They are like Demetri Martin, they entertain for a profession and when a brand wants to align with them it can sometimes look really good. Such as the Martin + Microsoft = 'Clearficiation' series
They are like Hilltop Hoods, who are entertainers who have commercial deals with brands, in particular DC (they have to wear DC at every show). However, you do not hear them mention this during one of their shows.
They are peformers...They put on a show...They act.
John Laws does not act, he is seen as news source an information source.
They are definitely not like Rene Rivkin, Rene gave financial advice that people trusted. When he had a vested interest people's money was at risk.
At the end of the day in my opinion;
-Vloggers need to disclose any commercial deals. I think that it should be on their profile homepage, I don’t think it needs to be on the video.
-The best Vloggers will put their community first. If there is no fit they will not engage in commercial terms, no matter how much financial or other value they stand to gain
Asher Moses (Journaliste for tha SMH) is lurking ma blogs and publishing my posts in the fo real Media, gotta be careful! Don’t want my mum reading in The Age tha bad news about Youtubers doing dodgies, need to set the record straight! Don’t want to say stupid shit anymoar!
Adspace-Pioneers is now a news source for the worlds!
Time to tackle the big questions on this blog!
Should there be laws/rules for Vloggers around cash for comment? What should they entail?
Alright guys, Moses and I need your help working this one out.
My Dads ex-bro Rene Rivkin (My dad loved your newsletter)
or
My bros Hilltop Hoods
Please guys answer, Moses and I need answers, the worlds need to solve this problem quick!
On Wednesday, I will tally votes and give you guys the ANSWER to what the rules should be around cash for comment with Vloggers. Moses might publish it in Thursday SMH Media and Marketing sections.
This post is dedicated in the memory of the late Carles pre-Hacksterbro
On the weekend, I found out that two of my friends and fellow members of my Bottle Club were directly effected by the Victorian Bushfires. One of them was 30 metres away from the firestorm, the only reason he is still alive is because 3 CFA helicopters dumped water infront of him, just in time.
However my other friend was not as lucky she lost her eldest son in the fires. I cannot imagine the hurt that they must be feeling in the community at the moment.
Kimberely Evans had taken advantage of the competition that Samboy’s chips were running to see who could create the biggest Facebook Group with the words Samboy is back in them. She had hijacked the competition for social cause. A higher need.
Samboy are also holding Flavour Hit Film Festival where they are asking to create a video of 'How the Flavour hits you?' and to include an end graphic. The most viewed clip on Youtube will win $5000. I decided to create a video to try and win the $5,000 prize for the most viewed clip so that I can donate the money to the Red Cross as well.
I think this is a win-win situation for all parties involved, The Bushfire victims get hopefully $15,000 that they were not getting before and Samboys chips gets awareness of their relaunch that looks to be their main objective of the campaign.
At the moment, I feel there is a big elephant in Social Media/ Digital Strategist room. That is Facebook, it was the reason that social media became mainstream, the general public started creating content.
However you very rarely hear anyone talking about successful executions within Facebook.
The reason being is because it is a walled garden, it is a private space where third parties (startegist) cannot peer in and watch social media at work.
So,
I thought I would make a list of good examples of Facebook branded executions;
There is currently a trend amongst Youtube Vloggers (US) that transperancy is not a rule of social media and doing cash for comment is acceptable.
TV show Lie to Me have paid a number of vloggers to talk about their latest show with no disclosure from the vlogger about being paid.
The content is good, it is engaging, it is not a stretch from what these vloggers normally produce. So that makes it okay, right?
From a Vlogging source I was told that the reason they do 'cash for comment' is because they do not want to risk losing a large percentage of their audience (by doing full disclosure, they will be deemed as a sell out), whereas with cash for comment, a large percentage of their audience will not notice.
What is your opinion on self disclosure within Youtube? Do Vloggers need to be upfront about advertorial?
'When individuals begin to see themselves as mini-media businesses, the lines blur. Unfortunately, very few people have the capacity to deal with where that can take you - remember, the media businesses such as Fox have legions of people who have turned people into celebrities and celebrities into household names. There are disciples and practices around doing this. The difference is that it is done in a way that always reflects back on the "parent brand" (in the same way that Channel 9's stable of celebrities reflect back on Channel 9).
