If this is a Gold Lion then the jury knows nothing about Twitter (Oh look, they don’t)
Winning a Lion in Cannes is a big deal. Even more so if it’s a Gold Lion.
But that relies on the jury being qualified to judge what’s in front of them.
Looking at one of the Aussie Gold winners from the ad festival this week, my view is that the jury made a bad call, and damaged their credibility in the process.
I’m perplexed that Droga 5 has won a Gold and Silver in the Direct Lions for its LA4320 Twitter campaign on behalf of V Australia.
It feels to me that the jury lacked the knowledge to judge what was in front of them and made an award based on what was hot, rather than what worked.
(And that’s not to criticise the agency, by the way. It’s not their fault for being good at awards entries. It’s the jury’s for buying it.)
The campaign in question saw V Australia fly three people out to LA, tweeting every minute. I vaguely remember it from the time. Like many, I briefly followed the three tweeters out of curiosity, then immediately unfollowed. Who wants to have their Twitter timeline filled with three inanities from the same people, every single minute?
I missed it at the time, but Lachlan Hibbert-Wells, who works in social media and is better known online as Warlach, wrote a thoughtful post about it at the time on why he considered the campaign to be a Twitter failure.
His criticisms were:
- The Twitter profile names (@4320LA) looked like spam.
- The clutter of minute-by-minute updates
- Choosing people who didn’t have the writing skills to take part
- Failing to link the images posted elsewhere with the tweets
- Trying to game the stats to create a hashtag trend (and failing)
Later, he busted somebody working on behalf of Droga 5 for tryng to astroturf his comments thread – talking up the campaign as if they were an independent commentator when they were not. All in all Warlach’s piece – still worth a read by following the link above – was a case study in how brands shouldn’t do a social media campaign. He demolished it as the gimmick it was.
That was that, until awards season, when Droga5 put together this video:
Impressive, isn’t it? You can read the entry here too.
(By the way, having sat through a lot of awards entry videos, one surefire way to tell if the PR plan succeeded or failed is to watch the images that accompany phrases like “The world watched around the clock”. If they are mainly clippings from the trade press, then fair to say the world was probably not watching around the clock.
On freezeframe I can make out Digital Buzz Blog, Campaign Brief, Mumbrella’s sister travel site Thumbrella, Creativity, Creative Online and Bannerblog.)
But hey, maybe the Direct Lions jury saw something in it that Warlach and myself did not.
But to do so, you’d expect the jury to understand the communications medium they were considering. Otherwise, they are effectively taking a video awards presentation’s word for it.
One element of their experience in this respect is available – how active, if at all, are the jurors on Twitter? have they at least lived with it for a few weeks, and developed an understanding of it? otherwise, how can they know if this is a successful campaign?
There were 30 on the Direct Lions jury.
I’ve spent the day examining their digital footprints to try to work out how well they are likely to understand Twitter. They may be excellent disciples of traditional direct marketing, but as far as I can tell, Twitter ain’t their thing.
As far I can tell, only two of the 30 seem to make regularly use of it in a way that a normal twitter user would recognise.
Vaughn Davis, from Y&R Auckland and Erik Ingvoldstad from MRM Worldwide Singapore. Not being privy to the jury deliberations, I’ve no idea whether they liked the campaign or not.
As for the rest, about a dozen of them show the typical signs of trying a new fad, quickly losing interest before fully engaging with it and never going back. In alphabetical order, that includes:
- Droga 5’s
David “Nobby” Nobay (he would not have been allowed to vote on his own work, by the way), who appears to have only sent one tweet, back in July last year: “What is all this tweaking about?” - Thomas Tatzl, who first tweeted just under three weeks ago and has sent ten tweets since, mainly about being in Cannes.
- Marisa Furtado, who first tweeted three days ago.
- Brenda McNeilly, whose Fuse Marketing Group has tweeted six items this year.
- Hartmut Kozok who has a locked profile, but if it’s the same person follows only 16 people.
- Sergio Muller (or the only person on Twitter by that name) who tweeted twice, last year
- Conn Bertish fromJWT South Africa, who has only tweeted 14 times, although one of them was the amusing: “Why are Australians so irritating?”
- Lotta Marlind, who follows 68 people.
- Peter Bronniman who follows 11 people.
- Peter van Leeuwen, who has tweeted eight times.
- Jamie Bell who has tweeted eight times
- Scott Lewis, whose profile shows 13 tweets
When they aren’t able to apply the consumer perspective to the campaign, it’s suddenly easier to see why that video starts looking so persuasive isn’t it?
