The tweets and links

Clicking on the promoted trend ‘Red Cross Join Us’ shows up the latest Red Cross tweet with other users’ tweets underneath related to the promoted trend. During the time the ad ran the Red Cross featured the two tweets shown above.

The call to action in the first tweet is a little odd as ‘donating’ tweets will be a new concept to most people but, on the other hand, it sounds like a very easy ask that should have been good for user engagement. I was pretty surprised that they used bit.ly to shorten their link considering that the URL shortening service makes the stats on their short URLs publicly available. Still, it’s helpful for those of us that want to take a look at the effectiveness of their campaign. Taking a look at the stats we can see that the bit.ly link was clicked on, at the time of writing, around 500 times. So far, not so good.

The second tweet was a much more traditional marketing message asking people to sign up for Red Cross Month activity. Although this shortened link seems not to have been done using the bit.ly service, adding a ‘+’ symbol to the tweet reveals that the URL is still using the service which means that we can also get stats on the number of clicks. The data shows that this link was clicked on, at the time of writing, just over 1750 times.

Which is how many conversions?

These figures are, I’m sure you’ll agree, fairly paltry considering the expenditure and exposure but lets drill a little bit deeper. If we aggregate the clicks from these two links and assume a very generous 10% conversion rate for the two calls to action we end up with less than 250 conversions. Assuming a more realistic conversion rate of around 2% we only get around 50 conversions.

So what went wrong and what went right?

If the American Red Cross paid full price for their promoted trend they can’t help but be disappointed with the result. However, one thing they will have got in spades is brand recognition. Sitting on the top of the Twitter trends list for 24 hours is absolutely great for promoting their brand and their campaign.

What I did find a little odd was that the promoted trend was visible to someone who was viewing the top London trends. It seems to me that targeting UK Twitter users with a promoted trend aimed primarily at those in the States would elicit a far lower response rate and deliver a lower return on investment. I did also find that the Red Cross Month landing page left a lot to be desired. There is a lot of dense copy and the calls to action are barely distinguishable from the overwhelming torrent of text which can’t have helped their conversion rates.

Most puzzling of all to me is why they chose to go with such a stale promoted trend: ‘Red Cross Join Us’. The most popular trends are always the ones that demand participation from Twitter users. For example, two popular trends in London today were ‘#thatswhyyourmyex’ [sic] and ‘#thingsthedevilinvented’. Both wouldn’t be mentioned by most Twitter users without adding some of their own thoughts. This is their viral quality.

As you can see in the chart above from trendistic.com, the Red Cross’ trend barely outperformed ‘#thingsthedevilinvented’ and woefully underperformed compared to ‘#thatswhyyourmyex’.

Even if the Red Cross got the promoted trend for free the data still suggests that they squandered an absolutely fantastic opportunity. Not many charities will have the cash to try to do right what the Red Cross did wrong but their failings can and should be learnt from and act as a stark reminder to charities that digital campaigns need to be more than just set and forget. These days our audiences demand interaction, vitality and originality. And so should we.

Update: After I posted this story up on Twitter I was contacted by a member of the American Red Cross' social media team who said that my points were 'well taken' but that they 'did [their] best with 1 hour's notice'.  As I suspected this means that it was a last minute campaign and that they were probably gifted some distress space by Twitter at short notice.  However, I think there are still some valuable lessons to be learnt including optimising trends for user engagement.

The method

I paused five of our keywords on Google Adwords that ranked alzheimers.org.uk number one in the natural results for the same search over a period of two weeks and assessed the differences in traffic and visitor quality using Google Analytics' keyword tool.

The results

Considering that we were number one in the natural rankings I was shocked at how much difference it made to traffic levels by turning off the ads that were triggered by the selected keywords.

Across all five keywords the 'best' performance was a 10% drop in traffic and the worst was over a 50% drop in visitors with the rest averaging out at around 20%. Clearly then, turning off the PPC ads for high performing keywords definitely has a major impact on the levels of traffic you will receive.

Although the quality of the traffic marginally improved as observed in increases in the average time on site, pages per visit and decreases in bounce rate; these gains in no way were as significant as the drop in traffic.

The conclusion

Despite what hardened internet geeks like myself might think about sponsored results (I barely see them as I scan to the natural results) it's obvious from my experiment that people do click on them and that they do contribute a lot of traffic to a site.

So, for my part, I'll be turning my ads back on to capture those internet users that don't discriminate between paid and natural search results and, let's face it, who probably don't know or care what the difference is either.

