The Internet Marketer's Secret Weapon
I know that One Degree is your default home page and all, but after you’re done reading what we’ve got to say, what other Canadian marketing blogs do you check out?
Feel free to include the blogs name and address. Add your top pick after the click…
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Mike Halminen, VP, Co-Creative Director, “MacLaren McCann Direct & Interactive”:http://maclaren.com/, has spent the past nine years in the interactive industry, building brands of all scales from as large as GM Canada, to as small as the Sam Roberts Band.
With over a dozen international art direction awards under his belt, Mike has put his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology to good use in both interactive and mass advertising.
In his past life, Mike wasn’t a rock star, but he’s met plenty. As Creative Director at Maple/Universal Music, he worked with award winning musical talent including the Tragically Hip, Sam Roberts, Bruce Cockburn and Cowboy Junkies.
As the interactive creative leader and new media expert at MMdi, Mike supervises a talented team of art directors, writers, designers and other specialists. He inspires both the account and creative teams to think beyond what’s expected to create online experiences that surprise and delight.
*One Degree: What’s the basic idea behind the “Johnny.ca”:http://www.johnny.ca/ campaign?*
Chevrolet would like to be on more young people’s radars. With that in mind, the “Johnny” campaign focused on Chevrolet vehicles that are most relevant to youth by showing them in a unique way, both in message and delivery.
In the campaign, traditional mass, online, and guerilla-style tactics delivered the rules of safe and responsible car ownership through an “after school special” theme, presented in an unconventional, quirky tone. Johnny, the young Chevrolet owner hero, is constantly confronted with driving situations that could compromise his own safety and the safety of others. Holding true to his values, he constantly makes the “right” choice.
*One Degree: How is the Internet being used in this campaign?*
The Internet is being used as a continuation of the story that was set up with the TV spots. It allows consumers to enjoy a more in-depth experience with the Chevrolet brand and vehicles by having the characters come alive online and be “spokespeople” to promote the features and benefits of the Chevrolet small cars. We also used other online properties, including MySpace, to see if we could generate some interest at a more grass roots level by creating MySpace pages for the main characters. Here’s “Johnny’s MySpace”:http://www.myspace.com/johnnysmyhomeboy page for example.
When it comes to offline community building around a brand, there are very few local examples as successful as “The Running Room”:http://www.runningroom.com/. But does this offline success translate into an equally persuasive online offering? Do they really “get” online?
If any of you are runners or even just like to walk your dog early on a Sunday morning, you will likely already know that the Running Room understands community building around a brand. Every Sunday morning at eight o’clock, outside of every Running Room outlet everywhere in Canada, there is a gaggle of hyped-up, spandex-clad runners in nice shoes and water bottle belts warming up for a run with their designated “community”. Whether you’re a slow 5K’r or a marathoner in training, there is a community of like-minded people waiting for you at the Running Room.
The Running Room, it seems, sells more than shoes. They sell a running lifestyle and they back it up by fostering an active community that lives this brand and congregates around their properties. In short, the Running Room is everything that an online social network aspires to be. Which made me wonder, what does their website look like and do they do as good of a job online as they do offline?
First, I need to be honest that I really did want their site to suck. It is always much more fun to write about a smart company caught with their pants down than to have to write about a smart company being smart. Unfortunately, this article will be the latter. With one notable exception, their site does a very good job of reinforcing their core offline values, online, and is a good example of a company leveraging their core strength through their online property.
Let’s look in more detail.
The homepage www.runningroom.com drives you immediately to the key content areas for their community (not their commerce): the “events” page, the community “forum” page, the “photos” page and other important pages designed to get you to put down the cheese doodles and go for a run. The “forum section”:http://www.runningroom.com/discussion/ is especially impressive with tens of thousands of entries around discussion threads on topics ranging from “running when you are pregnant”:http://www.runningroom.com/discussion/viewforum.php?f=6467&sid=b29b49074e0cc99d331ef9288b63f22b to “the right foods for a 10 km run”:http://www.runningroom.com/discussion/viewforum.php?f=16. It’s not the slickest discussion forum I’ve ever seen but it is well organized and clearly well used by their core community. Even the marginal runners have a home, where posts like this one entitled “I finally got bleeding nipples again!!”:http://www.runningroom.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=25650 chum up the waters for the “run till it hurts” crowd. Everywhere it’s community first, commerce second.