The demise of Toyota’s werewolf?
It may be time to stop the contest for the great Toyota Yaris live social media pitch.
Unless the competing agencies have some special tricks up their sleeves, they may just have been beaten with the latest twist in the tale of An American Werewolf in Yaris from Host / One Green Bean.
Followers of his tweets will be aware that Wolfy’s last message yesterday was somewhat abrupt: “bleeding from the chest forgive her I don’t w”.
Fair to say that the video which has just been posted has a twist that Dr Mumbo didn’t see coming. So as not to spoil it, he won’t mention it just yet. Take a look:
(Declaration of interest: Wolfy gave Dr Mumbo a lift to the Opera House the other day)
Ahh geeze *slaps face*
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that was great! Where did the video go?
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video removed.
what a twist! 😉
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Seriously? Aligning a brand with a known liar and attention whore who was nothing but a one note joke, a blip on the gimmick radar who’s “15 minutes of fame” have long since faded? SERIOUSLY? and your write “they may just have been beaten”?
I couldn’t think of anything lamer if I tried! … well maybe if they got the “where’s the beef” granny, or got that androgynous Brittany loving hack to ask people to “LEAVE THE YARRIS WAREWOLF ALOOONE!!!” while crying in a closet.
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Dammit – sorry about that. As i tweeted it, they took it down for some kind of technical glitch.
Video’ll go up again in half an hour or so I gather.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Video not working anymore – arrrrgh suspense!
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Way to ruin the surprise Ray
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Can’t see the video… talk about bad timing…
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Hi anonymous,
I’ve edited Ray’s comment for that reason.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hey “Anonymous” Why even read commentary about something you haven’t seen if you’re worried about “spoilers”? seems pretty dumb to not expect discussion about what was reported in an area designed for precisely that purpose.
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I’d actually seen it Ray but others might not have been so lucky. No need to get cranky now fella
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Actually YouTube’s down for scheduled maintenance and doesn’t seem to be allowing uploads at present – I reckon it could be while before the video is back up.
My handy YouTube tip – unless you’re really, really sure you want to delete a video don’t do so, just chance the privacy setting….
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Thanks Tim – we’re doing everything we can to get this up asap, sorry!
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Ridiculous and fun. Really nice end to it I thought. Turning it into a bit of a story makes it more than just a conversation, and therefore more engaging. Neat.
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i’ve spoken to many people who aren’t in the industry and they haven’t even heard of these campaigns. Once again proves that PR is primarily written for the benefit of the media / marketing industry and NO relevance for Joe Public
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Talk about jumping the gun hey, this has now been released on B&T as well with a Vimeo link which says the video is in the queue waiting for conversion??! http://vimeo.com/7911470
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Yep, no relevance. A $15,000 idea pitch, which was clearly designed to show what kind of ideas the different agencies would use, had little relevance to Joe Public. Shocking.
Obviously none of them were likely to be a huge boost to sales on their own – but can we wait to see whichever agency does win does with the account before decrying public engagement.
Besides, despite what certain social media experts would like to tell you, not all social media experiences needs to be ongoing, long term conversations. Yes, that’s how the brand itself should behave, but individual project can just be one off, fun experiments.
Everyone I know, including myself, who had a ride with Wolfy, watched the Hot House’s lego video or had a look at the entries in Saatchi & Saatchi’s film comp at least enjoyed themselves for awhile.
Yes, it was the social media equivalent of a one night stand – but not everyone is looking to settle down with every brand.
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“makes it more than just a conversation, and therefore more engaging. Neat.”
What?
Dave, all this really shows is that some PR agencies still have little clue, and the only way they can think of to “go viral” is not to think creativity or be original but to simply copy, steal or repeat stuff that has ALREADY BEEN DONE and got popular/viral on it’s own, and doing so well after the shine has faded and gone from the original phenomenon.
All there is to see here is clear desperation and trying to trade on a has-been meme becasue the original plan gained so little traction.
I KNOW, they should have “the Fonz” jump the yarris on a motorbike in the followup!
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Video now live again.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
@Warlach to be fair we don’t know what Toyota’s brief was to these agencies and I think it is possible to have a social media advertising campaign OR a social media PR campaign OR a social media communications campaign. As long as they work towards the objectives of an overall social media strategy and you don’t expect the outcomes for the three different campaigns to be the same. Advertising, PR and comms have all worked together before the web got social, why not after?
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Fair point, Ray. Could you post a link to your last viral work? Sounds like you really know how it works.
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@Ray if the fonz jumps the car on a bike, I’ll forward that shiz on for sure!
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Dave, I see what you’re trying to do… and it’s lame. you’re falling into the old trap of the stupidest of internet counterarguments, “well if you’re so clever why haven’t YOU done better?”
I can’t tap-dance, but that doesn’t automatically mean I can’t easily tell when someone else is shit at it too. and neither of those facts means I don’t understand what it takes to be considered good at tap-dancing.
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Oh I don’t know about that Ray. You should try it. I’m sure you’d be an great tap dancer.
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again with the assumptions Dave, what makes you think I haven’t tried? 😉
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Ray, I don’t give a monkey’s whether you can tap dance or do great viral. Kind of irrelevant, as you point out. I would be interested in your idea of what has been good viral recently, though.
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I notice on youtube they’ve gone ahead and lied about their content by using tags like new moon, twilight, eclipse, true blood and vampires, none of which are descriptive of the content at all, and all of which are just trying to SCAM hits from people trying to search for content RELEVANT to those terms.
It’s crap like this that makes people’s lives HARDER when they actually try to find content they WANT, instead we get this kind of dodgy crap trying to SCAM people into watching.
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Why you decided to use that chk chk boom idiot is beyond me – she’s racist among many other things. Is that the Yaris demo?
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Ray you are funny but I kind of agree – interested to know how many regular people ie not media agency staff are Facebook friends/fans of Werewolf in Yaris.
Have there been any ‘regular person’ entries in Saatchi’s Clever film comp?
I can’t remember the other 2 ideas put forward – is that because they were aimed at the general public?
Vox pops in Pitt Street Mall to determine the winner I say.
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Candy, don’t know about the OGB fans, but a quick glance at the ol google Insights suggests there’s been a tiny uplift in ‘Yaris’ and ‘Toyota Yaris’ searches that coincides with the pitch period. the keywords don’t look pitch related. Maybe this all did have a tiny impact on Joe Public.
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Ray I noticed that the bootboxing vid used keywords from the stop motion campaign for their tags – underhanded spammy tactics or a fair SEO fight?
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Oh dear. This wolf shit is bad and has been done before.
There’s a thing called AWARD school, also RMIT and D&aD school.
Try it. Seriously.
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