ZN

REMIXit offered a unique experience that enabled TEDx-sters to build on the inspiring talks they saw at TEDxBrussels and share them with the community for great prizes. TEDxBrussels is pleased to announce that, after careful deliberation, the juries have finally delivered their verdicts! You can find the list of winners in the website of REMIXit.eu

Thank you to all TEDx-sters for your contributions, sharing and votes. The REMIXit campaign was a big success thanks to you! Philip Weiss, Chief Hyperthinking, said “It was great to see the creativity and insights that simple ideas can bring to life. Creativity comes in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes the best ideas are simply a matter of looking at the same things from a different perspective… The world needs hyperthinkers, and there is hope, because there are plenty around at TEDxBrussels.”

Thank you to TEDxBrussels, Accenture, SWIFT, ZN, Evernote and Getyoo for their support and help in making this project possible.

The REMIXit campaign represents a subtle shift in the philosophy of “sharing ideas” to doing them. It freed TEDx-sters from the constraints of being spectators and enabled them to become participants and share their ideas. Like Philippe Ruttens, Marketing and Communications Manager at Accenture BeLux, who added “Accenture is pleased to have co-launched the REMIXit contest to boost the creation and combination of ideas and innovations in Belgium,” we look forward to taking this a step further next year and seeing how much more creative and innovative people can be!

We are looking forward to seeing what REMIXit will bring to the table next year.

Greenpeace's Nestle Killer campaign logo

From time to time, we come across a story that demonstrates that a worst case scenario can come to life. Nestle is currently going through just that ( http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/social-crm/nestle-debacle-demonstrates-common-social-media-misunderstandings/105610).

The story is that they launched a facebook group which is a general ‘corporate’ one – if you read the information page, it talks about Nestlé, and its Mission is ‘Good Life, Good Food’.

The group has over 93 000 members, so clearly has attracted many people.

As the communication team was getting excited about the success of this open engagement strategy something went badly wrong.

Greenpeace decided to launch a campaign against Nestle called Nestlè Killer – Give the Orang-utan a break, driven from the main UK site: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/. The greenpeace campaign has all the marks of a social media campaign (including a truly gross video – do not watch this before eating!).

But here comes the twist. The greenpeace campaign gradually started to take over the Nestlé facebook group, putting comments, pictures and activating the campaign using the very platform Nestlè had build to show it’s customers how it was delivering ‘Good Life, Good Food’. The result is that currently the site is dominated by posts by anti-Nestlé campaigners. The company is struggling to find the appropriate response – first by deleting comments, then confronting the campaigners and finally apologies and letting all the comments stand. The spirit is one of open and and learning – but it feels a lot like a catastrophic situation out of which there is no easy way out. As this is still unfolding it will be fascinating to observe how this plays out.

Nestle Facebook Fan Page: What should Nestlé do now?

The question is: what should Nestlé do now? Delete? Engage? Change country? Flee the country? They have already said that they had stopped giving business to one the companies that was responsible for the deforestation that is leading to the Orang-utan being threatened.

A video worthwhile watching: Ikea’s viral facebook campaign that was solely based on existing facebook applications:

From time to time a strange discussion takes place with one of our clients, prospects or someone I meet at a party.  In the later case I was discussing what a viral marketing campaign was and whether it could actually be commissioned by a client.  The scary answer by inexperienced (or dishonest?) marketing agencies is horribly consistent: let’s do a one minute video – it will be funny and maybe a bit outrageous and as a result we will have ourselves a viral marketing campaign.

This kind of answer makes me sad and a little angry.  I must also admit that I was once involved in a project like this and had to fight with the ‘advertising people’ about the fact that a funny video alone simply would not do it.

Recently Seth Godin, the man who ‘owns’ the concept of viral marketing (calling it ‘ideavirus) has revisited the subject on his blog.  He wrote a post entitled ‘what is viral marketing’ which is a great recap of the meaning of the concept.

He summed up my feelings better than I could:

The reason for this post is that viral marketing is getting a bad name, largely from clueless marketing agencies and clueless marketers. Here’s what they do: they get a lame product, or a semi-lame product, and they don’t have enough time or money to run a nationwide ad campaign. So, instead, they slap some goofy viral thing on top of it and wait for it to spread. And if it doesn’t spread, they create a faux controversy or engage a PR firm or some bloggers and then it still doesn’t work.

My word of advice next time the topic comes up:

1) You can never predict whether a campaign or video will go viral

2) The real question is why do you want something to go viral and what you are trying to accomplish: the answer to this is often that you want to get your message out and get a discussion going on a topic or raise awareness of some issue.  Instead of trying to create a viral marketing video, why don’t you concentrate on doing just that?

3) Stop using the word ‘viral’ – if you want traffic, say you want traffic, if you want people to forward the message, say that too.  Nobody wants viral marketing for its own sake – and the most successful viral marketing video were accidental (ask the Star Wars kid).

I want to end this with another quote from Seth Godin’s post:

Something being viral is not, in an of itself, viral marketing. Who cares that 32,000,000 people saw your stupid video? It didn’t market you or your business in a tangible, useful way.

Marketers are obsessed with free media, and, as is often the case, we blow it in our rush to get our share. We create content that is hampered or selfish or boring. Or we create something completely viral that doesn’t do any marketing at all.