Campfire

Who We Owe It All To...

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 18:38:29 -0500

All right, very little posting going on here as we are working on probably 10 projects at once. BUT no way we can't take a moment to observe that Campfire owes it all to the sensational 70's group, Ant Farm, who not only showed the way with Cadillac Ranch, but a bunch of other media aware art projects! One of the founding members, Chip Lord, is a professor at the University of Santa Cruz. Doug Michaels, another key participant, who among many accomplishments, worked for the legendary architect Philip Johnson, died in 2003 climbing a whale watching cliff in Australia. Hudson Marquez is a painter and sculptor in Los Angeles. Curtis Schreier is "...a psylocybal pterodactor available for worldwide consultation." Their spirit lives on...

Creating Fandom

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:52:18 -0500

Here's a fantastic mash up of The Beatles Paperback Writer and The Monkees I'm a Believer.

While the music industry battles this kind of fan engagement, (I wonder how long this will remain on YouTube), marketers are desperately trying to encourage it. But this level of engagement doesn't happen unless a brand builds fans, and fandom grows out of meaningful relationships. People often characterize the Blair Witch Project campaign as a big hoax, implying we fooled people into believing it was real, but it was really about our relationship with people who loved the story. It was the discussion boards, and the emails, and the community built around the Blair Witch universe that turned people into fans, and it was the fans who generated all the buzz.

New on Motorati

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:13:00 -0500

Hey, there's a whole lot of new goings-on at our Pontiac Motorati Island on Second Life. New businesses, buildings, Solstices for sale. Check it out -- just teleport to Motorati or Pontiac. Or go to www.motoratilife.com to see a web window into what's up.

Pontiac Motorati Campaign Opens Tonight on Second Life and Broadcast Television!

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:32:35 -0500

A fantastic concert event is taking place in Second Life tonight, as part of the launch of the Pontiac Motorati Island campaign. Featuring a special surprise guest, the Jimmy Kimmel Live show will be broadcasting musical segments from Hollywood Boulevard. The live concert will also be seen on Second Life on the Pontiac Garage on Motorati Island.

Just to complete the circle, the virtual performance on Second Life will also be seen on the Jimmy Kimmel show broadcast -- with live celebrity and audience avatars. We have sent out invitations to some Second Life audience members. If you don't have an invite, watch Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight, starting at 12:05 AM EST!

And more events, the sale of the new virtual Solstice GXP, as well as our Motorati Land-A-Palooza land giveaway, will be continuing into next year.

Above you see our crew going into their fortieth hour. They include some of Campfire's crack people, led by Mike Monello and Jenn Mann, as well as our construction/design partner, Millions of Us, working out of Chelsea Pictures, LA. Participating more or less virtually, are the staff of Leo Burnett, Detroit as well as Campfire's Brian Cain and MOU's Chris Lassonde and Rodica Buzescu. And, of course, yours truly, Elliot Tao.

Engagement Begins at Home

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:05 -0500

This week, two stories on the front page of Digg.com caught my attention:

"Games 4 Girls" What an INSULT to Female Gamers!

Ready to Get Annoyed: The NYT is throwing around the term Web 3.0 already.

Then there is the recent announcement that one of the largest communities in Second Life has decided to ban PR and Marketing firms who insult the community by declaring some kind of "first" in Second Life, disregarding all the people and business who were actually there first.

Everyone in advertising is talking about engagement these days, but engagement starts at home. Marketers, especially creatives and planners, need to engage themselves in the very communities and cultures they are marketing towards. They need to understand the environment, the people, and the social rules of the community in order to be effective. Anyone truly engaged in net culture would know that "Web 2.0" is a universally despised term and avoid "Web 3.0" like the plague.

Reading a "cool hunting" brief isn't going to suffice, either. Sure, you can understand the basic functions of a community like Second Life or MySpace just by reading a brief, but unless you really engage you won't understand how frustrating it is to get pinged with excessive friend requests from bogus MySpace profiles, or how obnoxious it is when someone astroturfs your blog, or how female gamers hate, HATE being stereotyped as only interested in Bratz and Disney games.

You have to join the conversation before you can have any affect on it.

"Viral"

