – a marketing mind is logical, analytical and linear – I know, because I have a marketing mind.

Even Ivan Moroke said it himself - when on the panel interview at the launch of the Annual last week (having been a strategist in his past life) – that it’s generally not a good idea for a strategist to come up with the concept for the TVC if you are expecting a creative result.

Strategists are marketers too – they think in the same way. We have to, because it’s the left hemisphere of the brain that allows us to be analytical, logical, linear and great problem solvers. And we are great problem solvers – for us it’s about pushing more feet into store, getting more bums on seats and driving sales. We get excited about the result, the numbers and, in the case of mobile, the tech, though we know a big idea when we see one.

Creatives, on the other hand, get excited about the big idea and how it will engage the senses, the emotions it will stir up, the perceptions it will change in the consumer’s mind and the lasting impression it will leave behind. Creatives don’t care about how the TV works, or where the billboard is going to be positioned or, in the case of mobile, the tech. They’re right brain thinkers.

So is the conclusion here that a mobile agency needs to incorporate a creative mind, with solid traditional experience, into a strategic team, with solid mobile marketing experience, all working towards the business goals laid out by the brand team?

Well, sort of – though it’s not so cut and dry. Everyone knows that mobile has a specific skill set – if you don’t know how the tech functions then you will deliver campaigns that don’t work on cellphones. Adversely, if the person coming up with the concept knows too much about the tech, then their thinking is automatically limited by what the cellphone can do.

So mobile calls for a new breed of creatives and strategists. We need creatives

who can build concepts based on an understanding of mobile that does not limit their thinking and strategists that can put their understanding of mobile aside and embrace the big idea (As scary as it sometimes can be when the ideas are totally left-field).

When a mobile agency achieves this and they have successfully merged left and right brain thinking then they are well on their way to creating the future of mobile advertising that incorporates everything that has made traditional advertising work up until now. And when advertising works on mobile it automatically becomes viral because mobile is a viral touch point.

Tropika serving up Tracy McGregor on a mechanical bull?

After the running success of last year’s My Celeb Slave Mobisite for Tropika Island of Treasure 3, 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke was approached by Stimulii to create a similar, and equally exciting mobile experience to go with this year’s Tropika Island of Treasure 4.

The thinking

7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke (7DKS) brainstormed some ideas and what came to mind was, perhaps users could interact with a celeb pet? They looked at toys like the Tamagotchi and games like Nintendogs, where players could interact with their own pets. 7DKS wanted fans to be able to have their “own” pet celebrities.

With that in mind, 7DKS wanted to create something that would work on any phone and would form part of a Mobisite. And that’s where Celeb Amigo (www.tropikaisland.mobi) came in.

The idea

Celeb Amigo allows people to log onto the Mobisite and interact with real-life celebs. Users could feed them hot Jalapeno peppers, have them dance in comical pink tutus and more. Think Tracy McGregor riding a mechanical bull or rapper Slikour in a poncho and you’ll get an idea of the kind of hilarity that kept TIOT4 users enthralled up to 15 minutes each.

Ryan Gandalf van Jaarsveld, MD 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke explains, “What if you could feed your celeb, dress your celeb, make your celeb dance, sing or ride a bull – wouldn’t that be cool. So instead of giving your celeb an instruction like last year, this year you could click a button – like say “Eat a chilli” – and then watch a video of your favourite celeb – say Tracy McGregor – eat a chilli and see fire come out of her mouth.”

The premise

7DKS shot real-life videos of celebs Joelle Kayembe, Slikour, Tracy McGregor, DJ Zinhle, Tshepo Mogale, Poppy Ntshongwana and Phila Mazibuko doing the most hilarious things, all for the Mobisite users’ enjoyment. In essence, the celeb would become the user’s “pet” where they could feed them, dress them up and make them do tricks.

Users would log onto the Mobisite using their phones. They would then choose a celeb from the list on the landing page. It would then take them to a page with a variety of buttons, and clicking on these buttons would play a video of the chosen celeb eating a jalapeno, riding a mechanical bull, drinking a Tropika and more. These buttons had multiple videos behind them, so that if they clicked through on the same button more than once they wouldn’t always get the same result.

