Frontiering Talk

Well I kind of knew it wouldn’t be long before someone spoofed Carlton Draught’s big ad that I wrote about here.

The Belgians .. home of probably the most varieties of beer you could possibly imagine have put together this gem in a cow paddock somewhere in Europe.

Jay jay’s have also chipped in with an interpretation of what a small ad should be, which I am sure will not be the last spoof of Carlton’s big ad.

Have you ever placed an ad in your careers section for brand ambassadors? If you did, do you think anyone would bother applying?
And, do you have the right incentives to attract and nurture these evangelists?

Google has done exactly that with their Google Pizza program.

By targeting young software engineers (and potential employees) to represent them at university campuses. The Google Ambassodors then organise study breaks for their peers, and also enjoy free Google pizza, and other Google gear.

So, you don’t need a big advertising budget to create evangelists for your brand. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Access to exclusive brand premiums (branded gear)
Factory tours
Invites to special branded events
Involvement in future product designs
Incentives that the ambassodors can give to their friends

The investment is small, but the ongoing benefits are huge !
So .. what are you doing to recruit Ambassadors for you brand?

Yahoo and Google are poised to continue the search battlefront in the video mediam.

Google recently launched Google Video as their attempt to catalogue the worlds archive of video clips. They are inviting amateur and professional producers to upload their clips.

Yahoo have a similar function in their video search and it appears to have a lot more content at this stage. To help generate some interest amongst the film makers, Yahoo have launched the “Yammys” which includes 5 categories showing the top 3 submissions in five categories. (Pets, Bloopers, Road Trips, Office Humour, and I can’t believe it)

Making videos have become a lot easier thanks to advances in technology, and I think marketeers need to think about tapping into this trend as a way to get their consumers to interact with their brand.

As the aftermath of this world tragedy starts to hit home to many of us, it is amazing how much of the coverage of this event is being produced by ordinary people.

Yes, the big television and newspaper stations have crews in helicopters and are doing a credible job at covering this tradegy. But what I find interesting is the increasing number of photos, videos, stories of the event, as well as crys of help to discover the whereabouts of loved one appearing on the internet. These are not trained journalists or professional photographers, and yet their stories and pictures are very real.

Reading through the stories, one can’t help compare the Asian Tsunami where the Asian cultural trait working for the good of the group, can be contrasted with the Western trait of Individualism.

Let’s hope that we learn some of the lessons from this tradegy!

National Foods hope to link Farmer’s Union flavoured milk as an Australian icon with this cleverly scripted advertisement.

Lines that most Australians will recognise as milestones in history such as Cathy (Freeman) and Sydney (2000 Olympics) have been told as a journey through history. I like it … Advertising is after all, story telling !

Utilising the buzz that this site will generate, I would be inviting the community to submit lines for a sequel. Or, run a competition and let all the amateur film makers produce the next ad, allowing people to vote for their favourite at the site. This would generate extended interest in the whole idea of matching Aussie history with Farmer’s Union.

As a regular Skype user, which is a voice over IP (voip) service that lets you dial up another internet user and talk for free to another online user, or for phone card like rates to any phone using Skype-out. So, I was pleased to see and try a new add-on product called iSkoot.

Basically this let’s you call your Skype phone book or receive calls from other skype users while you are away from your PC. You can make calls from your mobile phone, via your PC to other phone users.

You pay for the mobile phone to your pc cost, and iSkoot handles the rest ! iSkoot offers a free 30-day trial.