Chapter 3.2: "Video goes viral" Cadbury's Gorilla & Analysis

Welcome back, Still talking about viral videos!
Before we start, let's look at the photos below and refresh our memory of the videos!!

Yes! It's the viral marketing campaign by Cadbury's Gorilla. Let's look at the video now and also the numbers related to this marketing campaign!

• The 90-second advertisement  
• 500,000 page views in YouTube for the first week 
• Shown in 850 cinemas across Canada in November 2007
• 70 Facebook groups appreciating the ad have been set up
• Cadbury reported that sales of Dairy Milk had increased 9% from the same period in 2006

The numbers speak for themselves, the marketing campaign was very successful. But when we compare with the Burger King Freakout campaign, it was not as remarkable as the Burger King's one in terms of the boosting of sales. Why?

In terms of advertising strategies, we can analyse both of the advertisements in different aspects. 

The first one is whether the advertisement is attractive? The Burger King advertisement makes use of the hidden cameras and show the angers of customers, in this way audience find it hilarious and interesting for looking into others' reaction. However for the Cadbury's Gorilla, it makes use of the intertextuality elements. The Gorilla in Cadbury's advertisement is the main character from the Planet of the Apes (2001 film). It is more remarkable to the audience as most of them have seen the movie before. So that makes it more interesting to watch the advertisement, Gorilla in the advertisement is cool and funny, unlike the one in Planet of the Apes which is fierce and horrible. This makes it interesting for the audience to share on Facebook and makes it viral in the end. 

The second aspect is the recall of the brand name, for burger king one, the words "Whooper" and "Burger King" are always mentioned in the advertisement. Hence, the recall of the brand - Burger King is quite well done for this advertisement. 

While for the Cadbury's one, you can only see the brand name from the start and till the end of the advertisement. Most people only recall the Gorilla and its relations with the 2001 movie Planet of the Apes. When audience cannot recall the brand, no matter how good the call to action part is done, this can hardly push the audience to purchase the product. This is one of the reasons why Cadbury's advertisement is not too successful for boosting the sales. 

The last aspect is comparison with other brands. For Whooper Freakout two, Whooper burger is replaced by its competitors Wendy's and McDonald's burgers. But people refuse to have other brands instead of Whooper burgers. This makes Whooper more stands out for its importance to the audience. For Cadbury's one, no comparison with other brands, no mentioning of the brand throughout the advertisement either. 

Of course, this is only a very general analysis by observation, a detailed analysis included statistics, recorded reaction of audience and other analysis. 

I hope this gives you a brief idea of how viral marketing works nowadays! 

Thanks for reading! See you next time 

Jennie <3

Read More

Chapter 3.1: "Video goes viral" - Burger King Marketing Campaigns

(Disclaimer) Many people asked if the chapters are separated topics. To make it clear, for example, chapter 2.1 and 2.2 are of the same topic. Frankly speaking, for online communication, long posts do not work well. That is why I deliberately cut them into several posts. So feel free to read all the posts of one topic or just choose the one you are interested in. 

This week, we are going to talk about some videos that go viral in human history. During the class, I have shown a video about the Whooper Freakout but I do not have much time to explain the whole campaign in front of the class.
This is actually a marketing campaign of Burger King during 2007 - 2009. It may seems a bit outdated to talk about it in 2012 but it's not. The marketing campaign was very successful in terms of brand building, numerous promotions and the boost in sales. 

According to Advertising Age, The campaign website, WhopperFreakout.com, got 250,000 unique visitors in December 2007. Consumer-generated YouTube imitations were numerous. More important, the work also drove double-digit sales for the Whopper sandwich.

It works so well, not only people shared the above video crazily. People also created their own parodies responding to the Whooper Freakout commercial.
Generated numerous media attention, Burger King was trying to prove people do not realize how much they like something unless it is taken away from them.
It worked so well, the sales of Whooper raised but even so the campaign was not over.

In 2009, after the Whooper Freakout Campaign is ended. The new campaign called the Whopper Sacrifice - Would you delete ten friends for a Whooper?
This seems very controversial but new, Facebook is part of the campaign as well this time. People are all trying to delete their friends before others delete them. Ten friends for a burger, it was equally successful! Check the case study of the video below!

I will continue to talk about other examples for viral marketing :D

stay tuned and I will see you guys next time!

Jennie <3

Read More

Chapter 2.2: "The social network" Facebook

Good Afternoon Readers! Moving on to the part 2 of this topic.
You may first take a look at the picture below.

You can see from the above conversation involved three people, that is me, friend A and friend B. While friend A and friend B do not know each other, friend A started asking if the food in the picture tastes good. I used the word "dun" which mean do not in formal written form of English. When I am using the online media or the social network, I would use online slang and also short forms of the words.
Incorporated with smiley inside the conversation.

After awhile, ten minutes after friend A commented on this post, friend B joined the conversation by giving his knowledge of Japanese words and create new meaning to interpret the food.

