Facebook's smartest newbie

The day could not have started with more buzz than this, my phone kept pinging on and on about Queen Elizabeth II's first tweet after opening the Information Age exhibition at London's Science Museum. Good for the museum, another good strategy to get people talking about it...
It is twitter so the whole world is talking about it.
Just when I thought that this would be the news of the day, another news alert from Mashable..
Stephen Hawking joins Facebook!
Looks like today is a Big day for social media
First thing I do..check out SH's (that's how Stephen Hawking signs his posts in FB) page. I mean duh..obviously The Theory of everything is about to release in few weeks and SH joins Facebook, this is no coincidence. Definitely a marketing strategy to promote the film... that's what I thought till I saw the page.
Looks like the scientist really wanted to connect with the masses.

In his first post he encourages us to be curious, then he shared the video of ALS Ice bucket challenge done by his kids, in his third post, he jokes about being an alien...
I should probably stop thinking that social media is all about marketing..blame my subjects,we only learn about social media being the latest tool for marketing anything and everything, even oneself.
Meantime, the so called intellectual banter among his disciples is something that caught my attention.

I found myself accepting with this man's comment. I'm sure even people without super human brain find these 'I love my kitty', 'I am sleeping', 'My new IPhone', blah blah posts boring.
Hers's another one..

I'm sure Stephen Hawking was not expecting a critical appreciation of who he is..

But my most favorite one was comment by Pamela Hughes:

"Beware, Facebook can teach you all about time dilation...You can spend an hour checking pages and reading articles and suddenly discover that 8 hours have passed in the real world."

That was a good advice!
One thing I realised is that, Stephen Hawking doesn't need a movie about him to create a buzz about him, he creates a considerable amount of buzz by himself..

Crowdsourcing- uber of the advertising world

The word crowd-sourcing has been making ripples in the marketing world for quite a time now. There has been a lot of ‘crowd-sourcing vs traditional collaboration’ debates online and offline.

Ok, for those who don’t know what I’m talking about, here is a quick walk through.

Crowd-sourcing is, an online distribution of tasks to a mixed crowd containing enthusiasts and experts.

The ‘task’ that is mentioned here, is getting ideas for advertisements for a product or a company from the general crowd.

It is basically a lot of people (general crowd) submitting their ideas, works for an ad. The selected ideas will be refined, worked on and made into an ad, which will be later telecasted. The owner of the selected idea will be rewarded.

Crowd-sourcing is everything that is not top to down approach. It is a non-linear model.

For ex: In 2013, automobile giant Hyundai asked its audience to write their own commercial for i10. The winner got a chance to act along with SRK in the TVC.

Companies such as Tongal, Zooppa, Popnet, and Ffffound are tapping the crowd for talent. They are using the internet’s real time impact to strengthen the connection between products and consumers.

 In Tongal, they are one step ahead. If you can give only idea, i.e. no videography or editing skills, No problem. Just send the idea, someone else will shape your idea. How thoughtful of them! In fact, even I have sent an idea for a slippers commercial (fingers crossed….)

The concept of idea can be found anywhere is pretty cool! Honestly I dunno why some of them feel crowd-sourcing is a bad idea.  It is just like citizen journalism. Right?!

Although, when you imagine an Indian giving the idea and a French shaping it up, it doesn’t sound like the intended result coming. The cultural difference will sure be a problem though. Maybe this is where the experts come in.

In India, even government turned to crowd-sourcing to give a makeover for its ads. India has always had pretty bad government ads. More than 2000 entries were received for the Independence Day ad call out, out of which 7 were shortlisted and telecasted.

A lot of big brands PepsiCo, Virgin Atlantic, Pizza Hut, Audi are embracing this concept. Why not, you get the work done much cheaper, get a variety of fresh perspectives, you have so much alternatives to choose from and you pay only the owner of the idea.

Right now crowd-sourcing is just a part of advertisement industry, it might as well become the future of it!

Lincoln's new spokesman

Looks like Lincoln has got a new speaker.

No, I’m not talking about the American president and those who have guessed it right yes, I’m talking about the American premium luxury car producer Lincoln Motor Company.

Lincoln MKC’s series of three ads has been garnering a lot of attention online for it has successfully used Matthew McConaughey’s potential as an actor.

(FYI: He is an Academy Award and Golden Globe winner)

Using Matthew as an opinion leader is a good strategy (roping him must have been pretty costly), yes, but the ads are just so philosophical. The campaign is named as #LiveInTheMoment

First ad shows him driving through city nightscape and talking about how going back is sometimes important so that we can always remember where we came from. Then the ad ends with a superscript of its campaign name #LiveInTheMoment.

Doesn’t really make sense does it. So, anything-that-will-be-put-on-internet-will-be-critiqued users thought it was one of the story campaigns where the story progresses along with each ad.

But, I guess they were wrong.

In the second ad, we see him driving out of town. He says how he started driving Lincoln even before he was paid to and that he drives it ‘just because he likes it’. Really? Great, now tell us something about this premium crossover car's features.

Then, the third ad, the most popular one (and anything-that-will-be-put-on-internet-will-be-critiqued’s most favourite one), he talks bull, literally. He calls it Osiris (Egyptian god, identified as god of afterlife) for whatever the reason and decodes the bull’s silence as telling him to take the long way. Weird isn’t it?

The third one seems to be the finale. His voice, actions (that finger thingy) are soooooo True Detective-ish. An other reason why the campaign is a success.

An other factor that contributes to the popularity of this campaign is the spoofs of this ad by popular comedy talk show hosts like Ellen and Conan.

I don’t know if these ads will help in increasing the sales, but it definitely has achieved the purpose of reminding people of Lincoln. Maybe the strategy all along was to make it a ‘Top of the mind’ brand.