And based on that expert panel, Droga5 has just picked up two of the most coveted advertising awards in the world. As I write this, the campaign has also been shortlisted in the Cyber Lions category.
If there was a Cannes Lion for Producing Awards Entries, I’d give Droga5 the Grand Prix.
June 27 Update: Another jury’s gone the same way. The Titanium Jury has given the Grand Prix to a retail helpline based on Twitter. Sheesh.
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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It was a publicity stunt, and as a ploy to create some hype in ad-land and some branded content for in-flight programming it was OK.
As for being a clever and well executed campaign idea that was engaging – not so much
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Additionally this did not get short-listed in the IAB category for Social Media Marketing.
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What wasn’t mentioned in this article was that 4320LA was not entered in the following category:
Best use of Social Media (i.e. Twitter)
It did however win gold for the the following category:
Direct – Travel, Entertainment & Leisure
In this context it was probably quite deserving.
Cheap swipe at a tall poppy Tim.
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Hi Tall Poppy,
I see you’re posting from an IP address previously associated with comments from Droga 5.
You guys really haven’t yet got the hang of astroturfing anonymously, have you?
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
by accident or intent, this reads like a droga5 bash to me.
so are you saying to be qualified to vote on the merits of something involving twitter you have to be an active participant. i guess that cancels out 99% of the digital world being able to comment on press/tv/the wider media world
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I can remember when this campaign launched, and I saw a Tweet with a call to action to enter the competition. I clicked the link on my iPhone (everyone knows that most people interact with Twitter on a smartphone) and hit a wall. Flash website. So that was the first sign of a major fail whale on this campaign.
It’s pretty clear though that Cannes as a creative advertising awards is not really focussed on effectiveness, and you can see from this that it’s more about the creativity and originality of the idea. Nothing wrong with that, but to claim this was effective as a Twitter campaign, you need some real metrics, and there are none. They only had a few thousand followers at best, and I’m sure at least half were people like me, in the digital marketing industry.
Of course this campaign did nothing to sell weekend deals for V Australia, but that’s not really the point.
Thankfully clients don’t really care about awards when selecting an agency, they care about results. And increasingly, as digital/online marketing gets a greater share of the marketing dollar, it’s going to be increasingly harder for the creatively lead agencies to win work unless they’re also able to be truly effective, in the digital space.
Simply saying our campaign reached 15 million people (bollocks!), but then going on to say that the site received 116,000 visits which is very low for a national campaign. I wonder how many of them went on to convert (let’s say a very optimistic 5% which is 5,800 people entering), and then of those, who would have gone on to buy a weekend holiday with V Australia (10% perhaps = 580 people). The cost of conversion of this campaign I would guess is going to be sky high. Let’s assume the agency charged $500,000 for this job, sounds about right, then we’re talking a cost per conversion of $862. Fuck, that’s effective!
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Didn’t this also win a D&AD Yellow pencil? hing in it…
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Tim, fair point and good research ‘tweetless’ jurors. I love looking at accounts of senior advertising people who lost interest in Twitter before they even started.
The other day I came across this one from Host CEO, Anthony Freedman who’s one and only post was
“hard to talk convincingly about twitter if you’ve never even used it so here goes”
3:03 PM Mar 23rd, 2009 via web
Presumably he is now much more convincing when talking about Twitter.
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Hi Ben,
I suspect that most digital people have read newspapers or watched TV, so they will at least be familiar with the medium as consumers.
Not so, as far as I can tell, with this jury’s experience of Twitter. That’s my point.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Great work Mumbrella.
By acknowledging the weaknesses, in some ways whistleblowing – (Although that may be a bit strong) you will help future awards judges, teams and submissions. Simply, debate should increase, decisions improved, integrity raised and everyone will be better off. And whether you like awards or not, at least they may be deserved!
note: Tall Poppy – Poppy’s are flowers. They have roots in the ground and flowers in the air. My advice – you should look at the ground for the shit you might stand in. Not in the air where your ego is 😉
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It’s amazing that so many campaigns get celebrated for being creative for the sake of being creative. What happened to the twitter page when the promotion ended? Did anyone at Droga5 think of the potential customer backlash that would happen after this?
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It wasn’t a strong digital strategy, just good old school advertising and PR.
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Re: Ben’s comment above — actually, as a member of the TV world, I’d say about 99% of us would agree with that observation regarding the digital world.
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There should definitely be an award for producing award entries.
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Firstly, thank you for you very kind words Tim.
