The essential for any social media campaign: a tattoo
In a move that belongs in the you-couldn’t-make-it-up category, the character at the centre of a social media campaign has had a tattoo on camera as part of the project.
As Mumbrella reported a fortnight ago, this coming Monday Aussie Home Loans mortgage broker Duane Brown will make his first parachute jump.
The stunt is an activation project around the TVC for the brand where a freefalling broker promises that wherever he lands he can save customers in Australia money. The digital campaign run by Amnesia Razorfish involves YouTube updates, along with a Facebook page and updates on Flickr and Twitter.
And in a move that will raise eyebrows for anyone who remembers the launch of Tourism Queensland’s best job in the world promotion, photos have been uploaded onto the duanejumps Flickr photostream of him getting tattoos of his children’s names ahead of the jump.
The Tourism Queensland tattoo turned out to be fake, with the girl in the video working at agency Cummins Nitro.
But Ian Lyons of Amnesia Razorfish insisted that in Aussie’s case, the pictures are genuine. He told Mumbrella: “The first we knew was when someone called him and he was getting them done at the time. He did it off his own bat. He took these on his camera phone. Take a look at the photos. That’s what a tattoo really looks like.”
However, with just the weekend until the launch, the idea has so far failed to ignite the social media landscape. For the most part, the videos on YouTube have averaged about 200 views each.
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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Half the Aussie population seems to have a tattoo – half of those were probably either done under influence of some sort of substance, influeneced by peer pressure or were just generally ill-conceived – I guess the reason the above has failed to ignite people’s imagination is that getting a tattoo under weird circumstances is pretty ho-hum, so no-one gives a crap if you get a tattoo, particularly if you’re some random dude who works for a bank / mortgage house.
Set the dude on fire while he’s getting tattooed with a BIC ballpoint pen while doing time in Longbay Jail… that’ll get people watching.
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To me this campaign felt like a did when I first read about it. Which is surprising because the guys behind it are very intelligent.
I don’t really care if some guy jumps out a plane just to prove he can save some poor mortgagee 5c. It is substantially different to the best job in the world where it had instant emotional spark. The chic getting a tattoo just jump started it.
The centre of the best job campaign was about the individual, the center of this campaign is an advert about finance, one of the most boring topics, second maybe to the price of wheat.
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*Posting comments from an iPhone results in bonus spelling mistakes.
Previous comment meant to start ‘campaign felt like a dud’ not ‘did’ 🙂
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Mortgage Broker goes skydiving.
Mortgage Broker gets tattoo.
Boring.
Ruby Rose goes skydiving.
Ruby Rose gets tattoo.
Cool. Kinda sexy too.
We live in a celebrity obsessed culture.
Not a balding, slightly overweight Mortgage Broker obsessed culture.
Now that Ruby Rose no longer has commitments to her Twitter account, perhaps she could take up social media spruiking for Aussie Home Loans?
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The reason this has failed to take off within the social media circle, is because no one could give two shits about some dude from Aussie getting a tattoo. They’ve gone from an admirable attempt at experimental marketing to embarrassment. They’re trying to make a social media hero out of Duane by pushing him out of a plane to spruik Aussie’s competitive home loans, and now Duane’s getting a tattoo… what next, Duane on youtube eating a sandwich? that’s badass.
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Iain here, I’m the CD on this job for Aussie, and happy to take all feedback, good/bad/ugly.
Quickly in advance, – Duane’s tattoo is not a stunt or agency idea. He just happened to do it. In fact, there was no script to any of this, we just let it play it’s course. eg: Aussie chose Duane, not us.
So anyone looking for sexy advertising sizzle and judge by zillions of viewers flocking to this campaign, I am happy to disappoint! …and I mean that in the nicest way, because this was simply not our objective, not was this a big budget campaign as people are probably thinking, in fact the whole thing happened end to end in three weeks and was very organic.
I realise there is a little more attention from adland on this (maybe because it is labelled as a social media campaign), but I would encourage people not to make hasty judgments without understanding what our brief was, and how we are measuring success. Social is very different platform and beast to traditional channels/campaigns both how we design engage and measure. We look at quality of lead and conversion, and this does not always involve big numbers.
Bear in mind, we inherited the Aussie parachuting mortgage broker idea from Saatchi’s. Not a problem though – no, it may not be sexy, but it still works for what we were briefed to do (v. hastily) which was create a social extension of the Saatchis idea.
It’s important not mix the terms ‘social media’ and ‘viral’. This was NOT a VIRAL campaign, it is a “social” campaign. Social is not necessarily about creating reach and frequency or attracting zillions of people. IMHO it is certainly not about creating pseudo entertainment.
In this case ‘Social’ is also about creating honest, authentic connections for those that wish to engage. We have taken care to attract people to this campaign (through targeted methods, not spray and pray media etc) for whom Duane will have much more meaning and relevance. In this case the numbers and the targets are very specific.
Social is a new concept to most brands and I think that Aussie have made huge steps with this campaign and the learnings are already immense. I would ask everyone out there… How many other brands have been brave enough to open up and allow a staff member to represent their brand in this way??? Duane has been himself from day one as we asked. Warts and all – and that’s what we asked him to do. Tattoos – all his own doing. Unprompted, unscripted. That to me is good and very honest use of social.
I think the meaning of Duane will become more clear in the coming months as the brand evolves – something I am obviously can’t talk about yet. Meantime I hope you will have a little patience as social is a commitment, not just a campaign and there is more to come.
Remember, Duane is on Twitter for good, (not for two weeks), so please give him a little respect – this is a real guy trying real hard to do a good job for his company, and we have not briefed him to try make Amnesia look clever to other agencies! He is who he is, and we’ll take what comes 😉
Thanks 🙂
eunmac
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And just as importantly, iain: How did the jump go today?
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I think this bears repeating, over and over and over again;
“…I would encourage people not to make hasty judgments without understanding what our brief was, and how we are measuring success.”
Exactly!
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@katie harris
I totally agree, if you don’t know the outcome you can’t analyse it’s success. I’ve been a believer of this for a long time, however, we & everyone seems to think they can be a critic. This is no unique case.
@Eunmac (Ian)
I can relate to the difficulty in extending a traditional campaign into ‘social’ or ‘digital’ channels when the idea doesn’t work, sometimes we have to do it, but ideally we push back and change the idea or don’t do it at all. All that considered, I don’t know your long term strategy & objectives, so it’s hard to criticise.
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