Social Web Amplifies AIG Advertising Ironies

AIG's ad message irony: a theme of 'Strength to Be There' sparks a campaign pullout. But the social web never forgets as links and WOM spreads virally.




And this blogger received a direct mailer (and topped Digg ranks yesterday) from AIG asking: "If Disaster Strikes, Will You Have The Protection You Need?".

Perhaps marketers will need to audit their brands' vulnerability in a worst case scenario where the product/company can't deliver on the ad message - in a big public way. This, of course, is the eternal bane of advertiser's existence - the nagging worry that "what if my client can't deliver on our big brand idea?"


via AdAge and IPoopDaily.com

The De-blinging of MTV?

MTV is announcing a new program that takes the spoiled brats from My Super Sweet Sixteen and dumps them with indigenous tribes in Africa and Antarctica. It's called Exhiled! and it's a 180 turn from the ostentatious and limitless lifestyle glamorized in the original show.

The premise of this show stuck out to me, and I think it’s because it’s a demonstration of our swing away from soaking up the unattainable ultraglam world of My Super Sweet Sixteen to being more interested in “what’s right.” MTV is following that trend with Exhiled!. Over the next year, we will become more focused on what's right and what's wrong as the presidential election bears down on us. Things we haven't thought about for years are creeping back into our minds, and I think it's making us all a little more righteous. I think plenty of brands have picked up on their consumers being fed up (cashing out, as Faith Popcorn calls it) and have staked out territory as allies in “being fed up.” They’re anti-establishment; they’re rebel. But this MTV program may be going one length further to focus on life after being fed up—depicting what it’s really like out there in the world, rather than just being against what the world is not. "Our audience in the past few years has really begun to look at how they fit into the world; it's core to who young people are now," said MTV executive Dave Sirulnick. "Some of these girls had very little awareness of what was going on around them and were very self-centered. We thought, 'Here's an opportunity.'"

Asterisk Advertising

Consumerist notes amusing "Badvertising" such as this slightly misleading sandwich board in LA. I'd say this is a fitting metaphor for our ongoing deteriorating relationship with people: the ubiquitous "*" and "small print" to lure in the sheep only fuels escalated Hactivism (financial service brands and auto dealerships take note).

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Another one to grow on from a Consumerist reader. Funny how ad lies incite passion and inspires people to recall "a similar experience when..."


If anybody has other example photos, send links, I could use them for an upcoming deck.

Panic Button: Bridges Falling

Life in an age of transparency...

Other Twin Cities bridges to watch out for - via email chains and webposts, such as this from Eric Hare:

Bridges are scored on a 0-100 rating system. Bridges that are 50 or less are considered "deficient". The bridge that fell yesterday was rated 50.0 according to the list of all deficient bridges in the 7-County area

Note that there are 72 total bridges on this list.

Cross-checked that with the St Paul Bridge index and found that, aside from a few smaller bridges over ravines and so on, we have four major bridges in Saint Paul that qualify as "deficient" - shown here ranked by their rating in 2005:

26.7 Summit Ave over CP Rail Systems and Ayd Mill Rd
40.8 Interstate 35E over BNSF RR, CP Rail Systems & Cayuga St
43.4 Warner Rd EB (Reserve) over BNSF RR, CP Rail Systems, Union Pacific RR
49.5 Hwy 52 (Lafayette Rd) over Mississippi River

The Summit Ave bridge rates so low because at the time it had just been whacked by an empty container train, which ripped out a significant portion of its structure. This has been mostly fixed by now. The remaining 3 should be considered as likely to fail as the I-35W bridge.

Note: I-35E at Cayuga St is the long bridge just North of Pennsylvania. Lafayette is the only one across water (the Mississippi). Some work has been done on this, and its rating may have improved.

Truth Awareness:Delta Flight 6499

Robert McKee made a YouTube of his experience being stuck on the JFK tarmac for seven hours.

And now you see it too. 464 viewers today. Lets see where this goes.

Oh, did I mention this is Delta Airlines?

Notice that crying baby throughout the video. Nice.

