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Social Media “slurs” subject “sinners” to censorship

Last week it was reported in the Herald Sun that cricket players from a regional league have been banned from playing for weeks for mouthing off about the league on Facebook.

Let me get this out foremost: I’m not talking about libel, defamation or misrepresentation. I’m not talking about disclosing confidential information. I’m talking about opinions.

Read the article. It is absolutely ridiculous.

Social Media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are simply extensions and digitisations of existing social norms. They are a digitisations of our everyday conversations and social interactions.

All this means is, in addition to complaining to your friends in person about the shitty local cricket league, people will complain on Facebook and Twitter. I fail to see how the comments of players in a local league owe any sort of duty to represent that league positively (especially based on the facts outlined in the article). The league wouldn’t have barred them had they complained to their mates over a few beers, so why on Facebook?

Whatever happened to free speech?

This is alarming, as many companies are developing Social Media policies which confine employees to what they can and can’t say. What gives businesses the right to control what their employees talk about in person? Nothing. So what gives them the right to control what they tweet about?

This is a form of communism run by employers, local cricket leagues and the like. We can’t continue to allow the man to control what we say, off-line or online.

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When Advertising Fails – Part 4

I find that as a Marketing student I seem to pay more attention to organisations’ ads and marketing strategies than the lay person would. That’s why I find it especially amazing when even I have poor brand recall from an advertisement I just watched/saw/heard/etc.. What I’m finding more prevalent than ever are ads which do not coincide with the brand identity. That is, you could play an ad and put any old brand logo at the end without changing the ad or its resulting effectiveness.

However, this one confused me:

Another instalment to the When Advertising Fails series is a full page display found in yesterday’s Herald Sun (Wednesday, August 4, 2010).

The ad features a green ruler of some kind twisted into the shape of a question mark, along with the text What is success?. What confused me is that nowhere on the advertisement is any brand mentioned. Couple that with the fact that a full page ad in the Herald Sun could be costing them up to $40,466.58 this ad is on hell of a waste of money!
To answer the question: definitely not your ad!
I realise that I’m going out here on a whim and criticising an ad which may/may not be effective. The one thing I would say is positive is that it caught my attention with it’s simplicity and lack of direct brand promotion. What I’d love to see is a follow up campaign to this ad, building on the surreptitious nature of this one. Maybe they could create some ground swell and have a big reveal at the campaign’s conclusion? Although I don’t think this is very likely.

So for now, I’m going to assume it’s not part of an overall strategy and award it:

Advertisement Effectiveness: 2/10 (for lack of brand identifiability)

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Update (05/08/10): If anyone knows who the agency or brand behind this campaign is, please let me know in the comments section below!

Update (02/09/10): I’ve been following this campaign over the past few weeks and so it turns out, the client is CareerOne. There have been follow up advertisments in newspapers and television commercials. I even saw a banner ad for the campaign on YouTube!
It also turns out that CareerOne is owned by News Limited (known as News Digital Media in the digital space), which explains the ability to publish full page newspaper ads without fear of the budget. I still feel this campaign hasn’t been effective though. This judgement is based on the campaign’s poor execution.

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When Advertising Fails – Part 3

In a recent developer conference, Apple previewed it’s new iPhone OS 4 (some really cool stuff coming, definitely worth checking out). At this event, they announced that there are now over 185,000 Apps available on the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch, including an additional 3,500 iPad Apps. This event took place on April 8, 2010.

Yesterday (April 22, 2010) I caught a glance of a Telstra brochure which was an insert to yesterday’s Herald Sun. On the back page was an advertisement for iPhone. As always, it was well designed and visually stunning, however it was vastly incorrect on a major detail – the number of Apps:

Sorry Telstra, but your lack of attention to detail has landed you this edition of the When Advertising Fails series.

As a side note, the App Store has had in excess of 100,000 Apps for almost six months. It was originally announced in an Apple press release on November 4, 2009!

Advertisement Effectiveness: 5/10 (for lack of attention to detail)

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When Advertising Succeeds – Part 1

As a contrary to the When Advertising Fails series I’ve begun, I’m also going to make comment on advertising success stories in a series entitled When Advertising Prevails.

The first is an advertisement by McDonald’s from the Melbourne Herald Sunon Sunday, April 4, 2010 (Easter Sunday). This was the first day of the end of Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time.

I thought this ad was quite clever and a nice play on current events. At least they’re keeping their advertisements fresh and new.

A much more successful ad than the Labour Day ad produced earlier in March this year by the TAC.

Advertisement Effectiveness: 7/10 (for originality, simplicity & intriguingness [if that’s a word?])

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When Advertising Fails – Part 2

The second instalment to the When Advertising Fails series is somewhat shocking to me considering the organisation who produced it.

The newspaper print ad was taken from the Melbourne Herald Sun on Labour Day this year (Monday, March 8, 2010) and features an awareness campaign about driver fatigue. It was produced by the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) and what disappointed me specifically was that TAC campaigns are usually very hard-hitting, emotive and effective. They’ve dropped the ball on this one.

Fatigue may kill on the roads, but a bland advertisement definitely fatigues your brand.

Advertisement Effectiveness: 2/10 (for lack of impact)