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January 28, 2005
The brand doesn't belong to you - Volkswagen, IPod and the Tsunami Song
A couple of days back, I wrote about the Volkswagen ad. In this ad, a suicide bomber drives up to a cafe and blows himself up. But nothing happens to the car and the cafe. The only thing that can be seen is the blow inside the car. The message: This car is strong.
The story continues.
The only problem? Volkswagen didn't create the ad, didn't commission it to its ad agence DDB, and DDB didn't produce it.
The New York Times (registration required) writes that "the spot was sent to the London office of DDB Worldwide, a Volkswagen roster agency, by two people known as Lee and Dan. "We had no part in disseminating it," said Annouchka Behrmann, public relations director at DDB London, part of the DDB Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group. "We think it's absolutely disgusting.""
A different example not related to the Volkswagen ad highlights Apple and its IPod.
Wired reported about a recent ad featuring the IPod. In this case, a school teacher called Masters produced the ad and it went viral on the web, after a slow start. "Masters' 60-second animated ad features flying iPods, pulsing hearts and swirling '70s psychedelia. It's set to the beat of "Tiny Machine" by '80s pop band the Darling Buds." Or, to turn back in time, do you still remember the discussion about Apple's IPod and the discussion about its batteries
Or, the current discussion about the digusting Tsunami song - it was tasteless, but in earlier times, about .... years back, it would have taken a long time before it made its way to Asia. Now - it took a couple of seconds, minutes an hours. Earlier, the DJs might have stayed in their job - the impact on them or the radio would have been small - now they are suspended or fired!
These are examples of situations showcasting the evolution and usage of the web:
1.) the challenge of viral marketing.
2.) the ease how material (especially on or from the web)can be produced, distributed, copied and pasted elsewhere;
3.)the fact that the brand doesn't belong to the company anymore.
There was a time when advertisers and marketers could produce something, and channel it carefully into different channels.
Nowadays, with the advent of the web, something that is on the web is distributed fast, once discovered, and this distribution takes place away from the company, and is placed in the hand of the consumer (if it is the consumer).
They control the distribution, the discussion and the perception or image of the brand. The good part is - distribution is much wider than ever expected. The bad part - things that are not good tend to get really bad. Think of Abu Ghraib and the distributed pictures - no control of anybody in the presidential suites in the US brought the distribution under control. And people are so used to stealth or extreme marketing, that they simply don't know anymore, what is a "real ad" and "what a fake" - do they care?
Posted by Andreas at January 28, 2005 06:20 PM
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Comments
very astute observation with brilliant examples (the tsunami song is the one that illustrates very well how by publisicing it u propagate it, and now lots will be searching google for the song itself and it will become even more popular haha) of the speed of communication given by the web to what would not be noticeable in the past.
Posted by: anthony wong at January 29, 2005 04:13 PM