The US Open, with strings attached

While Britain recovers from the expected nadir of Murray’s loss and the majestic Federer’s subsequent victory at Wimbledon, and the tennis world celebrates a champion of the sport, the next Slam – the US Open, in New York – looms close by on the horizon. Zeitgeist will be going, but, like many others, had a terrible time purchasing tickets online.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free”. So says the moniker on the Statue of Liberty in New York, welcoming immigrants to the United States. The US Open grand slam tennis tournament released its tickets to the public several weeks ago, and for the first time offered fans on Facebook the opportunity to purchase tickets a day before anyone else. Unfortunately, not only did they neglect to stipulate that this offer was only available to American buyers, they also had more broader problems with their system that day, creating an enormous backlash of ill will seen on Facebook. On Twitter, the US Open official account kept having to explain itself.

Providing fans with the tickets they want is a hard business. Someone will always be disappointed. And credit should be given to the organisers for trying to do something innovative and rewarding. However, thinking that the reach of the US Open does not extend beyond the nation’s boundaries was a massive, massive mistake in today’s world. They really lost a lot of their brand equity and trust that day.

PR own goals leave Germans feeling cold

As if their continued efforts to save the Euro weren’t giving them enough of a headache, recent German attempts to sell cars and excite football fans have also failed to hit the mark.

As any Englishman will tell you, the weather has a nasty habit of messing up the best laid plans. From BBQs to Wimbledon, the rain can be relied on to appear when it is least welcome. Similarly the winters of 2009 and 2010 were unusually harsh just when retailers most needed people to be able to get out and spend their money.

So while we applaud their innovative thinking we can also sympathise with German agency Sassenbach Advertising who have seen their clever weather themed idea turn into a icy nightmare.

Seeking a “wind and weatherproof idea” to support the launch of the new Mini Cooper Roadster, they took advantage of the “adopt-a-vortex” scheme run by Berlin’s Free University and named the current high pressure front sweeping across Europe ‘Cooper’.

All was going swimmingly until ‘Cooper‘ dropped to -33 Celsius, disrupted transport across the continent and claimed over 100 lives.

The campaign also involved buying a low front to be called ‘Minnie’ later in the year that one hopes will be less destructive.

A statement from BMW confirmed that while they had bought the names they didn’t have control over when they were used and that clearly, they regretted any loss of life.

While the whole episode has been highlighted as a bit of an gaffe, BMW and their agency haven’t done anything wrong and the €299 price tag for naming the weather seems cheap even though the publicity it has provoked isn’t what was planned.

The same can’t be said for German football giants Bayern Munich who upset their fans with an ill thought out launch of an app.

Last week, as the January transfer window was coming to a close, the club told their 2.7m Facebook fans that they had just signed a new striker who would be announced exclusively via a Facebook app in around an hour.

Naturally, the announcement set social networks alight. To set the scene, Bayern had recently lost to Borussia Mönchengladbach and seen target Marco Reus sign for rivals Borussia Dortmund.

As the clock ticked down, fans debated which star they’d be seeing at Allianz Arena with Manchester based duo Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov among the suggestions.

However when the announcement was made it became clear that the club had misjudged things enormously.

A live stream with Markus Hörwick (Comms Director),  Chrsitian Nerlinger (General Manager) and Philipp Lahm (Club Captain) announced that the new star player was actually the fan themselves, the 12th man of the squad.

The app then showed fake press announcements, mock interviews with star players welcoming the ‘new player’ and shirts with the users name.

What could have been a great value added experience resulted in a terrible user experience, compounded by the app crashing, with fans venting their anger on various social networks.

The press, who had also been kept in the dark showed great schadenfreude, gleefully spreading news of the failure which ended up trending worldwide on Twitter.

Within three hours the club had received over 5,000 complaints from angry fans and was forced to offer an apology.

Both brands will survive their difficult week. Mini because they didn’t do anything malicious and Bayern because disappointment is all part of being a football fan.

Let’s just hope their fiscal policies have better results.

Serving up a good online experience

As with every summer, the tennis season kicks into high gear with the French Open (aka Roland Garros) in Paris in May, and the Championships at the All England Club (aka Wimbledon) just two weeks later. Brand Republic today published their list of the 10 Best Tennis ads. The sport’s popularity pales in comparison to other pursuits in the UK, and questions always abound at this time of the year as to the country’s woeful showing at the majors. It’s an especially sore point when one looks at recent successes in golf.