Secondly, Tall Poppy, regardless of Tim pointing out your connection, the fundamental point is the lack of thought that went into something which, while it did win as Direct – Travel, Entertainment & Leisure used social as it’s basis. If you fundamentally fail to understand a medium a campaign exists in, so much so that any assessment shows it to be ineffective for the client, how can it possible be considered a successful direct campaign?
Ben, while it’s important to not focus on Twitter as anything more than it is, it would be the equivalent of a judge of a TVC describing the medium as “those squarish, magic sound and light things with the little people inside…”
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Since when is campaign effectiveness relevant to Cannes? They’re creative awards.
It’s a nice idea that demonstrates the value of the product to a particular audience. Not sure how well it worked – given its fairly substantial executional flaws probably not that well, but that’s not what’s being judged at Cannes as far as I’m aware.
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Dear Ben and LS,
The reason you don’t get digital, is because you still see it as an ‘us and them’. As TV folk, you were kings of the world and could still be. But you proved yourselves incapable of adopting and integrating new technologies.
And now, even when the line between digital and traditional is blurred, you still want to argue about us and them. You are like a global power worried that someone is going to take over. So instead of adapting, you go to war…only to discover that one day, you are the second, or third most powerful. If you had focussed your energy on innovation, adaptation etc…you may not feel threatened by the youthful passion of those forging a new tomorrow from behind the digital boundaries. Instead you would harness it and use it. But alas, you don’t.
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Could have won Titanium if they’d added these words to the sizzle reel:
innovate holistic communities
recontextualize cross-media networks
transform cross-media vortals
deliver collaborative relationships.
Not good enough Droga!
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Cam,
Then shouldn’t they have entered it in the PR category?
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Words people use on Mumbrella when they’re slated:
“I’m a tall poppy”
“It must be a slow news day”
“Why is this industry so negative?”
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It is absolutely stupid for you to post something like this. If you can’t understand the power of it’s simplicity and that the IDEA is what won, you deserve to have your blog burned down. Don’t try and start a fire if you don’t know how.
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For the record, I’m still offended that Warlach implied I don’t exist as if that has any bearing on my worth. If you cut me do I not bleed Invisible blood and stock PR phrases?
What do we want? Equal rights for imaginary people. When do we want them? Eleventh-two!
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I really don’t read this as a post against Droga5. Almost every agency in the world is trying to work out how to use social media well, and this was a very early crack at a new medium.
That being said, everything Tim says is true, and to me, this post reads as criticism of the Awards process to me, and I tend to agree.
I’m not sure it can even be fixed.
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@1.47 pm – Droga5 obviously see it as a strong digital campaign.
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akaDan, the fact that your organisation created a fake persona to spam forums and message boards is a total fucking disgrace is absolutely unethical.
Droga 5 should be embarrassed to actually admitting they do this kind of thing.
It reminds me of this:
https://mumbrella.com.au/agency-boss-were-targeting-blogs-with-fake-personas-but-its-not-spam-9038
Which netted nearly 200 comments of nearly everyone involved saying it’s a downright nasty thing to do and goes against the heart of what communities are.
It shows that Droga 5 do not understand social or communities and that they are willing to do anything they can to promote their stuff. Typical advertisers (yes I know there are some amazing ad companies out there who get social but the majority don’t seem to) still trying to shout at people and not realise that it’s supposed to be about conversations and communities.
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As someone who works as a client (but not the client in question) I could not agree more with comments from Anonymous. While your all getting yourselves worked up over awards I could not give a flying f@%$.
An agency that demonstates effective campaigns with real and meaningful metrics will win everytime. Sure part of that is being creative but it’s so much more than that as well.
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Love it Tim well done !
The majority of the creative ad industry always has has always lived in their own little ‘disconnected from the main stream’ bubble and this just proves it. I’d say a case of eating their own dog food, but not in a good way.
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Reevesy’s comment about this entry getting nowhere at IAB (where the jurors are qualified) says a lot for what this actually is… a good campaign, not perfectly executed, but with a beautifully polished and presented awards entry.
But then i guess you gotta win what you can…
Nice research too Mumbrella!
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More worryingly isn’t this campaign a finalist at the upcoming Australian EFFIES?
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Nice work Tim, we forgive you for the short newsletter when you have managed to use your investigative journalism skills to uncover this 🙂
Version – yes I agree, it is such a specific skill, dressing up crap campaigns for awards.
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i must admit I was sucked in by the video, I watched it and thought “that looks like a great idea” ok so it was not effective, but as a campaign it does have creative merit and agree or disagree with its win at least it has got us thinking about the medium and how better to use it.