Ryan explains, “Our video formatting technology ensures that 14,000 different handset models each have a unique experience due to screen size and orientation and dinosaur handsets could download if their phone didn’t support streaming.”

Neil Clarence, Creative Director at 7DKS continues, “Where else can you interact in such a personal way with your favourite celebs? The variety of content kept users engaged. Users like to be surprised by what they see – the design of the site ensured that each experience was unique.”

Watch Slikour in a tutu, Poppy on the red carpet, Tracy eating a super-hot chilli and Joelle smacking a piñata!  

Media Game Changers! That's how we roll...

The Smartest Event of the Year was today and it marked the release of The Annual 2011/2012, a collection of anything and anyone involved in branding, marketing and advertising.

The latest edition is an impressive 2kg (we even tried a couple of bicep curls with it)

Not only was The Annual an impressive weight, it also held some gems - like naming 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke Media Game Changers!

Says The Annual:

"In days gone past some would have referred to this as a creative hot shop, an idealistic bunch of dreamers with a couple of good ideas wanting to make a difference. While all of this is true, this actually is applying sound creative and strategic solutions for brands wanting to use the mobile space imaginatively and effectively. We were particularly impressed with a clever interactive gaming concept the agency developed for a leading fast food brand that pitted users against a sportsman with a prize as an incentive."

Pretty amazing stuff! But that's how we roll...

Introducing the 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke team...

Movember 2011

The dashing men folk at 7 Dffrnt Knds of Smke have been pretty successful with the growth of their 'tashes.

Keep it up there guys - we salute you!

Weetbix serves over a million penalties to Lucas Radebe

It’s no easy feat to take penalties against an international soccer star, no less over a million of them. But that’s exactly what Weetbix did when Stimulli approached 7Dffrnt Knds of Smke to bring an interactive experience to their campaign involving Lucas Radebe.

It’s one thing to have your sports hero smiling at you from giant billboards, but a whole other ball game to play against him in the sport that you love. 7DKS knew that sports fans want to get closer to their heroes… and what better way to do that than to have them play the sport against them using their mobile phones.

In fact, fans were so keen on the idea that using the Weetbix.mobi site, players shot more than 1,100,000 penalties at the soccer star. Ryan Gandalf van Jaarsveld, MD of 7Dffrnt Knds of Smke explains, “We knew we would have another opportunity to bring the consumer closer to their sporting hero than ever before. Without this interactive element Lucas would have just featured on the Weetbix TV commercial, print media and other traditional channels.”

The mobisite was created to be a game, whereby users would register on Weetbix.mobi and get a certain amount of attempts to take penalty shots at Lucas Radebe. With the use of professional camera crews and specialist equipment, the outcome videos were shot to give the player the feeling that they themselves were taking those penalty shots. The player took the shots at Lucas Radebe himself, in person, as opposed to playing with computer-generated avatar.
Van Jaarsveld continues, “We wanted to make the experience more personal for the consumer. This is the second time in South Africa mobile has been used to provide a real life video game experience to the end user. Instead of the consumer playing against an animated version of their sports idol they are playing against the real life version. By carefully selecting their shot the consumer would try and outsmart Lucas and score as many goals as possible.” Players would be scored accordingly and there was a leaderboard for daily, weekly and overall high-scorers.

The impact was staggering. 1,146,936 penalties were taken against Lucas, and the top player of the game took a whopping 94,710 penalties.

So who played? This surprised everyone: some were in their twenties, but many were middle-aged and older, with someone as old as 75 in the top 35 players of the game. A third of people playing the game played by referral, and on average two people per household were playing. This meant that households were purchasing as extra box of Weetbix each just so they could play the game.

