Pigs Don't Fly

7 Things I Learned From A (Unsuccessful) Crowd-Funding Campaign

2013-05-23T21:48:00.000+10:00

So my half court shot for a product I was crowd-funding on Pozible missed. Not by much, but certainly no swish. And over the last 30 days of campaigning, here are seven things I've picked up along the way.

1) Niche is tough
As with all products, you want to appeal to a specific market, which makes it significantly easier to generate publicity. However you can't be so specific that it's hard for the 'average' person to justify getting behind you're campaign.

I designed a product to fix a problem I have at home. As it turns out my fridge is pretty unique these days, with a type of shelving that is almost obsolete. It was a sticking point, and ultimately I believe the biggest reason people wouldn't get around it.

2) Shipping is a bitch
It's tough justifying a shipping fee that costs as much as the item.

Sadly anything bigger than an 'envelope' is considered a 'package' by Australia Post, irrespective of weight and has a minimum charge of $6.60. More so, this additional cost of fulfillment hugely increased the overall required funding goal.

Particularly when you need to sell a lot of products at a low price (as opposed to fewer products at a higher price), high postage costs really cause headaches.

3) Plan out your PR campaign before you launch
I thought I had a pretty good grip on things prior to launch. I had a rough idea of what the press release needed to say and a rough plan of attack for people I wanted to contact.

But then the campaign started and it got crazy busy. You start playing catch up with people you need to contact, requests for images and more information, interviews and back-and-forths, answering questions, keeping backers updated, promoting it across various social platforms, and plenty more. On top of that I'd have new ideas daily on how to get the word out which just added on top of everything else.

Instead, prior to launch I should have had as much planned for as I could. Have press releases ready, email templates for different audiences and an exhaustive list of friends, family, networks, reporters and randoms you can contact, all before you push the campaign live.

4) 'Advertising' did not work
I thought it would be interesting to trial a couple of different means of getting the word out during the campaign, including some 'advertising'. Sponsored tweets (where a popular Twitter account tweets for cash), advertising on Reddit and Facebook ads all had little to no impact at all.

It probably depends on the nature of your campaign, but for me I would categorise it bluntly as a complete waste of money.

5) Don't overshoot the funding goal
While planning out the campaign, I determined the funding goal based on exactly what I would need to break even. But what I didn't consider is that I probably would have been willing to throw in some money myself.

So before your campaign starts, have a think about how much you'd be willing to top it up if the funding goal was just short. If you're looking to raise $10,000, it gets to $9,000 and you'd be willing to put in the rest, you should really have reduced your funding goal by $1,000 before you started.

All money on successful campaigns generally loses around 7% in fees. So it doesn't make sense to contribute to your own campaign. (However it would be the perfect means of money laundering. I wonder if Mastercard have thought of this yet.)

You can always raise above and beyond your funding goal, so aim as low as possible.

6) Reddit is untapped potential
As mentioned above, advertising on Reddit did not work. But my number one source of traffic to the campaign page came from a post I put up on /r/shutupandtakemymoney. It's a risky strategy and I received a substantial amount of criticism and negative feedback, but for the most part Reddit loves a good idea and don't mind getting behind something they like.

I'd only recommend it if you've been across Reddit for a while and have a bit of an idea of how it works there, but the above sub reddit was low hanging fruit for me, and there's plenty of highly focused communities on there for just about anything you can think of.

7) My family, friends and networks are awesome
I honestly didn't expect the response I got from the people I know. It's worth remembering that most of them don't want to see you fail and will promote the shit out of your campaign for you. And if any of you are reading this who pledged or shared my campaign, thank you.

So what next for me? "Pivot" seems to be a popular word in the entrepreneurial space at the moment.

One of the great things about crowd-funding (other than the fact the only thing at risk is your ego) is that it's effectively a market research tool. The feedback overwhelmingly suggests people love the idea, but not the execution. So I'll be taking on board the learings above and tweaking it. For me, that means a product that works in fridges with glass-shelves. And hopefully a cheaper means of postage.

