posted by Rad Campaign on 11/17/2008
The economy is in a slump. Companies are worried how they’re going to meet next quarter’s profits. So they hire an ad agency to come up with a viral video campaign that’s going to be so fresh and inspiring that it will help boost sales. That’s what McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the largest consumer company within Johnson & Johnson who is responsible for Motrin’s brand were banking on when they released their new video campaign and Motrin Moma-Alogue.
The results - a slick online video narrated by a snarky young woman saying babywearing on a sling, the shwing, the pouch, whatever, is fashionable and “supposedly it’s a real bonding experience” but moms that wear their babies “cry more.” But don’t worry mommies of the world “Motrin feels your pain.” They are here to help.
The viral video worked in the sense that it went viral but not in the way the marketers of Motrin were hoping for. Just hours after the campaign launched moms began blogging, tweeting and posting Facebook updates about how offensive the new Motrin campaign is to mothers. Women were so angered by the video that it became one of the most popular subjects tweeted about this weekend on Twitter. Talk about a PR disaster. Over 100 blogs featured headlines such as “Motrin Makes Moms Mad” to “Motrin Giving Moms a Headache”. Read more.
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posted by Rad Campaign on 10/23/2008
Paul Boutin, who ironically writes for the Sillicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag, says blogging is out and being replaced by the next generation of social networking tools - Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. In a recent WIRED Magazine article, Boutin says that the mainstream media has taken over the blogosphere with professional writers, who break the big stories these days.
“Scroll down Technorati's list of the top 100 blogs and you'll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post, Engadget, and TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day,” says Boutin.
Boutin raises excellent points about the commercialization of the blogosphere but fails to recognize that blogs are still a crucial web tool to distribute info and news even if they are not listed in the top 100 on Technorati. Furthermore, while microblogging tools like Twitter are certainly cool they are limited in telling the longer, more personal story.
What do other experts think of Boutin’s controversial claim about the death of blogging? Read more...
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posted by Rad Campaign on 10/11/2008
If you're a politics junkie you're probably a) addicted to polls and b) becoming increasingly concerned about the ultimate nightmare in presidential elections, the electoral college tie. If you care about one or both, check out fivethirtyeight.com.
Fivethirtyeight.com is another one of those sites that aggregate polling, however they use a much different methodology from most of the others, including simulating the election 10,000 times (based on the latest polling) before updating the site. While it remains to be seen how ultimately reliable it will be, it provides a wealth of info, charts and numbers for your late-night poll junkie fixes. Read more.
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posted by Rad Campaign on 10/11/2008
Knight Foundation News Challenge
"You invent it. We fund it." This is the Knight Foundations News Challenge slogan which will award $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news and information exchange. The deadline for applications is November1, 2008. The contest is open to innovators worldwide, from software designers to journalists and everyone in between. To help people interested in applying for a grant, the Knight Foundation has created the News Challenge Garage where applicants can be mentored and peer reviewed by past awardees and some of the biggest web gurus such as Mary Hodder, founder of Dabble.com. Read more.
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posted by Rad Campaign on 06/15/2008
Meetup recently launched their new and improved website filled with an intuitive and streamlined web architecture, a Google mashup that shows where Meetup’s are currently happening, real time RSVP’s, etc. Check it out at Meetup.com. What we love about the new site is that Meetup has a wealthy amount of info on their site, yet the new design is well thought out and not cluttered. It flows easily and does not overwhelm the web user. Unfortunately, many organizations constantly struggle with putting every item under the sun on the homepage in order to please their stakeholders. The end result is a cluttered homepage that intimidates the user with competing information.
When embarking on a redesign consider a few key points and tips:
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