To bring this fledgling demographic of men back into the pub (and, more importantly, to get their brand talked about by potential customers) Andes have created a sound proof cubicle that can be filled with a variety of non-pub background sounds. This means you can call your (quite rightly) distrustful girlfriend and lie convincingly that you are in the office despite the fact that you're slurring all your words and may or may not have dropped a kebab down the front of your shirt.

Basically, it's not going to fool anyone but it is a cool brand awareness campaign.

The ad for it below is (apparently) in Spanish but you get the idea.

However, as good as VCCP's offering was, my ad of the year is actually a fairly low-profile but totally brilliant ad for a Doritos / Guitar Hero tie-in. It follows the life of a wannabe rockstar called Alan from birth to .. well, you'll have to see for yourself.

And yes it is 4 minutes long but it's the best 4 minutes you'll ever spend watching an advert.

So why is this my ad of 2009? Well, for me that's simple; it's because I watch it for my own amusement. I don't passively consume this ad, I actively seek it out and show it to other people. Undoubtedly it hasn't become the viral hit it was meant to be but in the more-art-than-science world of the viral video I'm not sure too much blame can be leveled at the AMV BBDO team that came up with it.

It also doesn't shy away from having fun with the brands. The stage dive into the Dorito's box is a genius bit of product placement and the overriding message that Alan is a bit of a loser but even losers can rock out on Guitar Hero plays up to the public perception that the game is just for people that weren't good enough to learn a real instrument.

It's fun, it's funny and the chorus still hasn't left my head since I first saw the ad in October last year.

So come on everybody, sing with me: "Alan you are a guitar hero! Trapped in the body of a rock n roll zero!"

3. The Skoda Cake Car

Oh my god it's a car made of cake!

Yeah, it's a car made of cake. And that's all it is.

Since PR companies discovered that 'stunt advertising' got column inches and TV coverage (ushered into the mainstream by the media's blanket coverage of the Bravia Bouncing Balls ad) we've been increasing presented with more and more ludicrously extravagant set pieces intended to wow consumers into submission.

Sony's ad was brilliant because it said that colours weren't static; that they were alive. Colours exploded and tumbled, jostled and jumped. It looked exciting and it made a clear link between the Bravia experience and the jaw-dropping spectacle you'd just witnessed.

And that is why the Skoda ad is so disappointing. Yes it's kind of cool that they managed to construct a car out of Victoria sponge but what does it actually say about the vehicle? Soft and squishy? Bad for something that can do 70 mph. Put together by some TV extras that couldn't book panto in Croydon? Well that's build quality for you.

It's just event advertising for the sake of it with nothing to say and for that reason it's going on the list.

2. Cadbury's Eyebrows

The brief: Create an ad that is more memorable and inexplicably brilliant than a gorilla drumming along to Phil Collins.

The pitch: Er .. there are these kids .. and their eyebrows wiggle .. .. .. in time to music!

If this was the best idea they came up with I want to know what they rejected. I'm not saying they should have milked the gorilla for another campaign but I did expect something a bit more well thought out than some sub-standard 'wacky' YouTube video. The fact that it seems to have been so successful amazes and depresses me in equal measure.

1. The T-mobile flashmob

By the time big business cottons on to anything remotely underground it, by definition, immediately fails to market it to the people that might be interested because the ads usually resemble something akin to your granddad dressing up as Ali G to tell you about the benefits of sexual health check ups in the style of an Eton educated grime MC.

Remember flashmobs? They were pretty cool in 2006. Well, unless it took T-mobile 3 years to co-ordinate a couple of hundred people dancing to one of the decade's worst mega-mixes I'd say that they missed the boat on this one.

At least the ad has a point: sharing is fun. Yes, sharing things on the net is fun. Watching things sent to you is fun. But not when you've already seen it and not when you already saw it nearly 5 years ago.

"Hey everyone! Look! Have you seen this wicked BADGER BADGER MUSHROOM MUSHROOM video?!"

Honourable mention (NSFW)

I don't think this was really anyone's favourite advert and, to be honest, it's not even from 2009 but I do like what Brooker has to say about it.

Other advertising agencies certainly seem to have taken an interest in the series of ads with Soho-based outfit, Big Al's Creative Emporium, producing this delightful parody.

Dixon's tube ad parody by Big Al's Creative Emporium

It's unclear whether this was actually a campaign or just the design team horsing around in the office but either way, I like it.

Coke: It's basically just brown sugar water

And to show there wasn’t any kind of bias against Coke the filmmakers also took the time to level a satirical swipe at Coca-Cola's main competitor whose fictional ad agency were compelled to deliver an even more damning creative: 'Pepsi. For when they don't have Coke.'

