Pas nécessaire d’être un Perez Hilton ou un Kanye West pour voir les ressemblances entre Mlle Gaga et La Madone. Si on s’en tient au concept de l’évolution de la marque personnelle (the personal brand), ces deux phénomènes du pop ont pleinement tiré profit des outils marketing à leur disposition. Madonna s’est réinventée ad vitam aeternam et a dominé MTV. Elle était de son époque. Normal, donc, que la machine Lady Gaga carbure plutôt au 2.0.
Cette vidéo intitulée « Brand Romance », de nos amis chez Newcast, démontre à quel point Lady Gaga est la poster-girl du marketing 2.0
(Except for the fact that the site is in Flash and that the only social network sharing widgets/commenting capabilities to be found are related to the videos), this is a brilliant web campaign for a very important subject: the human rights of Child Solidiers. The social web has become a very dynamic tool in the activist’s toolbox, and I’m hoping to help Equitas, the human rights organisation on whose board I sit, leverage it to its full advantage as it goes through the process of revamping its own outdated website.
We definitely live in interesting times.
Check it out … and please support this initiative by War Child Canada, whose mission is to work « with children all over the world to reduce poverty, to provide education and to defend their rights. (to) work tirelessly to help children whose lives have been torn apart by conflict, providing them with the means to build a brighter future. »
In 2008 War Child Canada, a charity which supports children in war zones, launched an intentionally deceptive and provocative campaign to call attention to the estimated 300,000 children around the world who have been forced or drafted into armed groups.
Partnering with War Child’s advertising agency, John st., H&K Toronto’s digital team helped develop a digital strategy for their ‘Help Child Soldiers’ campaign. The team used various media channels, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and blogging sites. They also contacted influential Canadian bloggers and taught War Child Canada staff how to tweet.
The ‘Help Child Soldiers’ campaign was a success. Just two weeks after it began the ‘Help Child Soldiers’ video was the number one featured video on YouTube.com’s global home page. Traffic doubled to the charity’s website (www.warchild.ca) and 1,000 people signed the campaign petition. Most importantly, donations to War Child Canada increased by $50,000 Canadian dollars, year over year.
If you work as a social media specialist, you’ve inevitably come across the line ‘I don’t have time for things like Facebook and Twitter’. Understandable coming from a client; most Canadian companies haven’t even started to test the social media waters or are just getting their feet wet. More of a mystery coming from a communications professional. When it comes to answering the latter, I usually just smile and nod, knowing that it’s just a matter of time before reality catches up with him or her. Saying you don’t have time for social media when you’re in the communications field is akin to going back in time 50 years or so and saying you’re in advertising, but don’t have time to understand this new-fangled thing called a television.
When it comes to the former, however, I try to put social media in context, explaining that there are tools to help make its use more efficient and, above all, emphasizing the power of it all.
The next time a client tells you he (meaning he, his communications team and his brand) doesn’t have time for Twitter, and you would like to beg to differ, ask him, without being sarcastic, if he’s busier than the mayor of Canada’s largest city. Then bring up the example of Joel Dembe. He might just start to see things from another perspective.
Who is Joel Dembe? No one famous or powerful or well positioned enough to bend the ear of someone like a big city mayor and get him to jump into action. Or so you’d think.
Dembe said he made it clear to Miller and the fire department that his situation was not an emergency, but was happy to know that someone was listening.
If the mayor has flunkies working his Twitter account for him, they’re highly efficient flunkies with a direct line to the little red phone on the mayor’s desk. Either way, the good PR Miller has received online, in print and on national newscasts as a result should be proof enough of the power of using social media to be there to listen … and to respond. Not to mention that chances are he’s secured at least one more vote for the next election (if he were running again, which he’s not).
Our clients should be where their customers are. If their customers are using social media, our clients need to be there too. Let’s just hope that as communications advisors, we’re there as well. Before our clients are, ideally. In an age where some of our clients are starting to earmark their entire marketing/PR campaign budget for social media initiatives, we have no choice but to do so if we want to remain relevant.
Would it be great if David Miller would publish his phone number and take phone calls too? Well sure. But let’s not get carried away, now 😉
