We Are Team Rubber

In the introduction to his talk last night (attended by the TeamRubber-London-Office), Malcolm Gladwell self-depricatingly announced that he hadn’t given his talk a specific title.  Usually, he said, he’d come up with some obscure title for his talks involving Freud - for example “Freuds’s geology” - or put three random words together - for example “Elephant, Ice Cream, Jesus”.  The idea being that the more obscure the title, the more interesting the talk, therefore the bigger the pull.  The crowd tittered at this thought, however these introductory words for me proved the most interesting of his whole talk.

I’ll admit that I’ve never been a massive fan of Gladwell’s.  I think he’s clever and I admire him for bringing the genre of popular social science to the masses, however each of his books seems to grate more and more.

The reason for this is that Gladwell comes across to me a as a bit of a one trick formulaic social science pony, who takes a simple central concept and then surrounds it by obscure anecdotes to make the concept sound a lot more interesting and important than it is.   And the formula is roughly this:

1)  Pick an “of the moment” concept that’s been bubbling away in the back of public consciousness, but hasn’t yet been articulated well enough for the public to “get it”.   N.B. this concept will generally be pretty obvious.  Obvious enough to result in people going “Oh, I seeeeee!” once they’d read Gladwell’s book.

2)  Give the concept a catchy title / name (e.g. Tipping Point, Blink . . .)  N.B. these are often existing names of concepts.

3) Explain the concept by using a varied number obscure real life examples / anecdotes to bring the concept to life, and flesh out the book so it’s over 150 pages long and therefore merits being called a book and worth over £8 (paperback) or £15 (hardback).

4) Send the book to the Daily Mail to get previewed to ensure a gushingly positive review involving the words “inspiring” “genius” and “genre defining”.

So, by being partly lost for something interesting to say to introduce his talk Gladwell made a Freudian-slip and revealed his inner-self - a self that’s undoubtedly clever, but also hell-bent on making sure everyone knows he’s clever.  That’s of course not a bad thing.  Especially when the end product is as entertaining as his books, and he (and his formula) is such a Success.

I’ve worked in Soho for around 2 years now - and surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) I’ve never been into a porn shop.

Until today.

After finally finding out of how to make book barcodes (for aMap), and buying the software to create them, I then discovered that there are two types of barcode, and wasn’t quite sure which one to use.

Given that we’re surrounded by bookshops on the Charing Cross Road I thought it would be a good idea to pop along to one of them and ask them which was the correct barcode to use for books.

Having been initially failed by the sales desk lady at Foyles, I headed across the road to the Soho Bookshop (one of the last independent bookshops in Soho - which sells mainstream books on one level, and then has a porn section in the basement). The sales lady in the Soho Bookshop didn’t know anything about barcodes, but said her manager might - who worked in the basement (obviously).  So I boldly descended into the basement, passed walls of porn mags and a carefully constructed butt-plug display, to find the manager standing at the sales desk.  Carefully putting my example barcodes on the till desk - adorned by a montage of giant cocks and the like - I explained my barcode dilemma to discover he knew nothing about barcodes (again)- but that if I wanted a porno, they had a great 2-4-1 offer . . .

So emerging from the basement barcode in hand (and porn free), I headed over to Borders to see if they knew their barcodes.  And thankfully they did.  Without a cock or butt-plug in sight, the nice Borders lady advised me on which was the correct barcode for books - which was a relief.

I’ve just come back from the election celebrations outside the Whitehouse which were absolutely crazy - a kinda mix between a Take That concert - crowds of adoring fans screaming uncontrollably - and a football match - with choruses of chants.

The chants and screams seemed largely dictated by the presence of TV cameras. Every time a camera light was switched on the baying crowds erupted on cue with either “Yes we did”, “U - S - A” or “Get the f*ck out”.

To borrow a cliche the atmosphere really was electric - and given that 90% of thousands of people gathered were under 20, it was clear why Obama won - having successfully mobilised the youth vote.

[I've tried to post up some photos from the Whitehouse rally, however they don't seem to be uploading.  The wonders of Wordpress!  Anyway, here's a link to a photo from ireport.com from a guy who seems to have been standing right next to me and uploaded his photo more successfully!]

