socialmediocrity

I was recently sent the tipp-ex digital campaign by a non-digital friend of mine – a clear sign that either I am no longer at the bleeding edge (anyone who knows me, this is your cue to comment in a light-hearted manner here), or this type of thing has gone, how do you say, mainstream?

http://www.youtube.com/tippexperience

A nice enough campaign, but a distinctly similar experience in the main to the subservient chicken, which remains one of my all time favourites. So a decent enough idea, but in no way new or original.

And to execution,  I tried a few things to find that the range of actions / videos available and was disappointed with the 404 error video (and that there’s only one of them), and the frequency with which it appears. The limit on the actions that have been shot is too tight, and the way the word connection occurs is light-weight too. “Plays Twister With” gives me a shot of RoShamBo being played, “shears” gives me nothing, “races” gives me nothing – in fact about half of my suggestions failed to deliver a result.

And what occurred to me most of all by the end of it is that as a campaign, by the end of it, all I actually remembered was the bear and hunter. The product or brand it was meant to be promoting is lost almost immediately as at no point after the intro video does the product itself feature. Burger King’s (TM)  Subservient Chicken was, in my opinion, much better executed and being presented in the guise of a web cam, represented a far better creative treatment.

What is a real shame is that I can’t forward links to the phrases or words that I have used to my friends, so that they can see how clever I am, or that I have “discovered” a funnier, naughtier, clever clip included in the campaign – instead anything I share is back to the top end of the campaign – which really counts against it as far as “social” is concerned.

Of course, the reason for spoofing the YouTube setting is no doubt to somehow claim this is another great success for “social” marketing. I’m old enough to remember when YouTube was the platform of choice for viral marketeers, but something tells me  history will record this as a great triumph for social marketing.