Issue 129 – We'll be right back after this commercial break
Traditional Irish advertising agencies and marketing departments have some facing up to the future to do. But the time is now, contends Nick McGivney.
I’ll tell you exactly when we got lost. It was that moment in the woods, somewhere around Burkittsville, when that stupid Michael Williams kicked the stupid map into the river.
Up until then we were all humming along just fine. Day followed night, post- followed pre- and all was good. Then, in July of ’99, Artisan released a low-tech, diy home movie called The Blair Witch Project. Biggest box office sales-to-production cost in American filmmaking history.
They threw away the map.
The internet was there already, of course, in an increasing number of workday lives. It wasn’t quite the chattering, listening, helpful, I-hear-you place of consumer gratification that it is now but that didn’t stop the producers of The Blair Witch Project from realising what a mighty opportunity it gave them. They invented a myth about an Irish witch in Maryland, they peddled it for gospel in a documentary that they’d made for potential investors, and when it got people talking they shot that ‘new truth’ directly into the bloodstream of young Americans with this fabulous internet thing before they ever released a print. Cha-ching. The fact that they’d spent two years inventing a centuries-old myth and then turned it into the biggest no-budget marketing success ever via the web was a delicious whammy that none of us even copped until the dust settled and the numbers were in.
Engagement
That was then. Internetland has changed dramatically since. It’s not a place where you just observe any more. Engagement is key now. You contribute, like the script for Snakes on a Plane. This is a basic that hasn’t been grasped by a lot of Irish marketers yet. Since 2005, YouTube has allowed anyone to upload their content, and anyone else to watch it. It’s incredibly user-friendly. No strings of code or fancy algorithms necessary. If you’ve got some rubber bands, a toilet roll tube and a magnifying glass you can probably do it. And if you’ve got something that others want to watch, they will. And if you’d invented simple, straightforward cut-and-paste YouTube, how pleased would you have been when Google came knocking a year and a half later, waving a cheque for $1.65 billion? If Google want what you do, you can bet that you’re doing something that has a future.
The full article is printed in Film Ireland 129.
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Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
[...] We’ll Be Right Back After This Commercial Break Traditional Irish advertising agencies and marketing departments have some facing up to the future to do. But the time is now, contends Nick McGivney. Read more here [...]