Demand for tickets however at the four annual Grand Slams has never been higher. Getting a seat at such events then is a tough ask. Recently, the French Open began making tickets available online for direct purchase. This included being able to select specific days, courts and seats. Of course, having such an easy route meant that there were one or two people who had the same idea as Zeitgeist. Even accessing the website on the stroke of the hour the tickets became available put him behind 3,560 other eager tennis fans (see picture at end of article). Prima facie then this democratisation of ticket availability – rather than having a lottery and corporate hoardings – is a good thing. From a practical perspective however, does it make sense to do it this way? Can or should there be priorities given, based not just on how much people are willing to pay for tickets? Why not give those who actually play the sport more of a priority, or using Foursquare, see how many other tennis tournaments people have attended and judge their passion for tennis based on that. Can they have ticket giveaways to those who “like” Nadal, Federer, etc. on Facebook? It’s a thorny issue; perhaps the route the French Open has taken is the least worst option.

All the slams provide diverting iPhone apps too. However, if you’re going to the effort of providing a service, better make sure it works. Zeitgeist was presented with the below image on their phone while sitting on Court 1 at Wimbledon on Monday, June 20th.

Serving up a winner – How timely context enhances a message

Two brands, both alike in dignity, in fair Wimbledon, where we lay our scene. Those lucky enough to be at this year’s Championships at SW19 witnessed a record-breaking feat; the longest tennis match ever. While an exhausted John Isner and Nicolas Mahut – it would almost be a disservice to label either of them as not winners – were convalescing in ice baths with IV drips and (no doubt) comely women at their sides to mop their sweaty brows, it was not just John McEnroe that paid attention to the importance of the match, which ended 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68.

KitKat came up with a simple but brilliant execution for a print ad that ran soon after the match – the principle image being a terrifically distressed tennis ball, along with the final scoreline – that was perfectly on-brand and in sync with its proposition “Have a break”. The second, more amusing exploitation of the match was by Durex, with the end-line “Take pleasure in coming second”. See the ad below. (UPDATE: The video has now been “removed by the user”. Zeitgeist can’t seem to find it elsewhere online. If, good reader, you know where to find it, please let us know.)

Visiting Google HQ

On Monday morning, fully half the Zeitgeist team awoke from its slumber, left its abode and walked the 15-minute walk to Mecca. While not a dedicated fanboy, the integral part this company has played in the evolution of the Internet over the past decade, (Zeitgeist first remembers using their search engine in 1999), is undeniable. The morning would be spent in the hallowed halls of Google HQ. Mobile advertising for the Android platform would be the focus.

After munching on a croissant, downing an Earl Grey and meandering past the ice cream delivery bicycle, Zeitgeist was talked at by Ian Carrington, Amanda Rosenberg, Reto Meier, Scott Seaborn from that indefatigable ad agency Ogilvy and from IconMobile; Steve Griffiths.

Given the high volume of iPhones-to-people ratio in the room, it was not best to start off the morning with a non-so-subtle jibe at the aforementioned device. However this was indeed how the morning started; these jibes became the sine qua non of the whole event. Given the current regulatory scrutiny Google’s search empire faces regarding Net Neutrality, any hubris around ‘open source’ might have also have been best kept checked, yet there it was. Those who persevered in their listening heard that 2010 was indeed the year of the mobile. For some it may have seemed like they had been stuck in an echo chamber; every year since at least 2005 has been deemed ‘the year of the mobile’, occasionally with the suffix “but this time it really is!”. Zeitgeist would not care to argue with the statement though, as finally consumer desire and the corporate technology to suit that desire seem to be approaching an optimum. Last Christmas, there was a sale on eBay through a mobile device every two seconds. We were told that “Everything Google do, we have a mobile version of”. Despite this poor syntax, this was an impressive statement; something simple and logical, but surely something that only a very small number of companies could lay claim to.

Google’s director of mobile advertising said that the company’s mantra when developing new products was now “mobile first”, again, an impressive affirmation when you really think about it. Currently there are fifty times as many searches performed on smartphones vs merely WAP-enabled handsets. So the iPhone, Android platform and its myrmidons are clearly providing a better user experience for consumers, that they in turn are utilising – though it will be interesting to see whether the soon-to-be-introduced data tariffs will have any impact on this. This may not be the year of the mobile, but it certainly is the year when futureproofing becomes a sound investment: In 2013, smartphone sales are predicted to overtake PC sales, which will coincide with mobile internet use overtaking desktop computer use. It’s quite plausible by then that such distinctions between types of computers will be even fuzzier than now, (iPhone, iPad, netbook, laptop, desktop) if not moot.

Google is currently in the throes of redesigning its Android application store, currently with 60,000 apps and growing (compared to Apple’s 250,000+). Apps are an interesting phenomenon. With Apple’s initial inception, they are now quite the hot item, the thing your client’s clamour after without knowing exactly why. Yet what service do they provide? According to the meeting yesterday, 95% of Apple’s apps are not used after twenty days. For Windows’ part, half of the ‘Marketplace for Mobile’ apps are made by Microsoft, suggesting they have some way to go before accruing a wide, collaborative audience. The utility of an app, it was suggested to the audience yesterday, could be one of two things; engagement or purchase. Your app is there to either enhance the brand (like Chanel or Dior) or to encourage purchase (Argos). Time, lack thereof and frequency are also a large contributing factor to an app’s use. Simply put, it would not be worth someone’s while to download the Expedia app to their phone in order to book a single flight. It would, however, be of use to a regular traveller.