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@ScottRhodie, read Dan Masnick’s comment again. I think it’s a joke.
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Tim you don’t need to post on twitter to be a user. that’s the issue here. You are making a comment around jurors usage (and subsequent ignorance) of Twitter without knowing how they use it. I think it’s lazy.
Scott Rhodie – how is the view from up there?
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Dear tweebs, I can’t remember whether this line came from David Ogilvy, or if he quoted someone else in his book: “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative”.
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Anonymous – hoping it is but he already admitted as such on Warlach’s blog:
http://www.warlach.com/2009/07.....fail-away/
It just kinda riled me up as I hadn’t read Warlach’s original post.
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Yes it has been shortlisted for an effie: http://www.communicationscounc.....202010.pdf
It is a long list though. Bet it doesn’t make the next round.
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This whole blog raises a further question. Is Cannes judging purely on creativity or effectiveness?
Having read Advertising Age this morning, they were especially critical of media agencies lack of wins in media categories versus creative agencies. Personally I find it unsurprising since Media agencies would limit themselves to entering awards based on effectiveness. Hence we see a win for Droga 5 when it’s evident the metrics do not hold up. I’m not questioning their creativity, it’s what they do and they’re very good at it!
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I want some of what Gold is on..
I wholeheartedly agree with the Mumbrella piece, was actually trying to point out to Ben that by HIS logic it is surely a fair call to say those who do not actively use Twitter are probably not the best qualified to judge such a category of award. Tim responded to him in a far more constructive way earlier than my post anyway, so it’s moot.
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What about the result for the client? Did sales uplift? I guess that’s pretty important right?
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Hi Ben,
I’d argue that to understand how most people use Twitter, you do need to post – it’s a two-way medium, of which conversation is a part of it.
But even leaving that point aside, in order to have even a passive understanding, you need to follow people. My research indicates that the jury do not do that. Their Twitter profiles show that almost without exception they follow a tiny number of people.
Until you try it, how on earth can you see it from a consumer’s point of view?
While you may not necessarily have to make TV ads to judge TV ads (of course some would dispute that) it would be necessary to have at some point at least watched some TV.
My point is that most of the jury appears to be making a pronouncement on the use of a medium of which they have no understanding even as consumers, let alone as communications professionals.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Im just getting sick of the whole astroturfing thing and I commend Tim for his unstoppable quest to find the truth, or at least expose those who are writing and acting on gut and emotion rather than as impartial observers that can make rational contributions.
What it highlights more, is these people are only interested in blowing their own trumpet, or their organisations under what they think is a cloak of invisibility, and are not here to participate in the conversation, but just to deliver a sermon that even without the IP tracking stands out like dogs b*lls. My bet is the box below “notify me of followup comments via e-mail” remains mostly unchecked for these commenters (got any stats on that Tim?) as they arent interested in what others have to say.
Remember astroturfers, you are not talking to the consumers you think you have wrapped around your little finger, but to intelligent (mostly) experienced, industry folk, that come here for useful and informative conversation, not to be insulted by your well scripted comments, no doubt said with a “That’ll Show them” smirk as you submit comment.
Your time would be better off spent in your own facebook fan pages where you can give yourself a pat on your back, and even “Like” yourself…. in fact I think I might just go start one for you.
As for the camapign, I agree with Warlach.
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Agree with the semantics about Twitter, but I think this campaign was creative and well executed. Was it a great social media campaign? Don’t know, but did they get 110,000+ visitors in 3 weeks, and got a bunch of PR (looked like sunrise or today) (or paid editorial) and it reached loads of people.
Agree that Twitter was poorly used and they did some terrible stuff, but it’s a great concept and I interacted with it.
However, I love the insights into the judges & their lack of social usage and the investigative journalism in this and Warlach’s posts.
I’d love to hear what V-Australia have to say.
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I think it’s pretty weak as a pr/ad campaign. Let alone a weak social media play.
115,000 web visitors is a pretty poor result I think. And must be below what they were expecting.
Great work Tim, I love your analysis.
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Jimi,
Thanks for your comments.
I’d welcome upfront comments from Droga5 if i’ve missed a point from the campaign (maybe they never wanted to connect with Twitter users in the first place but simply create a PR stunt that would get talked about in mainstream media?)
That would be a welcome contribution to the debate and certainly more authentic than apparently third party comments that aren’t.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Yeah I agree with Jimi Hopkins – LOL!!!
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Dont know who this Jimi guy is, but I like what he has to say!
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Great work, Tim.
