Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Pay to watch advertising - can it work?
I've seen a lot of different advertising platforms, companies and businesses come and go. I've interacted with many having worked at various media houses in SA as well as at a major mobile network. Everyone is trying to solve a problem in advertising. Advertising makes the world go round whether we like to admit it or not.It's quite well known that people are becoming blind to advertising. This is a problem for anyone with a brand trying reach an audience.SeeSayDo.mobi is a company trying to combat ad-blindness by incentivising consumers to visit their mobile site and watch advertising. In exchange for a consumers attention, SeeSayDo will pay out airtime, cash or data.The service talks about DSTV as their major partner right now amongst "others". I think there's legs for something like this to really work if the advertising being showcased is sufficiently engaging to keep the consumers coming back. Ultimately we'd all like to think that people will do anything for money but the truth is, it has to be time well spent and money well earned.The service is definitely trying to keep you on your mobile phone. The desktop website explicitly tells you that the best viewing is done on a mobile device.Registration was simple enough and I had no problem kicking off into the advertising categories. The first advert I listened to was a Mini (the car) advert and was an audio ad. The quality of the audio was listenable but not fantastic. I imagine they're doing this to keep data costs down, which I appreciate.I am curies about the value in spending data to listen to ads in comparison to the amount of money I would be paid out to listen to those ads.This isn't a new concept when you look at the global market but all in all it's a well executed platform that seems to do what it promises: Pay you to watch adverts.Your attention is a valuable commodity, don't forget that. SeeSayDo.mobi knows this and has created a smart model to gain your attention. Bare in mind: If you're not paying, you're the product.View their TV ad above. And no, you wont get paid for watching it.*This is a sponsored post
How making money ruined a good game
A couple of weeks ago I started playing a game on my phone called Bowling Friends. It's a game that allows you to play turn based ten pin bowling against your friends. Simple and effective idea. 
Initially the business model was one that worked: upgrades in the game. You can pay to receive more coins and gems which help you unlock better bowling balls and bowling alleys to play in. The better the bowling ball, the more your game improves and the better chance you have of beating your friends. Simple and effective.
I spent about $2 on coins and upgraded my bowling ball to a place where I was content.Then the app makers released an upgrade and all of a sudden there were adverts in the game. Everywhere. This is clearly not an innocent mistake. The adverts are post-game and force you to watch a 10 second video and you are then prompted with an advert screen allowing you to click the advert or close it.
There are also adverts every so often that cover the home screen. The reason this isn't an innocent mistake from game devs trying to make some money is because if you now go into the story you'll see a new product that allows you to remove adverts for $1.99.
This is infuriating. The game developers were onto something so simple and so great but they got greedy. They shoved banner and video ads into a seamless gaming experience and have ruined their core product offering.What they could have done was play the long game, be calm and hold their ground. There's no need to rush the money. You need to grow your user base and then monetize them. Right now I feel like I've been cheated and then forced to pay to "uncheat" my experience. I'm not the only one either. I've got friends who have stopped playing the game because of the terrible user experience now being presented.There's lesson in this for all app, web and game developers; be good at one thing. In fact, be so good at one thing that people will pay you to enjoy the experience. Don't trick your users into loving your product and then force them to watch adverts and pay you to remove them. That's called racketeering.
What was sprite thinking? Let me hazard...
What was sprite thinking?Let me hazard a guess:
Sexy German Sprite Ad - BJ from Max Isaacson on Vimeo.
Could it possibly be that Sprite took a risk and wanted this advert to be banned? Could it possibly be that Sprite is illustrating a movement in to the social media and "viral" space through controversy?I think that Sprite made use of the German standards to benchmark a campaign that would expand much further than the initial launch of the advert in Germany. I think they were banking on their advert being banned from Germany, finding it's way online and spreading across the world.Did anyone notice the new can in the adverts? I did. It could even be said that Sprite is rolling out a world wide relaunch of their brand and this is the mechanism they have chosen to introduce users to this new brand. Perhaps.
The New Yorker doesn't want you to read...
The New Yorker doesn't want you to read their content. At least, they don't want you to read the content first. They want to force you to look at an advert smack-bang over the key eye-track position of a story, top left. Then while it's loading (and the close [x] option isn't visible) they want you to think "Hmmm, this can't be happening, can it? An advert over the main body of text."They then want you to close the advert and continue reading the story. I don't think anyone's content is good enough to overcome this sort of hurdle. Not only will I not click your stupid advert but I will not not read the article, leave the page and not return. Tsk tsk.Downturns in the economy should be handled slightly better than this. Surely the answer to revenue issues is not to shove unwanted adverts as users who actually do visit your site?
The best pitch email I've ever received as a blogger
Below is an email that I received on Monday in my capacity as SA Rocks Editor/Owner. Read it first and then I'll go in to my reasons for liking the way it is structured (albeit coincidentally).
