Using Flickr photos: is it social media’s carte blanche?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Interesting story of a controversial use of someone’s Flickr photo by Virgin Mobile.

AdRants reports that the family of someone is suing Virgin for using his photograph grabbed off Flickr for the ad campaign .

Which brings up the question: is it OK to use/link to someone’s picture because it is out there on a Creative Commons license? Or the larger question: Is the model release form in need of a re-write?

I have put up some of my photos here on my blog, via Flickr. I have not deemed them private, and they fall under the Creative Commons license –meaning they could be used for commercial reasons as long as they attribute the source. But I have to be careful. I don’t use pictures of my friends or family in that album. I know some others do.

CC Chapman (above) for instance, the epitome of all things in the new media space, a huge advocate of the commons and networking has loads of pictures up there. Robert Scoble’s photos of family and colleagues are everywhere.

Note, I am not copying or uploading this image of CC. I am simply linking to the URL, using the WordPress “insert image here” field. (I’ve previously used the image upload feature, but apart from it being cumbersome, it’s never seemed fair to copy someone’s logo or image onto my hard drive and upload it without their permission.)

But to get back to Virgin, consider the medium the campaign is promoting: phones. Virgin’s agency could not have been ignorant of the copyright envelope they were pushing. My guess is that it half expected this to happen and like all things Virgin, decided it was just “doing a Branson.”

And just to capture a delicious irony of how a Flickr lawsuit could end up, there’s a picture of a settlement check one photographer received after suing a company that had used her Flickr photo. Yes, that settlement and the check is on Flickr !

On Grammar Girl, content is queen

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I listen to a podcast of one of the driest subjects on earth, grammar. But what makes Grammar Girl, so extremely listenable /valuable /addictive is a lesson for a lot of marketing communications that’s too self conscious. This short, no-frills podcast never reveals the person behind the mike –Mignon Fogerty — who interestingly is from our neck of the woods –Gilbert Arizona.

But I bring this up because of another reason. It’s a good example of why you should pay attention to content, and not get too distracted with format and style. Grammar Girl has no well-produced intros and outros (the intro is simple and memorable.) Just riveting content. She opens with three words that becomes her de-facto signature, “Grammar girl here,” and leaps straight into the topic.

Topics are those you may be too embarrassed to ask about (but rather look it up on Wikipedia) such as when and how to use an ellipsis … the proper use of bring/take, and things you never new existed (“eggcorns“)! She also responds to reader queries, and comes across as the person next door, rather than some snooty English major or language guru. Give it a listen and you’ll see what I mean.

Desperately needed: creative media buying

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Most college advertising tends to be boring. OK, let me rephrase that since I work for one!

Most college marketing tends to follow the same formula when trying to recruit new students. I know this from another perspective, because I’m in the process of reviewing a boatload of marketing aimed at us because of my son’s impending college decision. Of course we try to shake things up here, but the standard elements are postcards, brochures, web sites, invitation to virtual tours, personalized URL’s (PURLs) etc. Bring up Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Delicious and people get queasy, but we try.

But sometimes someone breaks the mold.

I wrote about how one school used an unusual media buy to do this, and why marketers ignore three fundamentals of marketing:

  • Exploiting the medium
  • Knowing the customer
  • Giving them information they could act on

On the first point, marketers seriously underestimate the power of the medium, and that is precisely where the message falls flat. Media buyers and planners are not on the same page when everyone’s trying to hammer out the message.

To use an example from a different, competitive category, most car ads also tend to be extremely me-too and boring. But take a closer look at this “medium” used for Mini Cooper in Germany. Which do you think came up first with the idea? The hotshot Creative guys or the boring media planners?

Pricing as a strategy, Sri Lanka style

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If you’ve never heard of this dessert that’s priced at $14,500, you soon will. No after-dinner mint, this.

It’s a special treat that’s designed more to when the appetite for buzz. Served up in a resort set in a colonial town of Galle in Sri Lanka.

If you take a closer look, this is more than what the menu describes as “A combination of a gold leaf Italian kasata, flavoured with Irish cream and served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a bubbly-based sabayon…”

All yours for the $14,500 price tag, but please don’t choke on 80-carat aquamarine. It’s balanced on the chocolate sculptured stilt fisherman that happens to be the logo of the resort.

Ah, the resort. That’s the whole point of this. It’s called The Fortress, because this beautiful city by the sea does have the ramparts and remnants from a Portuguese era that goes back to the 14th century.

Pricing as a strategy is not new.

I came across a similar (fun) ad this week in Time magazine for the Sprint Blackberry,s 8830 World Edition smart phone. It is advertised as “The first$10.5 M Cell Phone.”

To be sure, it’s just Blackberry, but it does have a picture of an exotic island on the small screen, and the “island gift”is described as an optional $10,499800.01 when you purchase a $199.99 phone. The small print is really funny. “Island offer only available to the wealthiest 100 people on planet Earth.” It’s really a waste of a double-tuck ad just to get the headline noticed, but people do try…

Crayon’s critics rush to judgement

/ Angelo Fernando / 11 Comments

So predictable. The ad industry turns on the anti-30-second-commercial guy, Joseph Jaffe, because he is repositioning the company Crayon after several key people departed. In case you hadn’t heard of it, Crayon was the new marketing agency launched in a new media environment, Second Life, less than a year ago.

