About
two months ago, I heard that something outrageous was coming!
Maybe you saw the ads in the newspaper, heard them on local radio spots
or watched the spots on T.V.... Some company was going to do something
outrageous and they teased Iowans with what I guess is probably a
$50,000 media campaign. The ads direct people to this microsite.
The outrageous thing is that the message
didn’t reach audiences in the mediums that allowed them to share the
campaign, and this campaign has failed to generated any momentum. I
mean, when is the last time you were in your car posting a radio ad to
your Facebook account? I know I don’t often share the ads I see printed
in the Des Moines Register through Twitter. I guess they could have run
the T.V. ads on YouTube but they didn’t.
So what is so outrageous? Well, MetaBank
announced some new checking account offers that -- on the surface -- seem pretty cool. Pretty different from the normal bank advertising we are
so used to seeing. I asked my friends at Lessing-Flynn if they did this
campaign. They told us that Meta Bank was no longer a client and they
had nothing to do with this. Lessing-Flynn didn't know what agency was
helping Meta Bank.
It's clear that there was
no ad agency directing them. No agency would have recommended $50k in
teaser media without any social media initiatives. In today’s world,
that would be a waste and campaign suicide. Go onto Twitter and search outrageousnow.com
– you get two tweets – one from the company that built the site and
another from some agency person.
What if someone had just suggested
they use social media (the right way) to drive their efforts? What if
someone tweeted for a month about the "outrageousness" that was coming?
What if MetaBank already had a social media presence and could have increased their follow list through this kind of campaign? Metabank did use some social media chicklets on the site, but they don't have a volunteer fire department (aka, followers!) to help get the word out. What am I supposed to do with these? A Facebook icon and a url that pops into my twitter feed? Huge miss.
My guess is that in 30 days if you search Google for “outrageous now” you will find this blog post listed higher than the actual outrageous now URL and most likely the MegaBank site. That’s not because I’m more savvy than anyone else, its just that I am the only one talking about it. Spending $50k on a teaser campaign that flops? Now that’s outrageous!
The only thing lamer than this is Banker's Trust sending me SIX generic Facebook messages asking me to be its friend when I am not a customer and I already told them that they can't use me for my followers. Get your own, dude.
