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!