If you’ve read Jaffe’s book, listened to his podcasts or read his blog, you’ll know that he –an ex agency guy– is Madison Avenue’s worst nightmare. Or if I may rephrase it, Old-Madison Avenue’s nightmare. Indeed, many agencies have embraced new media and new marketing, but for many, new media is still a slide they add on at the end of their presentation. (“vlogs? short codes? What’s that?”)

No mater what Crayon does, you have to agree that this “shape shifter” (their term) has been a pace-setter /embarrassment / thorn in the side / to an industry slow to adapt to new new consumer behaviors & motivations. No different from how Richard Branson pushed a lot of buttons and upset a lot of “industry” apple carts, Jaffe is always challenging the way things have been done.

Conversational marketing is something Jaffe’s upcoming book will be all about. In fact he did a survey earlier this year on just that topic. Critics of this kind of marketing and advertising are probably disturbed by all of this. They are quick to call his repositioning a “fall from grace.”

But there was some vindication last week. AdAge ran a page-one story (“Old-world media starts to feel the pain“) on the shift away from traditional media to conversational marketing.

But there’s something else going on that has nothing to do with the natural rhythms of booms and busts or the fortunes of Madison Avenue’s biggest clients. Simply put, American companies are shifting more and more marketing dollars out of paid media. You see it happening every day as marketers—smart ones, at least—talk about things such as word-of-mouth and conversational marketing…

Did they just notice? Companies have been talking about these ‘things’ –and taking their money with them– for many years now. Jaffe was been of the first to chronicle that shift.

Quotes of the week

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“It would be mathematically impossible for us to get into that business, and we have no interest in doing it.”

Google, dispelling a rumor that it had hired former O&Mer Andy Berndt to crush Madison Avenue

“Unlocking a cellphone is copyright infringement. When you buy a handset from a carrier, it has programming on the phone. It’s a copyright of the manufacturer.”

Claim made by Canadian telecom exec, now debunked with the unlocking of the iPhone

“In the fight between authority and rebellion, cops may be (over) relying on tasers, but students are using the viral volts to the max.”

Fast Company, commenting on the Andrew Meyer incident of getting Tasered while attempting to ask a question from John Kerry at the University of Florida.

The days of “whiter, brighter, faster, new and improved” have had their day. Consumers are looking for connections. The stuff that matters. If any one of us can deliver our messages like Mister Rogers – by telling a story, being authentic and delivering a universal truth, we’ve won.

Mitch Joel on The Power of Authenticity in marketing and communications.

Breathtaking blog layout

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So many blog designs look so similar that it’s refreshing to see a totally new creative approach. And this is not from any agency, mind you! It’s the blog of a U.C. berkeley professor and writer, Jesús Rodríguez.

I think the search box is neat too! Whoever said it ought to look a symmetric box?

He calls it “a treasure trove of (possibly) worthless intellectual trinkets.” Every page brings up a new collage, and fabulous typography.

Stealth PR from infant formula manufacturers exposed

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Some PR agencies will never learn. There have been plenty of cases where ‘flogs’ (fake blogs) have shown up, only to be traced back to PR agencies attempting ‘stealth PR.’ (Google Edelmen + Walmart and see.)

The latest one is for a group calling itself Babyfeedingchoice.org exposed by the Center for Media and Democracy as the front of the Infant Formula Council.

The site is very well done. It has areas such as “Moms and the media” with great quotes for lazy journalists wanting to get the other side of the story –people offended by seeing a mom breastfeeding an infant– and Resources with links to other similar sites. Looks very credible, until you dig around, and compare it to the saga of the fake Walmart blog.

Taser hits wrong nerve. Gets wrong kind of Google juice

/ Angelo Fernando / 4 Comments

Taser is not unfamiliar with controversy, even when it comes to students. But yesterday a Taser hit the wrong kind of target –a student being videoed -and the company has started getting the kind of media coverage and social media backlash it never bargained for.

It’s an incident that shows what could happen when you combine rudimentary citizen journalism and the ability to quickly form an online community around an event.

The Facebook group formed in protest is just one way this incident is getting played out, apart from in the media, with online comments, and headlines not very flattering to a company. But it’s not only how it’s played out. It’s how the story gets enshrined. The phrase “Don’t Tase Me Bro…AHHHHH!!!” uttered by the student Andrew Meyer before he went down is used by the Facebook group. It could live on — right next to say, “Die, Press release, Die! Die! Die!” and “Dell lies. Dell sucks” in a Google search.

There are many interpretations of the several videos taken at the incident, eye wittiness accounts, and some calling this an overreaction. The eyewitness who had also been waiting to ask John Kerry a question makes a good point, wondering why Meyer could not have also waited without rushing the microphone. Some called Meyer a jerk, and another said it was justified.

But if you watch the video, you’ll see there were many cameras on the scene. One report suggests Meyer knew his was being videoed.

All this of course doesn’t help Taser. The company recently announced a ‘subtle shift’ in its positioning, from one of protection to “saving lives.” It’s an impressive technology from an impressive company here in Arizona. But it goes to show what a tenuous task public relations is today.