Maybe I'll even be back on Pozible in six months with the Beerend 2.0.

Half Court Shots

2013-04-17T20:42:00.002+10:00

I've already mentioned I'm a big fan of side projects, and today I'm pretty effing excited to launch my next one. Every now and then you need to take a half court shot and I'm really hoping this one goes in.

It's called the Beerend, it's like a bookend for your beer.

And I'm turning to crowd-funding to raise the money I need to start manufacturing.

So if you like cold beer, check out the Beerend on Pozible, share it with your mates and make a pledge. I'll drink to that.

Side Projects

2013-02-02T16:47:00.003+11:00

I'm a big fan of side projects. Particularly those that support your main gig, even if it's indirectly.

It goes without saying that the most successful people in this industry are the ones that do something on the side. Launching a line a bottled water, managing a band, running a resource for Juniors and a building a fashion blog are a few that come to mind from people I've worked with.

I've tried to have a few of these projects over the years. I built and sold a website which taught me some crazy good stuff and I'm pretty sure my local hockey club is the only one in Australia to have an SEO strategy.

In fact this blog was too once a side project while I was a student that resulted in my first job. Sadly when your side project essentially becomes your full time job it's hard to keep passionate about a little old blog in my case. Hence why I'm lucky to post once a month these days.

With that said, this year I've got two major side projects I want to tackle. Within the next few months I want to launch a product, and after that develop a mobile app. That should be enough to keep me busy, and give me some time to think about what comes after that.

So what's your side project and how does it support your main gig?

Thank The Brands You Like

2013-01-27T16:42:00.000+11:00

Maybe I've been in advertising too long, but I can't help but feel brands get it pretty tough.

Especially brands that actually contribute toward a customer's life. Some of them meaningfully.

Yet all we see is brands being criticised and abused. Particularly on social media.

But what would happen if consumers thanked the brands they liked? Or recognised the role they played?

Turns out most people are pretty skeptical. Although my posts did generate some 'random' likes.

I don't think we'll be seeing 'Thank The Brands You Like Day' anytime soon. But I think it's an interesting concept.

BitTorrent for Brands

2012-11-08T22:14:00.001+11:00

Last month I wrote about how I think email is not used enough by brands. This month I've been thinking about other channels and platforms marketers don't leverage enough.

And the big one that keeps coming back to me is why have we never seen a brand use torrents?

Yes it falls into a gray area that not a lot of brands could get way with, but we need to remember of course that torrenting itself is not illegal, only the torrenting of illegal content.

Although most media usage reports seem to ignore it, we know video consumption through torrents is prevalent, and in many demographics ubiquitous. So why don't we see any brands playing in this space?

Even if they don't have quality branded content to release through torrents, why are no brands leveraging torrent sites through display media? Surely the lack of competition makes them fairly cheap placements and I imagine a "real" banner ad would stand out among the rest of the spam.

It would be pretty ballsy for a brand to do either of these, but it would be pretty effing awesome.

Email; The Red Headed Child of Content Distribution

2012-10-07T14:23:00.002+11:00

We regularly talk about the distribution of content through YouTube, blogs, social networks and other digital bits and pieces. But I think we often overlook a hugely under appreciated platform; email.

Take this example sent around a few days before the Brownlow.

Philip Brown, a Quantitative Strategist at Commonwealth Bank, put together a report with a model and analysis on who he believed would win the Brownlow Medal using a few seasons worth of data (which you can download it here if you're interested). He emailed it to a few of his colleagues where it was quickly forwarded on around the industry and then on to broader audiences (where I received it).

It's well targeted, interesting and shows how smart the brand is with data. And it doesn't even matter that I dropped $100 on it and lost my money because the predictions were wrong.

And if you're even remotely interested in footy, you probably received the 'Red Carpet Analysis' PowerPoint the day after the Brownlow from a friend. Another piece of content distributed very successfully via email.

Email has this crazy potential for amplification (and sometimes longevity) being forwarded again and again and again. As a platform it's ubiquitous, not going anywhere and cheap to leverage. And personally, I think it's way underused by brands for distributing content.

