Was the V Australia Twitter campaign stupid? Maybe. Sometimes that’s what it takes
On Wednesday, Mumbrella posted an opinion piece questioning whether Droga 5’s V Australia Twitter campaign deserved to win at the Cannes Direct Lions. Juror Erik Ingvoldstad has accepted our invitation to respond.
I believe the jury discussed this as an interesting way of engaging the consumer and getting publicity.
The tweets themselves were less interesting. I did not follow the account, but I still knew exactly what the campaign was about.
During the judging, I personally spoke up about the spam characteristics of tweeting every minute, but then I don’t believe people would follow this tweet stream to hear about what these guys actually did. It was more the fact that they found a way to get talked about.
Twitter is not a great marketing channel, in fact all of us who use it regularly recognise the the fact that most marketing attempts have created as much negativity as positivity (like Habitat, and even the much praised I Spy Levi’s campaign – really all they did was give away free jeans).
But this is still uncharted territory, and I for one give kudos to agencies and marketers who are willing to try new things to get their message across.
The jury in general recognised work that worked on a multitude of levels, and the V Australia campaign one certainly did.
Is it stupid? Maybe, but sometimes that’s what drives interest from the general public and the general media.
As the awesome Diesel campaign (that just won at Cannes in the Outdoor category) says: Smart Critiques. Stupid Creates.
- Erik Ingvoldstad is Regional Creative Director – Asia Pacific & Executive Creative Director – Singapore for MRM Worldwide. He is on Twitter as @ingvoldSTAR.
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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topics
airline
Cannes Lions
Diesel
Direct Lions
Droga 5
Habitat
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V Australia
So V is stupid and Diesel is awesome/? What are you saying bud?
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Good on the guy for responding, gives a clear picture of where they are coming from…
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If this is the level of judging at Cannes then they should be renamed the Muppet awards. On one hand Erik you say that twitter is not a good marketing channel but this is contradicted by an an earlier comment of how this strategy is an interesting way of engaging the consumer and getting publicity. More worrying is the fact that the tweets themselves were deemed less interesting, the tweets are the engagement mechanism for the campaign, if its not engaging then surely its a huge Fail as opposed to an award winning campaign. A campaign can’t be an interesting way to engage if the engagement itself is weak.
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So it was good because it engaged the consumer and generated publicity. Ok, how did it engage the consumer? I can’t see evidence.
Yes, it generated publicity.
Kudos was also given for doing something new, apparently.
So the formula to win a lion is:
1. Do something a bit new.
2. Generates some publicity.
3. Create awesome video
4. Win lion
Cool!
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Experimentation in social media is not a bad thing. However, it would be good to know how the campaign was being measured – was it simply a brand awareness exercise or was the goal, as I suspect it may be, to bet more bums on Virgin seats? To be an award winning campaign, surely the metrics must come into play. So, how was this campaign evaluated?
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Before this blew up, one of the other judges, Vaughn Davis, bloggged about the judging:
http://vaughndavis.posterous.c.....kened-room
According to that: “The middle question often gets the most discussion, and as results count for 30% of the score in the Direct category, otherwise-good entries often die on this measure. We’ve seen a lot of fluffy results and some very hard to believe ones. When this happens we ask the organisers to call the agency and client who entered the campaign for confirmation – we’ve done this a few times so far on my sub-jury.”
Luckily in this case they’d have just been able to ask Nobby as he was on the jury too.
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A lame reply to Tim’s well researched criticism. A Cannes juror’s arguing skills to defend a decision he has made should be be far more insightful and compelling. Erik lost all cred saying “I don’t believe people would follow this tweet stream to hear about what these guys actually did.” Like saying “I don’t believe people would watch the TVC but it looked good anyway.”
And how come a Twitter-based campaign qualifies for a DM Lion? Would have thought it better classified in the Cannes Cyber section where “experimentation” might be more appropriately judged.
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The sooner Cannes is exposed as a shameless money making joke/piss up in the sun that doesn’t count against your holiday leave, the better.
That said, it’d be more fun swanning around there than sitting here in rainy Oz doing real ads.
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