The audience was later shown a graph showing mobile and desktop search queries throughout an average day, with troughs and peaks mirrored between the two systems. Google stated they were not sure whether mobile search had a cannabilisation effect on desktop search, and that they “don’t care”.

We were then treated to a presentation by Amanda who delved into the world of Android-capable handsets. This included voice search – asking the phone directly “What are the best restaurants for breakfast near Union Square in San Francisco?” led to a satisfying list of responses – and voice text; unfortunately punctuation is something that remains almost impossible to do by voice, currently. There was also an example of Google Goggles, which, as well as being able to identify a building from a picture taken by a user, can also scan hard copy text, translate it and then pronounce it for you. All of which, except for the semantics of context, was most impressive.

Scott Seaborn then stepped up to the plate, going through some interesting case studies of mobile advertising. Two in particular caught Zeitgeist’s eye. The first was the Seer app that IBM updated for this year’s Championships at Wimbledon. This interesting video from the somnambulistic “Click” show on the BBC details the amazing thing that OgilvyOne’s app can achieve. Also quite fun was the new Coke Zero iPhone app called The Cleaner, soon to be released.

Steve from WPP’s Iconmobile brought up some similarly interesting case studies. The first of which was for T-Mobile as it attempted to encourage paperless billing with a great mobile initiative that involved “green” perks. The other highlight was that of a North Face campaign in China, which won a Silver Lion at Cannes. An interesting co-incidence of brand and region, as most Chinese people are currently gravitating to an urban life, and do not traditionally treat hiking or mountain-climbing as a past-time.

We then heard more about the Android platform. 160k devices that support Android are activated daily now. One of the nicer features that Zeitgeist saw was the enablement of cross-app usage. A user could be browsing through nearby restaurants on one app. Upon finding the one they want and clicking on a button in the app to book a table, the user would then be taken straight to the OpenTable app, which would immediately display the available times and tables for the restaurant you were just looking at on a separate application. While convenient and a nice move, this does present a potential hindrance for advertisers if users begin to navigate through the web merely by going from proprietary app to app rather than using a browser where they would be exposed to more advertising.

Conversely, the expandable ads that will begin to appear on Android platforms while surfing looked great, especially for things like films (the example we saw was for Adam Sandler’s Funny People). Lastly, we saw the new ‘Navigation’ app, which is currently only available in the US. Its map system allowed for alerts to the user for nearby amenities on their chosen route, e.g. cinemas, restaurants, etc. Interestingly, it also allowed for sponsored layers, meaning advertisers could put specific flags down on the map for particular promotions, to encourage people to take advantage of en route to their final destination.

As for Google’s final destination? Well, we’ll save that for a future article.

Digital Activation @ SW19

From the July Zeitgeist…

With the London Olympics on the horizon and the World Cup next year, one rather large sporting event has just taken place on our doorstep. The Championships at Wimbledon provided a very interesting case study of digital brand activation.

The sponsors, though subtle, were plentiful. Ralph Lauren served as the wannabe‐Brideshead Revisited outfitter. Their site is serious, serene and sophisticated. Not much fun, however. Aside from some nice flash video and some tips for players, there isn’t much going on. Evian have a more engaging, enjoyable site, though it promises more than it delivers; while the navigation is interesting, the functionality is unsatisfying as it could have been so much more. The Wimbledon site itself does an excellent job of ensuring the brand remains true to its ethos while still keeping it fresh and relatively contemporary. The pop‐up live scoring, VOD, blogs and social networking functionality make it a fantastic site. Ticketmaster have been releasing unallocated tickets for Centre Court throughout the championship, and have linked with the Wimbledon homepage and eCRM campaign.

HSBC has played a larger role this year in its sponsorship of the tournament, hosting a poll for people to vote for who, in their opinion, is the greatest men’s and women’s player of all time. However, the bank’s sponsorship page is somewhat uninspiring, and the link on the Wimbledon website could also be improved. The BBC, never one to miss an opportunity to elevate and aggrandise out of all proportion every generational hope for a British winner, had blanket coverage of the tournament; their online presence with blogs, live online video, text updates and impressive editorial was a great showcase of exciting
but not overwhelming content and functionality.

There is a superb iPhone app as well, which Ogilvy played no small part in developing with IBM. No talk of Wimbledon would be complete without mentioning Roger Federer, who on Sunday won his sixth Wimbledon title and 15th major. Nike created a simple but effective microsite for him, where users can leave a congratulatory message. This is published as a collage on a green lawn; the site prompts the user to re‐publish their message on Facebook, Twitter, etc. As some of these examples are temporary, make sure you check them out ASAP.