The end of blog marketing is near, that’s for sure. Instead of asking bloggers to place ads or to give them stuff to try out in exchange for a review, Belgian agency Duval Guillaume asked two Flemish bloggers (asfaltkonijn.be & stew.be) to create a commercial clip to give the campaign some extra buzz in the blogosphere. The two heroes sacrificed their blogging souls for a small monetary token of appreciation and a short period of fame and attention and started working. Although in the Middle Ages, it used to be a job for the local town idiot/fool to entertain people, nowadays you can ask bloggers, apparently. You’d think the agency would select a matter close to the bloggers and their lifestyle, and yeah, maybe it is… Who knows? I just find it a pretty risky precedent.
The campaign itself is for VLAM and it concerns the promotion of… cheese. Somewhere in Flanders, on 4 locations, cheese is hidden and people are invited to guess the location by means of visual hints with pictures. Although the campaign is promoting Belgian cheese, the four locations are Flanders-based. It’s not that we don’t like the south side of Belgium, but umm… yeah. That’s a small detail with a long story, probably. On the product site [www.belgischekazen.be] extra video, audio and textual snippets help visitors in their quest for the precious fungified milk. If you smell guess the location, you can win a cheese buffet at the comfortable altitude of 50 meters with 20 of your friends. Other prizes are: a boat trip with cheese picnic for 8 people, 10 cheese baskets or 100×4 entry tickets for ye olde cheese factory ‘Passendale’.
So. Is this campaign in any way related to blogging, bloggers or the blogosphere? No. Is there a link between the product and the blogs? No. Is the clip funny? Umm, apart from being a semi-clone of the Flemish Trigger Happy’s bunnies (two guys in bunny suits acting ridiculous in the city) and the Pac-Man at the university gag, it sometimes almost is. The overal feeling is that this is an attempt to become viral, based on leeching on the bloggers’ social networks. Judge for yourself, see the clip (some Dutch language present).
There is, however, a very cute visual for the campaign, something Duval is actually pretty good at. That’s about the only thing I like about this campaign. It’s true that this is ‘the first time in Belgium an agency asks bloggers to create a commercial for a product’. Let’s hope it’s the last time, or that the bloggers will get some sort of media training in advance. For that small compensation, I’d hardly call it ‘freelanced’ or ‘outsourced’ work. I wouldn’t exactly compare it to sweatshops either, I’m sure it was a fun afternoon and all that, but I’d never sign up for a proposal like this. I’d feel juuuust a little abused. But hey, that’s just me… ranting. You should probably just ignore this.
Copy:
“Find the cheese and win
Participate on belgischekazen.be”
Agency: Duval Guillaume
Duval Guillaume
May 10, 2007 at 9:43 am
Thanks for your thoughts on the campaign Miel. For promoting the campaign online we opted for several tactics. Bannering on sites such as MSN and using mailing lists to spread the word are mainstream examples.
We also attempt to reach out to the blogosphere and their readers. We could do this by buying advertising space on blogs or sending a press release to bloggers. We could even send a “hippy hey viral message” to bloggers or give the free laptops but for what reason? Where will this get the campaign?
We’ve chosen to ask the people from Asfaltkonijn and Stew to promote the campaign on their own way and pay them to do this, without spending budget on middle men. No big bucks, but no little money either. And we communicate about that. We gave them an assignment.
These bloggers were invited to come up with their own idea and produce in themselves. The cheese campaign and website had to be mentioned. They could choose to this with or without being recognized.
What was the goal for this strategy? Getting attention about the cheese campaign from other bloggers and blog readers, which should result in visitors on http://www.wedstrijdkazen.be. I can follow your concerns about this idea, but do not share your thoughts.
Since we asked the bloggers to be creative and produce something they like, I cannot see why this would be a problem. Do bloggers sell their soul once they place banners on their blog?
Participate online, that’s what we believe in and with this case for community marketing we will continue to learn and axplore about the online marketing opportunities and collaborations with users.
Huug
May 10, 2007 at 10:05 am
Tsja, het is een beetje “downgrading” hé?
Na Hugo Claus nu (maar) bloggers die reclame maken voor kaas.