I've talked before on my blog about the trend of honesty in advertising and Ricky Gervais has certainly taken this modern marketing technique to its natural conclusion. Although many will be certain that we'll never see an ad for Coke that confesses that ‘it’s basically just brown sugar-water’, I for one would get a kick out of big companies having the faith in their brand to lay out the basic truth about their products.

It may be a risky strategy for a corporation like Coca-Cola but I've got a feeling that an ad like that would give them licence to run an incredibly satisfying and successful follow up campaign: 'Coke is just brown sugar-water. Coke drinkers don't care.'

Lego, and augmented reality company Metaio, have developed an augmented reality kiosk that will show you an animation of your whatever Lego contraption you wave in front of it. And of course it's better than an animation because it's an animation superimposed in the real world.

Initially this is just going to sell a boat load of Lego but the future applications of this are staggering as a promotional tool. What if Lego develop an app that allows you to overlay Lego sets and pieces over a base in your living room? You can glimpse your Lego creation before you even take the bricks out of the box.

Kids and adults will be enthralled by this kiosk and it is a perfect example of a company doing augmented reality right: the customers love it, the press love it and it'll awaken the imagination of a new generation of tech-savvy Lego block builders.

Created by M&C Saatchi the ad is a brave attempt to run the gauntlet of the 'refreshingly honest' approach to brand advertising. In one fell swoop Dixons have admitted that their staff are not the best trained, that their shops are not the most aesthetically pleasing and that their sales advice is somewhat sub-standard. They admitted all of this because they're hoping that the message of their ad, 'we're not the best but we are the cheapest', is what will stick in consumers' heads when they reach the final stages of the product purchase cycle.

In many ways this is a twist on the classic Avis ad: 'we're number two ... so we try harder'. The agency behind that advert, DDB, hit upon the idea when they asked the beautifully blunt question, 'why does anyone want to rent a car from you?'. The answer that spawned the legendary advertising campaign was that Avis couldn't begin to compete on price so they had to compete on service; they tried harder.

A similar question has clearly been asked of Dixons. Why would anyone buy anything from you? Conversely, of course, they can't hope to compete against Harrods and Selfridges on service but they can certainly compete on price. 'We try harder' for Dixons is simply 'we are cheaper'.

With the country still feeling the effects of the recent recession it is absolutely right that dixons.co.uk is staking its claim to low prices instead of great service but a major stumbling block of this strategy is the question of whether it is too late for the site to establish itself as a major low-price retailer. The cut-price consumer electronics marketplace has a number of major incumbents: Amazon, Dabs and even eBay are all established players in this crowded and competitive market and consumers are already well versed in the 'try and buy elsewhere' purchasing philosophy.

To bet a brand's reputation on a campaign like this is commendable but very risky. Personally, I have a feeling that Dixons no longer has the clout or the brand recognition to make sure that 'the last place you want to go' is a call to action and not an untimely epitaph.

The 1936 film Reefer Madness was funded by church groups in order to teach the youth of the day about the dangers of cannabis. The fact that the film was then purchased and re-cut as a cult comedic exploitation film tells you just how hopelessly unrealistic the film's portrayal of drug users as murderers and rapists really was.

It is said that 'those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it' and the folks at Think!'s agency, Leo Burnett, clearly haven't taken the time to review the history of misguided government anti-drug campaigns.

The ad is clearly reaching out to existing drug users which is a problem because the existing users will be perfectly aware of what actual pupil dilation looks like and will dismiss the ads as worthless propaganda. If they can't take the dilated pupils aspect of the ad seriously then how can they be expected to absorb and, most importantly, engage with the message that drug driving is a serious offence?

Although it is plain to see that the video deliberately exaggerates the effect of pupil dilation in order to make a stronger point the reality is that all they've actually managed to achieve is to dilute and infantilize their message.

It's an immense shame to see that Think! (part of the Department of Transport) and Leo Burnett have so roundly failed to produce an informative anti-drug driving ad and that they have relied upon lazily rehashing antiquated scare tactics that were already ripe for lampooning well over 50 years ago.

Modern advertising is about engagement and Think! would do well to realize that patronising their audience has made a mockery of their brand and, most disappointingly, of their message.

Unfortunately this kind of functionality isn't officially available yet because Apple haven't released the code that developers would need to access the live video feed from an iPhone.

However, this is rumoured to be coming in the 3.1 software update and with the iPhone positioned to be one of the best AR platforms available I would be very surprised if Apple didn't have plans to allow developers to use the live video feed in the near future.

And for those of you still in the dark about Augmented Reality here's a little video to explain things: