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Why Fads Fade – The Invetable Death of Flappy Bird

As many of you know, Flappy Bird has held the #1 spot on Apple’s iTunes apps  store and was downloaded over 50 million times  The game’s young creator earn’s a pile of cash everyday by reaching this milestone and then mysteriously took it down.  Whaaatt??  Too habit forming?  Have you never succumbed to the mindless entertainment of Candy Crush saga, Farmville or P vs Z’s with zealot like intensity for several weeks and then realize, with surprise, that you haven’t even looked at the game in days.  What turns us into crazed digital maniacs and as quickly makes us lose interest?

Why Fads Fade: The Inevitable Death Of Flappy Bird

Since the game has been removed from iTunes, enterprising eBayers have been selling preloaded smartphones for up to $90,000.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/11/nintendo-denies-flappy-bird-legal-challenge

The Molson Beer Fridge campaign that launched in the summer was the most viral campaign of 2013 until the Westjet Christmas campaign.
The recent follow on campaign of the Molson Beer Fridge shows the fridge travelling to a remote island in the Phillipines along with a flat screen tv so friends can watch the Olympics:

Both of these are great examples of  the NARRATIVE technique in marketing communications that we’ve been talking about in class, hooking viewers in with a story.

Both campaigns also have gone viral.  These ads follow on our discussion also of the importance of ads being shared online after they play on tv.  The Travelling Fridge is 3 minutes (!!) an exceptionally long and $$ tv ad.

For a more detailed conversation about the campaigns, here’s a good review:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/molson-takes-online-beer-fridge-ads-to-hockey-airwaves-and-points-beyond/article16039363/

At it’s core, marketing is about listening.  Listening to your customer, of course, but also listening to your competitors, your critics and yourself. Sales, on the other hand, is about talking.

Let’s think about the marketing part first:

What messages are you putting out there?  Are they consistent with what you’re trying to say about your brand?

Comm 296 started off with 200 students signing up for Twitter accounts.  We’re using Twitter in the classroom so I thought it’d be useful to go over some Twitter basics.

Twitter has two main components:  a social networking aspect, like Facebook, where people follow you and your follow them AND a messaging capability where you send out 140 character Tweets.

The social networking part of Twitter lets you send out updates to your followers and you can receive their updates.  This works well whether you’re using Twitter for personal stuff, like telling people your opinions or what’s going on in your life, or for marketing purposes like driving traffic to your blog or website.  Twitter has been called a microblogging platform because of its message limitation of 140 characters.  This forces you to keep your messages brief.  The fun of Twitter lies here, in that you have to think creatively in terms of engaging your audience but still getting your point across.

Twitter and Marketing

Twitter posts can be used to support a firm’s social media marketing activities in several ways:

1. by driving traffic to the firm’s (or your personal) website or blog.  You can remind your followers about your product or website and encourage them to revisit your website.

2. to connect with your readership & customers.  Twitter is a more conversational online medium than blogs or websites.  You can have more dialogue with your followers and hopefully engage them more with your brand.

3. to build your brand.  You can your online persona using Twitter more fully by sending out tweets that are unique and reflect what you want your brand personality to be.  Your intention should be to get people to connect with your brand and to make yourself unique in your niche.  By being interesting and engaging, you’ll drive traffic to your website or blog.

4. to research your customers.  Twitter offers you an opportunity to spy on your target market’s interests and to ask them questions about their needs.