Need a break from all the intense issues in the headlines these days? Make your voice heard on the red-hot question of whether you roll your toilet paper over or under. [I promise to use massive willpower to avoid all the easy bathroom puns.] Cottonelle is going all out with its Roll Poll, creating a feisty forum for debating the pros and cons of how you roll.
You can start a Roll Poll Throwdown – basically choosing from characters such as a tough firefighter and high society matron [for the Over team] and an uber-hip yoga guy and crazy cat lady [for the Under team] to give their best reasons. You don't really believe these are real people, but they are just serious enough to be funny. Then you can cast your own vote.
It's a genius way to promote a product easily taken for granted: Tap into an irresistible debate [much like Coke or Pepsi, creamy or crunchy peanut butter] to get people talking. It's a topic where very few people are ambivalent. You just can't help taking sides. As of this writing, Over is the clear winner – 76% to 24%. North Carolina is a heavy over state at 86%. Yes, you can check a US map to see how your state voted with street videos of opinionated rollers from each state. Interestingly, California is the only under state. [Hmmm...what do we make of that?]
The Roll Poll took advantage of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube along with TV ads and guerilla ads spotted on trains and bus stops. And it appears that the mommy blogs have bought in. A quick Google search turns up tons of them. Apparently Cottonelle got the word out to this key consumer audience by offering free TP – a month's worth – to bloggers who encouraged their readers to go vote.
And no TP campaign would be complete without a celebrity or two. Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott are taking opposite sides, appearing at the Roll Poll Great Debate in Times Square in honor of Thomas Crapper Day, Jan. 27. [No, really, he's credited with the invention of the flush toilet. Historians say it was John Harrington, but that's another debate.]
It's all light-hearted fun with serious branding all over it. So how do you roll?
The clamor for information rages on, but where will we get it? Traditional media are dying a slow death – an AP article last Sunday said newspapers are now in survival mode. Staff cuts are hitting hard at the Hartford Courant, the Baltimore Sun, and the Daytona Beach-Journal. The venerable Tribune Co. is looking to sell Newsday. Closer to home, the News & Observer announced last Friday that its Business section would be integrated into the same section as local news, a reflection of cutbacks. McClatchy Co., N&O’s parent, said more staff cuts are coming.
So what’s going to take the place of newspapers? Will it be a new breed of media company? At Web Content 2008, Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 declared that online content marketing is the future of media and expressed his condolences to anyone working in traditional media. Pointing to shrinking media company budgets and the myriad technologies that allow the smallest companies to deliver targeted content, Pulizzi and Junta42 are banking on custom publishing. This company helps match marketers with branded content providers, content advertising agencies, direct marketing and PR firms, integrated marketing firms and post-advertising agencies — at no charge.
And content delivery goes beyond blogs and e-newsletters. Junta42 lists – you guessed it – 42 ways to deliver your content, including virtual tradeshows, online games, e-books, vodcasts, and digital magazines.
What's missing here is any type of objective reporting. I understand the power of customized content, but I’m not sure it will totally replace the role of the fourth estate – or if it should. Maybe instead of journalism empires like the Tribune or McClatchy, we’ll just have journalists for hire, building personal brands as trusted, impartial sources of news. Or maybe product marketers will draw crowds by providing news articles even if it doesn't tie into their products.
Sure, the line has blurred between news and entertainment, and I'm all for online content marketing. But shouldn't news and marketing still be separate?
How can something as cutting edge as social media be considered old school? Because it goes to the heart of communicating. That’s the upshot of a couple of talks Darren Barefoot gave at a Web Content Conference [WC08] put on by Duo Consulting in Chicago. This totally engaging Canadian started his presentation quoting from Shakespeare’s Henry V and a drawing of the theater used in Elizabethan England – not exactly what you’d expect for a presentation on the many facets of social media. Barefoot pointed out that someone drew the theater after hearing about it, then copied it and published it. It underscored for me that social media isn’t suddenly working because of the power of Web 2.0 tools. These tools simply give people who are hungry to communicate an easier way to do it.
At his second talk, Barefoot used a decidedly low-tech approach – he hung 29 cards naming social media tools on a clothesline of sorts. Borrowing from Theatre Skam's 29 Plays in 59 Minutes concept, he asked the audience to call out a social media technology. He’d rip it off the line and riff for several minutes [of course, some kept falling off the line early, providing even more comic relief]. He covered everything from the ubiquitous Wikipedia to emerging surprises like Kyte.tv and Ustream. For the last two, he even admitted to the dreaded feeling of “Kids seem to like these but I don’t know why….” Made me feel a little better for not even knowing about them yet. 29 tools in an hour and a half. Not bad.