Blend This Book! by Jim Kukral

This ad probably won’t run on network television in the USA because the networks believe that American’s find this offensive. Watch this and you decide.

From Huffpost… This new television commercial for Hardee’s “biscuit holes” probably won’t entice your appetite — but it is likely to grab some attention.

One thing is for sure, it gets your attention.

So is this video really from Microsoft? Or is it a fake to make it look like it’s official? The link off the video page goes to a site that is copy written by Microsoft. So it must be real?

If it’s really from them. Is it so over the top and gross on purpose so that we’ll all talk about it like I’m doing right now? Hmmm… At what point do you have to scream so loud to get attention?

For example… does anyone really care about Internet Explorer 8? I sure don’t, and frankly, it’s going to take something just like this to make me even think about it. Interesting marketing/attention for sure. What’s your take?

You can’t make this stuff up. Check out this story my friend Dave M. pointed me to.

An advertisement for Burger King’s latest sandwich leaves little to the imagination and should be discontinued due to “distasteful” and unappetizing references to oral sex, advertising experts told FOXNews.com.

The print ad for the “BK Super Seven Incher” — a limited time promotion in Singapore, a society known around the world for its strict government controls of social conduct — shows the “mind-blowing” sandwich near the open mouth of a wide-eyed, red-lipsticked woman accompanied by the suggestive tagline: “It’ll blow your mind away.”

“Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled,” the ad continues.

Mark Duffy, a blogger and an advertising copywriter at a major New York City firm, said the advertisement is among the “worst” he’s ever seen in more than 17 years of industry experience.

“I’ve seen a lot of sexual innuendo ads and this is about the worst, especially for something as mainstream as Burger King,” Duffy told FOXNews.com. “I was a little repulsed by it. It’s really misogynistic to women and it’s also unappetizing.”

But did it get your attention? And frankly, is it going to resonate with their target market, which might possibly be men who are probably laughing, and happy, about this imagery?

Time will tell. The bottom line is the agency for Burger King is pushing boundaries and they should be commended for getting noticed. Not for their subtlety.

There are a million examples of how negativity brings tons of attention. This is common sense. People love to pile on and love to hear more about negative than positive. Hey, we’re human, it’s just the way we are.

You’ll find this out if you write a blog. 90% of the people who read your blog will never comment. They lurk, and wait…

If you really want to get some reaction… go negative. Write a negative post. Complain about something. Put somebody else down. Do something that people can commiserate with. Be a jerk!

Yep, I said be a jerk… for ratings.

Ok, now, before you go do that, think about the consequences of “being a jerk” or “going blue”.

For one, you have to be able to take the heat. If you’re a nice person and not used to controversy, and you’re trying to “shock” people in a way that’s out of your own character… it’s going to hit you in your gut hard, and you may not recover.

It’s very hard to go blue and come back from it too. Once you go down that path, you may not be able to come back. And remember, you’ll always most likely be remembered for that one shocking thing you did, not all the good things you’ve done for years.

Are you sure you want to go there for ratings? For traffic? Think long and hard before you decide to go down the dark path.

A while back I wrote about a company that rebranded as Grasshopper.com and proceeded to send out 5,000 packs of chocolate covered grasshoppers.

Well, data has now come out about the ROI for this campaign. In a report over at Mashable…

The Grasshopper campaign proved to be very fruitful and buzz circulated on-air and across the web. To date, the company has seen a huge uptake in social media mentions, web traffic, and hopefully new customers. Here are a few notable stats from the campaign:

- 4,911% traffic increase from April to May
- 144,843 video views with 162 comments
- 1,500 tweets
- 120 blog posts in one month
- Tweets from Guy Kawasaki, Kevin Rose, and Jason Calacanis
- 7 national TV mentions

Basically, Grasshopper was able to saturate the blogosphere and twitterosphere, while securing a plethora of mainstream media coverage, simply with a bag of dead grasshoppers and some ingenuity. That’s clever marketing and we applaud them for their creativity, though no Mashable (Mashable) staffers were brave enough to consume any grasshoppers.