Total clicks from CPC Media: 53, 356
Total visits: 232, 407
Total Page Views: 1, 817, 626
Average time spent: 00:02:57
Viral reach: 432%
Added value: R400, 571

The recession and our obsession with superheroes

It’s becoming an increasing occurrence that every time we head to the cinema, there’s a bigger, better, more in-your-face superhero movie splashed across the coming soon posters. If it’s not Spider-man, it’s Superman, and then it’s Spider-man rebooted, or Superman re-made (for the second or third time). Superhero movies are getting more and more popular and with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars per film, you start to wonder what the big idea is when we’ve been in an economic recession since 2009.

We all know that superheroes started with comic books, but before the Great Depression and WWII, comics were just light-hearted reads filled with goofy characters and cheesy jokes. The trend of the cape-and-tights hero started in 1938, with the publication of Action Comics #1 featuring the all too familiar Superman on the cover, lifting a car high above his head. The series would go on to become the second largest number of issues of any comic book series. It was published in the time of the Great Depression, which America and the rest of the world were knee-deep in right into the late 1930s. The popularity of these characters only grew with the declaration of WWII. Captain America #1 was first published in 1941 - no surprise to know that America entered WWII in the same year.

Captain America was a superhero resplendent in the stars and stripes of the United States and was the poster boy for the war effort against the Nazis. This hero’s first comic book featured the Cap’ throwing a right hook to Hitler’s face.

This era of comic books and superheroes became known as the Golden Age of Comics, with famous companies like DC and Marvel emerging and rapidly gaining ground as a result.

The comic book industry met a bit of a downturn in the 1950s, when America hit an economic boom. This was the age of the ‘American Dream’, nuclear families and white picket fences. This was the age of the post-war economy, lasting between 1945 and 1960. This was also the time of the ‘Baby Boom’, when there was a sudden increase in births in the US, resulting in even more consumers. By 1956, most of the smaller comic book publishers were out of business. This wasn’t a coincidence: the average American didn’t exactly need a hero when he was already living the dream. There was more than enough money going around, but none of it was being spent on comic books.

Comic book superheroes have now started to enjoy a re-invigoration in the form of big-budget, action-packed movies. Yet again it’s no surprise that this trend began in the early 2000s, in the wake of 2001’s 9/11 attacks. Just as the 9/11 attacks displayed a threat, so too does the recession. Both threats represent faceless enemies and villains, just as superheroes are depicted as fighting stateless organised crime and threats.

Leading up to and including 2009 and beyond, superhero movies began to release in their droves, from the X-men film series in 2000, to Daredevil and Hulk in 2003, Catwoman in 2004 and The Fantastic Four in 2005. The superhero movies of the 2000s enjoyed relative success but it was 2008’s The Dark Knight that really showed what superhero films could do, being the highest-grossing superhero movie of all time and winning two Oscars, including one for the late actor Heath Ledger for his portrayal of the mentally-disturbed villain, The Joker.

The genre was again given a boost, with 2010 releases like Iron-Man 2 followed by 2011’s Thor, X-men: First Class, The Green Hornet and The Green Lantern. Movie adaptations of arguably “indy” comic books like Kick-Ass show that not only are the more “mainstream” characters like Batman and Spider-man getting the multi-million dollar treatment, but so too are the less conventional characters (Kick-Ass had an estimated budget of $30 million). Not only this, but superhero movies were not only based on comic books, but films like the rom-com My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006) and the family movie Sky High (2005) featured super-powered heroes packaged in dime-a-dozen, mainstream films.

Movies like the Spider-man series released in 2002 are now already getting the re-boot, leaning on the sudden popularity of the genre in the late 2000s and early 2010s, with the release of The Amazing Spider-man in 2012.

So why the sudden interest in superheroes again? The US (and the rest of the world) has been in a recession since February 2009. It’s been called a “lesser depression”, and it’s an on-going problem, with businesses shutting down constantly, countries declaring bankruptcy and political instability on the rise worldwide.

So when the world is in a mess, it’s those cheesy, spandex-clad heroes we turn to, to lift our spirits and leave smiles on our faces when we leave the cinema. Subconsciously we’d like to believe that those heroes will save us from losing our jobs, from terrorist attacks and from war.