Will The Real Digital Strategists Please Stand Up?

2012-09-26T19:53:00.003+10:00

Clients are increasingly getting better at digital. It's taken some time, but we're now at a point where most clients understand digital's potential role, importance and place. And this is only going to get stronger (particularly as younger marketers step into decision-making roles).

As a result, many brands now have the basic digital hygiene factors covered. They're in social media, creating content, leveraging video, thinking about SEO and search, using analytics and are across mobile.

And I think a lot of people who call themselves "Digital Strategists" are going to start sweating when they get asked what to do next. What happens after a brand ticks off the digital basics?

Because once they play the "Let's use Pinterest" card, I think they're going to start running out of answers.

Dare I say it's time for Digital Strategist 2.0s.

A New Gig

2012-08-23T15:47:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I finished up at George Patts.

I started my first day as an intern with a mohawk doing community management. Two and a half years later I leave as a Digital Strategist, with a lot more on my head, and hopefully a bit more in my head.

And on Monday, I start a new gig at CumminsRoss.

How I Inadvertently Split Tested My Homebrew

2012-07-16T20:12:00.000+10:00

For quite a while now, a mate and I have been homebrewing. We've had varying degrees of success ranging from exploding bottles to pouring entire glasses of head to great (drinkable) beer.

It's great fun and a cheap way to drink. But one of the frustrating things about it is how slow the process is. From step one to drinking a cold beer you're looking at two to three months, more than enough time to forget the small things you've done along the way to improve/ruin the beer.

So on a recent batch, we decided to do something different. Instead of brewing twenty bottles of the exact same beer we brewed ten variations in one batch.

Normally it would take two months to know if putting in an extra spoon of sugar has a positive or negative impact. This time, we put one spoon in a bottle, one and half in another and two in a third. Then we tried the same with raw sugar. And again with brown sugar. Then we tried one bottle with honey.

In two months, we'll be able to easily analyse ten variations, which under the previous approach would have taken ten times longer.

And you should take a similar approach with your highly trafficked website. I've been doing a lot recently around split testing and optimising and here are a few things I've picked up:

Every visit is an opportunity to learn something (big or small)
Never make assumptions (there's no need with so much data)
More often than not, change is incremental (there's no such thing as a silver bullet)

Without even realising it, I massively improved my "test and learn" process and inadvertently started split testing my beer at the same time.

Funnily enough, those bullet points above apply to homebrewing too.

Build It And They Will Come

2012-04-17T11:11:00.004+10:00

Last night I gave a group of Monash students a tour of our office. Funnily enough, exactly three years ago I was the student walking through George Patts hoping to one day get a job there.

It reminded me of how after my tour as a student I bumped into Russel Howcroft shortly after and he told us during a presentation that sometimes marketers needed to "build things and they (the consumers) will come".

I didn't quite understand it at the time. But today I can't help but think it's a completely underrated and underused digital strategy. This idea of building something rad that's relevant to your target audience and then using them to spread your idea.

You don't need to stress about amplification strategies/sharing user journeys/going viral/influencer seeding and all that other nonsense. Instead you be awesome and the rest comes naturally.

Intel did it here, and Coke are trying it out with things like this.

And of course, it makes an amazing brief for the ad agency.

Reaching Critical Mass Through Social Media

2012-01-17T21:58:00.007+11:00

It seems like even the laggard brands are now finding their way on Facebook. And what better way to kick things off than running a big promotion with a big prize.

Wrong.

Brands are relying too heavily on "going viral" and "amplification through social networks" and "sharing". As a result there are far too many social media promotions happening at the moment producing less than average ROIs. Big budget promotions are only receiving very little uptake.

It's pretty much the reason I recently won a car. In fact right now I am in with a pretty good chance to win $10,000 in a video competition... where less than 30 people entered.

Brands fail to understand that to run a big social media promotion you either need a cracking idea, a big media buy, or an already established audience. You can't launch and expect big results from your small community.

