ATL approach online

Over the past few years I have experienced many times classic ad agencies’ creative teams coming out with online execution ideas. Most of the cases the biggest problem was that they raped the ATL concept to fit into the online creative formats or their directions was just simply not executable due to technical limitations.

This time it’s much more interesting. ATL agency, Akció-NXS created a concept for the web, called Észpénz (something like mind your finances) for people who are not experts on this field but the financial crisis affected their budget very much. And they advertise it online with very simple display creatives.

Unfortunately, they have seriously underestimated the site architecture planning and the UAT parts of the project. After the content itself the second most important thing is how you structure it. When you identify how your visitors arrive your portal you should plan decently the customer journey. How they enter your site and how you want them to leave it.

This is what they forgot. When I enter I don’t know where I am, where and what to start with and what I may benefit if I consume their content. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think an ATL agency should be well aware of the facts I collected above, but they should consult it with an expert of the field because I am pretty sure if it comes to entry page conversion rate of this portal (visitors may perform any action on the portal after they entered the site) it sucks.

See it for yourself here (if you understand the language) or watch the short video of the navigation:

Most of the times I have the feeling that creative agencies don’t have any submission to try understanding online specialities. It’s a very special and complex field I know and my mission is to point this out and make it more conscious in order to always provide a better user experience.

This is how an ICON does it… at least on a small market

Have you ever heard about Windows Live Agents? OK, if you haven’t and don’t wanna read a whole Wikipedia page, in one sentence: Windows Live Agents are chatbots that in different topics provide info/entertain users that want to chat with them. They look like they are AI but they aren’t. They are programmed to respond automatically for certain type of questions.

Now this is really something unique, and congratulations to any agency who may sell a creative idea like that to an advertiser. Most of them would never understand what such type of communication stands for. In addition, WL Messenger has close to 1M UV per day which makes it one of the most visited online medium.

Coca-Cola Hungary has released an agent to support it’s online-based loyalty program, Take it, test it! It promotes all the services of Coke.hu that is focusing on music. Unfortunately, the chatbot is too simple, concentrates only for the promotion, you can’t really talk with it for a longer period of time which would really make it an experience. I hope it will be a success and Coca-Cola Hungary may invest in it because these kind of activations had a strong effect on brand love through the experience. I”m afraid at these times it’s not easy to remember how important that is.

If you liked it anyhow, click on the first link of this post that lists some very good chatbot examples and see for yourself how rich such an experience can be.

Interactive ad in an interstitial?

No, it’s not an interstitial – but almost. Have you ever measured the dwell time on a social networking portal entry page? Not much, especially not if you are a frequent visitor. Your focus is on typing your password correctly – and after hitting enter that’s it, you are in and entry page is gone.

Now, you may play around with the message reflecting on the only activity you do on an entry page and that may grab the visitor’s attention but placing any contextless game there is a waste of money. Lot of money. Next time, don’t just buy a very remarkable and expensive ad space, take the time and think about what you are placing there.

 

“Change, shit I guess change is good for any of us”

We (Magyars) don’t like changes. We are crying for good old things and many of us are living in the past. This kind of averseness to change is a challenge for news or community portals. They need to renew themselves every once in a while by offering new services using the latest technology and avoiding being boring.

So, what if it’s time to renew yourself? I like the way [origo] – one of the top Hungarian news portal – handled it. They put notes on the brand new opening page that are clickable in order to get more information on content sections. But you can easily close them if you want and – very important – with one click you can bring them back again.

One thing though – this feature is useful rather for non-experienced users. I would not use slangs for copy. Still, it’s just a fillip.

 

Déjá Vu… but nice execution

Experience Wii communication is surely one to follow. The dedicated YouTube channel having more than 5,000 subscribers is a good confirmation for that.

I have no idea whether on your market there was any copy of that creative, but we have one worth to watch it:

 

 

I like the execution but I would pay more attention on it buy using the real header and footer of Videa. The animation itself is a great one, I can see the huge amount of work however with using a simple  screeshot in the background of Videa makes it cheap for advanced users.

I also like the way they used the video sharing portal opening page for promoting the take-over:

 

 

I know it’s a copy of an international creative idea, but I have no problem with that as long as it makes sense using the given creative format and is well-prepared.