Individuals, on the other hand, are personal brands. There are fewer disciplines (and sometimes even awareness levels) in place. And as personal brands are built around trust and authenticity, any undisclosed dalliance with larger brands can be very damaging.
Unfortunately, once an outcome is achieved and the hard-earned brand equity has been extinguished (for cash/product/promise), those individuals (and their personal brands) can be easily discarded ... '
If the States is anything to go by, we may need to realign our thoughts about our vision and values of Social Media Advertising in Australia.
Update: Australian Hughsnews is getting paid cash for comment by Fox in the competition.
Hands up in the air who remembers the ol beef that 50 Cent and Ja Rule had about four years ago. They both came out and sledged each other in songs and then did some other jazz, and then Ja Rule career was pretty much over.
50 Cent is bringing the beef sandwich again, this time he is unloading it all over Rick Ross. 50 Cents communication beef weapon of choice: The Tubes!
(5:20) Why the hell does Fiddy buy this girl a leather jacket? Clearly she needed the sweet ride! Damn Fiddy listen to the woman!
Soulja Boy and Bow Wow are having a beef casserole at the moment too; arguing who has the biggest Lambo.
What does all this mean for Marketers? Having your own channel of communication with your consumers is one of the real advantages of online communication.
When you get attacked or need a quick response you at least have a channel of communication to defend yourself through and get your full message across.
Check out ma little homeboi Malcolm Turnbull and the way he defended not giving me ma $950!
Learn more about S***** M**** from Hip Hop stars in my series Blogging like a Rockstar (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)
So if you didn’t hear, the brains trust behind Bannerblog (Australia's No.1 Marketing Pioneer Blog) have been pretty active lately; Ashadi Hopper just put the downpayment on his new Penthouse overlooking The Bridge and Ash Ringrose just bought a 156 inch television screen so he can play WoW in real life and shit.
I broke into Ashadi's new apartment, stole a bottle of D.P from the fridge and took this photo on my iPhone
Ash's new television and the person he bought to explain how to run the damn thing.
Well when you look at the category of blog that Bannerblog would fall under it would be more of a news source and information storage blog. Unfortunately there would probably be only a handful of Marketing blogs in Australia that would fall under news (B&T, CampaignBrief and new hot shot Mumbrella) and I don’t know how many would fall under storage (Inspiration Room Daily and maybe Paps is trying it out with her endless Twitter lists)
This is a great for Mumbrella though with a new revenue model (single blog sponsor) being played out a few months before he goes for it or decides against it.
I am sure if we can get the boys away from sailing their new Yacht’s around the Harbour, then they would probably be the best guys in the business to be leading this kind of initiative.
Wisey has kept the link loving times a rollin with her '7 things you didn't know about me' link chain game. So seeing that this blog has not resembled anything to do with Marketing in the last 4 months, I thought my regulars will not be pissed off with yet another irrelevant post. So here goes it;
1. Adspace-Pioneers was an error The name actually comes from me wanting to do a blog on ambient marketing. I was going to be the 'Pioneer of new spaces to advertise'. I really don’t like the name, I especially hate it when people spell it AdSpace Pioneers too. Here is a link to my first two posts
2. I used to be able to name every Melbourne Cup winner I used to love horse racing, so much so that I got a part time job at The Australian Horse Racing Museum in Federation Square. I used to take old seniors on tours of the museum and reminisce on the good old days of SP Bookies and when women wore clothes to the races.
3. I always wanted to be a Barrister All the way up to third year Uni where I was looking to transfer into Law. It turned out to be too hard aka my marks were not good enough, however I still think about it, especially now that Rudd has slipped me the nine fiddy, I can pretty much quit at The Pop and go back to Uni on those $$$.
The 2007 Western Antique Bottle Club Show
4. I used to be the President of the Western Antique Bottle Club I have a collection of antique Milk Bottles from different Melbourne Suburbs. I have been a member of the Western Anitque Bottle Club for 10 years (joined when I was 13). It is kind of a dying hobby, we were one of the last clubs left in Victoria.
