Summer Heights High Fandom (Word of Mouth)

‘I didn’t touch his fucking dick’
‘Puck You Miss’
‘That so random!’

Have you heard any of these saying in the last week?

Summer Heights High is everywhere, it has even started to infect the lexicon of many Young Australians.

In the 1960’s, Ernest Dichter the ‘father of motivational research’ changed the way we look at word of mouth with his seminal article ‘How Word of Mouth Advertising Works’. He came up with four motivations for people to pass on commercial messages. They were Product involvement, Self involvement, Other involvement (altruism) and Message involvement.

Message Involvement involved a thing called ‘verbal play’; this is when an aspect of an advertisement campaign is repeated between friends, it may range from a catchy tune to certain behaviour. This behaviour is then repeated in a number of times in differing environments.

This is what is occurring with Summer Heights High at the moment. My week at Australian Uni Games made it interesting to see ‘message involvement’ play out. Words had been intertwined into a lot of the conversations I was having. It seems each week the audience is given a new lexicon of terms to use. People who did not watch the show felt left out of the joke, when it came around to Wednesday night, we had a few SHH virgins watching for the first time. Through the fear of being on the outer, people watched the show to make sure they were in on the joke the next time around. The original audience is acting as the salesmen for the shows future episodes.

SHH has gone beyond verbal play outs as well, the other day while checking a friends facebook I had seen that someone had used the graffiti function which allows others to draw on friends walls and they had done the ‘dicktation’ symbol from the first episode.



Dictation - Jonah Takalua - Summer Heights High

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Here is my first article on Summer Heights High Fandom (Social Media Integration)

Update
I took of the comments on this post because it was getting filled with Spam. If you have something to add feel free to comment it on the other post. Damn SPAMMERS!

In the name of research!

I will be taking a week off from the blog. I am going to the Australian University Games on the Gold Coast to do a indepth immersion into ‘Generation Y and consumption culture’. Wish me luck, as on these ethnographic studies you often put your body on the line in the name of science.

If you were wondering I will be playing on the Monash Mini Golf Team (MGT) so look out in the local papers for our results. Or if you are on the Gold Coast feel free to come along to one of our games starting around 8:30PM on Cavill Ave.

Political Marketing: Vote Grilld’

Melbourne Healthy Burger franchise ‘Grilld’ is the first to have a stab at the riding the coat tails of the upcoming Australian election. With the national election looming it seems that there will be a number of brands jumping on the political band wagon.

Grilld have set up the Vote Grilld, the reason behind it is to help decide the three new burgers for the range and to get a larger Customer database. There are three parties the Green party, Republican United Meats Party and Right Wings Party.

The video is a little weak, don’t know what they are trying to do with the voice. The instore promotion is very strong with ballot boxes, political posters and the staff wearing Vote 1 badges. I will try to get some photos up soon.

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Technorati Profile

E-Cultural Hijacking Part Four Arsebook

Here is another E-Cultrual Hijacking for you;



Arsebook parodies the Online Social Network giant Facebook.

Check out some past E-Cultural Hijackings

Zune Balmer
Error Message for Ad Agency
Youtube and Spanish Blood Bank

Summer Heights High Fandom (Social Media Integration)

At least in one conversation a day I will hear some reference to Summer Heights High. The ABC show has reached tipping point. SHH is a comedy mockumentary about two students (Jonah Takalua and Ja’mie King) and a drama teacher (Mr. G) at a Public School in Melbourne.

The show is a run away success but there are a number of other interesting phenomena happening around the show. The support online for the show is phenomenal. I think this is so important for television shows because people can immerse themselves to a deeper level and interact with the content at different times. For instance I had some friends over for dinner last night and we went on youtube and watched the Jonah Montage from last episode.

The following is a documentation of the support from Social Media for the television show.

1. Vodcast
They have decided to release it on vodcast. It is now the highest rating Podcast in Australia after only 2 episodes. Following the success of the ABC’s The Chaser War on Everything and Media Watch vodcasts.

2. Online Social Networks
They have also set up Myspace Pages for the characters. The reason the Myspace page works so well is the constant information stream, people have something new to say every week after the episodes are released. Ja’mie King currently has 24,000 plus friends.

There are a number of facebook groups in their name two of the most popular

Summer Heights High Appreciation Society
500 members

Fans of Jonah Takalua and Polynesian Pathways
820 members

Youtube

They have also released video montages of the specific characters, my favourite being Jonah has had 150,000 hits for his first play and 23,000 for his second.

Homesite
They home site leaves a lot to the imagination with a dress up game which is an email to a friend. Would of worked better if it was an application on Facebook which people could send to friends.

I haven’t finished with this beast called Summer Heights High in future weeks I will be posting on SHH and;

Word of Mouth/ Social Currency

Consumer Insights

New audience for the ABC

Chris Crocker; Leave Britney alone

Well if you haven’t seen it yet, Chris Crocker (internet celebrity of Youtube and Myspace blogging fame) empathetic claim to stop picking on Britney.

But what I find interesting about it is a blogging story is producing enough attention to be picked up and run in the traditional media channels. Another sign of the times that blogging is becoming a powerful medium.

A piss take by Seth Green


And here is another funny video mash up of Tyra Banks and Britney.

Elle MacPherson Intimates- Interactive Store Front

They are doing great stuff globally, quite an innovative campaign for a brand that you would presume to be pushing the new media boundaries. Here is my previous post on Elle Mac Intimates Youtube appearance.

Triumph Boats Back Again through Divine Intervention

I blogged about their great viral campaign last year and Triumph have come back again with another clever way to communicate the toughness of their boats. Check out the previous campaign ToughBoats here.

Man Cans = Solo 440ml Large Can

Yesterday I solved the teaser mystery of Man Cans. I found out because my mate showed me the new Solo cans and then it just clicked. This is a great example of social currency. Social Currency is giving the consumer something to be able to talk about, some valuable information.

There is also a raging forum debate going over at Whirlpool where they are trying to crack the mystery as well. This has hints of the communities formed around Alternate Reality Games as well.

On the whole I love this idea of launching the product before the general population makes the official connection with the Man Cans Campaign. They are giving the consumer the chance to solve the teaser before they launch. This is the best example of Australian Transmedia Planning that I have seen. To read more on this planning read what Faris, FOI and Influx have to say about it.

The agency behind this gem is The Furnace, I think they have got a Cannes winner on their hands.

The Furnace is also behind the winner of the 2007 AFA Effectiveness Awards Skins Campaign. However it appears that Skins may be in hot water with a legal suit arising over misleading claims that they don't sponsor elite athletes. Read the full story here.

Here is the winning campaign TVC


And click here to see the new campaign


Here is my previous post on Man Cans