Hi Editor,You won't know me - I'm a big reader of 2Oceansvibe and was referred by a link there.Anyway, I'm going to take a flyer here - just drop a little bait and hope for a bite...I'm a music producer at the moment, studied at UCT and now living in Johannesburg trying to hit the big time. My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album. In the mean time, though, we decided to record a couple of live videos of him doing some covers of cool and interesting songs. Basically it's just a way for us to get word out, create as much of a buzz as we can. We've had an incredible response to them so far and I thought I would share the videos with you:www.youtube.com/user/TimothyMoloiNow, I'm sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos. My favorite is the One Republic cover (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fiPe4U_Ow&feature=channel_page), but feel free to have a browse around and prove me wrong! All the artists on the videos are South African - hope you're impressed!I'm not too sure what to say from here, man. I won't beat around the bush - obviously it would be in my best interest for you to actually cover us on your blog and for that I would be incredibly grateful, but if not, a simple personal reply would be fantastic - another viewpoint to see what we're doing right!Look forward to hearing from you!
Let me break down the above email in to sections/reasons why I was taken by it and responded immediately.
References
The email references 2oceansvibe, I know I have a link in Seth's sidebar and therefore know (or feel) a little bit of legitimacy from the email's author.
Hope and a wish
The author openly admits that he is taking a chance. He isn't being too presumptuous and assuming that I will obviously respond and act. There are no orders coming from the email, there are hopes and requests.
Know the blog
James (the author of the email) clearly went and read SA Rocks. He knew that I liked local music, liked to help promote local artists and liked to support an underdog. So he appealed to these attributes with: "My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album."
Play on my field
Multimedia and new media content are integral to my world, it's how I make my living and how I interact with people. So it's a good thing James didn't tell me that he hated the internet and would never release any of Timothy's music online for the world to swipe. In fact, he did the opposite. He sent me links to a YouTube video of Timothy vocalising the hell out of a song I knew "Apologize" by One Republic. He had dropped the bait in my lake and I was not only staring at it, listening to it but chewing on it as hard as I could.
Play to my Ego
The crème de la crème, my ego. James played the game perfectly by stating the following: "Now, I'm sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos."How could any self-indulgent blogger possibly say no to a line like that? James got my, hook, link and sinker.
End the pitch
Do not linger, do not be verbose, do not become pedestrian and cliched. Write what you want to write, get it out, close it down and end the email. Do not linger. I hate it when I have to sift through ten paragraphs of shit to get to the point of the pitch. Say what you want and leave me alone.And here I sit blogging about James and Timothy and will be meeting with them very soon to see how I can help them in any capacity I can think of.James, well played. And to anyone who is trying to pitch to bloggers that might be reading this, take note: A good pitch will be responded to immediately and will have the bloggers commitment from the word Go.
The Onion writes off Sony as an advertiser forever
With this simple video, funny as hell, The Onion (unless they've planned this whole thing) have taken it to Sony, hard.This really does illustrate the independence of an online brand. Sharply contrasting how beholden old-media is to their advertisers. I love this sort of campaign, I love the brashness of it and I love that they had the balls to put it out there.
Honesty is the best business policy when selling online
Honesty in business, sales, marketing and advertising is by no means a fresh new concept. Yet it is fast becoming an integral one in the world that we inhabit.There are many posts that discuss transparency online in a personal sense. Don't lie, cheat, steal, defraud or do anything that might dent your reputation online. But I am referring more to the concept of honesty when selling online to the less knowledgeable.This has become an absolutely imperative part of selling and talking about online with people. Many companies and agencies are interested and intrigued by online at the moment because it is the direction in which the world is moving. But there are dangers.The main danger that I have come across is the overselling of the potential of online right now. Many companies almost have their finger on the pulse of things. But this means that they know of Facebook, Youtube and other sites that they can use in a social arena to promote their products. Yet many of them think that the viral nature of the social web world wide applies directly to South Africa. It doesn't. Viral in SA probably means, if you're lucky, a few thousand views of a video and a couple of blog posts. In the Western world viral translates to a few million views of a video and a few hundred thousand links to or embeds of a video. Those are the cold hard facts and expectations should be readjusted accordingly.Unfortunately the "people in the know" often oversell the potential of social media in South Africa to get the hype up and the profit margins higher. This is bad. This sort of selling is doing detrimental damage to the truth and success of the market in SA. This sort of selling makes it very difficult to create a consistent and successful stream of clients, revenue and business in the online industry. People are being burned and are staying away from spending money online because of misleading sales and delivery pitches. Return of investment (ROI) is being oversold and underdeliverd. Again, this is bad.Honesty is key. Clients need to know the truth and still want to go forward with a campaign and experiment, play in the space and engage with one or two hundred people in stead of hoping to gain one or two million. It wont happen so don't sell it that way.
Fantastic Nike viral advert
Nike is not mentioned once. The tick appears two or three times on Gossip Girl star, Taylor Momsen but I immediately knew it was Nike. Brilliant.Plus it received almost half a million views on YouTube in a couple of weeks.
Take a joke Lolly Jackson
I recently wrote about a new mobile initiative called Comedy Twist.Subsequent to writing my review of their launch they began an advertising campaign on billboards around Johannesburg. The approach they took surprised me somewhat as it's a dangerous game they are playing.The chose to take on Mr Lolly Jackson of Teazers fame. They created a mock-teazers billboard that had a similar looking logo, a male blow-up doll and other recognisable Teazers brands.Apparently Jackson didn't respond well to these billboards as they were taken down.They were replaced with this:
As I've said, I think Comedy Twist is playing a very dangerous game here but as everyone knows, any publicity is good publicity. Whether Comedy Twist or once again, Lolly Jackson't Teazers is gaining the most exposure remains to be seen.
Win With Doritos Taco - a relative flop
Doritos has been everywhere lately, all over the radio, a few other ads here and there. Basically they have been punting their Facebook page.I eventually saw that one of my friends on FB had joined the group as well as ±1500 people.
My immediate reaction is that this is a flop of a campaign. Advertising on radio is no cheap affair but an affair it is. You face the risk of being caught out by your better half - the listeners or target market. And to me it seems as though this has happened to Doritos.
Why I think this is campaign was a flop?
Coming off the back of a great advertising campaign with their "Moment of boldness" A few years ago I can't believe that Doritos could have done so badly with this one. That campaign was a viral campaign before there were viral campaigns. To this day I know many people who still joke about their moments of boldness.At the time of writing this post there were 777 122 people from South Africa above the age of 18 on Facebook. That works out to about 0.2% of the users on FB, from SA actually bothered to become a fan of the brand. In my mind, that's a bit of a flop.
Why this could be perceived to be a successful campaign
Theoretically what we could be looking at here is quality over quantity. Involvement and activity over masses of inactive users/fans.But let's look at this for a moment before we get ahead of ourselves. The available features on the FB page of Doritos are: Notes, Photos, Video, Wall Comments, Events and Discussion Board.To analyse these in a bit more detail:Wall313 postsDiscussion Board Topic 1: 120 posts by 95 peopleTopic 2: 29 posts by 25 peopleVideos12 fan videosPhotos44 photos5 albumsEventsEvent 1 - 6 confirmed guests, 4 wall postsEvent 2 - 28 confirmed guests, 6 wall postsNotes7 notes144 commentsLooking at the above breakdowns I honestly cannot say that all the money Doritos must have spent on their mainstream ad campaigns was worth it. 44 photographs and 12 videos is really not a good response in my opinion. Especially considering that there are ±1500 people in the group and over 750 000 people in SA on FB. That means that less than 1% of the fans on the page posted a video and almost 3% of the fans posted a photograph.I'm not sure about you, but I've posted, viewed and commented on hundreds of photos on FB, that should've been the saving grace but alas, it wasn't.
What Doritos could have done differently
Expanded their "moment of boldness" campaign to an online network of viral campaigns. Blogs, videos, podcasts and "fake events" that could have boosted the reputation of the brand for the young and socially in touch.I can picture the blog and videos now; South Africans all over filming their moment of boldness, recording fake jumps, dares and ironic, satirical parodies of the "bold" factor.
Doritos could have done more with their Facebook group. Updates, invites, ads, coupons, giveaways, freebies. Sometimes it just takes a bit of gritty interaction to spread the word for a fan page, not an entire radio ad campaign. Other than giveaways the Doritos fan page gave nothing to its members. No community offering. I know a lot of people who feel an affinity to Doritos, it's their choice chip, but they were not enticed to join this group. People like Apple Students has it right on their page. They have a community, not a product.Below the line marketing would have worked better. Get bloggers involved, send them a box of crisps and ask them to eat them, rally a party around the chips, get other bloggers in on it and spread the word slowly to all their readers via the subsequent posts.Print would even have worked better than radio. More people will sit near a computer while reading a newspaper/magazine than will be listening to the radio, so why put it on the radio? You are probably driving in your car when you hear about the Doritos fan page, not sitting by a pc with internet access. Bad move.I did try to contact Doritos, the admin of the group or anyone but no one responded. I gave them a few working days. I'd love to know if they consider this campaign to be successful or if they are looking in to recovering from the flop that I see?
Invasive online advertising
What do you think of this advert?
Visit Mail & Guardian Online now to have a look at the advert.I am in two minds. Initially I hated the concept, but then, it's not so bad really. It's effective, interesting and different. Plus it can be closed at any moment if you can find the relevant button.
Mweb advertise on top of Teasers
What a Brilliant advert, snapped it on my way home tonight:
The Mweb part of the advert reads: "MWEB PARENTAL GUIDANCE".For those of you who haven't seen the Teasers ad campaign - where have you been? - the ad below the mweb one has a revealing picture of a woman on the side...Mweb seems to be capitalising on this by placing their advert for their online parental guidance service over the Teasers ad.Sheer brilliance. But I wonder if Teasers needed to give Mweb permission or how the situation works? Any have an answer?
Big website, big adspend and a blogger blog?
Vottle has pumped some serious moola in to their advertising campaign recently. I think we have all heard them on 5fm or whichever other radio station it was.Yet I am left a bit baffled and bemused at their approach to blogging. They clearly believe they have a massive product if they are willing to pump money in to their campaign. They clearly have the money to do this, but they have a BLOGGER blog?Not only is the website a .com url, which means they have a hosting package attache to that .com, but they most probably have a great big hosting package to cope with the traffic they built up over the ad campaigns. So I ask you, where is the .com/blog blog? What are you thinking?Blogger might have been cool a couple of ages ago, but now blogger blogs are filled with porn, spam and clutter. .com blogs are the way forward, .co.za blogs are a very suitable substitute, but a blogger.com blog is not acceptable. They might have redirected the blog to "blog.vottle.com" But they have chosen to keep the Blogger template. This really makes no sense to me.I suppose that any online presence in the form of a blog is better than no online presence. But surely an ONLINE company knows better and knows about better services?Lock it up and throw away the key. Get a Wordpress blog.
Go Pepsi Yourself
I have been listening with great frustration to the Pepsi radio advert campaign. I am frustrated because I actually prefer drinking Pepsi to Coke.The adverts on the radio sound something like this:I Love Pepsi, but what if we Pepsi together and our Pepsi doesn't Pepsi properly then we'll have a Pepsi and our Pepsi's will be Pepsied. So lets not Pepsi tonight, let's wait till the Pepsi and Pepsi when we are properly Pepsied. But the Pepsi might not be Pepsi then and our Pepsi will be Pepsied for Pepsi. What a Pepsi if our Pepsi doesn't Pepsi like it used to Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi.You get the idea.I think it so unbelievably ridiculous that this actually counts as advertising. This is subliminal advertising without the subliminal part. This campaign shamelessly lacks creativity and innovation in my opinion. It simply spews out mindless words that force you to say the word Pepsi, think the word Pepsi and talk about the stupid advert from Pepsi. There is no choice here, there is no option, there is no thought behind it there is just...Pepsi. And it disappoints me.There will be those people responding to this post who will argue that the advert does its job because even though I hate it, I am still posting about it. True. The advert does its job, and oh so well but this is what I find problematic. As consumers we love stupid things like this, we allow marketers to make us look moronic and mindless. We (myself included) do not stand up and shun the advert, complain or boycott the product.I am not an idiot and refuse to let marketers and brand managers at Pepsi think that I am one. I will not be drinking Pepsi, they have lost a client and I hope I am not alone on this one.
Kumomo - Spamvertising Gets Personal
I just received this email from a "revolutionary advertising option for blogs":Dear Nic Haralambous,First of all, allow us to come clean. We've got your email contact from your blog, Media Madness & Everyday Mayhem at http://www.nicharalambous.com. We apologize shall this email cause any interference and we will make this message short and simple.We would like to share with you the launching of Kumomo.com, an online ad space booking platform, where you can sell the spaces on your blog. Sounds familiar to what you've experienced? Almost, but not exactly.This is the place where advertisers come looking for your space. There is no cost in posting your ad space here (it's free!) and fees from the advertiser goes direct to you! No Commission, No Cash Holdback, Free Exposure.If you have never sold space before, or don't intend to be flooded with sponsored banners? Here, you have the option to donate all the ad space proceedings to Cambodian Build A School Project. Be part of the Kumomo Tree Charity Project, www.kumomo.com/kumomo-tree, and bring a smile to the Cambodian kids.Kindly log on to www.kumomo.com/publisher to start selling your ad space.Best regards,YongKumomo.com - Got Space?I am impressed with the personalised touch, but if I wanted to sell ads I would be doing so. Should this be taken as a compliment? Is it really possible that a company would make real people (not bots) troll sites and get details from the sites to send a pitch to? I am again, impressed by the effort if this is the case. I am not sold however. Thanks Kumomo.com, but no thanks.
Facebook introduces advertising
Unless I have been sleep-social-networking lately I haven't noticed any adverts on Facebook. Until recently that is. For weeks I have been trying to figure out how they make their money.
Windex now and then
I read somewhere that the following Windex ad has been voted the best by the American public. I am close to agreeing but haven't seen the alternatives so I can't say for certain. Watch it and decide for yourself.Now watch the next ad from about a million years ago and see how far we have come in the advertising world.