Coolz0r
May 10, 2007 at 11:01 am
I don’t really see what the laptop case has to do with this, but allow me to enlighten: if you use a computer it runs on an operating system. If you blog, you use a computer. If you have a record of being analytic or being involved with IT, online services or applications, then you can benchmark a computer.
The laptops are handed out to some bloggers in Europe to have them being tested by people who tend to install, uninstall and reinstall upcoming software and switch a lot between multiple applications (bloggers are keen on trying out new things)
We could send out Vista DVDs and Office DVDs, but then we’d have less control about the hardware it runs best on, and not all bloggers have the required components, so we tried to provide the right environment in which we thought the product would be experienced at best.
Comparing this experiment to ‘buzz around cheese’ is umm… you can fill that in by yourself. Microsoft doesn’t actually need that more attention. The most important part of the campaign is behind the scenes. The emails, the phone calls. The bloggers were free to write about it, but not at all obliged. We just need their expertise to see where we can possibly tweak the OS to make things better.
Back to the cheese. Yes, all you did was ask the bloggers to endorse the product/campaign. Yes, they agreed. Yes, they got paid. And that’s where I think it goes wrong. Putting banners is one thing. Asking for reviews is another. Having some consumer generated random acts of entertainment is totally another. What the two bloggers produced wasn’t funny to me (we all know I have no sense of humor at all) and really was simply copied from existing concepts. It just didn’t make me laugh.
If you’d have thrown a dedicated bloggers dinner or sponsored a barcamp or what not with your tables of cheese, the result would’ve been really different and much more productive, not to mention more acceptable.
The cheese is in no way connected to what the bloggers do or write about. It just doesn’t match. Sometimes a product needs a different approach and personally, that’s really just my opinion, I don’t think this was the right one. The effect it had on me was about the same as seeing David Hasselhoff promote the new Ariel color fast washing detergent.
If you talk about community marketing, do something for the community as such, not just for two bloggers. This clip doesn’t really contribute to a community, I think, what doesn’t mean that I can’t understand that two youngsters are enthusiastic about being contacted by an agency for a project like this.
Duval Guillaume
May 10, 2007 at 11:26 am
@ Miel: thx for your feedback.
We asked the two blog teams to attract online attention for the cheese campaign. These bloggers or their movie aren’t the campaign. It’s a little extra on the side.
Our goal is to get the campaign url http://www.wedstrijdkazen.be under the attention of Belgian bloggers and indirectly to their readers. Thx for your post btw, you are contributing to it.
To come back to your remarks: We could have sent some baskets of Belgian Cheese to some bloggers and hope they will review the cheese and mention the campaign. Is that relevant? Do you know any Belgian bloggers with a large audience that write about cheese? Giving gifts and presents can also be seen as bribing blogger’s souls. Remember the Vista Acer laptops in the US.
We will keep your remarks in thought. For a low barrier campaign such as http://www.wedstrijdkazen.be, we have used – next to the common methods online – another mean to specifically get the attention from bloggers.
After the campaign we can evaluate what (positive and negative) buzz this has generated and how this resulted in extra visitors on the site. We will also evaluate bloggers thoughts about it – yours included – and judge wether this approach can be used in future campaigns or not.
Coolz0r
May 10, 2007 at 11:32 am
I know I’m contributing to it.
… is not what I suggested and will result only in posts saying “I like this one” and “I don’t” (see Fanta). Sposoring a blog dinner or barcamp brings you closer to what you forced Croky to do, and would have been a smoother angle of approach.
Christian
May 10, 2007 at 11:43 am
“The cheese is in no way connected to what the bloggers do or write about.”
Yes it is, their stuff is cheesy.
(sorry, open goal)
I played the game, thought it was well executed.
Coolz0r
May 10, 2007 at 11:55 am
Agreed, the campaign itself is pretty cool with the picture hints and video, audio and textual hints. It’s strong enough without the extension to bloggers.
Luc Van Braekel
May 10, 2007 at 1:18 pm
“Duval Guillaume said”…
I don’t consider it a good marketing practice to comment on a blog, using a collective company name without identifying the person writing the comment.
Blogging, “conversations”, are about people. I miss the personal touch when someone identifies himself/herself as a company without specifying his/her personal name. Even Belgian civil servants have to sign letters with their own name nowadays, they cannot hide any longer behind their collective identity…
It boggles my mind that a communication agency is communicating in a way that ignores the personal aspect of internet communications.
