At iiNet we’ve always known that geeks are awesome but now that ‘geek is chic’ is mainstream, we want you to help us prove that not all geeks are created equal – there can be only one Top Geek.

How it works

Casting [now - 14 Jan]

It’s an open call for geeks and people can submit themselves or nominate a friend. Participants then need to rally support for their entry by getting people to vouch for their geekiness by seconding their nomination.

Selection [15 Jan - 30 Jan]

The 5 entries that rallied the most support automatically advance to the finals and iiNet selects the remaining finalists (they know a good geek when they see one!).

Finals [31 Jan - 28 Feb]

It’s a geek showdown where the finalists complete challenges, upload videos and rally support in a points race to become Top Geek.

The lucky[ish?] guy or gal named Top Geek wins an all expenses paid trip to the geek conference of his or her choice [SxSW, Comic-con, PAX or CES] – as well as some serious bragging rights.

Enter here.

There's stiff competition to become Top Geek.

My presentation on the business application of location-based service Foursquare from last week’s AMI FutureComms workshop:

My Kitchen Sucks!, an IKEA campaign we’ve been working on with Market United launched earlier this week:

Shoddy, dated or just not functional — tell us why your kitchen sucks and you could win an IKEA kitchen to the value of $10,000.

With my partiality duly noted, I’m still gonna say that this campaign is pretty damn awesome.

South Australians and West Australians simply own up to their avocado green appliances, stained and kettle-burned laminate countertops and harvest gold linoleum tiles for the chance to win a brand new $10,000 IKEA kitchen (one to be awarded in each state). Voting is open to the public, and entrants can earn extra points by uploading evidence (photos and floor plans) and by publicly shaming themselves (sharing their entry on Facebook, Twitter and email).

My Kitchen Rocks! is running simultaneously, the only difference being that S. and W. Australians tell about their ‘tasteful’ kitchens for the chance to win $2,000 to spend at IKEA. (But let’s be honest, this is really more about the suck – seeing people’s flash, functional and well-appointed kitchens is not nearly as much fun.)

OK so this is a tad self promotional but there’s something in it for you so don’t be too quick to judge. I will be presenting at this year’s Sydney ad:tech and if, despite this announcement, you were still thinking of attending (16th and 17th March) then drop me a line (marc@thinqdigital.com.au) as I can send you a code that scores 20% off your ticket(s). Here endeth the promotion.

Today we launched Bring It Back!, a social media campaign we devised for Ashley and Martin.

The campaign concept is simple - losing things sucks. Your favourite food gets discontinued, a great television show get canceled, bands break up… but you’re in luck, Ashley and Martin wants to help bring it back.

Background
If you aren’t familiar, Ashley and Martin is the largest medical hair centre in the Southern Hemisphere [translation: they help you regrow your hair, medically]. We met with them a couple of weeks ago and they asked us to come up with a social media campaign idea, so Marc and I poured ourselves a glass of wine and pondered how we might make the topic of hair loss fun and engaging. Here’s our thinking: Hair loss is not fun and engaging.

It’s true – people that get these treatments generally want to get it done, grow back their hair and never speak of it again (okay, so I guess that means we’ll skip the Facebook Fan Page). Yes, we could have created a community for people to discuss and share information about hair loss, but those forums already exist (and let’s be honest, that’s not all that fun). Or perhaps we should have produced clever videos that take the edge off hair loss… except they’ve already done that.

Okay, so then what?

We decided that we didn’t have to talk specifically about medical research, statistics and success rates to support the brand. Besides, we can’t compete with the hunk on the beach that’s already out there telling you about those things. So, we decided we’d broaden our scope a little and make it about losing things. Since the goal was to keep it fun and lighthearted, we made the focus on nostalgia and bygone things from the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s.

The campaign is driven from a Tumblr blog which features pictures, videos, text and links of popular things that are no longer around. We pre-populated the site with content, but this has been designed with the plan that it will become self-sustaining via user submissions. Participation is incentivised with a contest where each week the best submission gets $500. Our original idea was that we’d bring back the item for each week’s winner (it’s amazing how many extinct products you can actually buy on eBay), but then we soon realised that we’d have a hard time fulfilling certain things that people might want to bring back, i.e. Hummers and Michael Jackson.

