(Credit: Somebody Else's Phone)
If you found somebody else's phone, would you look through it? That's a rhetorical question. Of course! Your phone is your life, at least if you're under 25, and there's nothing more interesting than the "lives of others."
The advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy London translated the idea of "cellular oversharing" into a much gushed-about ad campaign for Nokia. "Somebody Else's Phone" depicts the lives of three twentysomethings through their text messages, multimedia messaging service, and pictures, and it essentially creates a new story format: the phone novel.
Fusing scripted content with real-life audience interaction, the campaign runs in 10 different languages, following the characters' evolving storylines through a 24-7 feed of content, across three time zones, over 6 weeks.
Nice idea, though the blog of marketing firm Luon comments, "Sometimes it feels a bit like trying too hard. The advertising-tries-to-be-socially-smart thing, where it's not clear what is real and what is fake."
But that's exactly the point. Fake authenticity--I've already written about "Mad Men" on Twitter in this context--is a burgeoning trend. Fake is fine, as long as it feels real. We'll see more of it in 2009.
(Credit:
Textually)
"Be the first to know whom Barack picks as his running mate," had been the campaign's promise. The only problem: Those who had signed up to be the first to know, were not the first to know. About three hours before the Obama campaign deployed their SMS blast, John King of CNN broke the news, leaked from "Democratic sources." The "artificial exclusivity" of one-to-one marketing was undercut by the familiar means of traditional broadcasting. The thunder of Web 2.0 campaigning was stolen by old-school TV news coverage. The utterly disciplined Obama campaign seemed to have lost control for a moment and experienced one of its rare glitches. The "eventization" of news -- a social media paradigm so masterfully applied by the Obama camp -- was "uneventized" by CNN's preemptive strike. CNN suspended the suspense. What was supposed to be gratifying instantification - "all for this one moment," as Lufthansa's advertising slogan goes, collectively shared -- became a shallow confirmation email devoid of any newsworthiness.
What this tells us: you gotta be faster! "Now is Gone," Brian Solis called his book about PR in the age of social media. Indeed. If CNN breaks tomorrow's news, you have to release yours yesterday.
Also read Tomi T. Ahonen's analysis including a great overview of SMS usage in the US.
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