Sometimes You Just Gotta Let It Out
So, one of the skills of a good PR person is the ability to properly tailor a message. Of course, with this exercise comes good and bad. In getting out a message that is clear, concise and to the point, sometimes company representatives are forced to hem and haw, obfuscate and muddy the waters. Fortunately, thanks to the types of companies we work with and the culture we try to promote both internally and externally, we at LaunchSquad don’t have to worry about that.
General managers of Major League Baseball teams, however, do. Half of their job is shading the truth, circling around facts and telling half-truths to the media – generally out of self-preservation, but it’s lying nonetheless. General managers – and athletes, managers, coaches, really anyone involved in sports - rarely get a chance to open up, until, lo, that loathsome day when they are freed from the shackles of responsibility. They get fired. That was the case recently with Seattle Mariners GM Bill Bavasi, he of much charisma, but unfortunately for him, little means to run a baseball team.
As some of you know, but probably none of you care about, the Mariners are abysmal this year – a total train wreck of a baseball team and organization. With the need to withhold now gone, Bavasi gave one of the best baseball interviews I’ve ever seen. Well, minus a tirade or two.
Some gems from that one (and credit for the video goes to Geoff Baker, the excellent baseball reporter from The Seattle Times):
That’s good stuff – things you’d never hear from an employed GM.
It’s refreshing to hear a baseball person get to talk without the proverbial axe hanging over his or her head. Sure players are generally free to say what they want – a multi-million salary ensures that – but to be honest, there’s not too much you’d want to hear from them. A general manager talking candidly about the team he’s just been fired from. I’ll take two tickets please.
Vanity Fair Tackles A History of the Internet
The internet.
Now, that’s a somewhat broad topic– and not one I necessarily imagined would be of particular interest to Vanity Fair. Nonetheless, the magazine’s July issue includes a thorough and in fact, very illuminating, oral history of the Web, beginning with United States government’s creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1958 and ending with the emergence of blogs, social networks and our nation’s newest military endeavor, the United States Air Force Cyber Command.
The story is told in a series of quotations from relevant computer scientists, entrepreneurs, business men and women, government employees, lawyers, journalists, influencers and programmers, all of whom witnessed the internet’s birth and subsequent rise in some way, shape or form. Some of the most interesting come from Jeff Bezos, speaking on his vision of the largest book superstore, Mike McCurry, White House press secretary, on the Drudge Report’s infamous breaking of the Clinton-Lewinsky story and quotes from Lou Montulli, Thomas Reardon and Gary Reback on the early battles between Netscape and Microsoft.
While not groundbreaking in terms of uncovered facts or opinions, the article succeeds in bringing together a vast array of information through a series of fascinating vignettes, capturing the excitement that categorized the beginning of the Internet era and just how far we have come in the past fifty years.
No doubt an interesting read– and one that certainly begs the question of how the Internet will develop and continue to dramatically change the way we work, live and see the world in the half decade ahead.
LaunchSquad goes A-List
LaunchSquad client Barely Political is the producer of the Obama Girl series of viral videos, among other work. (You can view the latest Obama Girl release, The Incredible McCain Girl here.) The first Obama Girl clip (I Got a Crush… on Obama) was released in June, 2007. In it, Amber Lee Ettinger, the Obama Girl, lip-syncs to a song praising presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. The video became insanely popular and has been viewed by over 50 million people. Amber, as Obama Girl, rocketed into pop culture consciousness and appeared on shows like Saturday Night Live and national publications like People Magazine. As a result, cable network Bravo nominated her as the Internet’s top “Cebwebreity” at their first awards show, the Bravo A-List awards, which aired last night on the cable channel. Here’s a look behind the scenes.
Planting Seeds for Technology at New York’s Internet Week
Last week was the first ever Internet Week in New York (and maybe anywhere?). Everyday had a slew of events from EconAds to the Applied Cryptography and Network Security Conference. It was a celebration of the Internet for the New York tech community in a sort of open-source, create-your-own-events format.
This event made it clear that New York is serious about becoming the “global technology hub” that mayor Bloomberg suggests. In fact, in a press conference to kick off Internet Week, Bloomberg announced NYC Seed, a $2 million fund for early stage technology companies. Granted, that’s not a lot of money, especially with the cost of operating a business in New York, but it’s a start and companies also receive advice and guidance from the fund’s members as they build their company. Any buy-in from the city is a good thing, and if that $2 million goes to good use, NYC Seed would definitely see a re-up in the near future.
Taking a seed-funding approach is appropriate for the state of the New York tech industry since many of the companies based here seem to be in much earlier stages than their counterparts on the West Coast. Also, I’d imagine that quite a few talented developers and less-experienced entrepreneurs may not have the relationships with wealthy individuals and VCs to raise a first round of funding they need to get their businesses off the ground. NYC Seed should give them easier and less relationship-based access to that kind of money and knowledge.
