Author: Angelo Fernando

Image is everything –until you tick off the media

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This is the flip side of my last post on image management –the futility of trying to control things.

The British journalist removed from the scene of a protest in Beijing on Wednesday can undo much of gains China has been making in the first few days of the Olympics.

The hand-covering-camera-lens tactic worked in times gone by. Today there are too many cameras that don’t look like cameras. There’s audio. There’s Twitter. And as we have seen only too well, reporters don’t have to be credentialed to cover a story. Images like this will gain more currency when mainstream people are ticked off.

As I more or less predicted last month, media rights mean nothing if someone has a story to tell and an audience.

Addendum:

This comment from David Wolf, on a post on Digital Watch, a blog out of Ogilvy China sums it up well:

“the IOC has yet to come to terms with the Internet and what it means to the way people enjoy – or at least “consume” – the Games.”

Using Flickr to send a message

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

So you’re a photographer not a writer? How could you use social media to tell a story?

I came across this amazing series (via GreenDaily) by Dharmeshi in India. It looks like it was done for a campaign, but it could very well be he was trying to use his camera to take a stand about the environment, using a simple prop we run into every day.

And on Flickr, he’s able to send a message about what plastic looks like when its convenience factor wears out and it interferes with our lives.

Beijing Olympic Report: Branded Entertainment

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By amazing coincidence, I heard a bit of Rush Limbaugh this morning, philosophizing on the reason the Olympics attracts a female audience, and his theory was that the Olympics is a hugely ‘chickified’ event filled with stories of rags-to-riches and oppressed people overcoming the odds. They dig it not for the sports, but for the emotion, he went on. Limbaugh is famous for this kind of nonsense, but he’s going to feel vindicated because of how Kleenex plays into this angle.

I’ll leave it to Rohit Bhargava, my guest blogger from Beijing to take it from here.

If you are one of those people that gets in front of the television every evening with a box of tissues to get ready for the melodramatic overload that is the American television coverage of the Olympics, then you’ll be thrilled to know that as part of their sponsorship of the US Olympic team, Kleenex commissioned a documentary to take an inside look at some of the most powerful tear-jerking moments in the Olympics over the past few years. The film is mostly focused on the US (to match their sponsorship) and takes you on a hosted journey with a nameless host who plays the part of “good listener” as past and future hopeful US Olympic athletes are interviewed on a blue couch about their Olympic moments and aspirations.

I had the chance yesterday to go the film premiere at the USA House here in Beijing and it was a well attended affair with lots of recognizable US Olympians, including Julie Foudy, Scott Hamilton, Lenny Krayzelburg, and a few others (see my photos on Flickr). The venue was “homebase” for USOC team members and lots of American gear was available for sale. It was the perfect venue for the premiere and a well put together event. The film itself is a really nice piece of branded entertainment and does well to promote the role of Kleenex brand in the Olympics and in each of our lives, encouraging people to “let it out” without being overly branded. Great job by brand manager Anya Schmidt and the rest of the Kleenex team to keep the branding soft on this project.

I am a fan of Kleenex brand, but I do think that they have a larger strategic problem that likely won’t be solved by a campaign like this or even through an Olympic sponsorship. One of their biggest challenges surely must be the commoditization of their brand. The fact is, people call every kind of tissue a Kleenex. They own the category, but need to continually explain to people why it matters that you buy Kleenex instead of the cheaper store brand. Just once I would love to see them take the road of comparing their brand’s superiority to cheaper imitations. I can already picture the thirty second spot. Guy and girl on a first date go to see a sappy movie. Girl is crying and guy tries to be smooth by handing her a “Kleenex.” She blows her nose, the tissue rips and she messes up her expensive “first date dress.” The ad ends with her looking at him angrily as the tagline fades in: “Kleenex … Because Everything Else Blows.”

Damn, I’m good. I should do this for a living.

PS – Check out the trailer for the film below – its actually really good and will be premiering for a limited engagement in theaters in 25 cities starting August 13th across the US. It will also be available on www.letitout.com from August 14th.

To read more real athlete’s stories, visit Lenovo’s Voices of the Olympic Games!

Image is everything. Beijing we don’t have a problem

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

So easy to criticize lip-syncing, now that the news is out that Lin Miaoke (the girl on the right) who ‘sang’ at the opening ceremony, didn’t. She was simply mouthing the words from Yang Peiyi (left).

“The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation,” the music designer Chen Qigang has observed.

I understand the transparency/ethics brouhaha. But when we get to this level of production, since this is ‘theater’ after all, what’s real and what’s fake? Wasn’t most of what happened on the massive stage an analog-to-digital suspension of disbelief?

Before you rant about the fakeness of it all (al la Milli Vanilli) consider too that the pyrotechnic creation of  29 footsteps leading up to the opening event was –for want of a better word, and I don’t mean this badly– fabricated using CGI for the billions of TV viewers. It was part real, part fake.  No different from how special effects around major events are staged, pre-made, and whatever Thesaurus word you can find to fit.

It’s all about the right image, whether we call it advertising, marketing or an opening ceremony. So give Beijing a break.

Billboard campaign minus Clear Channel costs

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

There’s a ‘billboard’ outside Hollywood Alley, a restaurant in Mesa that’s doing something really creative. It changes every week day, with a funny, punny line from a movie, adapted to say something about food.

