Sponsored Stories No More!

I love the fact that new media such as Facebook is pushing profit-maximizing businesses to take a more creative and proactive approach towards engaging consumers on their channels. Many of us have been complaining about how Facebook has begun emulating popular culture as seen on TV - especially in terms of promoted content. The internet is a place for niches, so after this new update, we’re cheering.

Ever since the dot com era in the 1990s, brands have repeatedly misunderstood this new environment. Their focus on ROIs and other numbers always means that there is a sales message attached to every piece of content they put up. But consumers have never liked advertisements. They may respond to them because they keep them informed about new products, but they have always been an interruption. So advertisements managed to drive awareness and later, conversion. But in the digital space, consumers couldn't care less. Once someone hides a brand from their feed, the brand doesn't exist for them any more.

Subservient Chicken is eager to listen to the commands you type in. Oh, BK Tendercrisp!

Of course, there are some brands (as is always the case) that lead the way for others. One of my favorite digital activations is Subservient Chicken by Burger King. There are many others, but the point I wish to make here is that brands don't have the choice to treat digital like they do any other medium. Not anymore, at least. I laugh at the brands that ignore this advice. But only because I have been trying my level best to articulate this simple truth about digital – just to get them to do something amazing (only to hear how their PR department had a near heart attack at the suggestions). Some have been more receptive to these ‘crazy ideas’ though.

Public relations, although conceptually still applicable, has dissolved into HR and digital. PR is a dead hen that doesn't lay golden eggs any more. And most brands are having trouble making that jump from PR to digital. Especially since it is still a very experimental medium. 

The message from Facebook, in this light, is clear. Get creative or get lost.

There is still hope for brand managers though (yes, they can keep their jobs). They need to learn to deal with digital data themselves. They need to start relying on psychographics rather than demographics. They need to recruit creative people who understand digital and make them a part of their team. Sure, they have digital managers (usually just one for all the company brands), but every brand team needs to have at least 50% people who can lead digital using their creative abilities, while paying absolute attention to digital data such as ad analytics and performance metrics, themselves.

Crafting engaging stories doesn't come from the copywriter sitting in a corner at a digital agency full of geeks. It comes from the top, with the geeky copywriter sitting next to the brand manager. This is the only way brands can truly understand their audience and engage them in real time.

Until they learn to do that, they will keep hiring digital agencies as the middle men, missing out on the bigger picture, until other brands go ahead and incorporate digital into their everyday workflows.

Content marketing strategists must be really happy right now. I know I am.

Thanks, Facebook!

Johnny Rockets Fixes Its Typo

One of the major issues that digital agencies face today is the prehistoric concept of 'media buying' which is always done in 'bulk' to save costs. While that may be true for traditional media, new media really doesn't work that way.

Here in Pakistan, you will see that most brands tend to allocate their digital channels' management to one digital agency and media buying to another, which just doesn't make any sense. That's like going to get your car washed from one service station and windows wiped by another! It's preposterous! So here's one example to highlight the disconnect such an arrangement may cause:

Johnny Rockets' media spend has been massive, ever since their launch. They've gone above and below the line and they've also gone digital. Sources tell me that, like Mobilink, Unilever, Nestle, and so many others, Johnny Rockets also gave away its digital media buying to a company that was NOT managing its online properties (Facebook page, primarily). Here's the result:

"Let the good time rolls" - apparently Johnny Rockets is competing against Karachi Silverspoon 

After running these ads for more than month, I noticed yesterday that they've finally fixed this grave typo. It was probably not even that visible when it was advertised like this on the side, but they had the same typographical error on ALL their featured ads, and if I were the brand manager, eardrums would've ruptured.

This is but one example that shows how awful it is when the same people who are creating/curating content and managing your digital strategy are NOT managing your ads as well. This digital business is best managed by a singular team, and it is high time that brands started to understand this.