Overall it was a great week of events, and even culminated in an Internet Week “old media vs. new media” feud that made it onto Page Six! I guess Amy Winehouse took the week off.
Future of Marketing, Thy Name Is Baron
Viral + celebrities + humor = The future of marketing.
Two brilliant YouTube videos have been making the rounds the past two weeks that are fantastic examples of how to use viral marketing - one overt, the other more subtle. But both use the above formula sublimely.
The first is a pretty ingenious piece of cross-promotion for iBeatYou.com, a competition-based social network started by NBA star, entrepreneur and LaunchSquad hero Baron Davis. The clip features Baron and Adam Sandler as Zohan, the title character from his new movie, in a staring contest. It’s really funny
(Why is Baron a LaunchSquad hero? Well, that’s pretty obvious.)
The second doesn’t actually mention a brand by name – but is for Nike – stars Kobe Bryant and the “Jackass” guys, well, doing stupid stuff. Also very funny:
So, what’s the common denominator here? 2.8 million. That’s the total number of views these videos have gotten for only the nominal cost of producing these videos. How’s that for effective? Millions of people – engaged users who sought this content out – saw these ads and they cost literally nothing. Just a bit of star power and creativity.
I was at the Under The Radar conference in Mountain View earlier this week and there was an interesting discussion amongst a panel of Internet advertising execs about why companies haven’t abandoned traditional advertising for these types of viral campaigns. The answer was a mix of two factors: First, the there will always be a need, in some manner and in some scale, for traditional advertising; and second, that big companies and agencies are simply addicted to buying advertising. That’s amazing.
Being skeptical of new technology is one thing, but ignoring it because, well, that’s the way you’ve always done it, is just stupid. All it’s going to take is for one of these types of campaigns to totally blow up and all the sudden, they’ll become the norm – I’m sure advertising on television was scary for a while back in the early 1950s. Until then, it’ll be pretty easy to spot the savvy companies. Just visit YouTube.
Coors Perfect Pour Vid - Cool or Crass?
Viral video success “The Perfect Pour” looks at first glance like so many other amateurish YouTube videos. The shaky camerawork and bad lighting all spell “cameraphone,” as does the setting–a house party that a guy shows up to and starts doing wild and crazy tricks with cans of Coors Light, such as pouring two of them into glasses while hanging upside-down from a rooftop. But a closer look reveals that this is a clever marketing stunt, bought and paid for by Coors itself.
The folks at Gawker sniffed it out immediately, because of the video’s striking similarity to similar stealth videos by RayBan and Levis. Sure enough, the New York Times eventually discovered that the Coors “perfect pour” video is the work of ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish (owned by Microsoft). Silicon Alley Insider then revealed that the ad agency also paid several others to post “response” videos illustrating various beer pouring tricks of their own. Hot on the trail of the story, SAI later reported that one of these videos–featuring a sexy woman opening a can of Coors Light– was deemed too risque and pulled from YouTube. (It’s posted on the blog, as well as on Blip.tv.)
All of this raises the question–is it okay to use YouTube in this way, or this kind of thing overly sneaky and just a little bit sleazy? My first thought is: what exactly will happen to the “real” amateur videos on YouTube? Already, signs indicate that for the most part, what people watch online isn’t all that different than what they watch on TV. Perhaps professionalization is inevitable. But it makes me just a little bit sad, especially when the occasional true UGC “gem” comes out on YouTube, such as the laughing baby. (Oh no, wait, that became an AIG commercial. Oh well, at least it started out amateur.)
My second thought is, what’s all the fuss about? This is just like product placement was in the 70s. People didn’t always notice it, and if they did, they weren’t necessarily aware that they were being targeted with advertising. Eventually they figured it out, at which point product placement hardly went away–it got bigger than ever! Which indicates that viewers not only tolerated it, but they kind of liked it. I know that for me, watching ET on the big screen and seeing real brands at the breakfast tables struck me immediately as far more realistic than other movies I’d seen.
However, this isn’t the 70s, and audiences have gotten savvier. In this way, such stunts represent a step backwards. Nowadays, with product placement, audiences are quite often let in on the joke. Marketers treat them as equals and rather than sneaking the ads by them, they make sure they’re noticed. MTV does this with its overtly advertorial Dove tie-in, as do edgy online-only video producers like Revision3, where the guys on Diggnation crack jokes about their sponsors while nodding and winking to audiences about it. And to my mind, this is the way it should be. In the long run, this approach will make audiences into partners rather than unwitting victims. Still, I have to admit I’m impressed–I never would have thought to suggest that even the response videos should be part of the marketing push.
Update June 6: NewTeeVee has sniffed out a great example of a viral video that works without resorting to sneakiness of any kind: