TheWayoftheWeb

Firstly, Merry Christmas to everyone!

Secondly, my love of marketing means that I couldn’t help but comment on a micro-brewery I discovered when I stocked up on alcohol for Christmas (in moderation, obviously!).

I’m still coming to terms with getting older - and discovering a taste for ‘real beer’ rather than massmarket lager, so I always like to try a couple of new beers on ever shopping trip.

Which is how I spotted Punk IPA from Brewdog.

Punk IPA from Brewdog - interesting beer brand and microbrewery

It’s definitely an example of a business, brand and product with the marketing built in!

From their site:

‘Beer was never meant to be bland, tasteless and apathetic.
At BrewDog we are setting the record straight.
We are committed to making the highest quality beers with the finest fresh natural ingredients.
Our beers are in no way commercial or mainstream.
We do not merely aspire to the proclaimed heady heights of conformity through neutrality and blandness.
We are unique and individual.’
A beacon of non-conformity in a increasingly monotone corporate desert.
We are proud to be an intrepid David in a desperate ocean of insipid Goliaths.
We are proud to be an alternative.’

Interestingly, they’ve just been successful in a battle with the industry-backed Portman Group over the language on some of the labels on their beer - for instance describing Punk IPA as an aggresive beer, which the group original claimed would ‘encourage anti-social behaviour’.

You can read more about the battle in a great post on the Brewdog blog. Meanwhile, I’m hopeful about trying some of their other produce, particularly the Hop Rocker, The Physics, and the Hardcore IPA!

Pizza Hut has released a new viral campaign via Youtube, which you can see below:

But it’s getting mixed reviews. AdAge has the background, including that it was placed through Zadby for a comparable fee to the $25,000 paid for Wendy’s first viral video.

The video itself on Youtube by MediocreFilms has been seen almost 200,000 times as I write, and 2852 comments and 3807 ratings. Most are positive and it’s got 4.5 stars.

But the style of the video, and almost all the comments, focus on the video as an example of Jackass style comedy. There’s no mention of Pizza Hut in the comments, or in the video itself. (I had to check the Adage link to make sure it actually was related to Pizza Hut).

And it’s also receiving negative comments. I found out about the video via Ian Schafer who writes: ‘Pizza Hut, what the heck were you thinking?

As Ian points out, the Pizza Hut brand is essentially mocking small ‘mom and pop’ pizza joints. Not the best method for promoting a brand which essentially produces a homogenised version of the product and has economies of scale on it’s side already.

It will be interesting to see whether the comments on Youtube would change it someone posted where the video came from - and whether the video does any more for Pizza hut than giving them lots of views of something with no link to them or their product at all.’

Just a quick heads up - I was just about to log off from Twitter when Darren Rowse (@problogger) flagged up an interesting intiative which was then sent into chaos by a reasonable number of his 12,509 followers!

Creative Agency LisaPMaxwell has set up a site which allows every employee to chat via webcam when they’re available. Those who are online are the ones moving around on the main page as far as I can tell! Despite being bombarded with a lot of Twitter traffic thanks to Darren, I’ve just been chatting to PR Director Aneisha Howard.

Apparently the initiative started yesterday, and they’re measuring it for links, buzz and everything available, rather than just leads generated as they demonstrate their commitment to a viral mindset…

I’m not sure how sustainable or scalable it will be - although Aneisha was coping pretty well after Darren singled her out! But to generate buzz, it certainly seems to be working.

Jame Oliver by Vic on Flickr (CC licence)

As I’ve said before, I don’t watch much broadcast television these days, but I made an effort to catch Jamie’s Ministry of Food after seeing some of the trailers and the fact it was flagged by Mark Earls.

And I’m glad I did, because it’s probably the first time the principles of community marketing (See also Word of Mouth marketing etc), have been played out on national television! If you’ve been looking for an effective case study, this is definitely one to watch.

The premise is simple. To try and get the people of Rotherham to start cooking helthy food rather than living on takeaways. But rather than an advertising campaign, the plan was to teach 8 people how to cook on the understanding they’d pass the recipes to 2 more people. And in 15 steps, they’d reach the 260,000 population of Rotherham.

As Mark says, it’s a template for HERD marketing:

1. focus on what you can do not what you can say
2. …on what you can give folk out there to do…
3. …that they can do with each other
4. …oh, and make it highly visible and oh, yes fun

But there’s even more that I picked up on. One of the things Jamie started by saying was that he had to listen to start with. Sound familiar?

He also picked a woman who had undermined his School Dinners campaign by taking chip shop orders through the school fence, and picked her out as a key influencer . Time will tell whether he picked the right influencer!

And he’s already worrying about the speed and scalability of the approach (Shel Isreal on scalability). He can see the positive effect he’s had on the 8 people he’s engaged, and the fact they’ve already ahd improvements to the way they live and act. But he’s got three months to transform a whole town. Sounds like the dilemma of showing a Return on Investment!

And finally there’s the fact he’s attempting to do something positive with this approach. Something that various people within the social media wrld have worried isn’t happening because most people are aiming for fame within the media/marketing/online sphere - and outside of it, things aren’t being affected by the new ways of marketing, communicating and conversing. (I’m struggling to find the appropriate link right now, so will add it later!)

If nothing else, it prompted me to exorcise some blog guilt. I’ve been tackling reports, budgets and plans, and I’m up to my neck in data and Excel spreadsheets, hence the slight lack of posts. But hopefully things should be more consistent again now.