The Social

Mazda to be the first in Australia to use Augmented Reality Print ads

Remember this video I posted awhile ago? Well I guess the future of advertising is here sooner than I had anticipated. 

Huge automobile company, Mazda is the first in using Augmented Reality print ads in Australia. The Mazda ads were printed in News Limited metro papers as of today. The print ads will also be included in magazines such as Wheels, Men’s Health, 4x4 Australia and Fishing World beginning next year. 

As mentioned before AR ads allow viewers to be more engaged with what use to be a traditional medium. They come to life and the print turns into a video. It becomes more than just a 2D print. It becomes almost 3 dimensional and encourages readers to seek and reach out to engage with the print ads. 

In the UK Blippar is the application to download to view these ads. But the recent and newly print Mazda ads encourage viewers to download the application called Aurasma Lite from the App store or Andriod Market which helps to view the AR print ads and turning them into an interactive video ad. In addition to print, the Mazda campaign called “More is more” will also be running on TV, radio and online. 

For the full article regarding the first ever AR ad in Australia by Mazda click here.

To read my earlier post about AR ads click here. 

Watch the Mazda AR ad below.

Someone has to take the lead right? It’s always hard to be the first while everyone else sits back to see whether it was successful or not before they jump on the bandwagon. But I believe AR was bound to be used in communication sooner or later whether it will be sustainable or not. I think some companies will find better use for it than others depending on the nature and message of their campaigns.

What do you think? Will it be a successful ad? Is AR ads sustainable?

Nissan Micraspotting winner: Zac Martin

Just a couple of weeks back, we had a guess speaker from Nissan talk to us about social media and its Micraspotting campaign on Facebook whereby people were encouraged to find pictures of the Micra on various Facebook sites with clues given from the Micra Facebook page to the location of the cars. Just yesterday the winner was announced and it was Zac Martin who was also one of our guest speakers this semester for Electronic Marketing. Zac Martin is a digital strategist of George Patterson Y&R and is also a Monash University alumni if you are not aware and he is also the founder of the blog “Pigs Don’t Fly.”

The point here is that it was found that he is really good friends with Nissan’s customer experience channel coordinator, Simon Oboler who was involved in running of the competition. And of course participants of the competition who found out this news were outraged and annoyed. They took to the Nissan Facebook page to post disgusted comments and outrageous remarks. Basically labeling the competition as a scam and that it was not fair and a waste of time.

Some examples of these comments included:

“I won’t bother next time. Clearly you need to know someone to win anything! Beeline to uncheck that like button on Nissan’s page!” - Sophie Kennedy 

“Why run a comp to promote Nissan Micra and then give it to a mate? Honestly, your marketing department should be shot coz all you have done is create ill will instead of putting the company in a +ve (sic) light you’ve done the opposite! …. “ - Susan Norman

What also fueled some of these comments was the fact that Nina Igel who won $1, 250 Nicola Finetti voucher after winning one of its weekly competitions were also friends with Simon Oboler. 

Nissan revealed that Zac Martin was indeed a good friend of one of Nissan’s staff but claimed that Zac had won it fair and square with no help from anyone who just happened to be friends with a staff which they are unable to stop from winning the competition besides family members of Nissan staff. Neither was it in the terms and conditions that friends and acquaintances were unable to be a winner of the competition. 

It appears that Nissan has some cleaning up to do around its marketing department and this social media competition controversy. Social media marketing gone wrong?

What do you think about this social media competition? Is it unfair for its participants?

This is a summary of the original article from B&T. Click the link to read the full article.

E-marketing

Just studying for my Electronic Marketing exam and feeling slightly sad that the semester has come to an end so quickly. I remember the first day of using Moodle 2 and starting this blog. Through this subject and this blog, I have learnt a lot about e-marketing and the current trends especially with social media and have seen a quick flash of what e-marketing will be bringing to the future.

I will miss Moodle and this blog. I may continue posting but it feels like I’ve completed the purpose for this blog (although there are many many more things that I could’ve post about) and it will not be the same if I were to continue blogging on here because it will feel very nostalgic and majority of the readers (my fellow class mates) would probably be my readers no more. Who knows, one day I may find another purpose and create another blog.

In the meantime, I will be revising what I’ve learnt from this subject and will continue to watch out for e-marketing changes in the world.

Many thanks to all the readers who’ve dropped by! Hope you’ve all enjoyed this blog!

♥ Take care for now!

Share a Coke with…

Have you noticed lately that on your Facebook newsfeed, people have been posting pictures of their custom made cans of coke with their names on it?

Well I certainly have!

Almost everyone on my Facebook were posting pictures of their cans of coke! At first I thought that it may have been the intention of Coke’s campaign to go viral but a quick google of the campaign showed no intentions of a viral online campaign. It was simply a new Summer Campaign launched in Australia to encourage people to share a coke with someone. And sharing it, was what people were doing.. sharing their pictures of coke cans with their names on it online. By the end of the week, I had people post on their Facebook status that they were sick of everyone posting these coke cans.

You can even create a virtual coke and share it virtually with a friend. Or look up the nearest location of where you can get your can of coke custom made. The intention was to physically buy a coke and share it with someone but Coke has benefited from online platforms such as Facebook where people are more than happy to share with their friends their can of coke. Then other people are asking where they were getting this and then they go and do it and they’ll post it on Facebook and the trend continues.

It appears to be a very successful campaign. I’m sure Coke will be selling loads of Cokes!

What do you think? Effective? Was it intentional for it to go online?

And you can read more about the campaign here!