We chose to use Tumblr as the platform for a few reasons.

1. It’s free (HOORAY!).
2. Falling in between micro and macro blogging, Tumblr was built for the bite size bits of content we wanted to use.
3. Tumblr was built for sharing – literally; users can reblog and like posts with just one click. Furthermore, it’s also the culture of the platform; content gets posted and reposted (tumbles, if you will) until it eventually becomes this long nested chain of user commentary.

Benefits

You’re probably thinking, if you aren’t talking about the product, what’s in it for Ashley and Martin? A few things, actually.

- Branding. The science of hair regrowth hasn’t changed much in the past couple of decades, so the service surrounding the product becomes very important. What we’re aiming to do is make people feel comfortable with the brand, to reminisce with it. It’s already a bit of a scary subject, so let’s open the conversation with pogo sticks and trapper keepers rather than scary men in lab coats. We used a punchy line to tie it back to the brand: Ashley and Martin – bringing it back since 1964 which is discretely placed on just a couple places on the site. We wanted the content to sit front and center.

- Distribution. This is the sort of thing people can send to their friends without feeling awkward about it. Again, it’s all about the content.

- SEO. Social content is a key driver of natural search. (reblogs, tweets and comments = social content.)

Building out this campaign has all been a lot of fun; but, as is the case with hair treatments, there’s no substitute for measurable results.  (…to be continued.)

So, upload a picture of an Atari or your Hypercolor t-shirt and let us know what you think in the comments.

Okay, let me start by saying that I wanted to post this for a couple of reasons

1. Disclaimer: I worked on it. Bluefly was one of my very dearest clients while at Attention and I was heavily involved in this campaign from ideation right up to launch; I’m incredibly proud of how it has turned out.
2. In my post about the Toyota Yaris agency campaigns, I suggested an approach of identifying influencers (ugh, can we get rid of that word already?) and then activating and empowering them to act as brand ambassadors. The proof is in the pudding, right? So here ya go…

Overview: America’s Most Stylish Blogger (affectionately referred to as AMSB) is a collaborative effort between designer fashion e-tailer Bluefly and Stylelist (AOL’s fashion and style blog) to find the country’s most style savvy blogger. The campaign commenced with an open call for submissions from which 8 bloggers were selected. The contestants are from all over the country, range in age and life stage and each possess a unique personal style.

Each week, the bloggers go head-to-head in styling a particular clothing item or accessory (provided by Bluefly) and use their personal fashion blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc to share their look, express their inspiration and drum up support. Each challenge is kicked off with a video recap of the bloggers’ submissions featuring a guest style consultant, and then it’s up to the public to choose who did it best via an embeddable voting widget. The contestant with the most votes at the end of the 5 challenges wins the coveted title of being America’s Most Stylish Blogger – as well as a $1,000 Bluefly shopping spree, a Bluefly blogger store and a column on Stylelist. Not too bad a deal.

Comments: I love the idea (and I’m obviously biased), but this campaign really does illustrate what happens when a brand, its community of influencers and consumers have a mutually beneficial relationship… everyone wins!

The bloggers:

• The chance at winning the contest is obviously a major incentive, but in addition to that they all get to keep the 5 products – which in itself is a win when you consider that the second week’s challenge item was a pair of studded Prada booties.
• The bloggers also gain traffic and visibility for their blogs (which comes with it’s own set of perks). For example, contestant Tiffany Tse was written up in the LA Times and Valerie Elizabeth was featured on NBC.
• And hey, it’s probably sorta cool getting personalised style tips from fashionalities like Nicole Miller.