RSS marketing – the CEE way

I don’t know how such thing may happen. Really. RSS marketing is such an innovative way of advertising that the companies dare to use it may think it twice what message they may place. 12,5% of Hungarian internet users use RSS feeds in any way according to a recent study. That means if you are a medium and have a news feed you may count appr. 1/8 of your readers (of course that may vary depending on the media type but it’s good to calculate with).

If you have a creative concept and want to target those heavy internet users that are already blind enough to see your banners (or may even block any flash content) what kind of call-to-action would you choose?

Here is Bricostore Hungary’s creative:

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, it’s rather funny.

When you have too much trust in your creative consultants…

I adored the Coke Club concept that is a local initiative by Coca-Cola launched in 2007.

Coke Club is an open-air summer place that has been providing quality music and cultural programs at Lake Balaton (the biggest natural lake in Central-Europe) over the last couple of summer seasons. During the day you play beachvolley or beachsoccer, burn yourself under the sun and get the best Cuba Libre in town or just simply enjoy the clear and cool water of the Lake Balaton. At nights best Hungarian and famous international groups and DJs play music.

The campaign creatives in 2007 and 2008 were simply stunning and demonstrated the quality of the place that was full with designer chillout furnitures like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For this year Coca-Cola has a new creative agency. As Coke Club opens on Saturday I managed to capture the first banner. Here it is:

 

 

It is a crappy rap that has one aim: to draw attention. And what if you get that?!

How may that represent the philosophy of the best chillout place in town?!

How can you fit it into the concept of MTV Icon (best ever music groups that are celebrated at the venue)?!

What is the connection between this performance and the most celebrated DJs that plays the best music on every Friday?!

I was excited by Coke Club this year, but this season started with a disappointment.

Mobile spam – on the margin of Digital Festival

Organizing professional conferences and workshops on a small market is not easy. In addition, the economy and social crisis in the CEE region makes it an even bigger challenge as companies save money on such “luxurious expenses”.

Therefore the organizers of the Digital Festival 2009 may be proud of their results because of two things. They managed to fill the venue and they could attract leaders to join as speakers from international digital agencies.

One of the initiatives however was a bit pointless and strange. Participants received opt-out contextless wap-push messages onto their mobiles. The text-based content on the links was either a promotional message of a local TV channel (wtf cares???) or a poem that was actually part of the program sometime over the day but without any note on the purpose.

Honestly, it is a small thing, why I tought it worth to mention is that the whole program was so professional even on international level, do help incompetent sponsors socialized on TV promotions in thinking of promoting their services that may fit into the context of the festival’s theme and schedule.

Campaign creative planning and execution by a media agency?!

Since 2005, we all know that the world is flat. And is becoming more and more…

Couple of days ago, I read an interesting story (sorry, in Hungarian only) about the recreated GroupM in Hungary. The new name is eMission Interactive and including the same media companies as before. Now, the interesting part is that such a group of media agencies with their media expertise claim that they can also provide campaign creative production and web development services.

For sure they didn’t hire a group of digital creative experts like: digital creative director, online art director, flash programmers and copywriters, do they? OK, they don’t have to I guess, anyway. However, I am afraid this will strengthen their ‘focusing on quantity’ approach and reputation on the market. It’s a slap on the face of the hopes of seeing great campaign creatives on the Hungarian digital media.

Community portal language lameness in brand communication

Let’s make it clear: I find it very entertaining on Facebook (Hungarian), when it comes to duplications in inflection, wrong word order or mixed Hunglish sentences. That’s part of the game. We wanted our Hungarian version of Facebook, even myself have 15 winning phrases. We have been creating it for ourselves.

 

An example for a Facebook application English and Hungarian mix:

 

 

But I’m afraid brand communication is different. A brand that has properties like: professional, one of the best quality available, innovative, etc. cannot allow negligence in communication that may harm the brand. Unless…

Unless what? Unless the company wants to associate a human insight to the brand. Accordingly, this is what Nike is doing with the new campaign. Building running communities by giving them a platform for racing. By this occurrence, once they integrate the campaign into community channels and use those resources well, language lameness would be part of the game. However, Nike is doing it on its own microsite, really by the reason of saving budget. They just don’t want to bother with small markets. So their lameness is a real one, a part of a bad quality web development that is not in harmony with Nike’s brand properties.

 

Nike’s branded Hunglish widget:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This kind of global way of thinking is against today’s marketing trends. I mean personal experiences with the brand. For me, as a Hungarian, it tells me that Nike doesn’t think my engagement is important for them.