The Age of Creativity and Unpredictability!

I stumbled upon a great reminder this week that as we integrate social media into our marketing, it’s always worth noting of how powerful and somewhat unpredictable these tools can be. It’s the latter part that makes social media so engaging because anyone can join the conversation or in this case, add their own message!

It all started when mega agency Publicis decided to create a video to promote their Twitter stream. They also decided to skip over the typical staff stand-in actors and cast the big guns,  CEO Kevin Roberts and his senior circle…..what could go wrong? Well, Jim Edwards in his article on BNET chronicles it perfectly but I’ll give you the short and dirty (pun intended). The comical video featured the Publicis gang using bird noises to communicate with each other in various office settings…. Ok, somewhat clever. After releasing this video on YouTube the miracle of the remix took hold and within hours someone had added subtitles to the entire video…the theme of these subtitles were all crotch jokes. I must admit it’s impossible to watch the remixed video and not crack up, crotch jokes never get old. Obviously this was not the intended buzz the CEO of Publicis wanted for himself or the company but hopefully they’ll have a sense of humor about it. In a weird way it’s working by brining more eyeballs to their content then they ever predicted.

Although cleverly produced the original Publicis video itself has that “trying to hard to be hip” feeling to it. It reminds me of when dad hits the midlife crisis and runs out to buy the corvette. Do we make a video each time a new platform comes out to show clients that we’re also using it? This isn’t a knock on Publicis, they obviously are doing a ton of things right in this sector but my comment is more of a knock on the industry. We all need to have hands on experience and knowledge of the platforms for our own marketing, but the energy might better be used on showing clients the results of integrated campaigns using these platforms.

On behalf of the subtitled video version, this is an awesome reminder at the expense of another agency how we can craft the messages we send out into the world of social media but we cannot control it. How people interact with the content, manipulate it, customize it, share it or shit on it… is all part of what makes these communication platforms so exciting. The same reasons we love social media are the same reasons we despise it…. social media gives everyone a voice. Human nature doesn’t change just because a keyboard is in front of it, but every now and then at that dinner table of digital life you over hear something that’s amazing, you engage with an idea that inspired you or you spit your food out from laughing! Social media doesn’t allow time for candy coating or ego massaging; it’s instant human reaction minus the pie charts and graphs. Vendors see the reaction in real time just like clients; it’s the ultimate unscreened focus group moving at mach 4.

Oh…and if anyone wants to remix one of our case studies, have at it…we welcome the enthusiasm and enjoy a dirty joke or two!

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