Yesterday it was “I see fed people” (wouldn’t be such a bad pun if it was a restaurant in Washington DC); Some days back it was more clever: “Houston, we have a pickle!”

It’s an interesting experiment, reinventing the tried and tested media vehicle (literally), to display more than a name, or a logo. Even if the lines are too obscure or pun-dependent, there’s evidence of smart brand thinking. Too often people assume ‘branding’ is something you have to do with your logo, when it’s all about the experience.

If you’re in the area (NE corner of Baseline and the 101) look out for the featured movie of the day! Or heck! Call them up and suggest a line.

Beijing Olympic Report: Sweating the small stuff for Namibia

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Guest Blogger Rohit Bhargava Reports:

Last night we had a chance to have a moment like that as part of a blogger meetup we organized over Twitter for a few local bloggers in Beijing and some of our athletes participating in the Lenovo program. We ended up having dinner with two Namibian cyclists, both of whom were competing for their country – Mannie in Mountain Biking and Kris in Road Cycling.

As we sat there and listened to their stories of making it past the trials and what it took to be the ones their country sent, it was easy to remember why the Olympics are the most powerful global event in the world.

Mannie competes on the second to last day of the Games, but talking to Kris was a great reminder of just how much every athlete trains and struggles just to be part of the Games, and how proud thousands of people none of us can see will be of them when they return home. Erik realized a personal best and finished 22 out of more than 100 of the finest road cyclers in the world after riding for over six hours.

This is what the Olympics are really about. Not the hurdler who conquers personal tragedy and cancer of the kneecap to win the Gold. That’s the Hollywood version. The real life story is about the guy who beats his one biggest competitor to be the sole athlete in his sport that his country sends to Beijing. The one who misses marching in the Opening Ceremonies to rest so he can compete at 9am on the first day of the Olympics. The one who rides his bike in hot and humid weather for more than six hours among the best cyclists in the world. And the one who beats the odds to finish a personal best of 22nd so that he can go home a hero.

Mojave Experiment: marketing not science

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

I don’t use Vista, the Microsoft operating system. But I have heard mixed feelings about it: It’s classy, or it’s like adding a piranha to your gold fish bowl. Vista has a huge perception problem; maybe we humans are just fickle; maybe there’s a marketing or PR fix to tell the Vista story better.

Maybe.

But if the Mojave Experiment is part of that attempt, you wonder what kind of mad science teacher is sitting next to the PR wizard in the perception adjustment department.

The set up: 22 Hidden cameras; ordinary people who have heard bad things about Microsoft Vista, and would never ever try it.

The experiment: This happens off camera, so we see no more than a before and after series of short video clips

The outcome: People who thought they were using a “new” operating system called “Mojave” having seen the software box and tried it in the ‘lab’ loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it.

The microsite looks like a fun experiment from a marketing angle. A panel of clickable videos that give you a feeling you are watching the participants as you would from behind the one-sided glass in a focus group.

But it’s easy to see that these are edited clips. We don’t see the whole reaction. This is not a lab experiment but a video shoot in search of footage that could be used for other purposes. I would have liked to see the guinea pigs use the OS, watch them struggle with the set up, and (assuming these are not all IT folk) do things like install print drivers, set up a wireless network, download web apps etc to suggest they/we do in real life.

If the Mojave Experiment is an exercise in attitude adjustment, we need to see less of the (reality) TV and more of the transparency. I like to know:

  • Who are these people in the experiment?
  • What do they say now –outside the lab?
  • Are some of them blogging about it? Could they be quizzed by us?
  • What percent of them are upgrading from Microsoft XP to Vista in their homes?

Finally, what is the outcome? I guess there will be more Mojave experiments. Give me some Mojave results.

Analog to digital highlighted at Olympics opening ceremony

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Thousands of years ago, our ancestors communicated across vast distances by beating out messages on drums. Today we relay messages across the world on Twitter, using our thumbs.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics combines both these communication impulses in a country that is seeing this dramatic shift from the analog and digital. The balance and alternation of signals is a powerful metaphor for much of what we do, no matter where we live.

The visually lavish opening ceremony with its human tableau set on a digitally created scroll was just the start. Bamboo scrolls gave way to print; and in a striking opposite effect, 2008 drummers played out a digital spectacle with their choreographed beats made to look like a LED screen which spelled out the count down. That too in Roman and Chinese numerals. How much richer could we get?

One Daily Mail journalist summed it up this way: “This was a feast for the eyes cooked not from the books of ancient culture so much as the latest Microsoft manuals.” I don’t think this is accurate. It was a feast for all our senses, cooked from a user manual that’s a mashup of the Little Red Book and Microsoft manual.

A few millenia after the drum and the torch, here’s how we send and receive information:

  • There’s a Twitter tag 080808 set up by three Chinese to connect everyone’s tweets.
  • Watch cell-phones streaming live video on Qik, a service also used by the Sacramento Bee to cover the torch protests.
  • Newspaper and TV journalists are blogging to give us expanded, less time-delayed coverage.
  • Text alerts (and video) on your phone is available at NBC at NBColympics.com
  • Several Facebook groups in support of, and as a protest to the Olympics.
  • NBC has a widget you could add to your blog or social network.
  • The Voices of the Olympic Games, courtesy Lenovo provides great back stories from the athletes themselves.