Not too shabby eh? What I’d like to know though is how much those grasshoppers cost, and how much to send them out to 5,000 people, and any other costs they may have had. Only then can you try to get a true ROI on a campaign. If you’re reading this from Grasshopper.com, can you illuminate?

By the way, my 4-year-old boy ate them all over the course of two days without blinking an eye. I’ll always remember that… and I’ll always remember Grasshopper.com now because of it.

 

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Ok, there’s a girl, and you send her shirts, and she wears them. Check it out. Then listen to me interview her (above).

Of course there’s a catch. You pay her to do it.

Similar in concept to Jason at IWearYourShirt.com (check out my podcast with him too), but different in how she structures the program and what you get.

 

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Months ago I interviewed Jason Sadler of IWearYourShirt.com about his attention-getting idea. Summary: he wears a different shirt every day of the next year (2009).

The catch, you pay him to do it.

I love Jason’s idea and implementation. It works for several reasons, most of which I’ll outline when I feature his story in my upcoming book.

So, now, months later after I interview him (listen above), where is Jason on his promotion?

Well, according to his website, he’s sold out through November 09 and is looking like he’s going to make it all the way through the end of the year.

In case you were wondering, that’s $66,795 dollars he will earn if he sells out. (Minus fees)

How much is that in PayPal fees Jason?

You betcha! Got your attention? Sure did.

That picture was taken at my church, Southbrook, in Dayton. They are advertising a breakfast where they’ll be discussing the dangers of porn addiction. If you visit their website, you can download Internet accountability software and pair up with online “support buddies.” No, I didn’t attend the breakfast. But, I was pretty curious after seeing the XXX.Church.com sign in our foyer. Seth Godin would call it a “Purple Cow” something certainly remarkable.

This church is pretty progressive. On their website, you can listen to podcasts of previous sermons, interact in their online community and engage in blog posts. They are way more innovative than 90% of the businesses in our industry.

What did I realize in church that Sunday?

There is a huge gap between the innovations taking place in our personal lives and those taking place at work.

So today I got a Fedex package and in it was a neat little package of chocolate covered grasshoppers.

YUMMY! Not.

But the promotion I loved. In fact, it was done so well on so many levels, well, you see the result here of me writing about it.

The packaging directed me to here: http://grasshopper.com/idea

On that page is a fun viral-type video. Watch:

Also included on the page are tell a friend email scripts, plus links to easily let you share it to Twitter and Facebook and other places. Then a nice subtle link to “What is Grasshoppper?” which brings you to a nice clean and easy explanation of what it is.

Well done. Great attention-getting technique here, and more importantly…. great follow through. I will definitely be contacting them to do an interview for the book about this campaign.

So was this promotion a fiasco? Well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask KFC they say “No!” (of course). But if you ask some PR professionals they say “Heck yes”. So who’s right?

First, let’s back it up. Go read this synopsis story over at AdvertisingAge.com.

At the end of the promotion and ensuing coverage we are left with what?

KFC did accomplish one thing — a sea of buzz for its product. But the chatter got nasty when the promotion ceased. According to Zeta Interactive, which monitors blog chatter, KFC generally popped up in about 538 blog posts daily, with 72% of mentions positive. During the promotion, that number soared to 1,319 mentions, 89% of which were positive. But cutting the cord on Thursday had an immediate effect, with 772 posts. Negative ratings shot up, to 33%

“The free-chicken promotion created a sense of enthusiasm within online communities and enhanced KFC’s online reputation,” Al DiGuido, CEO of Zeta Interactive, said in an e-mail. “However, as soon as KFC decided to halt the promotion, their brand suffered a brutal backlash, plummeting down to 67% positive buzz. With this overwhelmingly negative response, KFC did more damage to its brand by running an incomplete promotion than if they had just not launched the campaign in the first place.”

KFC begs to differ. “We have never had more positive customer response,” said Ms. Schalow, noting that about two in four grilled-chicken customers it’s attracted are new or rare visitors to the chain. However, Technomic President Ron Paul said that’s the group easiest to alienate.