Much Needed Improvement from Facebook

For digital managers running campaigns on Facebook for a number of clients, between brand managers, VPs, account managers, digital strategists, copywriters and page managers, it had always been very difficult to monitor interaction with fans - we could never tell who had been posting on behalf of the brand!

Often, we'd pick on a comment with wrong grammar and the typical response from the page manager would be, "But that's probably the brand manager who posted this comment!" Needless to say, since we couldn't tell who posted that comment, everyone could go on pointing fingers at each other forever.

There was this one time a well-known glue brand's franchise owner insisted he be on the admin panel for their page, only to post some unrelated ad on the page every now and then regarding jobs for doctors in KSA, confusing every one of us at the digital agency.

It seems that Facebook has finally identified this problem and plans to fix it soon, as I just came across this notification on one of the pages:

A little tweak to save page managers countless headaches, yay!

Why I think Flappy Bird has done so well

Promoting an app, a service or any other content organically is tricky business. While paid campaigns tend to ensure reach and visibility, 'virality' comes from the users/consumers - they HAVE to genuinely like it for it to go viral.

For this reason it is always a good idea to work on your game dynamics - make it fun and addictive. Flappy Bird is doing well primarily because only ONE person worked on the game and put his heart into it. Now people can't help but return to the game over and over again, perhaps in an attempt to challenge themselves.

#FirstWorldProblems

The game has occupied the number 1 spot on both iOS and Android app stores the past week, even though it has been uploaded since May last year. It seems its following got that critical mass that pushed the game into viral mode.

Flappy Bird Rank History

The gameplay is extremely simple - simply tapping the screen makes the bird fly. Yes that's right, the birds are flying in a manner similar to Angry Birds, and if you take a look at the pipes in higher levels, you might experience stronger waves of nostalgia hitting you back from the good old days of Mario World.

I think the Flappy Bird is rather ugly, but yay pipes!

Dong Nguyen, the Vietnamese guy behind Flappy Bird has been pretty busy with people calling in for interviews and sundry. Given that he does incorporate some standard advertising in the app, I hope he is starting to make some cash. Maybe a next step after this initial success would be to add some in-app purchases to increase his earnings. That way he might have some extra dough to spend on advertisements to try to prolong the lifespan of his game's virality and become bigger.

But first, he must integrate Game Center into the app (he says it's coming soon in the next update) so that players can at least see where they stand. If the game continues to do well, there's room to add social media plugins as well, especially for Facebook, but the server costs can add up so he must be careful in making this consideration.

Flappy Bird is a great example of keeping it simple and focusing on user-interaction. #TeamDong now has the opportunity to incorporate some feedback and improve the game in terms of graphics and design as well. Just continue following your philosophy to keep it simple in terms of graphics as well to keep the size of the game low in your future updates.

I am rather proud of my high score. Post your screenshot if you beat mine!

My Relocations Through Spammy SMS Texts

Sometimes I think these spammy SMS texts allow me that chance to have a reality check. It has now been more than a year that I've moved out of Karachi but all the spammy texts I received in this period were mostly for services and products based in Karachi. More recently, however, it seems that the spam SMS operators have figured out that I am not in Lahore and the texts I receive now are more for products and services that are Lahore based.

I still remember when I arrived in Karachi from Singapore, like, 4 years ago and reactivated my Lahore number and started using it in Karachi. Back then, there were fewer spammy texts, but because of the number format, perhaps, they figured I was from Lahore and so most of them were for Lahore.

It's almost as if these spammers knew how long it would take for me to get adjusted to the new place I had relocated to, before making their adjustments.

So there you have it - my life relocations through the lens of spammy text messages on my phone. I probably couldn't have picked up a topic that was more odd.

I do wish there was a way to stop these texts though. I've ignored so many important texts from clients, bosses, family and friends because of them that it is ridiculous. Unfortunately, most of them are sent by the telcos themselves, perhaps because they view it as a lucrative marketing activity. But honestly, it really is just spam. Because when you enter my private space, you have violated my sovereignty - yeah, like a drone attack.