Of course I know who wrote that comment, because I use Twitter… ;-)
Marketing.fm » Marketing and Advertising Network Roundup: 05/09/07
May 10, 2007 at 2:01 pm
[...] Have Blog, Will Mortify For Cheese » Coolz0r – Marketing Thoughts [...]
Duval Guillaume
May 10, 2007 at 2:15 pm
@ Luc: I see your point. My email will show Miel who is commenting but not the readers.
I will continue to comment under the company name Duval Guillaume, since I speak for the agency and sign below with my personal name.
Kind regards
Pieter Baert
Pieter (dot) Baert (at) duvalguillaume (dot) com
Cheng Cheng
May 10, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I guess blogging is just one of ways people get traffic. It is getting so popular that many people want to use and exploit it.
We cannot do anything about it. Maybe it just proves that blogging does work after all.
Cheng Cheng
Get the Free Attraction Acceleration Report by Bob Proctor now!!!
visualizationexercise.com/rights
Hans Dreesen
May 10, 2007 at 4:20 pm
@ Miel:
Your first comment left me a bit in the dark here. Allow me to ask for some additional enlightenment.
Judging from the note in Pieter Baert’s (Duval Guillaume) comment and your reaction to it, I have to assume Microsoft lended or gave out laptops with Vista and/or Office to European bloggers. I don’t know the full story so correct me if I’m wrong, but given that fact I think you contradict yourself on a few issues.
“The laptops are handed out to some bloggers in Europe to have them being tested by people who tend to install, uninstall and reinstall upcoming software and switch a lot between multiple applications (bloggers are keen on trying out new things)”
If you are an OS maker, you have enough resources to have your product well tested against every thinkable scenario. By benchmark-happy, IT literate test analysts, for instance. I believe that’s the standard way to ensure quality before releasing it. I can’t see how any blogger, as keen as he/she might be to test new things, could replace that.
“We just need their expertise to see where we can possibly tweak the OS to make things better.”
Like using a test public, understandable. Happens for almost every product I guess. But why then send out laptops to renowned bloggers? Why not invite people to beta-test as usual? Or even throw a test-fest dinner/barcamp? Knowing that…
“Microsoft doesn’t actually need that more attention”
… it can neither be because Microsoft would like to sugar-coat the blogger’s opinion, fabricate positive third party reviews and create a buzz in the blogosphere (pardon my French), can it? On the contrary:
“The bloggers were free to write about it, but not at all obliged.”
Of course they weren’t. You can’t oblige someone to write something. Not without the threat of some unholy medieval practices or help of the Corleone family at least.
But you could of course encourage them a bit. Gently persuade them by giving out incentives. It’s common practice used in all layers of society, so nothing to be ashamed of (or hypocrite about).
What you cannot do without being accused of the latter, of course, is point your finger to another player, because you are all in the same game. What distincts you is the way you play it.
I prefer straightforward players, open about their game. Knowing advertising I wouldn’t go as far as calling them honest, but at least they earn more of my respect than the ones covertly trying to achieve the same goal. That makes me think of Don Vito again.
Coolz0r
May 10, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Hans, you’re guiding the discussion away from it’s orignal matter, namely how a product is linked to a target audience. I’m pretty sure software is closer to bloggers than cheese is. That said, I have a separate blog (micromiel.com) where I’d love to talk about Microsoft related actions that I’m involved in, and I try to separate them from this blog as much as possible. But I’m not chickening out, which is why I approved your comment and will enlighten it here.
“If you are an OS maker, you have enough resources to have your product well tested against every thinkable scenario. By benchmark-happy, IT literate test analysts, for instance. I believe that’s the standard way to ensure quality before releasing it. I can’t see how any blogger, as keen as he/she might be to test new things, could replace that.”
We did have benchmark-happy and IT literate test analysts throwing themselves on Windows Vista, Office 2007 and the Live services already. That’s what the beta phase is for. Bloggers are just another audience on which we focus and they do tend to make rather weird combinations of tools and apps, which is why we selected some.