And lolz at people saying this has creative merit. By that justification, every spam-twitter-bot that tweets every minute is a stroke of creative genius. Hey, why not award a lion to that email sent from Nigeria about your relative that died and left you 43 zillion dollars.
Man up Droga5 and accept you liked the medium more than the message. And you didn’t even use the medium creatively.
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Why thank you, Tim. I was just browsing my emails before today’s Twitter workshop wot I am running here at the Click Digital Marketing Conference in Dubai when you hand me a nice, cut and dried ‘how not to use Twitter’ case study on a plate.
Duly incorporated, with all associated lessons.
🙂
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Ben, the view from up where? I’m talking from a grass roots level and from a PR perspective. One of the objects of PR is to ensure the brand you are working on is not damaged. Creating fake profiles is one way to damage your brand. It shows you are not willing to get involved or that you are willing to pool the wool over people’s eyes.
I don’t agree with anyone astroturfing or faking names on blogs and forums to pimp their wares.
I posted earlier about Geoff Emerson’s original fake forum posts but even he agreed that it was wrong and did an editorial piece on Mumbrella to highlight the fact
https://mumbrella.com.au/my-rules-on-posting-comments-for-clients-9240
(Disclaimer: I worked with Geoff at Zing and he is a friend of mine)
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@SimonTDroga @DaveM
115,000 sounds good. However..
The campaign site was linked off most pages on the VirginBlue/VAus websites for the entire duration of the campaign. Given these websites get between 1.2m-1.5m UB visitors a month already from people looking up airline ticket prices – it is not odd to get 10% of this onto page traffic for a promotion.
In fact you would probably get the same ‘traffic’ to a microsite about Richard Branson dental hygiene regime with the same amount of linking from such a major website.
Entries in the competition would be the most accurate measure of ‘engagement’ to use the term extremely loosely. But even then you are going to get a whole heap of prize pigs who are not going to change any of their behaviour or mindset just by trying to win some free tickets to LA.
I didn’t mind the ‘creativity’ in this campaign – if it was supposed to be branded content for inflight and VA website featuring core audience. But I’m still confused as to what the campaign was originally supposed to be and I suspect that based on the D5 reel so are they.
Disclosure: I was doing a lot of digicomms work for a VA competitor at the time, hence why I watched it closely.
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@version: “There should definitely be an award for producing award entries”
YOU ROCK!
@Scott Rhodie – Agreed – despite the comment being (seemingly) a joke, agreed that honesty, transparency and authenticity are compulsory in any social media campaign.
@Matthew Delprado “a very early crack at a new medium” – sorry Matthew, it’s not an early crack / campaign at all – social media campaigns have been happening for the better part of 16 years, and the expected conduct has been around since humankind first started referring their friends to the local hunting ground.
Social isn’t new, although the medium might be. Can’t use that as an excuse.
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This campaign comes across more of a promotion for Twitter rather than V Australia – and that’s simply based on the Canne vid alone.
Also, Tim, it’s really poor form to dig into people’s anonymous comments. If you give people the option to post comments without identification, then you RESPECT their privacy. At the very least, you can mention in your T&Cs that you dig into people’s IP address to identify and ridicule their feedback.
In fact, I’d consider the latter to be a breach of conduct vis-a-vis privacy. I’m not saying that it IS, but I certainly wouldn’t engage in that conduct if I were a webmaster.
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Hi Michelle,
My policy is to respect people’s anonymity so long as they are not trying to mislead Mumbrella’s readers. When somebody pretends to be a neutral third party, or talks about their agency in the third person, that’s misleading.
If somebody wants to be anonymous while disclosing their affiliations, that’s absolutely fine.
The relevant paragraph from our privacy policy is this:
“Our system automatically captures the IP address of those who post comments. We reserve the right in circumstances such as attempts to mislead other users about a poster’s identity, to share that information. We will protect the anonymity of those who comment in good faith.”
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
As I’m not from the industry (just an interested observer/reader/listener), what is the criteria to win a Gold Lion? Is it for a effective campaign? A great idea? Or is it a combo of both? Does it carry the prestige of an Oscar or that of a Logie or is it just to polish?
The campaign may of sucked in execution and Droga 5 seem to be rather Troll-ish, the idea itself is quite good. However in saying/writing that, if it sucks in execution and it’s not effective then it shouldn’t of won.
As a final note looking at the Cannes website, it looks like the awards are given out as if they were swimming certificates.
BTW I got a bronze for breaststroke when i was 12.