The ubiquity, ease, and low cost of consumer recording, editing and sharing software is quickly making it less feasible for big companies to get away with stuff like this.

via Consumerist

Conscious Consumption:Design Can Change

"Sustainability and good design do not have to be mutually exclusive." Designers may examine how practices impact the environment here.


via Treehugger and Greennormal

Hactivism: Home Depot Forced to Respond to Message Board

The web continually enables the masses to not only whine and complain, but actually channel a loud enough voice to force change from brands and corporations.

Consider this: after readers flooded MSN Money's message boards with tales of lousy service, Home Depot's new top executive says change is on the way!

Last week, MSN Money published a column by Scott Burns that focused on customer-service problems at Home Depot.

The response was overwhelming: THOUSANDS of readers posted messages on the MSN Money boards and more than 10,000 took the added steps of e-mailing editors to MSN to share their own stories of time wasted at Home Depot's stores. Oh, and did I mention that Home Depot is in a announced a 28% decline in earning for 4Q, and same store sales are down 6.6%?

In response to message board outcry, Home Depot’s new CEO, Frank Blake, posted his own message promising change. Below is his posted promise of change:


I'm Frank Blake, the new CEO for The Home Depot. I've read a number of the postings on the MSN message board (unfortunately, there were a lot of them), and we've dispatched a dedicated task force -- working directly with me -- that is ready and willing to address each and every issue raised on this board. Please give us the chance.

There's no way I can express how sorry I am for all of the stories you shared. I recognize that many of you were loyal and dedicated shoppers of The Home Depot . . . and we let you down. That's unacceptable. Customers are our company's lifeblood – and the sole reason we have been able to build such a successful company is because of your support. The only way we're going to continue to be successful is by regaining your trust and confidence . . . and we will do that.
We've already taken steps to cure many of the ills discussed on this message board:

We will be and already are increasing our staffing in the stores.

We're also in the early stages of launching a nationwide program to recruit and hire skilled master tradespeople to staff our stores so that our customers receive the kind of service and expertise that made The Home Depot great.
We're investing significantly in the appearance of our stores to make them an easier and more fun place to shop.

And we're making it clear to all our associates that nothing is more important than you, the customer. Every associate knows that his or her number one job is to make you smile and to help you solve your home improvement problem … no matter how big or how small.

But the real judge of all of these changes we’re making is you. All I ask is that you please give us the opportunity to win you back. When you enter our stores, you should receive a personal greeting. After that, you should encounter a helpful associate who will walk you to find the tools, material or service you need. If you don’t, please let us know . . . just like Scott Burns did.

A response box has been opened at wehearyou@homedepot.com

More Hactivism +/+/+


via Consumerist

Mass Interactive: Open Houses

Truth awareness and transparency is opening the doors of our homes.

Some examples:
HGTV, the home and garden cable channel owned by Scripps Networks, launched a social network this week called Rate My Room.

The idea is self-explanatory: it’s a Flickr or YouTube for rooms, allowing users to upload photos of their rooms, tag them, and have them rated and commented on. You can then find the top rated, most viewed and most recent rooms. There are profile pages, too, but these simply aggregate all the rooms you’ve submitted.

The site is a bit plonky now, but interesting thinking with loads of potential presuming improvements are ongoing. The brand connection to HGTV is intuitive and smart, too.


*One slight confusion I have is the relation to Ratemyroom.net, which seems to be the same idea, and name, created by an interior designer from Atlanta. I can only assume HGTV has covered this potential conflict?

Anyways, another interesting (and similar) house share community is Curbly, "a community of people who love their neighborhoods."


And finally there is Zillow which is about a year-old and headed by the founders of Expedia. Consider it the E*Trade/Expedia/Craigslist/MLS of Real Estate. House values are valued for all to see (harvested from local municipality data), with useful trending data to aid users' search and decisionmaking. Though there are some early-stage flaws with coverage and up-to-date accuracy Fortune magazine reports that 4 million visitors a month are checking out Zillow's 52 million house valuations, making it one the internet's biggest real estate destinations.


And, not surprisingly, it is the real estate agents (protecting a $27 trillion industry) who are the loudest critics of Zillow, perhaps fearful of suffering the same disintermediation that travel agents endured when sites like Expedia came on strong.



Zillowblog here



via Mashable, Marketing Vox and CNN Money