Towards the second last post of this conversation, friend A uses hyperlink to direct us to YouTube, The clip is about the same product in the picture, the local Japanese make the marshmallow and videotaped the process of making it.

In this case, Facebook really changes our way of thinking. We do not only rely on our own knowledge (for instance, my friend's knowledge in Japanese) but also make use of some external references (The YouTube link) to create new meaning.
After she posted this YouTube link, I went on YouTube and watch it, so after this my comment was directing back to the YouTube video which makes others difficult to understand if they haven't take a look at the video. 

The good thing about Facebook is to share our life and views without difficulties, we can tag our friends to tell them what happening now! We can also contribute to the conversation in real time.

The only concern is we can edit and delete the comments all the time. If we want to use parts of the conversation as a prove or show it to friends, we need to do a screenshot to "preserve" the evidence. Facebook also leaves evidence about when you get on Facebook, for example friends see you commenting on a post but not replying in the inbox. That creates problem of trust in the virtual world which is very different from the communicative approach in real life. Because of the causal way of talking on Facebook, we care less about grammar and the syntax of English that leads to deterioration of English level in written form.

Next time I am going to talk about something new! Stay tuned and subscribe to my blog! Thanks a lot for reading, see you next time!

Wait!Before you go, I would like you all to listen to this song!! Enjoy <3

Jen x

Read More

Chapter 2.1: "The social network" Facebook

Dear friends,

Thanks for checking the socializing with social media 101!
This week I would like to share something you always use.
It's the social network - Facebook! I am going to introduce in two parts and this is the first one, now take a look at the picture below *a screenshot of my Facebook, names and pictures are changed and replaced due to privacy issues.

(disclaimer) Before I start with this analysis, please do not get me wrong. I have no personal issues with Japan. The ironic expression about Japanese was about the food itself. This post is created over 6 months ago, it should be free from any issues of the disputed islands.

So you can tell this is a layout of Facebook and from the timeline era. The post was about the Japanese candy I purchased, according to the translated version of the text, by mixing the powder with water and the special ingredients. It will become like marshmallow or cotton candy. However it didn't turn out well. So I posted this photo on Facebook and tag 7 friends that purchased with me on that day.

The way of tagging people on Facebook is very user-friendly, so you don't have to tell them to look at your Facebook one by one. It also created a community of us, my photo was shared with my friends on Facebook but since my 7 friends are tagged. Their friends will see this photo and the content as well, this helps us to spread information.

The content of the post is also very person-oriented, what I am trying to say is even the post is open to all of my friends. But the tone of talking and the content carries implied meaning. There are also uses of smileys, capitalized text to emphasize the meaning. The post also carries typo because social network is a very causal platform for us to communicate. Unlike doing assignments and writing an academic essays. The content itself is more important than the grammar.

The inclusion of photo not only help us to understand the content more, it is also a prove of buying the products. Due to the uncertainties on the internet, it created trust problem, sometimes people tend to look for evidence more on the internet than in real life.

That's it for part 1, please stay tuned for part 2!
Have a good night!

Jen x 

Read More

Chapter 1.1: My digital life

So here we go, chapter one!

An opening, also a very brief idea about my digital life. Who I am is not very important in this blog. My background maybe very similar to yours. I am a student studying English at the moment, at the same time I am very interested in the new media. This is also the main reason why I took the course "writing for the new media" as some of you know already this is not a required core course. What I think I can learn from this course is the chance to experience the new media and compare the differences between new media and the traditional type of media. Also, I am currently working on the projects related to new media, I want to work and learn at the same time as to enhance knowledge from both sides.

Just like most of you, I make use of the new media frequently. Facebook, Twitter, google+, MySpace (I seem a bit old for this), foursquare, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Blogger.... There are just too many.

I have a different view for using these social media, there are different affordances and constraints for each genre. People use it because it means something to them. For example, Facebook, I do not use internet to grab attention. But for some people, they get on Facebook just to see how many "likes" and comments they could get! I am not saying using Facebook is bad, I just see Facebook differently and I actually like using Facebook. One easy example is, you can make use of Facebook for group projects meeting, exchange folders and opinion through Facebook. Or there is a new function from google plus called the "hangouts" which obviously has the video conferencing functions that allows us to have business meeting. Social media plays a very important role in society, it's not only for fun anymore, it is now approaching to its best business model.

It's wonderful day! I hope everyone will have a good night! (:

Jennie <3

Come and visit one of my favorite local sites - HK Magazine

Read More

It's getting started(:

Welcome everyone. I believe most of you are the netizens' generation, that's what guided you here.
Let me guess something I know about you:

1. You make use of Internet everyday.
2. You have accounts on facebook, twitter and adding to a list.
3. You share your photos and your thoughts online sometimes.
4. You do not know the power of social media yet, or let say how to make good use of it


Social Media is a heated topic. Just like how my blog is titled "Socializing with the social media 101".

I will share some of the experiences and examples of how to you can make good use of social media.

Read More