“Like using a test public, understandable. Happens for almost every product I guess. But why then send out laptops to renowned bloggers? Why not invite people to beta-test as usual? Or even throw a test-fest dinner/barcamp? Knowing that…”
We have invited people to beta-test, the beta-tests were public, as usual. We threw test-fest dinners (Pieter was even part of at least one in Diegem, Brussels, when Phil Holden came to talk about new Windows Live products, we had Vista demo laptops out where the invitees could play with the OS). We do go to barcamps, in fact we were on the last one with a Messenger VOIP story in cooperation with i-merge. The reason why we choose some ‘renowned bloggers’ is obviously because they have a rather large audience. They might not write about it, but when somebody asks them something about one of the products offline on an event somewhere, they’ll speak their mind… Obviously when they’ve had a positive experience they’ll share that too, which is all the better for us. Providing them with the right equipment is simply because we can in this way ensure (more) that they can interact with the software in an optimal environment for a rather long time. As for Microsoft not needing that ‘more attention’, I meant that Vista and Office are difficult to compare with cheese when it comes to needing buzz. We’re in the news and wires every day, in contrast with Belgian cheese.
“Of course they weren’t. You can’t oblige someone to write something. Not without the threat of some unholy medieval practices or help of the Corleone family at least.”
Thank you for turning this discussion into a “Microsoft is evil” conversation. Hasn’t got anything to do with the subject anymore.
“But you could of course encourage them a bit. Gently persuade them by giving out incentives. It’s common practice used in all layers of society, so nothing to be ashamed of (or hypocrite about).”
Go read Tom Raftery’s posts about his experiences. Count the positive ones. Good luck. (www.tomrafteryit.net) –> We did learn a lot about the issues he encountered though. Incentives may not trigger positive posts, but we try to help out as good as we can. I’m not ashamed or hypocrite about it, which is why I openly blog about it on micromiel.com, from before it started right to when the project will end.
“What you cannot do without being accused of the latter, of course, is point your finger to another player, because you are all in the same game. What distincts you is the way you play it.
I prefer straightforward players, open about their game. Knowing advertising I wouldn’t go as far as calling them honest, but at least they earn more of my respect than the ones covertly trying to achieve the same goal. That makes me think of Don Vito again.”
I play it open and fair. (read the blog) – We don’t pick high-profile bloggers in all countries. Some of them are still students, others IT specialists and others devoted Mac users. I’m a bit disappointed you make it seem like Microsoft is the dark evil sneaky overlord here. I’ve never hidden anything, always played it out in the open.
… and about “straightforward players”… The guy who got hired by Duval with his popular blog, is actually working for them on a ‘freelance’ basis (although he is still studying) as a ‘buzz marketeer’. Where in the press release or where in his own blog post is that ‘disclaimed’? How about: “we gave the assignment to our part-time buzz marketer” or from Asfaltkonijn’s part “I work for Duval” instead of making it seem they randomly got contacted by accident. No they didn’t. They want it to seem like they did. Very straightforward. Truly.
Again, this blog isn’t meant to become a meeting point for pro and con Microsoft people. I’d rather take this sort of discussions to the other blog. But I’m not going to stand by and be accused of having a hidden agenda and not playing it straightforward. Not in this lifetime.
Duval Guillaume
May 10, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Miel,
Dieter from Asfaltkonijn is still a student and is webmastering on one of our sites. Jobstudent, like we say in Belgium. Copy paste stuff and all. He has done some seeding for campaigns. Good work though.
What he writes in his linkedIn profile is to impress future employers. We allow him. :) How where you as a kid?
regards
Pieter
Coolz0r
May 10, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Very noble of you. Still worth mentioning or disclaiming though.
Ahmet
May 10, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I would like to say to Duval G.: Send me you banner and I ‘m going to post it in two of my blogs in Bosnia and Croatia. Seven days for free. I’m a student and I’m do it for free. I like Idea. So many people are looking for sponsorship or laptop and solutions are always wrong done. It was also a case with laptop issue.
Also to Miel: “The laptops are handed out to some bloggers in Europe. ”
It’s not in Europe, but in EU + Israel (which is not delivered, according to your posts in MM blog. People in EU like to say in Europa and that means only EU. (Es tut mir wirklich leid or I’m sorry but truth hurts. )
–
Have a nice day people from Vienna and one bosnian’s student here
Hans Dreesen
May 11, 2007 at 12:27 am
@ Miel:
I wasn’t aware you had another blog where discussions like these would more appropriate. I’ll keep it in mind.
