About two weeks ago, David Meerman Scott came to Australia to talk about social media. He’s a best selling author on Amazon on PR, marketing and social media topics and his books have been translated into 22 languages!
I heard him speak at Social Media Club Sydney (SMCSYD) and also had the opportunity to have breakfast with him and some other Sydney bloggers. He also had a speaking engagement in Melbourne.
You can read about the events from David here and from Jennifer Frahm (the organiser).
Here’s a pic of the breakfast:
He spoke about buyer personas at SMCSYD – understanding who the buyer is and talking to them in their voice. I thought he was a really good presenter, fun and engaging.
The most compelling thing for me was the idea of giving content away for free. He gave an example of a dentist in boston writing an ebook of Oral sex and health which went viral. It was niche, eye catching topic and controversial and something people want to know about. He’s also a great example himself, as he gave away a few chapters of his current book, World Wide Rave. He also has a free ebook out as well (like the full thing). I actually read the free version of World Wide Rave, liked it, then went out and bought it.
I think a lot of organisations are very scared of using this tactic. They like to build walls around to capture data, and monetise. Don’t build the barriers up. Just give it away for free – don’t coerce them. It will generate more online buzz, be easier to share your idea and thoughts, and if people are interested in you, they will subscribe to hear you……..voluntarily.
I’m about halfway through the book and I got him to autograph it! Check it:
I also helped out in the online marketing of the event as my company, ND sponsored the event in Melbourne. A bunch of my colleagues contributed using our various skill sets from:
online display ads: nextbrett
Email marketing: James, Tiff, Me
Blog: James
Twitter @socialmediamc: James, Me
Eventbrite & Copy: Tiff
And Matt Edge who brought us all together.
If I have forgotten anyone, please feel free to shoot me =) I believe there is an interview video floating around somewhere, so hopefully it gets uploaded soon to the interwebs.
There’s some other bloggers who have blogged about it here:
On Monday night, about 300 people gathered for the inaugural launch of the social media club in Sydney. The event was held at the Polo & Supper Club in Oxford St and the event was well attended by the masses. By the masses I’m referring to marketing people, the digerati, the twitterati, PR people, etc…or whatever you want to call them. The key note speakers were the fake Stephen Conroy aka Leslie Nassar (love your work!) and Adam Ferrier of Naked Communications. The MC for the night was Tim Burrowes, editor of Mumbrella. The topic for the night was “authenticity & transparency in social media” – one of those airy fairy marketing topics.
At 6.30pm when I arrived, the place was pumping. They had two levels booked out, and the bottom level where the main arena was, was absolutely packed. Standing room only! (Well bars are made for standing room).
Man with the $349 jacket
Adam Ferrier went first and spoke about their infamous “girl in the jacket campaign”. This campaign was created for Witchery to launch their mens range and they had a budget of zero (emphasis) and wanted to generate a lot of buzz. So they created a fictious story where girl sees boy in cafe she fancies, boy leaves jacket, girl wants to find boy. Girl then goes to the enormous length of posting a video on youtube. The story then got amplified as the main stream press picked it up and they showed that Sunrise breakfast program, newspapers, etc… Their intention was to get the brand noticed and get people talking about Witchery Man. Check it:
As of now, 212,100 views in youtube. Pretty impressive for a budget of zero. I’ve watched the video for the first time, and although I have the benefit of hindsight, I would have been highly skeptical of it at the time. The way that she goes to great lengths to describe the jacket and how the “perfect guy” would be wearing it. In fact its not a bad jacket. Subliminal advertising must work on the weak.
Then the press started asking who is this girl, is this a marketing campaign, who is behind this? They eventually got outed. Naked & Witchery came clean and posted a video response saying yes it was us. I’ve only seen the videos now (after the talk) so here it in all its glory:
Man, I cringed when I saw this. It could have been executed a lot better and definently with more class – the way that Heidi turns it into a ad for the jacket. In fact, the only time I cringed even more in the last 24 hrs was when I heard Adam Ferrier’s response as to whether Naked was arrogant.
Its all about generating conversations
It seemed that for most of the night Adam was defending Naked’s actions. He even had stats to back himself up. But at the end of the day, I think he was convincing and I agree with Tim Burrowes comments on Mumbrella that he did help to sway the crowd onto his side.
Honestly, I don’t have a problem with this tactic of creating a false story or building a mysterious story to get customers engaged and talking about a brand. Brands do it all the time. It’s what we do as marketers. Can Jordan really fly? (Wait, there is doubt?), are pure blondes really made from pristine rivers? Brands make up stories and fantasies all the time to get customers talking and excited. All they want to do is generate buzz. If that’s the objective, then Naked slam dunked it.
Was the public misled about Girl in the Jacket. I have no doubt they were. Was their a line that was crossed? Yes – only when they made that cringeworthy followup video. If Naked did not do the followup video like that, I think it would have been a great campaign. Consumers are smarter than what we give them credit for.
Was it groundbreaking? Of course not. In fact some guy in the audience asked “Did the Witchery Man campaign helped increase the popularty of social media?” – dude are you kidding me? They posted a youtube video about a fake story and it got picked up by the press. It’s not as if they created Twitter. When the story was being told, I immediately thought of the real life campaign of NY girl of my dreams, the cybersearch by one NYC man for an aussie girl he met on the subway. I came across this when I was travelling in the States, and I had actually thought about it when I started reading about this campaign and the connection became even more clearer last night.
I agree with Adam’s insight that social media is a communication channel. It could be more than that, but at the end of the day that’s primarily what it is. Yes it is democratizing media (see Ashton Kutcher). However, it does make it a lot harder for brands and marketers to do something similar now because people think they got screwed over.
It nots really Stephen Conroy?
I love Leslie’s work as the fake stephen conroy. Dude is funny but a walking PR disaster. He didn’t have a lot to say on the night and Tim was trying to involve him as much as possible by asking him questions as well. But he definently had a couple of good insights – that not everything created by companies on social media is great. Everyone does go nuts when they see a brand do something on social media.
If you want to see more of the Witchery Man campaign check the video from the night.
