Pimp My Kettle, Fantastic Noodles and Clemenger BBDO FAIL at Social Media


3 reasons why the Pimp My Kettle will FAIL.

1. Social Networking around a false hobby
Where the hell is the consumer insight in this one? When have people ever tried to Pimp their kettle. We already have a social networking site, it is called Facebook, why do we want another? People created Nings around social objects/niche passions people have(no one loves pimping kettles)

2. Fake people
Kill me now, this is reminiscent of Skip Harder, why don’t you do a bit of research find someone who actually does do this and use them as your poster boy, Instead of trying to pull the wool over your dumb target markets eyes(I am in this market and find it offensive)

3. Google Pimp My Kettle

Where is your site? Do you think everyone is going to remember and type your site URL straight in. Who the hell launches a site and does not even get the SEO.

Why am I laying into this campaign so hard?
Because it is these sorts of campaigns that wreck the name of Social Media Marketing for the people who actually know what they are doing.

Here is some advice;

Clemenger BBDO get someone in who knows what they are doing, or stick to above the line! It is good to see your creatives are stealing their ideas straight from Youtube too.

This clip was produced a year before the Fanatastic Noodles campaign

Fanatastic Noodles when Clemenger tell you they have had success with the social networking side of things. Have a look at who has joined, all the profiles (there is only 49 at last count) are from Adelaide, is this any coincidence that this campaign came out of Clemenger Adelaide?

Bloggers call out these rubbish campaigns because if we don’t they will just tarnish the reputation of Social Media Marketing.

I am not alone here either;
Matt's(Zakazukhazoo) interpretation of this rubbish

Zac thinks PimpMyKettle is wrecking his future as well


This comment by Tait Ischia was in the comments section but it is so insightful I decided to publish it in the body of the post. Check out the comments section for the great discussions about this campaign.


I think the core issue is that the idea to incorporate social marketing into the media mix seems to have come from a need to reach the target rather than extend the idea. I can't really be bothered going into how terrible the site is; I just don't think it warrants any critical perspective. These things happen all the time - think recent Vegimite campaign.

What I found interesting though, is the giant lift-out I found in this month's Vice magazine. Vice got Ed Woodley from China Heights (and Oxford Art Factory) in Sydney to pimp a kettle for the campaign. It's fucking cool. Which means it could have been done well. It was actually a fairly OK idea. Although it was a 'rip-off', so was the Honda 'Cog' Ad. And everyone loved that. Some call it appropriation and others copying, but whatever people say, execution is the biggest difference between the two. And if the execution is done well, then ripping-off becomes referencing and everyone's happy.

Conclusion: Poorly executed campaign mixed with social media being chosen too late in the process. There are other things as well - just to name a few: A confused selection of media placement eg. poster in Vice, terrible use of irony in street posters, a mainstream look trying to target an underground populace, and not to mention a great list of (hopefully well-payed) artists that the vast majority of the mainstream gen-y audience will not give two shits about.

The big agencies don't really get it. Not to mention most creatives thinking they're cool and hip-to-the-scene but in fact being complete wannabee douche-bags. I have no problem in saying that because I see it all the time. Although I must say the guys at Publicis Mojo are the antithesis of that statement. A little less so after Toby & Serene left for Fallon a year ago. Sad, but as an industry we need more of those people.

I wholeheartedly agree we need more critical perspectives on campaigns like this so that others don't fuck-up social networking for the rest of us who are trying to do it properly.

38 comments:

Zac Martin said...

So so so true.

Now a good social media campaign would involve a response from them here on this post. Do they even know what Google Alerts is?

Anonymous said...

Hey Julian, I mostly agree with you, but what would you have done with the online component of this campaign? Just not bothered at all? The TV ads will have the biggest impact, setting up a Ning site seems like a natural progression from there. If a few people take notice, great, if not, who cares? As long as they sell more noodles, the client will be happy. The agency is just doing what the client's marketing department would have demanded because they thought it was cool. I give them points for sticking it out there and having a go.

Julian Cole said...

As long as they sell more noodles, the client will be happy?

