AWOL Monk: viral media

..or how a bunch of savvy marketeers plagiarised the creation myth & rebirthed a bad apple & womanhood in a more glowing light [for the love of commerical units].

call her eve, diana, snow white or whatever but since time incarnate we've been fed legends of chicks chasing apples to their detriment & often humanity's. seems a couple of ad agencies decided to reinvent the wheel & created a post-apocalyptic world where the skies are ruled by born-again feathered serpents where light & balance are restored to redesign a dilmunlike paradise. as a bad ass femme i'd argue that it's a shame the feral had to be a man but behind every good one is apparently one fallen eve [total babe that she is].

today the second delivery wave occured in the intermedia marketing campaign which was publically revealed through the complete usurpment of media channels by lion nathan's campaign for their toohey's extra dry cider brand : 5 seeds.

this was punctuated by a teaser TVC on sunday night as holler had hinted with me last week when punk monk followed the trail of crumbs back to the acclaimed digital agency's base... and what are holler particularly acclaimed for? yes, they are the award winning recently retained kids responsible for a plethora of lion nathan brands. deduction combined with a few well placed phone calls led us to believe at the corner shop that a new line of alcohol was about to be launched. fellow culture jammer dave carter earned his cigar when he repeated my earlier steps to come to the same conclusion.

utilising social media parameters with backends firmly entrenched in applications such as facebook, twitter & youtube the outline of this possible world was skilfully executed whilst the hub was generated through realtime treasure hunts. to the degree that holler sydney have temporarily shunned their main website & placed their address in FB realtorverse. all outside media shepherded to FB.

when asking the agency about the choices involved when viewing the culminated strategy, i questioned exactly the demograph 5 seeds was aiming for: with 50-60 year olds comprising the fastest user growth group on facebook this cider isn't just as i originally presumed for the young ones. old adopters are reversing trends to become new ones as they become increasingly wired for sound/sight. this concurs with social media apps such as FB allowing customised profile privacy options: perhaps it's nana that doesn't want you to see her salacious pix not vice versa.

as gen Y increasingly abandons mass ubiquitous use of facebook, myspace & deride twitter as being irrelevant or old in search for the next application flavor, these vehicles become increasingly specialised. click-thrus as currency still ring true in the viral environment where online behavioral trends are only as good as your last project. it's apparent that holler's widely cast net through arguably influential media, music & cultural blogs deigned to catch a vast spectrum of a thirsty target market.

if you saw a giant apple in sydney sometime recently [ended last week], yes it was a marketing ploy just like those spammed santa claus's standing on street corners with their incessant red fabriced waves. only instead of randomly spotting father christmas these concealed apples were revealed through a series of tantalising clues drip-fed through social media vehicles: twitter & facebook. find an apple, keep the doctor away, win a prize. we all know that game.

as account manager matt kendall said today when i spoke to him once more this ensured that by the time the more interactive component integrating bloggers/zine meisters around sydney came into place they weren't playing to an empty room. just don't believe the hype because there's a sequel... the eggs don't hatch, the birds are CGI. but btw. kudos to the awesome after effects. shades of blizzard.net in zerg swarms/meets diablo's act 3 flesh hungry locust swarms.

cut to a cleverly connected youtube CYOA [choose your own adventure] model the campaign takes on an extra dimension where participants can have a limited interactive experience in the world where birds rule the sky & humans lie feral at the bottom of the feeding cycle. happy to say i made it through the twists & turns much to punk monk's felix & michael's chagrin [obviously you eat the eggs]... still the feed the ferals game had me... um, stumped. this is supposed to be R18 years not months right?

back to the youtube strategy: augmented reality games implementing some sense of interactivity are a trend which appear to be here to stay as the traditional linear marketing approach employed for aeons becomes increasingly redundant and consumers become more demanding. check out the grand prix advertising winner at this year's cannes ad awards. a transmedia experiment with over 10 million participants over 75 countries:

TV is dead. long live the web. long live the tangible. concurrently. we view our content now on other channels at a higher rate than the television. disposable heroes of hipoprisy rapped about its brain denuding qualities 2 decades ago. intelligent audiences will not be passively fed to. we want to be involved. the thorazine shuffle is not the beat of the dance we choose to groove to. especially not in eden.

voyeurism is popularly viewed in the clinical psychological field as sexual dysfunction. it is listed as a known disorder. the very definition of it is the act of observing people, often strangers who may be naked or in the process of becoming so. people involved in intimate everyday acts of life. sometimes engaged in sexual activity. which often results in more sexual acts [by the hidden observer].

the voyeur usually implements stealth or distance, and treasures anonymity.

the interwebs are obviously a veritable paradise on multiple fronts which begs the question: are we all similarly dysfunctional? where does it start & end? are there blurred degrees? who doesn't slow down at the accident site for reasons beyond safety considerations & then T-101 scans...

the success of viral media pivots on this integral aspect of human nature. what would freud say?

in a world of polarized trash & treasure it's interesting that as a content provider advocating free speech, & becoming increasingly entrenched in the social media movement, i am potentially providing wank material. not just for myself.

it's a hell of a responsibility. forget rear window, i realise i'll need to introduce more amputees, courtesans, snuff movies & half-dressed solitary dancing girls... my sorta SEO'd web stats tell me so.