5. Lowriders I was part of a Low Rider Gang called the Malvern Madness Dragster Board, we used to cause a bit of havoc, hanging on to the back of trams, going down Collins St Hill no breaks, all that kind of jazz.
6. I don’t use an RSS subscriber I just use my memory and twitter to guide me to the goodness. I also just use the twitter.com to check my tweets.
7. I am becoming responsible I have got a 10 year plan. I am going to start by being responsible for a cactus once I manage that I am going to move onto a real plant and then onto a fish and then a cat. Then I will be responsible enough to look after a baby. I started with the Cactus just the other day, I still need to name it?
Here are the rules... Share seven facts about yourself in the post. Link to your original tagger and list these rules in your post. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. Let them know they’ve been tagged.
I was doing some homework the other night AKA watching Youtube and saw that TheHill88 (2nd most subscribed Aussie on Youtube) had posted an interesting video. On closer inspection it was clear that TV station Fox had slipped some money towards Caitlin Hill to do some promotion for the show Fringe. Sounds pretty good, using influential people in the existing (Youtube) community to endorse a new property.
How I was wrong...
Caitlin, the first was enough pain, please no more of that rubbish!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
It was not until I started looking at the comments that I realised that I was by myself and that she had actually converted a number of her viewers.
If I took a step back this was actually successful for Fox. I think that sometimes I am guilty of putting my perfect new media marketing hat on, unless it is breaking new ground it is just not cutting it for me.
Its kind of like when I get all hot and flustered when I see a Alternate Reality Game or I will dismiss an ad if it has been done in another country.
Who cares if So you think you can dance have copied an overseas idea? As long as it gets people interested in the show, who cares if they were the first to come up with the concept?
EDIT: The So You Think You Can Dance comment was in response to the recent flash mob efforts which were covered on Mumbrella which included some unhappy markerters commenting on the piece.
With this I hope to give you nothing but an insight into TWGF. Why have I written this? Because I have no life, that’s why I hang out in a multi-cultural football forum. Why am I asking myself Questions? I don’t know.
What is it?
The World Game forum or TWGF as the users know it is a forum/online community that is part of SBS’s Football site [Soccer to you new dawners] ‘The World Game’. Which in itself is pretty much at the peak for online content. Lots of quality video and updated reports.
VITAL STATS: ‘Our users have posted a total of 978475 articles We have 19874 registered users’
TWGF has been going for roughly 10 years and has about about 50-80 users engaged in active discussion at any given time. It’s a home where football fans come to fight, shit stir and sometimes talk football. If 4Chan is described as the Footscray of the web then TWGF is the Balkan war of the web. This is not just an analogy either with many users engaging in bitter ethnic battles however; most of it is in good humour.
Over the years TWGF has grown to such a community that some have met in the real world and even traveled to football matches overseas, met up for kickabouts, to attend A-League matches or have just gone to jail. I myself have met people from TWGF and despite mum’s advice about not meeting people from the web I wasn’t raped. Still, I told a girl I was seeing that I was meeting some mates from the internet that day and I never saw her again.
Seriously though when it is good this forum is laugh out loud funny [LOL we call it for you marketing types trying to understand the crazy yoofs lingo] with all the wit, banter and psychopathic characters that blow in and out. Also pretty much everyone is angry here for either one of four reasons:
A: The fact that Football is always getting kicked in the guts by the traditional media in Australia. B: ‘New Dawners’ are starting to follow the game C: Because someone just hacked their Facebook account and posted photoshopped pics in the forum of them bumming someone. D: The wheels on their gyspy cart just fall off.
Most other forums are moderated properly or have users that invite you in. TWGF is the complete opposite. But this is probably part of its charm. If you post for the first time on another forum people generally say welcome. On TWGF we either give you shit or ask what ’multi’ [explained later but a fake account] are you- forumites don’t believe that new users come to the site and in fact out of the 19,000 registered users only about 100 are believed to be proper forumites.