Whenever I run through my viral marketing spiel one of the first things I explain is that there are two types of viral:

The first is where the “creative concept” acts as the viral agent - i.e. some highly creative type comes up with the idea of a gorilla playing the drums or a chicken that’s subservient, and this creative concept is then passed around and brings your brand fame.

The second is where the “product” is the viral agent itself - i.e. you’ve created such a darn hot product that everyone’s talking about it, spreading the message and wanting to buy it.

And its the second type of viral that really excites me.  “Viral products” are for me the holy grail of business.  If you can create a product that requires zero marketing budget because it’s so darn amazing that everyone’s talking about it, then you’ve just created a cash machine (and put marketers out of business).

So, it was based on thinking that made me think - OK, if we’re so darn good at running viral campaigns for other people then why not have a craic at creating our very own cash-spewing viral product and make a mint.

So we did - or rather are doing.  We’ll be launching said “Rubber viral product” at the beginning of December, ready for the x-mas shopping rush.  And over the next month or so in the lead up to our products launch I’ll be writing a series of blog entries about the concept of viral products, and also revealing bit by bit what exactly our viral product idea is.

Excited?  I am!

N.B. this post was first written for my Brand Republic viral marketing blog

I never thought I’d hear Chris Moyles talking about “consultation”  - but he did just that in his breakfast show last week.

As a brand of research activity consultation rates pretty low in the general public’s perception - with most people associating consultation exercises with village halls, weak coffee, stale biscuits, and even staler conversation.

So it’s nice to see the self-styled “Saviour of Radio” bigging up the BBC Trust’s latest consultation exercise - and putting some real energy into it.  Maybe this is because this isn’t a village hall-styled consultation - but instead an easy-to-use e-consultation without a stale biscuit in sight.

Perhaps as Chris Moyles has now established himself as the Saviour of Radio, he should be looking to move on to save other communication channels.  “Chris Moyles Saviour of consultation” has a nice ring to it (ish)?!

N.B. this post about online consultation was first written on Rubber Republic’s viral marketing blog @ Brand Republic

Rory Ahern - come on down! In true Leslie Crowther style we’re pleased to welcome Rory to our London office. Rory’s come in as a consultant for Rubber Republic from AMV, using his Ad Agency background to round the edges of our viral offering.

Here’s a photo of Rory enjoying work a little too much . . .

Earlier this week Rubber Republic launched a campaign for Polaroid Sunglasses in conjunction with marketing agency Marketing Zone.

Full credit to the team at Marketing Zone and Polaroid for letting us do what we did with the campaign, but the results I think you’ll agree are both stunning and impressive.

The campaign is called “Polaroid Labs” and can be found at www.Polaroidlabs.com.

The objective of the campaign was to communicate and raise awareness of the benefits of Polaroid’s polarized sunglasses - and so the obvious creative solution was to chuck a bunch of random stuff (cakes, jelly, kittens and water balloons) at a model and film it in slow-motion.

The results are undoubtedly v.fun! + what was made more fun, was the fact that both me and Kirk got to launch the various objects at the model - our job can really suck sometimes!

With sore heads to prove it, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve been short-listed as one of the companies up for the Arena Magazine / O2 entrepreneur of the year award. Hurrah!

The sore heads came from the great evening me and fellow TeamRubber Director Andy spent having dinner and drinks with the Arena and O2 guys down in Bristol last night. All v.fun, and of course v.drunken.

Apparently we’ll be told whether we’ve won in the next couple of weeks - so fingers crossed! If you want to check out what we (well Andy) looks like - check out the latest (June) issue of Arena, and you’ll see our profile . . .
Check the mag here: Arena

Rubber Republic has launched a new game for the British Greyhound Racing Board (BGRB). Race Doggles is an exciting and slickly styled flash-based flying game. Fly your Biggles-like greyhound through the hoops whilst doing your best to keep up with the ever receding Baron Von Hare. It gets increasingly hectic as you progress through the levels. Chocks away!
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