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Hilarious that while all of y’all are whining and moaning for hours about Droga, they are polishing their trophies and winning business none of you could dream of.
Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.
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This is a compelling subject that I’m surprised that so may people have the time to participate in. But as it happens, today I do. I agree that the award entry is impressive, but only if it’s taken on face value. Creativity in this industry exists to add value to our client’s businesses. If it does not we have no reason to exist. If it’s an artistic pursuit then write a book, shoot a photograph or whatever takes your fancy. We get paid well for what we do and should always be measured against the outcome.
Thanks for starting a good argment Mumbrella. Stuart
P.S. Anonymous comments are a blight on humanity. Everyone should be accountable for their actions and comments. Ultimately that best serves the quality of the debate.
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Tim, you’re kicking some goals here today. Great clause in the T&C, and why shouldn’t you call out fake comments? It’s just pathetic that big agencies stoop so low. So clearly, @Ned Shneebly, they’re not that busy polishing their trophies to get their knickers in a knot.
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“Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.”
Word!
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I love how many are saying ‘well they ONLY got xyz thousand visits to the site … that’s not very good, what a poor result etc’
115,000 visitors is a pretty good result if they are in the market to travel to LAX or looking for a holiday for 2 around 6-8k.
Does anyone know whether it had an impact on V Australia’s sales? Was it meant to directly have an impact or was it part of a larger strategy from Droga etc. Maybe those posting do – I don’t know – but if they don’t then we’re just assuming aren’t we.
Personally, I didn’t follow any of the people but did get caught up in the PR around it and took away that maybe a long weekender in LA was actually feasible physically and financially from Sydney. The surrounding sizzle was compelling like it or not (for me anyway) and did give VA a point of difference amongst other carriers doing daily SYD-LAX flights.
Scott Rhodie I was referring to this comment. “It shows that Droga 5 do not understand social or communities and that they are willing to do anything they can to promote their stuff. Typical advertisers still trying to shout at people and not realise that it’s supposed to be about conversations and communities.” A bit melodramatic don’t you think?
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I love Twicker. It makes it all so easy to twick n tweet.
(Great work on this article Mumbo!!)
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Great article. These days it’s all about a great entry video. D5 is famous for leading the way with Million. “A Couple of Thousand” just didn’t have the same ring to it. Google it if you have time. The campaign was a brief test market in a few schools.
Reminds me of the hilarious early entry videos where declaring “we went on You Tube” sufficed and if you looked at the counter, it had 27 hits.
You are correct, Tim. This is embarrassing for the Jury. But in the wash up, sadly all that will be remembered will be that D5 won Gold.
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Tim,
WTF!
So employees refer to their respective companies in, what? Second person? They can’t do it in first person because the employee is not the company. Did you think that maybe an employee wants to participate in the conversation but have been told not to by their management? Because management knows that any participation in the conversation only feeds it. And if their management is smart enough they can trawl through company computer browser/server histories, etc.
Your implied definition of ‘misleading’ is bullshit. You need to revise your T&C so that contributors to your blog know they are posting anonymously purely at the whim of yourself.
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Hi Glen,
I think you may misunderstand a bit.
All somebody needs to do is identify that they are involved in the company/ campaign under discussion. They’re welcome to stay anonymous. But it’s misleading to talk up something as if you have nothing to do with it, if in fact you do.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Perhaps this will give people some more insight http://www.bestadsontv.com/ad_details.php?id=c31c6
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Tim, this is gold. Brilliant investigation – thank you. And for everyone else joining the debate – good to hear other POVs.
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Guys Sudeep was one of the brains behind this campaign – he understands and uses Twitter a lot. It was a good campaign (I think). The fact it won so many awards is testamony to the power Nobby and Droga have in the industry – good luck to them. Of course it makes the whole awards industry a fucking joke and other players are playing with one less card – but others (we) still chose to play.
Tim this is an excellent article, however its just the smallest little scratch into a much bigger story.
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On behalf of all your bosses, shareholders and clients: “GET BACK TO WORK!”
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Ad awards are only about stroking industry egos anyway. Who cares who won?
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JDB (2:16pm) has nailed it. The creativity shown in writing the entries in a creative award show judged by ‘creatives’, means that media agencies are less likely to write a winning entry. I have see some VERY creative entries that claimed effectiveness levels off this planet with things like 2,000% ROI.
And to quote Ogilvy … “A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” I think the man knew a thing or two about advertising that the industry has forgotten along the way.
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Anon 4.41pm…
Thanks for posting that link – that’s 15m 38s of my life I won’t get back.