Bluefly:

• For 5 weeks they are guaranteed to have 8 different blogs writing about their products (with a link back to shop the look). Since there’s no incentive for the bloggers to put up advertorial-ish posts (the public chooses the winner, not Bluefly), it’s authentic word-of-mouth.  In fact, in the 3rd challenge, contestant Nikki from Dirty Flaws took the challenge item – a pink lycra miniskirt – and dyed it black and stuck it on her head as a hood because she hated the item so much. Furthermore, the bloggers have varying style, so they essentially demonstrate 8 different ways of wearing a given product – More variety = wider appeal.
• Hello, SEO! By design, the campaign builds a massive number of inbound blog links, user-generated content and conversations – all of which are key drivers of natural search. A Google Blog Search for “America’s Most Stylish Blogger” AND Bluefly (to look at conversations that talked about the brand alongside the contest) generates 3,990 results – and that’s just a piece of the pie, the campaign isn’t over yet.
• Oh, and we mustn’t forget about email collection. In order to vote, people must enter their email address, and guess what… there’s a little pre-checked box to subscribe to Bluefly emails.

Consumers:

• Firstly, they get entertaining content – fashion tips and how-tos, celebrity appeal (guest style consultants include: Kelly Cutrone, Nicole Miller and Amy Smilovic) and the drama of good ‘ol fashioned competition.
• Participation is incentivised with a sweepstakes to win a $1,000 Bluefly shopping spree (every vote is an entry) and people are invited to show off their own looks by uploading them to the AMSB Facebook Page.

I think it’s a winner and can’t wait to see the final results (not just the winner, but actual metrics - yes, social media is measurable.)

Love it? Hate it? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Oh noes, another cyberstoning!

Toyota’s Australian marketing folks are copping it for their unconventional RFP process, which has agencies competing their best Toyota Yaris campaigns against one another to take home the glory, the honour, the respect of their peers… and a retainer relationship with the car company! You can just see the agencies frothing at the mouth over this.

If you’re not familiar with Toyota’s social media ‘experiment’ here’s a quick overview (mUmBRELLA goes a bit more in-depth):

• 8 of the big digital/viral/guerrilla/social media/PR/advertising/[insert marketing buzzword here]  agencies were asked to devise a social media campaign for the Yaris
• they were given 2 weeks dev time and a budget of 15k
• the top 5 were allowed to take their campaigns live and face the public
• the top 2 win projects with the company in the coming year

Blogger Laurel Papworth was so turned off by this social media “downfall” that she made a video about it! Calling upon the tried and true Downfall meme, Laurel dropped in subtitles to depict the conversation between Hitler, err.. ‘Bruce’ the Marketing Manager and digital agency execs. She makes some good points in her post and I definitely chuckled once or twice during the video (How f%$&ing hard is to do a Facebook fanpage, a YouTube viral or a Twitter account? classic!), but Laurel doesn’t offer any solutions alongside her criticism. (And, I would venture to guess that Toyota’s Marketing Manager might be less than thrilled with the comparison she makes in her video?!…)

The criticisms vary, but the general feeling is that this has fail stamped all over it. But you know what, I disagree – I think they’ve got it nailed. Think about it. They have 5 of Australia’s top digital agencies busting their asses to promote each of their campaigns (and in doing so promoting Toyota Yaris). Hmm, so it sounds like they’ve deliberately targeted and selected a small number of people that are regarded as experts in their field – you might even call them influencers! So, they’ve given the agencies the tools to create assets and build engagement on Toyota’s behalf and then they’re tapping into the agencies’ networks to get their message to the masses (brand advocates?!). Furthermore, the entire process generates a wealth of information – channel performance, campaign performance, agency performance (they’re basically crowdsourcing their agency selection process for crying out loud!).

Let’s just look at all the buzz this has generated – blog posts, tweets, even videos are being fired out in response! (And this is in response to the overall campaign, not to mention the individual agency campaigns.) Yes, many of the conversations have a negative tone, but it’s mostly in relation to the campaigns, not the vehicles themselves. Furthermore, in their criticism, some commenters have actually been pointing out Yaris features that they should be highlighted:

To be honest, I’m not really impressed with any of the ideas. My sister owns a Yaris and to me the one thing that differentiates the car is just how sexy and small it is. I don’t see how any of the ideas really show why you should buy the Yaris…

If I had $15k – i would have aligned the Yaris with the Melbourne Cup Carnival and done a tongue in cheek viral around the world of sexy and small jockeys….as they are fast, elegant and small….