Instead, start with small, regular promotions until you've built up a sizeable audience. Then start giving away cars and large sums of cold, hard cash.

5 Tips for Handling a Media 'Scandal'

2011-11-27T16:00:00.007+11:00

What a year I've had, two media 'scandals' in six months. In May I was accused of writing offensive tweets that supposedly meant I couldn't do my job and just last week I apparently cheated my way into winning a new car.

Between the two 'scandals' (and I use the word lightly) I've managed to be the most read article on The Age website, the lead story on Channel 10 news and even had a joke made about me by Dave Hughes on The Project.

Here are the five things I've learned about handling what is quite a daunting experience for a 22-year-old.

1) Anything can be a story
What I didn't realise until recently was that anything could be a story.

It doesn't matter if it's pointless or what I would deem 'a non story'. It particularly doesn't matter if it's a scandal for the sake of being a scandal.

You might think the content of the story isn't newsworthy, but you have to ask yourself, "What is the headline?". Because if the situation can be condensed into a scandalous headline, the rest of the article doesn't matter. And that's why something as innocent as a tweet or a mention of the word 'BFF' three years ago can apparently be news.

2) Don't feed the trolls
It's quite incredible how crazy some people can be. Despite being ill informed and unwilling to be informed, social media has allowed these people a voice.

It's tempting to respond to their blatant stupidity or cruelty, but don't. Trolls don't argue with logic so you're just wasting your time, and more importantly any response can be used as fodder by journos to make things worse.

Trolls are best left in silence.

3) Don't feed the journos (some of whom are also trolls)
Simply put, don't comment on the scandal.

Again it's hard not to, but by doing so you're throwing fuel on the fire and potentially getting yourself into another news cycle.

The quality of journalism and research in both of my 'scandals' were incredibly poor, yet the best option was to remain quiet and let the story die as quickly as it came.

No one ever got in trouble for not making a comment.

4) Do the ground work to win the SEO game
Articles and 'scandals' like these hurt people, especially when it comes to their Google results. One news piece could cost you and your reputation years down the track when a potential employer (or potential date) runs your name in a Google search.

To avoid this as much as possible, you've got to be proactive. Thankfully I've got this blog that I've been writing for four years and a number of other platforms that help my search results. They will (hopefully) always trump a rogue journalist who decides to use my name.

It's unreasonable to assume you'll never be a front page story (just ask 21-year-old Zac!). The best defence you can have to protect your page rank on Google against shoddy journalism is a quality blog or website. If you don't have one, best you get started.

5) Ride it out
Once the story breaks, you can't do anything about it.

If you've followed the advice above then the story should be dead within a news cycle and the damage won't be too extensive. You can't control how you're portrayed or what peple say about you, so you're best to ride it out and remember that in a few days no one will remember or give a shit.

It's been a crazy few experiences, certainly not something I want to repeat. Hopefully I don't have to follow these tips myself ever again.

Two scandals is enough for one lifetime.

I'd Happily Pay for "Free" Content

2011-10-19T11:49:00.004+11:00

I don't pay for most of my content, and I haven't for a long time.

Even my once beloved DVD collection has been replaced by torrents. My music and television shows have long been downloaded and most recently, I've even started torrenting my books and reading them on an iPad.

It's fair to say, I don't pay for content. But I want to.

I do realise that someone needs to pay for it, and I'd be willing to do so if it was easy and 100% of the money went to the team who produced it.

I'd happy throw a few dollars to an author of a book if I knew it was going directly to them (and their editor, etc.) Likewise for a band, and it could even for movies and television shows. What I don't want to pay for is the unnecessary cost of middle men, distributors and physical production.

I've just finished reading five Game of Thrones books. I didn't pay for them, but seeings how they kept me busy for the best part of two months, I'd happy give a good amount of money to George R. R. Martin and his crew if it was easy. But I can't find a donation button anywhere, and the only way to 'pay' is to give a large proportion of the money to the likes of Amazon and Angus & Robertson.

At the end of an ebook, television series or album, there should be an option to donate/pay, with the proceeds going directly to those who produced it.

