When millions of eyeballs are on the line it usually takes a pretty hefty budget to make sure you keep them. You better come up with something cool. When you’re messing with a brand that’s beloved with cult-like obsession, you better do something really special… unless (gasp!) you’re not worried about the core that’s gotten you here.
Now, admittedly, I was “on the fence” when I heard SciFi was re-branding to Syfy and still can’t imagine being in that meeting!
Check out the whole slew of creative posted at ProudCreative.com, the agency behind the work.
When I caught The Dirty Blog article revealing the creative behind Syfy’s new campaign I couldn’t help but check it out and it’s very cool! It’s cool enough to cut through the clutter and probably “wow” enough to be memorable but, on the surface, it just doesn’t seem to have that special something to win hearts and minds. At least not those of super sci-fi fan club realm.
An overhaul, not an evolution. At a glance it seems that Syfy is shooting for even bigger audiences than it’s geeky core can give while probably assuming the core will hang in there regardless. The work that’s posted is pretty impressive. There is, however, one odd ID that caught my eye because it looks like they just couldn’t get a purple plasma-like build of the Syfy logo to work.
Can Syfy keep the geeky? I just happened to check Twitter and couldn”t believe it, Syfy was trending! Scanning the tweets you realize pretty quickly that sci-fi fan’s are not impressed with the new look, check out a cross section of Scifi vs Syfy tweets at here > Scifi vs Syfy: Twitter Attacks . If you look even closer perhaps you’ll see the opportunity I saw to give that core audience their own online community. While the uproar is pretty much hatred for change, there’s still a love for the content in spite of Wrestling (as many comments show) and a large geeky audience to drive over to a new online resource for the “SciFi” crowd. So the question is, will Syfy step up and keep the geeky? Let me know your thoughts in the comments! What about you? Love it or hate it? Please comment!
My tweet went something like this when I heard about the change:
richardbouchez: Scifi changing SYFY, this is either ridiculous or genius! Glad I wasn’t in that meeting!
Whether you’re on Twitter of not, now there’s stuff for your Twitter addicted friends, family and coworkers at www.TwitterFunny.com. These designs will crack up the “tweeple” (people on Twitter) you meet and get questionable looks from everyone else.
Dark shirts display tweet inspired phrases like “ru following me?” among others. There’s even a customizable design, so you can add your own twitter name or someone else’s for a “super geek” style gift.
Due to their popularity the small business articles I’ve been posting over the last month are evolving. Originally (and still) posted on www.RABpromo.com, the series “Your Business Beyond Email: Basic Multimedia Marketing” is having it’s chapters broken out into individual articles and polished up their new home www.InovediaMarketing.com, a new marketing resource for advice, tips and discussion. Articles posted so far include: “How to” and Demonstrational Video Tips & Tricks, Using Customers as Spokespeople, Choosing a Videographer, Connecting With Customers: Marketing Tips and 6 Random Rules for Owning a Website. These and new articles will be hosted on InovediaMarketing.com. Where I hope you will help me create a new, more comprehensive “NEW MARKETING” resource for small businesses.
“My intent is to get you thinking about more creatively engaging your customers and perhaps remove some of the new media marketing mystique. My goal is to get you beyond advertising using conversational marketing. -Richard”
WHY NOW? In a time when the economy is tanking, friends and colleagues who build websites are busier than ever. Makes sense, I guess, as the web offers small businesses (all businesses really) cost effective ways to grow. Unfortunately, what many small business owners don’t see are the endless possibilities beyond the website and how they can use the web to start very profitable conversations. These conversations can build customer loyalty, deliver monetize-able research, entertain or otherwise gain attention (or trust) and even provide alternative revenue streams.
Please check it out, spread the word and send me your feedback on the new site to Richard @ RABpromo dot com.
Over the years, like many marketing managers, most of my hires have been younger “up and comers” who bring energy and passion to the department. Personally, I enjoy mentoring and therefore find “generational” stereotyping very interesting. From a managerial perspective it’s often pretty helpful when projects require a little extra patients, but from a marketing perspective it’s incredibly fun to experiment with generational targeted messages. Here’s an interesting video and post I ran across on generation WE on www.PeachyGreen.com. I’m not advocating the project in anyway as I don’t really know anything about it. Still, the video is pretty powerful, well worth watching from a production stand point and everyone in business (especially the “mass audience” folks) should take note of the line “…we are the largest demographic.”
Millennial Youth to Take Over America’s Environment?Generation WE
Generation We is new to me. Have you heard of it? It’s the Millennial Generation of Americans born between the years 1978 and 2000. They are being hailed as the next “greatest generation.” I take just a little offense to that statement, being GenX myself.In an effort to mobilize, organize and propel Generation WE to their world changing destiny, author Eric Greenberg has launched a new website and video created by award winning producers. They accompany his book Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America and Changing our World Forever.