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:40:04 -0500

I was once at a TV pre-production meeting and the director was going on about something or other, when the agency creative director interrupted him saying, “Let’s not beat a dead horse here.” The director shot back, “Let’s examine that proposition. What’s wrong with beating a dead horse? I mean it’s better than beating a live horse.” I’m telling this story because of the repeated abuse of another dead horse: “Viral video.” Let’s examine that proposition. Why do we now call any short marketing video, intended to be watched and forwarded by YouTube addicts, “Viral?” How do we know anyone will watch or forward any video so it goes “Viral?”” We don’t talk about a new film going into release as a “blockbuster” film, right? Or a just published book as a “Times bestseller” book? So why do advertisers and agencies assume any short video tossed onto YouTube will go “Viral?" This is not just an argument about semantics, but more importantly, methodology and effectiveness. The ad industry, for years, has made all sorts of false assumptions about TV commercials and their effectiveness; I believe the industry is now trying to apply those same mistaken assumptions to the “New Marketing.” There are upwards of 30,000 video uploads and 40,000,000 downloads a day on the Tube. There’s no way a random video or two can be counted on to automatically go “Viral,” projecting a brand’s message. Nonetheless, we run into this misconception everyday. From lots of smart and talented people. In the new era of consumer engagement, the real issue is what’s the big, persistently engaging campaign surrounding the video, moving the content? And what’s the big idea that drives that campaign? A video or two might be part of it (we used many in our Audi Art of the Heist campaign , but the real question is how are you engaging the audience overall so they look for your goddamn “Viral” videos? Might this misconception be a hangover from the 30 second spot culture? Back in the day, you simply produced a spot and it went into a black box called the media department, and that black box – which created great wealth for agency networks – stuck the spot on some demo relevant shows. If eight million people watched a show, the assumption was eight million people saw your 30 second spot. Simple. There are questions being raised now about this dead horse as well. And people began asking these questions long before “Tivo.” It turns out that when you work in the New Marketing, a truly measurable medium with extensive metrics, and where viewer participation can be easliy judged, the old set of assumptions are no longer relevant. I may be beating a dead horse here, but given the level of bullshit industry buzz about viral videos, I suspect not.

Fast Company story on Campfire

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:32:41 -0500

The November issue of Fast Company has an in-depth story on Campfire, written by Danielle Sacks. Danielle spent two days in Orlando with Gregg and I, and a day in Detroit with us and the gang from Leo Burnett Detroit, sitting in on a brainstorm session for our current Pontiac campaign. During that time, Danielle drilled down deep. She heard the entire story behind Blair Witch, asked incredibly detailed questions about all our past campaigns, and immersed herself in what we were doing with Pontiac. Even the fact checking process was intense, but in the end I believe she explains what we do and why we do it better than anyone, including ourselves. Hell, I've been trying to explain my work to my parents for years, and after my Dad read the story he said "I think I finally understand what it is you do. So thanks for the amazing story, Danielle, and I'll forgive you for calling me a "a hefty 37-year-old with bulbous hazel eyes." Eventually.

Moving on...

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:45:52 -0500

Last Friday I left Chelsea Pictures, the TV commercial production company I had founded nearly 20 years ago. Basically I wanted to focus on Campfire, which these days is more my cup of tea. I’m moving from the fastidious execution of TV commercials into the more conceptually challenging world of New Marketing via Campfire. I saw the handwriting on the wall at Cannes this year, where on a bleak Friday morning (yes, Cannes can be bleak) I went over to the Palais to listen to Lonesome Bob Greenberg talk about the agency of the future. Wandering around the halls of the Festival building at 9 AM I was amazed to find hundreds of people in many very large theaters watching an endless steam of commercials making up the Cannes “short list”. I felt like I was wandering around the set of Brazil. People were absolutely mesmerized by these endless little tidbits of irony and style that millions of other people around the world go out of their way to delete via Tivo, mute buttons and averted eyes. When I finally found Bob’s speech, there were maybe thirty people, half of them asleep in an auditorium that could have held a thousand… And it wasn’t Bob’s fault, his presentation was damn prescient. Painfully, I have also been thinking back to 1988, a year after I started Chelsea in Boston, when I was out for an anniversary dinner with my wife, Melinda, and I had to keep leaving her to run to a pay phone outside the restaurant on Newbury Street (no cell phones then), trying to reach a director who had disappeared on me. Even though he was up for a big job that would pay the bills for him and newly formed Chelsea for a number of months he hadn’t let me know if he was truly available. There were lots of good times too, shooting in a snowstorm in the Wadi Rum desert of Jordan with a crew of 200 French, Italian and English technicians, paddling around the Everglades in a canoe with the same director friend from my wrecked anniversary dinner at sunset on a GM commercial shoot, followed by a huge alligator who seemed most interested in us. Spending a day with James Dyson at his amazing factory in Malmsbury UK, talking about his inventions, his rivalry with Steve Jobs, etc. I definitely think commercials have their place in advertising, even in Campfire’s world of engaging social media. In some ways I think the most canny spot that was produced last year for one of our campaigns, at either Campfire and Chelsea, was the 30-second spot that McKinney produced as part of our Art of the Heist campaign (view below). Utilitarian, yes, but funny and effective as hell. I wish my two former partners in Chelsea, Allison Amon and Lisa Mehling, well and look forward to exploring the outer reaches of social media with Mike Monello and Gregg Hale. Of course I'm a bit sad, but Ty Montague's sage advice keeps ringing in my ears. Ty sez just repeat over and over, "It was a huge success and I did it all myself!" Ty promises you'll feel a whole lot better immediately. And even though it's not true, I do already.