TWGF users view of the brand
Most users tend to slag off SBS’s coverage of football or lack of it nowadays. Every host that’s ever been on SBS’s The World Game TV program has had someone register an account in their name and mimicked them in their posts. This has lead to an almost cult like status of SBS’s hosts such as Craig Foster, David Basheer and Les Murray. It’s fair to say though that most users have a respect for the work these guys have done for our game – maybe except David Basheer who everyone complains about, but not as much as FOX SPORTS’ Andy Harper who has been captured so magnificently by the one and only JAYFCAK47 in this vid:
The site owners/administrators dialogue with users:
This has been no existent with enquiries about forum problems made to Administrators falling on deaf ears. Users have been recently banned and threads deleted so users have broken away and started their own forums. The most recent being Gippo sports
Korb is a secret breakaway forum started by members who were disillusioned with the way TWGF was heading. Rumour has it they’re all single.
Gippo is a new breakaway forum that was recently started after members of TWGF had had enough of administrators deleting threads, banning people and not discussing it. I have a feeling that the Gippo threat could slightly be worrying them as Admin has banned the word and also delete any posts discussing it. Of course I could be wrong like the time I accused a poor person of stealing my camera at the World Cup and the police kicked the crap out of him only for my ladyfriend to start laughing and say ‘Oops, it’s in my bag’. No hard feelings, we all had beers after it, even if he had to drink through a straw.
Brands engaging in Dialogue: Setanta Sports. Setanta is a sport channel than runs on FOXTEL. It costs extra and is mostly subscribed to by football fans due to its extended coverage. Setanta came onto TWGF before the European Football championship to promote their packages- basically spam, but targeted to people who were actually discussing it and were interested in their product as opposed to be sold to by snidy pricks. Setanta answered questions directly and many users signed up. I know I did and must say that they were helpful on the phone and even sent back up emails to see if everything was working smooth. [Give me free Setanta next year for the plug karnts] Afterwards they have continued to have a voice on TWGF and answer queries about what they will be screening. The irony being the people that run the site won’t even answer users questions yet another brand is more than happy to engage.
Sometimes professionals in the football scene, journalists or bloggers come onto TWGF. When they do they basically get hammered. Mathew Breeze [an ex-Australian Referee who officiated at the World Cup] did a live chat. He did get some serious questions but these were outdone by ‘Dear Matthew, Why are you so shit?’
on SBS’s site and used to have one on FOX SPORTS. He started posting his blogs in TWGF but this pretty much stopped when he was online and there was a whole heap of threads with titles like ‘ATTN: Jesse Fink and when you clicked on the link you were met with ‘Why are you such a fucking wanker?’ Extremely childish but funny to watch. It’s like a mix of a car crash, girls fighting and listening to outer suburban lebs talk.
Lurkers
Lurkers are people that lurk on the site [or any website], like dirty perverts in a bush. They never post but just read. TWGF has many lurkers. The most famous was a user called KMART2004 who lurked continuously for two years but never posted [you can see who is logged in]. After a substantial campaign of calling him a ‘faarking lurking karnt’ for a year- KMART 2004 posted with probably the best post ever. It was just a picture of a baton and he wrote ‘over to you’ to another lurker. Since this incident most users wished KMART2004 remained anonymous, as he has contributed pretty much fuck all since then.
Examples of the quirky users
Jase The Ace- A young Aussie/Greek and generally just a good guy that lives and breathes the forum. Made an awesome tribute vid to celebrate making 15,000 posts
Maestro: Trawls the internet looking for things that make Croatians look like fools and then posts it. Started a universal TWGF language by always following up his posts with ‘Oh Cros’ followed by an ‘embarrassed’ emoticon. Pretty much every forumite has adapted and used this phrase to take the piss out of everyone.
Polynikes- Used to only post articles about Greek history and if anyone posted a random topic he’d instantly say Greeks invented it. For some reason makes posts about UFO’s every day now. I’m not kidding.
Tonigol- A young kid who pretends he is an accountant and had been banned probably 100 times.
Didi- An enigma. Was sort of normal then went a bit odd. Would only post TOTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEEEEEEE referring to Totti’s penalty to knock Australia out of the World Cup. His personal pics were famously posted all over the site.
Fronty- A freak who has a grudge against SBS. The story is that he was a sacked janitor. Now all he ever posts about is how bad their programs are or how they are slipping in the ratings. All his posts seem to start with ‘A slap in the face for lil'ol2%SBS’ and only ever refers to SBS as ' lilol2%SBS’.
Multis
A multi is an account someone makes in another name. This is a massive part of TWGF as not only is it funny, but it’s essential as people are always getting banned for breaking guidelines. Some classics include: Robot Mugabe: A robot version of Robert Mugabe. QuBo: A Chinese man that accuses Australians of racism any chance he gets. Also talks about dogs a lot. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The Iranian President.
Language:
The TWGF has spawned its own form of language and grammar. But I cannot tell it, you’ll have to join the forum and learn it. Mostly because this post is way to long. All I can say is it’s ‘Technically and tactically a farken World Clarsh language spoken by true Crayshans and Strayans alike and invented by Greeks. Spoken from here to Tardistan’.
Invasions Forumites occasionally invade other forums. This is means they all go in as a group, registering at another forum and posting topics to fuck with people. It happened in the Uruguayan forums during the World Cup qualifier and more recently against an AFL forum: Pic supplied. TWGF once unwisely tried to invade the masters of invasions - 4Chan. TWGF went into meltdown and nearly never recovered. Luckily 4Chan dismissed TWGF as a silly inquisitive child and didn’t crush it like they could’ve.
That concludes my long posts about the World of Forums or should I say the awesome cesspit that is TWGF. It’s also given time for me to reflect on how sad my life has become knowing this sort of shit. But in a strange way it’s kind of funny and strange in a funny kind of way.
Hopefully a few forumites will post a few comments here telling me to ‘get farked ya filthy gypsy’.
May I introduce Nat, Australia's Number 1 most subscribed Youtubers. She gets on average 400,000 views per video she does.
It is really interesting to watch the evolution of Community Channels format. One of the things that I have noticed about her videos in the last couple of month is the way that she is entering into a dialogue with her audience. As you can imagine it would be quite hard to respond to every single comment but the way she gets around this is by playing her favourite comments at the end of the video (Porno Music Time).
On this video from 2007 (when she was not playing viewers comments) she got 1,100 comments and 300,000 views
Since rewarding people with showcasing their comments with Porno Music Time, on a recent similar video with 300,000 views, she is received 5,000 comments.
Rewarding your audience for micro interactions is key to developing a strong community.
The evolution of online communities is an interesting thing to watch.
At the moment we are going through a phase of a converging of traditional marketing journalism meeting the marketing blogging community. There seems to be a rising trend of bloggers being the source of news in traditional media channels.
1. Looking at the taxonomy of blogs (which I will be writing a post on very soon), Mumbrella stands out, it would be classified as a “News Blog”, whereas the majority of blogs on Marketing at the moment are very much “Popular Mechanics Blogs” looking at the workings of marketing and advertising rather than the reporting.
2. Tim Burrowes ex-editor of B&T has established networks within offline marketing journalism community, therefore it was easy to get offline media influencers to read his content.
3. Burrowes also respected the online community and made an efforts to make sure that he acknowleded who was online. Goodlinx and Summation of incidentsonline
This will appear in other communities; I would suggest that Crikey lead this for Political Blogging, I would be interested to hear if anyone know any other cases in Australian blogging (fashion, sports, music?) where there has been a convergence of traditional media and citizen journalism.
My upcoming post on taxonomy of blogs will look at the impact this has on Marketers/Publicists.
Edit: Asher Moses writes for SMH not The Australian.
Next update the Top 50 will also appear in B&T and there will be hyperlinks to all the blogs. If you are looking for hyperlink to a blog check out the last update. Methodology for the ranking is here . A big up to Zac Martin for collating the list and Peter Wagstaff for putting it in a table.
If you are not on the list, please do not take it personally, I just forgot to add your blog to the list. So just send me an email and I will make sure that you go on the next update.