Really useful, considering the jury talks about why they like just about every other entry but that one, which they don’t mention at all.
Still, I did enjoy watching the close-ups of Nobby as he was dying to pile in at the beginnning as the chairman droned on, then getting increasingly bored until he appeared to punch himself in the face at the 13m mark to keep himself awake.
Gold. Quite literally.
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I work on both sides of the fence in PR and creative, and in all the agencies and clients I’ve consulted to in the past 18 months, everybody is astroturfing their arses off right now.
It’s ridiculous.
I keep reminding them it’s unethical, they’ll be caught etc but they justify by saying they’ll only do it at the start of the campaign until things “start happening organically”. Hey folks, think like that and it never will. Neither does it deserve to.
Get a look at any of these sort of campaigns’ member photo profiles. So many nice hair, nice shirt junior account exec looking youngsters posting their “experiences”. No real punter ever “joins their fricken conversations” about whatever because they’re too busy having real conversations on facebook about how annoying vuvuzelas are or swapping cat videos or reading the heraldsun.
Oh, and astroturfing from your work account to blogs like this. Dumb.
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A report with a lot of insight (and incite) covering a wide range of ethical and professional areas: astroturfing, campaign efficacy, jury credentials, creative license in entries. Well done mumbrella.
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It looks like, when men are judging campaings aimed to women with “female products” they have never used. If you have never use twitter and don’t known how to use it, what is the criteria?. Well, this is cannes.
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“Hate the game, not the playa.”
Resorting to this excuse is weak. This could be Droga5 today, or another shop tomorrow. Pointing out the problems as Tim has doing IS hating the game. Recognize.
“It is absolutely stupid for you to post something like this. If you can’t understand the power of it’s simplicity and that the IDEA is what won, you deserve to have your blog burned down. Don’t try and start a fire if you don’t know how.”
How old are you? This sounds like a child, truly.
As for other comments about judges using/not using a given media, fair enough. It’s not a requirement. But that’s not all that’s being said here. What’s being ignored is how the campaign unfolded. Spamming a stream by your intern or whoever was on the trip literally every minute is bush league shit that even the most uneducated client *trying* social media today knows not to do.
Btw, how are those metrics on Honeyshed. Oh, damn, forgot. #closed
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Another quantity vs quality campaign. Seems to be the mood these days.
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Droga 5’s infamous Titanium winning ‘million’ project, as mentioned above, was even more evidence of their absolute obsession with award entries, effectiveness and morals completely shoved aside.
The idea was beautiful. Give kids phone credits to disadvantaged kids to encourage them to work harder.
Amazing.
Unfortunately, only three or four schools were ever involved and the website was last updated just before the Cannes deadline. It hasn’t been updated since.
You see, fuck the kids.
Who cares, it’s the award that counts.
Why wasn’t the idea continued? After all, their hype video seemed to claim it was god’s gift to education. Were we misled? Surely not.
If the idea was great, and Droga5 had no interest in continuing it once the award was won, (and there’s no evidence to say it ever was) it would be disgraceful. They used disadvantaged kids for awards.
If the idea never worked AT ALL, but they hype video said it did, then they stole a Titanium.
Either way it’s fucked, so no surprises there.
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Kinda smells like a Droga-bashing here.
Tim – I don’t think you guys have the hang of at-arm’s-length commentary yet. A little less Judge Judy, a little bit more Aunty.
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I think you’ll find that certain other advertising forums are extremely protective of the golden child and his agencies.
There’s an awful lot of people who understand what they’re up to. This seems to be the only place the comments aren’t immediately censored.
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Mg
“I don’t think you guys have the hang of at-arm’s-length commentary yet.”
What a silly thing to say. They’re respected, trained journalists who know what they are doing perfectly well. This medium lends itself to a more opinionated and personal style and this is clearly an opinion piece, starting as it does with the words ‘my view is that’.
As to those complaining about being ‘outed’ when anonycommenting, anyone astroturfing could, and should, be outed. I personally thoroughly enjoy when agencies and corporates leave inane comments on my blog attempting to remedy the situation without being honest enough to say they have a vested interest in the debate.
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This is depressing. Simply because I had no idea that Droga5 would do something that seems completely immoral, specifically setting out to deceive people on Million.
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note to blogger types – want to drive traffic? bash droga5, mention twitter and traditional ad industry types ignorance of it, or even better do both and watch comments and pageviews skyrocket.
tim – you know how to get people talking.