Like I said in my comment, I wanted some more enlightenment about the laptop case and not the original matter. Admittedly that was maybe too off topic, but thanks anyway for providing me with the background information I missed out on. It didn’t change my mind, but still.
Furthermore, I don’t want to fire up another Microsoft discussion. Please no. I grew up with Microsoft products and they happily fulfil my every need so I wouldn’t know why. Since apparently I haven’t been general enough (don’t really care about which two companies are involved), I would like to elaborate on that a bit more, but as you said, this might not be the place.
Allow me to bring it up on micromiel.com one of these days. See you there!
PS: Quickly for the record: my words are my own, and I speak for myself. I live in Australia for the moment and so I say what I say independently, without being tied to any (former) employer. I wouldn’t want to give that impression.
Luc Van Braekel
May 11, 2007 at 3:54 am
@Miel: “Sponsoring a blog dinner or barcamp brings you closer to what you forced Croky to do, and would have been a smoother angle of approach.”
I don’t agree. Sponsoring a blog dinner or barcamp addresses bloggers. Sponsoring bloggers to write or film something, addresses the readers of those blogs. Not all blog readers are bloggers themselves, and it is a grave error to confuse between bloggers and blog readers.
Coolz0r
May 11, 2007 at 4:00 am
Well, if you’re looking for buzz on the web about a product, you’re going to need bloggers. That’s for sure. If you are present with a product, it will be covered because that’s how bloggers are. Think about what the speech recognition guys did in Leuven. Handing out samples to all bloggers, which resulted in many posts.
That’s what I mean with a smoother angle of approach.
Duval Guillaume
May 11, 2007 at 10:12 am
@ Miel: have you counted the number of posts about the speech recognition software?
I saw many post about the approach of handing out software to bloggers, not about the product. And how many positive/negative recommendations came out of this? Few.
Yes they had some buzz and links which is nice. They got noticed. But is was a one time action and there was few interaction.
I read a lot of blogposts where bloggers asked who wanted to test this gift, because they didn’t had the time themselves.
My package is somewhere in the closet, never even opened. The Microsoft Vista gift I use though.
Pieter
Coolz0r
May 11, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Compared to the number of bloggers present, I think the buzz and backlinks they had wasn’t all that bad. They got noticed, which was their purpose. It was one time action and there was few interaction, but it’s ‘just’ speech recognition software. What do you expect from your cheese campaign?
“I read a lot of blogposts where bloggers asked who wanted to test this gift, because they didn’t had the time themselves.”
So, they talk about the product and ask their peers to test it out. What’s not to like? The more people who know about it the merrier. I think that’s a good accomplishment. Don’t you?
Duval Guillaume
May 13, 2007 at 9:40 pm
@ Miel/Coolz0r: if high profile bloggers say they don’t have the time (read: they are not interested) to test the software, that sounds like a negative recommendation.
The same bloggers have all the time to test the Nokia N95 en they have to give that one back after testing.
Our Cheese side-action does what it does: for a limited budget it attracts some attention from bloggers and gets some viewers on YouTube and GarageTV.
Duval Guillaume
May 13, 2007 at 9:42 pm
My apologies, I forgot to sign with my name, next to the company ID.
Pieter
Coolz0r
May 14, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Pieter,
Who says they aren’t interested? Did you do a survey or are you thinking out loud? If they hand it out as a prize or an award that doesn’t mean it’s a negative recommendation. No sane blogger would pass on stuff that sucks to his readers.
Some bloggers received an N95 to test out, including me. I never switched SIMs, I took it to Vegas and used the camera and the wifi, and I used the GPS when I was in Brussels. Due to the fact it had to be returned within 3 weeks, I didn’t think it was worth it to merge all my phone data and email settings and so on. And I think others will have reacted in the same way. 3 weeks is a little bit too short to fully explore such a device, but it does give you an idea of what you can expect and how fast it works. The reason why I agreed to this is pretty simple. It’s portable, it’s cool and it doesn’t require me to change habits.
Where speech recognition needs to be trained for days and adjusted, wants me to stop typing and start talking, the N95 can just be picked up and used. Far less effort, far less time to adapt, much more ease-of-use. Two totally different products you can’t really compare. Again, just my two cents.
Appelogen » My two cents
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