- Jim (via mUmBRELLA)

Anyway, here are my thoughts on what the agencies came up with:

One Green Bean‘s An American Werewolf in Yaris campaign gives people the chance to “win a free lift from within metropolitan Sydney to a destination within a 10km radius with the themed ‘Werewolf’ in a Toyota Yaris.” People enter by tweeting or leaving a comment on the campaign’s Facebook page.

• Comments: This campaign seems to exclude everyone outside of Sydney – one of the major benefits of the Internet/social media is that conversations can take place and communities can be built outside of normal geographic limitations. I also wonder whether the One Green Bean folks are aware of Facebook’s promotion guidelines, which prohibit the administration of contests on the site without written approval. However, this campaign gets a bonus point for actually getting people into the cars.

HotHouse teamed up with Aussie vlogger, Blunty, to create a video of Lego robbers using the Yaris as a getaway vehicle. Viewers have been asked to leave a comment explaining why the Yaris is so clever for a chance to win the car.

• Comments: I think it was smart of them to team up with Blunty, a recognised vlogger with an established audience – particularly since the campaigns only run for 6 weeks. And another thumbs up for keeping it about the Yaris and getting users to talk about why it’s so clever. However, they should have put a little more thought into their Tumblr. They’re simply using it as a dump page to post the contest rules, but if that’s going to be the extent of it, they’d be better off with a downloadable PDF. There’s an expectation that a blog should have more than one post and it shouldn’t consist entirely of legal jargon. Why not republish some of the more clever comments from YouTube and hit the Tumblr community that you might not have reached on Blunty’s channel (hello, reblog!).

The Population and Oddfellows teamed up to answer the age old question of which truly is the ultimate city – Sydney or Melbourne. To enter, you simply become a fan of either city’s Facebook page.

• Comments: I understand what they’re trying to do in tapping into the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne, but that makes it geographically exclusive (I live in Perth, what’s the pull to get me involved?) Also, the actual tie to the vehicle is a little weak… Brought to you by Toyota Yaris – the ultimate city car is pretty much the extent of it. Lastly, I’m not sure what’s up with the Facebook app, but it doesn’t seem to function as much of a leaderboard…

Saatchi & Saatch created a “Clever Film Competition” which asks people to create their own clever films featuring a Yaris in exchange for the chance to win $7k.

• Comments: Not gonna lie, I’m less than thrilled with the campaign name and I found the microsite to be equally uninspiring. “Step one: First read and understand the T&C’s and competition Guidelines. Then make a clever short film featuring a Toyota Yaris.” Umm, what’s in it for me? They need to better communicate why I’d want to dedicate my limited time to making a video for them (which can be a rather time consuming process). But, on the upside, they are at least trying to get people to talk/create content about the car.

No one has heard from Iris. But, maybe it’s just so underground and awesome that we don’t even know about it!

So what would I have done differently? Well, as I was watching this all unfold Friday afternoon, Marc and I decided we’d have a little fun with it, so we built a single serving site – ToyotaYarisIsYourNewBicycle.com.

Here was our thinking…

• Calling upon the isyournewbicycle meme, the site randomly displays non-sequiturs about the Yaris and things it does for you (i.e. Toyota Yaris asked if you’ve lost weight.) The statements are obviously not meant in the literal sense, but rather to serve as emotional triggers – these are things that make a person feel good. With that said, a new car should trigger many of these same emotions… oh what a feeling!
• Also note the small link in the lower left hand that reads “But you don’t have to take our word for it” which links directly to the owner reviews of the Yaris on the Drive.com.au site. It’s quite simple, we looked and listened and there are already Yaris advocates out there, people that own the vehicle and they’re talking about it online. We’re not going to tell you why you should buy the car, people that own the Yaris are.

We pulled this together quickly (total cost was an hour of our time and a glass of wine each), but if we were actually engaged in this, the next step might’ve been to tie in a UGC piece. Something along the lines of Tell us why Toyota Yaris is your new bicycle. Just tweet it and include the hashtag #toyotayarisyournewbicycle. Then, each week of the 6 week campaign, we’d give some cash, say 2.5k, to the most retweeted line – essentially using the budget to incentivise people to create and share content on our behalf… wow, that sounds a lot like what Toyota’s done. Maybe ‘ol Marketing Manager ‘Bruce’ is smarter than he gets credit for.