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David Droga was speaking at a Brandkarma workshop in Cannes yesterday about his various cause campaigns like Tap Project and the difference they’ve made. If it’s true what Anonymous 76 says then that’s a terrible shame. Seek comment from Droga perhaps?
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Peace to you @Anonymous 7.22.
I am keen to hear about the ongoing success of the Unicef Tap project. No waiters I have asked in NY had ever even heard of it..
I also wonder if Unicef ever entered Cannes with the brilliant idea of putting “change for good” envelopes on airplanes.
No? Thought not.
Maybe that idea was purely done to raise funds for UNICEF, and not win prizes.
Just saying.
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Firstly, go here: http://www.droga5.com
Watch the million video.
Listen to the black voiceover, filled with hope. Watch the kids. ‘Attendance is up’ says an excited teacher.
Then go here: http://www.millionnyc.com
This is the website. Last updated, as far as I can tell in April 2009.
This bit’s telling too. You’ll find it hidden away on the site.
“The Million was implemented in the spring of 2008 as a pilot program in a few
select NYC public schools. The Million program is not currently operational.”
Titanium Lion. Cannes. Job done. Pull the project.
On to the next one.
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case study videos are the new scam. it’s an art, but it’s also an embarrassment. you shouldn’t have to watch a 3 minute video to understand an idea.
cannes is about creative, polished ideas. not effectiveness. same goes for most creative awards.
another thing that bothers me about cannes is that the categories are completely lost. people only see “gold lion – direct” and never see what the actual category was.
but i have to agree with the “hate the playa, not the game” bit. cannes is in the business of making money.
but also, who cares?
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i mean “don’t hate the playa, hate the game”
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@annoyed … well sleuthed.
If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard “but it’s all about the big idea” … well I too would have a million.
Yes it was a big idea. Yes it was a case video that was superbly crafted.
Yes the programme was suspended within months of its launch.
Clearly Cannes is all about the big idea and the selling of that idea. Advertising on the other hand is (or should be) about selling the clients product, service or brand.
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Tim you need to contact David Droga to clear these case studies up.
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Someone think of the children
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You could always, you know, call one of the schools involved – they’re all listed on the website.
See just how long the project took, and see how they felt when the project was stopped.
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Notice to all Expert Digital Social Interactive Wonderboys.
Put up or shut up.
This year, 1 bronze in Cyber, D5.
Do better, put you name to it and then be critical. Until then, get over yourselves and back to work.
Cyber is a wide open category generally untouched by the excellence of TV and print. Apply some great thinking and strategy, add some excellent craft and relevant use of media and we’ll clean up.
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Tim would be too scared to speak to Dave Droga – especially with that new combover.
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Well, an awful lot of us here have won Lions with work that worked.
The wonderful thing about the hype video is that is very easily covers up work that doesn’t.
It’s scam, just scam with a nice video.
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…. historically in print, direct or media maybe. Lately in Promo.
TV, not really, cyber nope.
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I remember the initial campaign and the link to a Flash website. If you are a client and wish to use an agency to help you with a digital campaign; here is a little helping hint for you:
Check an agencies website and if it is a ‘skip intro’ Flash website – be very very wary…
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Boring Campaign I don’t care what a bunch of peope in LA tweet about.
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Interesting discrepancy in the numbers:
Video cites 116,663 visitors to the website in three weeks;
Award entry says 67,000 visitors/ 55,000 unique visitors/175,000 page views.
That’s quite a difference… are figures self reported?
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IAB? Pffft! That’s like the logies.
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In response to the people asking about sales lift/client results (Andrew) and the campaign’s effectiveness as PR.. I believe it did work overall as a campaign to raise awareness of V Australia’s introduction of it’s LA – Sydney service.
I must admit while I never liked the use of social media in this campaign – it did use it purely as a gimmick it did attract a fair bit of attention. Enough so that the the servers used to initially host it were unable to cope with unexpected traffic at various stages – which was entirely re-engineered for the second phase (bringing 3 Americans to Sydney to tweet, exactly the same campaign but targeted at the US audience).
[Disclaimer: I was a freelance developer working for a digital agency contracted by Droga5 to do the technical implementation behind this campaign]
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In response to Skippy’s comment:
“I remember the initial campaign and the link to a Flash website. If you are a client and wish to use an agency to help you with a digital campaign; here is a little helping hint for you: Check an agencies website and if it is a ’skip intro’ Flash website – be very very wary…”
While the digital agency who did the implementation may have a flash based website now, they didn’t at the time of the campaign (August ’09 from memory). The flash site the campaign used and the way it worked was entirely driven by the creatives at Droga5 behind the campaign.
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