I know then I'd pay for content instead of 'stealing' it.

The Next Generation of Start Ups

2011-09-13T15:18:00.003+10:00

I went paint balling on the weekend for the first time. Not only did I leave with a few welts across my back, but also with a feeling of how poorly the business was managed from a digital experience sense.

The website was hard to find and hard to use. It wasn't intuitive and lacked a number of features that would make the process of organising 20 guys on a buck's party much easier.

Everyone talks about the next generation of entrepreneurs starting up the next Facebook or Angry Birds, but I think there's a bigger opportunity; your everyday businesses, particularly services. Paint balling, plumbing, computer repairs, and car washing; everyday analogue businesses.

But unlike their current-day counterparts, the next generation of business start ups will be run by digital natives. They'll have killer websites (personalised, localised and mobile optimised) and will crush their competition in SEO.

I'm in half a mind to ditch this advertising nonsense and see what I could make of a paint balling business.

Always Be Building

2011-08-15T12:06:00.003+10:00

My post Move Fast and Break Things got a fairly good response so I decided to present it to some undergraduates last week. After the presentation I was talking to some students about Angry Birds Blog, the example I used of something they could build.

And then I let them in on a secret. Angry Birds Blog wasn't the first thing I built. Nor will it be the last.

Some of you may remember an online business I tried to get off the ground that failed miserably. None of you know about a number of other websites I have that get less than 100 hits a month. And as we speak I have another project in the works for people who like beer.

It doesn't matter if you build something and it doesn't work. It doesn't have to be a success for you to learn from it. And if it's so bad that you need to pull the plug, then do so and go and build something else.

That's the thing about the internet; you can always be building.

How to Combine or Merge Facebook Pages

2011-08-03T11:48:00.001+10:00

About a year ago, I wrote how it was possible to merge unofficial Facebook pages if you had a big enough media buy.

However a recent change now means that anyone can apply to have fans migrated from an unofficial page over to an official one, even without a contact as Facebook. Although they don't promote it much, the steps are quite simple and are as follows:

You will need to 'authenticate' your official page by submitting it for review here (it doesn't look legit but it is!). This may take up to a few business days to complete.
Once authenticated, you can request that the fans from unofficial pages be migrated across to the official one here. Again, this may take a few days.

This is not normally the type of content I post here, but I figure it's a great piece of knowledge to have and is usually an easy way to get some fan growth. And at the same time you're reducing the potential risk of your brand in someone else's hands.

If it works for you, be sure to buy me a beer sometime.

Move Fast and Break Things

2011-07-26T14:30:00.021+10:00

'Move fast and break things' is a philosophy I've stolen from Facebook's work culture. Anyone who's seen The Social Network movie will know this ideology is at the core of everything they do, demonstrated by the regular Hackathon events they host where programmers stay up all night building for the purpose of building.

The outcome isn't necessarily important. It doesn't have to be perfect, nor necessarily functional. But by moving fast and breaking things, they approach problems in a different light that creates new solutions and new ideas. Many of Facebook's features have come out of these Hackathon events.

So why am I writing about it? Well, I think it lends itself to great advice for graduates looking to land themselves a gig in digital;

Build something.

Building something these days generally costs next to nothing. A lack of technical skills is no excuse either given Google is at your finger tips. And the only thing you'll need you should have plenty of as a student; time.

Time to move fast. Time to break things. Time to learn. Time to build something.

As an undergraduate I built this blog. Everyone's got one now (not to say you shouldn't build one too), but you could build a YouTube Channel. Or an online store that sells socks. Or a video that gets 1,000,000 views.

Throw yourself in the deep end. If it fails, pull the plug and build something else.

Six months ago I started a website called Angry Birds Blog. Like me, I realised people were searching for walkthroughs, Golden Egg locations and information about the game. The website now receives 95,000 hits and brings in $150 a month. But that's nothing compared to what I've learned over the past half year about SEO, SEM, AdSense, affiliate marketing, design, coding, ad placement and more.