In stumbling around Twitter I somehow landed on Shopnik.com which blew me away!Clean, cool and versatile… I have a gallery to launch on my “to do” list and this site would be an amazing way to showcase photography.
I ended up there from Brian Shaler’s site at (http://brian.shaler.name) and I highly recommend checking it out, he’s done some amazing work.
This is a definite winner in the “clever advertising” category! -Richard
Shopper Culture: Reach out and touch someone…in a bar.
Reach out and touch someone…in a bar.Ringsizercoaster That’s exactly what high-end retailer Hyde Park Jewelers is hoping people are doing. They want to communicate with potential customers when and where they are “in the mood for love.” So, they created a “ring-sizer” coaster that has shown up in bars around Denver, making it easy for the lovestruck to consider Hyde Park when they are meeting the woman or man of their dreams for a drink.And to make sure that popping the question is that perfect moment, Hyde Park created biggerwow.com, a website that focuses on ways to make the proposal unforgettable. With content that focuses on items like setting the mood, and proposal do and don’ts, Hyde Park helps out the soon-to-be-married in a fun and lighthearted way.Hyde_park_bigger_wowInteresting and engaging is a perfect way for high-end retailer like Hyde Park to disrupt normal behavior and interact with potential consumers in a new environment and with a new medium. And when matched with the great messaging strategy surrounding biggerwow.com , both end up feeding the consumers desire to have this time in their life (engagement) be the biggest and best it can be.
To all broadcasters, agency reps, media buyers, radio folks, newspaper, billboard, magazine, and all other ad supported media out there… Google’s CEO has declared war on you and entire ad supported business model be it television, print, web or whatever.You see, last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt appeared on CNBC’s Mad Money with Jim Kramer and while the majority of the show focused on Jim cheerleading for Google stock, Mr. Schmidt uttered 2 words during the program that caught my attention “Measurable Advertising.” That’s right, Google has discovered your weak link and they just let the cat out of the bag.
(Insert cliché of choice here equivalent to “The time is now!”).
So, assemble your greatest minds, begin new research projects, prepare to storm the Neilson gates or whatever you need to do, but focus your efforts on how you’re going to compete against “Measureable Advertising” because like it or not, Nielson may have met its match and you may soon be taking a check from Google’s ad placement technology.
Not possible? Okay, let’s see:
Google already has self ad-serving tools for placing one’s own television, radio and internet ads.
Google will continue growing these types of partnerships until they can deliver ads across multiple platforms to any region or demographic in the country (or world).
Whether you’re updating the “news on the go” promo (someone said “hey, the iPhone’s a trend”;-) or perhaps you’re planning a blog acquisition… either way, I thought I’d share this Google video that’s sure to inspire.I also suggest checking out Google’s page on YouTube, there’s a great presentation by Nikesh Arora speaking about the future of digital marketing, he certainly caught my attention when he said, “…50% of the marketers out there do not know what’s going on around them.” So, where do you fall?
If you haven’t heard of Revision3 now’s a good time to get up to speed. While, you may think a network of podcasts isn’t a big deal, you may change your mind after watching a Diggnation Live show (downloadable from Itunes), or viewing the site stats for Digg.com on Alexa.Diggnation shows consistently deliver a captive male audience many advertisers would kill to get in front of.
So why should you follow Revision3? Because they have to act smart and fast, just like you.They don’t have the massive pocketbook to buy and sell web properties like Viacom, but they do have the focus, the time, and creativity to launch cost effective marketing tactics to rapidly build audiences. They also have the flexibility to pull whatever’s not working offline… and if you’re budget is tight, you will want to use them as a gauge for what works and what doesn’t.Oh, and by the way, they do absolutely no outside advertising that I know of – what they do well: cross promotion and content creation.
Their strategy is to utilize their biggest shows (like Diggnation) to launch/build new shows, sound familiar? Now I know that’s not a new strategy, but they recently made headlines by recognizing a show was not working so they dumped it almost immediately. This will be the key to their success combined with a niche focus, which is mostly “geek” in nature. Other podcast networks to follow: TWIT Live, Mevio.
Revision3 expanded its YouTube presence to include its entire catalog of web shows on the Revision3 director’s channel page including full-length episodes of shows like Diggnation, Tekzilla and weekly best-of-the-web compilation The Digg Reel. The latter just went through its best of online videos for the first half of 2008, beginning with the spooky Google Maps, part I of “The Googling,” which received over 9500 Diggs. (Part II, Google Sky, came out a couple weeks back from producers The Vacationeers.)
-Richard
This is a definite winner in the “clever advertising” category! -Richard
