It’s as if everything is about conversations nowadays. Shel Israel started it, now we have the age of conversation from Drew and I just noticed that the baseline for Mix, which I’m attending at the moment in Las Vegas, says:” A 72 hour conversation”.Interesting!
A small update on the movie. As I said the movie will be ready (if all goes well) this Friday and I’m going through several conference calls with a lot of people internally to get as much support as possible for our little project (and to be able to spread the movie in as many countries as possible, of course). So far, all those who have seen the rough cut loved it… that’s a good sign, isn’t it?
Just found these online movies thanks to Right-Half Chow made by Mc Cann & Erickson for Office 2007. This is what Yves has to say on these movies: “Mc Cann Erickson have developed an interesting campaign for Microsoft Office 2007. Even though the stories are pretty trivial in their own right, the way they are told and the time (media take note) they take to tell them turn them into mini episodes which are actually quite enjoyable to view. They’re all labelled as ‘web-films’ so my guess is that they won’t make it into classic commercial blocks (save one or two times, just to be able to enter it in competitions) which is a bit of a shame.”
I agree with him on the story and the execution but I don’t find it a shame that they are ‘only’ web-films. If they weren’t I would probably haven’t seen them and looking at the target of this video I think chances are better that business people will see it online than they would see them on the television, no? To be honest, I’m making a ‘web-film’ as well but nevertheless this is a crucial question that is raised: Should movies always have to be made for television to be appreciated or not?
It’s been quiet on the movie hasn’t it? I have seen the rough cut but we are now in post production and we will see the finished result next Friday (not tomorrow). At the moment I’m planning a few preview session internally to look at local tactics or how to be sure we get people from creative agencies, media agencies or advertisers to see the movie. I’ll keep you updated.
This, “It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid” , is the best posting I have ever read concerning the changes occurring in the media & marketing landscape. I’ve been reading David Armano’s blog Logic + Emotion for a long time and it has been an incredible source of inspiration. The strategy behind our little project, Bring the love back, is based on what he writes and when reading this article in Businessweek I can only hope that, as he says: “…the new consumer class that can be anything and everything at once is looking for meaningful dialogue. Some brands and businesses are going out of their way to provide this. Some are going through the motions. And some are doing business as usual. Which camp do you fall in?”, I fall in the first camp!
I’ve often said that the best copywriters in the world are the people who write the taglines for movie posters. You know what I mean: those often clever and witty slogans that are meant to catch the essence of a film. A few examples: ‘In space no one can hear you scream. ‘ (Alien) ‘He’s afraid. He’s alone. He’s 3 million light years from home.’ (ET) ‘On every street in every city, there’s a nobody who dreams of being a somebody.’ (Taxi Driver) And of course the incredibly well written tagline forPsycho: ‘Check in. Unpack. Relax. Take a shower.’
In an attempt to make you even more curious about our upcoming movie ‘The Break-Up’ (yeah, we’ve changed that title too ), I’ve written just that kind of tagline for it. Here it is (while you read it, please imagine the dramatic male voice that you hear in almost every movie trailer):
She is a consumer.
He is an advertiser.
All she wants is genuine affection.
All she gets is loyalty reduction.
The Break-Up. A story of love gone wrong.
Coming soon.
Okay, so I’m not a Hollywood-writer. But this might already give you a better idea of what our movie is all about, isn’t it?
As you might have seen in the presentation on slideshare the idea to create this blog is not only for my personal pleasure or fame but also to create an interest in the movie before it’s online and to start the dialogue with our target market: creative agencies, media agencies and marketeers. The whole idea of this campaign (not only the blog or the movie but all the others things we have planned) is to position us, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, in the center of this dialogue between advertisers and consumers. The message that we want to get across is that we can help advertisers to reconnect with consumers or we can help to bring the love back!
To do this we created this movie that we are going to use during several trade activities (more about this in the following weeks) as well as putting it online. The ultimate wet dream is of course that people will love this movie so much that we get millions of views on Youtube, Soapbox or other video sharing websites but you can never be sure that that will be the case. Therefor we are trying to connect with as many marketing bloggers as possible to get the project started. We could have issued an press release to all influential marketing bloggers, but I don’t believe that that would have worked. This posting on Crossthebreeze shows that this doesn’t work. The only way we could think of to do this is to go naked, as explained in Wired magazine, or in other words to be completely transparent in what we do or want to do. An excellent quote from this article is:”Indeed, network algorithms do not favor the cagey or secretive. They favor the prolific, the outgoing, the shameless. In the Reputation Economy, even a healthy, happy company needs to worry about its good name if only six or seven people are talking about (and linking to) it. When that’s the case, “a casual reader has only a few opinions to determine what sort of company or person you are,” says Peter Hirshberg, chair of the blog search engine Technorati. One bad blog post can kill you. But if you’ve got hundreds or thousands of sites linking to you and commenting on you, the law of averages takes over, and odds are the opinion will be accurate: The cranks will be outweighed by cooler heads. Again, the Net rewards the transparent”
Is it working? Slowly but surely this blog is attracting more and more marketing bloggers and I’ve got some positive feedback already from agencies. At the moment we have about 60 readers a day coming from different countries as you can see on the graph on the right.
We’re not there yet but we have some time left, don’t we?
I just saw the first rough cut of the movie. It looks really great and apparantly others like it as well. Caviar did a little internal award ceremony and showed 120 movies to their staff and asked them to pick the best. And you know what… we ended 3rd! Not bad indeed.
So we are a making a movie, but why did we decide to do that? Below I’ll show you a short presentation that Openhere gave us to convince us to make this movie. Of course, you’ll miss the excellent argumentation Stef gave when presenting at the time but it gives you an idea.
I just received more photo’s from Stef taken during the shooting. Again it gives some clues on the movie (not too much, I hope). I’ve put a few here but if you want to see them all I’ve made a set on my Flickr page.
I have decided to change the name of this blog. From now on you can find it here: www.bringtheloveback.com (it’s a re-direct so you don’t have to change your rss feed). Why? This blog should not be about me or the risk I take with this project but about the dialogue we want to enable between consumers and advertisers. The final aim is to position us as a platform (MSN, Windows Live, Xbox, etc represented by Microsoft Digital advertising solutions) that gives that possibility to advertisers and their agencies. If we feel that that dialogue is that important we also want to walk the walk and talk the talk. Therefore we are using this blog as the center point of this campaign and not a mini site or something else. This blog should enable the creation of a dialogue as everybody can comment (no moderation, only name required)… so feel free to do so!
), I’ve written just that kind of tagline for it. Here it is (while you read it, please imagine the dramatic male voice that you hear in almost every movie trailer):