And I reckon if you can build something, that's probably more impressive than talking about your empty resume in a job interview.

Edit: I sold Angry Birds Blog in September 2011 for a nice little sum.

How Much Is An Invite Worth?

2011-06-14T17:58:00.005+10:00

So how much is an invite to a Facebook page worth? I'm sure there's various conflicting studies out there, so I thought I'd do some research of my own.

I asked people how much they would charge a brand to invite all their friends to the said brand's Facebook page. Some said flat out they wouldn't do it, others said they would do it for free and quite a few people said it would depend on the brand.

With a sample size of 15 of my Facebook friends, here are the results.

So there you have it, conclusive research suggests on average, an invite to a brand's Facebook page is worth 13 cents per friend.

If you're taking this seriously (you shouldn't be), this figure is of course from the point of the consumer, not the brand. But what this does mean is that if a brand can offer something worth more than 13 cents for each of their friends, it will be worth an invite.

Also, some of my friends are sellouts.

Commenting Anonymously

2011-06-05T18:25:00.006+10:00

Sean Cummins wrote a pretty serious piece regarding anonymous comments on the internet.

Here at Pigs Don't Fly I'm a fan of the anonymous commenter. I mean, I've received everything from abuse to death threats, and just last week in a very witty comment I was called a "homo". Yet I still allow anonymous commenting.

I do it because complete anonymity is a rare thing and it's one of the interesting unique features of the interwebs. Of course this has it's problems, but let's not forget the anonymous produce some of the most creative stuff on the internet (and not to mention LOLcats). They also do some pretty impressive stuff offline.

Sure, some anonymous comments are shit. But you have to take them for what they are. By allowing people to comment anonymously, they're more likely to do so and more likely to express an honest point of view. Sometimes this comes at the cost of your ego or confidence, but they're certainly not going anywhere.

(In before anyone, yes I'm expecting a lot of "homo" comments on this post.)

Being iPhoneless For 31 Days

2011-05-31T19:11:00.005+10:00

For the whole of May, I decided to go without my iPhone. Effectively, I went without my iPod, camera, email, calender, Angry Birds, Google Maps and Facebook.

It was interesting to say the least. Here's my takeout;

Over the course of the month, only once did I wish I had responded to an email faster. Everything else could wait until I got home or got to work.
Only a few apps were truly missed; Tram Tracker and Shazam being up there. Everything else is really good at eating up your time and making you very unproductive (mostly games).
Instead of listening to music and podcasts on the tram each day, I read three books over the course of the month. Unfortunately this meant I could also hear the amount of rubbish people talk about in public.
I stopped checking my phone every five minutes. However, having been involved in a 'news scandal' during the month, it would have been nice to be connected to watch it play out.
I could drop my burner on the ground and it didn't even matter. That was kind of nice.
And last but not least, I only had to charge my burner three times during the course of the month, and didn't once worry about running out of battery.

Good fun, I'm going to try and read one book a month on the tram and it's fair to say I've become less dependent on my iPhone. If you're interested in taking part, I have a free phone you can use, all it will cost you is a beer.

Water Wonderwall

2011-05-18T20:57:00.005+10:00

A few months ago a water feature was installed on the corner of Swanston Street and Collins Street in Melbourne. For a while, the large stone wall with water cascading down one side remained untouched. But then slowly people walking passed realised that the leaves from the trees surrounding the feature could be stuck to the wall. Quickly, messages and pictures started appearing. A walk passed this wall each lunch time would have a new piece of art every day.

As I've said before, people like to think they're creative. Yet not enough brands create things for people to interact with. This water feature is the perfect example, and it wasn't even intended to be.

I wonder what a digital/mobile version of this would look like.

Why I'm Ditching My iPhone

2011-04-28T14:47:00.005+10:00

The gents over at Native Digital ditched their iPhones. And I thought I'd do the same, so for the month of May I'll be iPhoneless, instead using this Samsung "burner" I picked up for $20.

For 31 days I'll be without reliance on a permanent connection, satisfying my digital communication and technology needs through only a desktop. It could be a long month.