Well it actually comes down to, is the actions that the company takes increasing the ROI?
Building a NING requires a developer and someone to update their content. This costs money.

More costs going out, means lower ROI.

Is the NING helping to sell noodles? Not doing a intensive study I would suggest it isn’t.
However it is creating a negative touch point for the brand and a great example of rubbish social media.

Okay let us take this idea back to its core of ‘manipulating the kettle’. They could of taken the money that was spent on creating the Pimping the Kettle Ning and created a competition to design the best Kettle, the winner would be the one with the most people voted on for the best kettle (DIGG styles). That money would then be used to create the kettle and sell the kettle through a affiliated site. The people who voted for the kettle will be sold the kettle for cost price (or if the company was being really nice given a kettle).

They should of then connected with the online audience, find the top design, industrial design and art blogs, Facebook groups, discussion boards and given them some value (money, noodles, kettles?) to highlight this competition.

Is this connecting with the Fantastic Noodle audience? Questionable
Will it get more attention to Fantatstic Noodle and put it in the consideration set for a new audience? Yes
Will it have had a bigger ROI then Pimp My Kettle idea? Hell YES!

However a better approach which has been done in Melbourne via a radio show Hamish and Andy for a potato chip company Smiths is to allow people into the Research and Development process of Fantastic Noodle, Give people the ability to suggest a new flavour of noodles. The most voted for flavour would go through to the development process. Then give value back to the consumer who helped vote the flavour through. This goes beyond communication into marketing and putting the consumer at the heart of marketing.

Here is Zac’s look at the Hamish and Andy Smiths Chip activity
http://www.pigsdontfly.com/2008/05/peoples-chip.html

Anonymous said...

Fair points, but I think you're talking about a marketing department and an agency that care more about REACH than ROI!

You inspired me to have put my 20c in though: http://www.e-cbd.com/zakazukhazoo/pimp-my-kettle/

Julian Cole said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Julian Cole said...

Marketing 101 would suggest that ROI is the final goal of any Marketer, if he is not having a long hard look at that number then he probably should not be in marketing. All these jokers are going to get found out very soon and I plan to be delivering the eulogy at their funeral.

Unknown said...

Mmmmmm... oxidized fats and oils!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_noodles#Health_concerns

oh and all served in environment loving Styrofoam! yayayayay!

so not only fake people julian... a fake product. No wonder they're focussing on the kettle you boil the water in... it's the best part of the process.

Adam

Anonymous said...

Well said Julian. I too have been annoyed at the whole pimp my kettle machine.

I think the core issue is that the idea to incorporate social marketing into the media mix seems to have come from a need to reach the target rather than extend the idea. I can't really be bothered going into how terrible the site is; I just don't think it warrants any critical perspective. These things happen all the time - think recent Vegimite campaign.

What I found interesting though, is the giant lift-out I found in this month's Vice magazine. Vice got Ed Woodley from China Heights [http://www.chinaheights.com] (and Oxford Art Factory) in Sydney to pimp a kettle for the campaign. It's fucking cool. Which means it could have been done well. It was actually a fairly OK idea. Although it was a 'rip-off', so was the Honda 'Cog' Ad. And everyone loved that. Some call it appropriation and others copying, but whatever people say, execution is the biggest difference between the two. And if the execution is done well, then ripping-off becomes referencing and everyone's happy.

Conclusion: Poorly executed campaign mixed with social media being chosen too late in the process. There are other things as well - just to name a few: A confused selection of media placement eg. poster in Vice, terrible use of irony in street posters, a mainstream look trying to target an underground populace, and not to mention a great list of (hopefully well-payed) artists that the vast majority of the mainstream gen-y audience will not give two shits about.

The big agencies don't really get it. Not to mention most creatives thinking they're cool and hip-to-the-scene but in fact being complete wannabee douche-bags. I have no problem in saying that because I see it all the time. Although I must say the guys at Publicis Mojo are the antithesis of that statement. A little less so after Toby & Serene left for Fallon a year ago. Sad, but as an industry we need more of those people.

I wholeheartedly agree we need more critical perspectives on campaigns like this so that others don't fuck-up social networking for the rest of us who are trying to do it properly.

t.

Anonymous said...

Oh and it's Toby Moore & Selena McKenzie (not Serene) that I was talking about. Proof of their awesomeness is here: http://www.wholphindvd.com/web-films/concrete-tightrope/

haze said...

I don't necessarily think it's a negative touch point for the brand, more just a case of online wallpaper that no one's going to notice or really give a shit about.

I agree the execution isn't great, but I don't think they're trying to pull the wool over people's eyes with the fake people here? It's an attempt at humour, but no one's laughing. I still think that creating characters in the social media environment can be really effective if used correctly (Barry Dawson maybe, that guy that pretends to blog as Steve Jobs)?

And, erm, surely they could've splashed out the extra 5 bucks a month or whatever and got their own domain name.

Finally, if they really did jack the idea off Youtube, seriously, for shame. There's been so much shit like that happening lately.

Sigh.

AKTIFMAG said...

The Chinese man looks funny beacuse he has a Chinese kettle....

I think it's awesome that they mocked minority groups and stereotypes for the ads.

I love it when people from Adelaide show their right wing bigoted views in their advertising, it's refreshing.

Anonymous said...

You should post their trailer and compare it to the one they ripped off on youtube. It's the same. I can't believe the fraud in advertising

User said...

I actually quite like this campaign... it got my attention and got me engaged with the brand for the 3 minutes I spent on the website. A win for Fantastic. However, I wouldn't have known about it if it weren't for this and Zac's blogs, so I don't know how effective they've been at getting the campaign out there. Is it running on TV? It would be effective on TV (if they didn't cut it down to 30 seconds - my pet hate!). I don't watch enough TV to know...

No doing some SEO is stupid, but other then that - I fail to see any problem???

tamir berkman said...

Is there any more room on the bandwagon headed for the lynch mob after party? What kind of social media crime happened here? Don't get me wrong, this campaign is far from perfect but it's something. In days where budgets are shrinking we need to say thanks to fantastic noodle for giving it a go and thanks to BBDO for missing the bulls eye so we'll have something to blog about. Let's not forget that being a critic is easy, it's a lot harder to make theories pass the reality test. Julian, this post would have been better with a BBDO response.

Julian Cole said...

Tait, dude you are a legend, If you don’t mind I would love to post your comment in the body of the post, cause it is gold!

Matt how can you say that it is not a negative touchpoint? Every interaction that we have with a brand helps determine our opinion of the company.

I could not agree with you about the fake people. People will engage with them for about a minute and then get over it. The reason we keep coming back to social networking sites is because we thrive on social information if a fake person is there they are not creating new information therefore people are less likely to engage with them. The only fake people that work are people who have a source of new information being filtered out to the community (think Summer Heights High Jonah Takalua Facebook Profile).

Rick good to see that you were satisfied with the campaign. I guess I am just disappointed because this is another example of an advertising company using social media to broadcast their message rather than have conversations which is what the technology is all about.

Tamir you are right when you say the issue is about shrinking budgets but that should be the reason why we should be MORE critical. There is absolutely no chance that Fantastic Noodles is going to try social media again for awhile and this is all because they have been lead up the path by false social media prophets in Clemenger BBDO. I would rather blog about companies that are doing social media the right way.

http://adspace-pioneers.blogspot.com/2008/07/amazon-twittering-their-smm-platform.html
http://adspace-pioneers.blogspot.com/2008/07/nike-flying-on-marketing-intelligence.html
http://adspace-pioneers.blogspot.com/2008/07/body-shop-channel-creation.html

There is a few for you, that are passing in reality!

In terms of a response from Clemenger BBDO I emailed them telling them that I had written this post, I even emailed fanatastic foods so they could have a read as wel. However the whole idea of social media is that people have the right of reply. If they do give a reply I will even publish it in the body of the post but ATM it is just further proof that Clemenger’s are not listening to social media.

haze said...

It's not a negative touchpoint. For it to be so a punter would have to leave the site with a worse perception of the brand than they had going into it. The site is an attempt at fun that doesn't really fulfill its objectives, but that's hardly going to change what someone thinks about the brand, especially for a instant noodle company (aktifmag I hope you weren't serious about the bigotism). Wack a BMW logo on there and then you've got a negative touchpoint. It will leave people indifferent, like 80-90% of all advertising does. To say that indifference is negative is wrong. Wasteful yes, negative no.

They're not using the fake people to continuously engage with people on the site. It's a part of the creative strategy to set the TOV of the campaign. They're relying on the strategy working to then get enough users on the site to keep people coming back (which I don't think will happen, but it's not because of the fake people).

Be very interested to see if Clemenger respond, be sure to post it.

Speaking of the people's chip, a new 'do us a flavour' campaign has just been broken by AMV BBDO for Walkers crisps in the UK. Interesting.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/Campaign/News/838313/Gary-Lineker-stars-Walkers-new-flavour-ad/

User said...

I think the cost of adding the "social media" component to this website would have been very minor, because they used a Ning and all they had to do was apply some style templates to it. So it probably wouldn't have been any more expensive than a regular website, really. So why is it going to turn Fantastic off social media? Because they didn't get an overwhelming response? No biggie.

AKTIFMAG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
AKTIFMAG said...

@ Matt...

yeah I was serious.

Only in Australia can we get racism in advertising and I love the way Adelaide is leading the pack.

Channel 7 does it with their coverage selection but not enough ad agencies do.

That's why I find this campaign so new and freshing.

Nobody would've ever had the creativity and insight to stereotype Asians, whites and blacks like these ads do.

If it doesn't pick up some creativity awards I'll eat my hat.

Ben Shepherd said...

I think saying this will "wreck the name of Social Media Marketing" is a little melodramatic.

They gave it a crack and it didn't execute. Sure it's lame but this happens all the time ... BUT it has to happen as the only way (generally) agencies (creative and media) get things right is by making mistakes.

Belting the shit out of them isn't going to solve anything. Who's to say your suggestions on voting on kettles would have resonated with the audience anyway? I think the issue is the whole bloody idea is off ... no amount of credible Ning, Digg, WHATEVER integration could have saved it.

Julian Cole said...

Hey Ben,

I think that it does wreck the name of Social Media Marketing because these campaigns are what Marketers are going to judge the effectiveness of Social Media Marketing by in the short term. We are in the formative stages with SMM at the moment, there are a number of clients wanting to get into Social Media and there is not many frames of reference. If we let this one go past as an example of social media marketing what is that communicating to clients? What is it saying about the effectiveness of social media for marketers?

I think it is our job as critics to offer solutions on how they could of done this campaign better, I think I have done this by giving a laid out example of how to do it.

Why haven’t Clemenger come here and entered this conversation yet?
Do they not value 542 people who have read this post and having a negative perception about the work Clems does online?
Do they not value this conversation we are having which is offering them advice from 8 people who get social media?

I have had other advertising agency respond to the conversations that I have had about their campaigns (TBWA Whybin, Sputnik Agency) and clients (Connex and NAB).

Let me put in an analogy that you might understand, If the Directors of Clems were having a conversations about your future role as the Account Director of Clems and they gave you the opportunity to be a part of that conversation, would you join them for that conversation? or would you just leave it in the hands the managers who have seen your work?!?!?!?!

Anonymous said...

Jules.

Please remove head from arse. This is JUST advertising. It's not a machine. It's not aimed at global domination. Go outside while the sun is still out.

If you were so 'fantastic' you wouldn't have this blog.

Age said...

Hey Jules,

mate I don't think Clems are going to come in here and discuss social marketing because it's clear they don't understand social marketing. This campaign is proof.

And to the Anonymous commenter...

I'm sorry, your opinion is as valid as your identity. You work out it. Grow some balls or keep walking.

Julian Cole said...

hahahaha, Age, mate I could not of said it better!

I think they may have also entered into this discussion under the name of Anonymous. Once again showing their knowledge of the social media etiquette.

Anonymous said...

Oh My Word...

Nominated for Campaign of the Year ???

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