I'll post the results here, but in the mean time you can follow my progress on Twitter through the #iphoneless hashtag. Although I'm not too sure how tweeting will go without my phone.

Every Time Someone Likes This Post Another Shit Status Update Has Been Written

2011-03-23T11:48:00.007+11:00

Here's some fun statistics for you that I promise I didn't make up.

71% of peeps are becoming more selective regarding the pages they Like on Facebook

The two main reasons people leave pages are because updates aren't relevant or are posted too often.

When this happens 19% of peeps do nothing, 38% block the posts from their News Feed and 43% unlike the page.

As more and more brands jump on the Facebook bandwagon, the market gets to a point of saturation and fans start to get choosey. There's only so many times you can click the Like button.

The first-mover advantage was a win if you got there, but you probably didn't which means you really need to be doing something of value on your page.

Most brands think the solution is to launch with a campaign and a media buy to build a foundation audience. Which usually works. But once that's over, they spend the rest of the year when their budget runs out pumping out pointless status updates.

There's only so many times you can ask someone to Like a status or fill in the blank. I know I'm guilty of it, where you write bait posts to crack a good level of engagement. But at some point people are going to start seeing past these shitty pointless status updates that don't mean anything.

Instead, you need to be entertaining or useful. There's enough brands trying the former (most of them failing), but not enough for the latter.

And I reckon one really useful post does better things for your brand and page than 20 pointless ones.

We're All Wannabe Copywriters

2011-02-05T17:06:00.006+11:00

Nearly everyone likes to think they're creative (even if they're not).

I'm certainly one of those people. We like to flex our creative muscles where we can, but never really go out of our way to do so. We express this in the everyday things like updating our Facebook status with something witty. Or writing a funny product review on Amazon. In fact, here are my recent feedback posts on eBay...

The brands that do community and content management the best are the ones that let their consumers be creative without having to go out of their way. Running a UGC campaign isn't always about asking people to film the next Super Bowl commercial, upload the next big viral on YouTube or be a pro in Photoshop.

Just let their inner copywriter run free. It's usually free (because people like to show off) and it creates good content to feed back into the community.

The Most Ridiculous Ad Complaint Ever

2011-02-02T18:50:00.005+11:00

The Advertising Standards Board (ASB) regularly receives quite a few ridiculous complaints. Thankfully, most of the time they're dismissed.

But I wanted to test it out myself. And what better way to do so than with this recently released Pure Blonde ad...

Here's how it played out...

23rd November 2010
I submit the following complaint on the ASB website...

"On the weekend just passed I was enjoying a cup of delicious tea while watching some Sunday night programming only to be confronted by an appalling commercial for Pure Blonde beer.

I am sure I am not alone when I say winged-horse enthusiasts like myself will be outraged at the disgusting lack of treatment regarding the magnificent animal in this commercial. The rare creature is clearly depicted in distress and suggests it is later physically harmed or, god forbid, killed. While some consider these beautiful beasts nothing but mythical, this ad supports animal cruelty for those of us who know the truth and it must be taken off the air."

24th November 2010
The Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code (ABAC) Adjudication Panel dismisses the complaint regarding any breaches of the ABAC Code.

13th December 2010
The complaint is scheduled for submission to the ASB for a potential breach of Section 2 of the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) Code of Ethics.

2nd February 2011
After consideration, the ASB dismisses the complaint and issues the following response...

"At the time of writing this, the commercial had been on national television for over 3 weeks and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. In relation to the complaint [...] we'd just like to state that no harm to the 'Pegasus' (a mythical horse that has wings – brought to life here through special effects) is depicted. Whilst the horse is clearly startled when the mountain starts to crumble – as are the humans featured – and does move with the mountain as it gives way, the horse does not come to any physical harm in the commercial.

In addition to this, given the horse has wings it's completely reasonable to extrapolate that it flew away to safety."

"This is the only complaint of its kind that we have received."

I can't believe it's someone's job to waste their time considering and responding to people like me.