As brands of all shapes and sizes battle for more online space, we investigate what really drives us to be social.

So we thought of no better person to ask than Christiaan Van Vuuren, or you may know him better as the Fully Sick Rapper. As a means to beat boredom while battling Tuberculosis in isolation at the Sydney Hospital, Christiaan created his alter ego and plunged head first into the social media world.

Ironically, his stint in isolation has seen him more connected than ever and today, six months on, apart from connecting daily with thousands globally, he’s launched his own merchandise, raps weekly for Campbell Live, is giving those in the fashion industry a run for their money and is working with the World Health Organisation to help raise awareness for Tuberculosis.

Christiaan and I in the isolation room

The real question is, who is whose audience? While Christiaan has built a captive audience from his hospital bed, perhaps his success lies in being the captive audience himself? Read on to learn more about how staying better connected with your audience is the secret to social media success…

Q: Christiaan, with 19,000 Facebook fans, 3,000 Twitter followers and 1.2 million hits on YouTube, you’ve had little trouble attracting new friends from all around the globe. Tell us a bit about the dynamics of these relationships?

A: Most of these people are people who just enjoy the content but some of these people are patients, others are the families of patients, others are rehabilitated drinkers and drug users, others are self-quarantined self-proclaimed social misfits. They like to see my positivity in the face of adversity, and they help bring me something that has been most important in my overall healing process - which is the perspective to stay positive about my situation and embrace it. I think we provide mutual support.

Q: Why do you think people are picking up your content, following it and forwarding it?

A: Probably because it’s just someone having fun, in a situation that would normally be really shit! Probably also because they relate to the feeling of pure boredom.

As far as following my vids, I think it’s fun for people as there is a distinct progression from each vid to vid. As I learn to play around with new effects, my recording quality improves and I am even starting to get the help of hospital visitors. The fact that this is all happening from a hospital room is interesting, because my creative output is limited by what I can get away with physically inside an isolation room!

Q: Would you describe the relationships that you form on each social networking platform as being different from one another?

A: When I entered hospital on the 9th Dec 2009, I didn’t have a single account across any social media. Now I’ve got two Facebook pages, two MySpace pages, a Twitter page, a branded YouTube account, as well as accounts across six other video sharing networks.

Facebook has been ideal in managing and maintaining close communication with a large number of people, ranging from a bunch of hardcore fans, to just my friends who get a laugh out of the things I post.

The YouTube audience is made up of subscribers and random users. Random users are obviously a very wide group. I receive all sorts of comments, and these trend very heavily to whenever a new article or piece of main media references the Fully Sick Rapper.

YouTube subscribers are however a different community entirely. They can be nit-picky, and they expect to be entertained. To them, YouTube is just another TV, with access to a far wider variety of entertainment on demand. They will click and change and stop and start if their interest is lost for mere seconds. Building and holding onto subscribers is actually quite intricate and a bit of an art form. There appears to be a hierarchical system in place, with several key players and gate-keepers among the community. Basically, channels with smaller numbers of subscribers team up by featuring each other’s channels within each other’s pages, in order to receive more subscribers.

As for Twitter, I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t quite mastered it yet!

Q: How have you fuelled the momentum and any advice to brands on how they can kick-start social media campaigns?

A: I reckon it’s the talkability of my situation that has led people to finding the videos in the first place. If you have great content, you have to create (or allow for) a spark that will drive people to take their own initiative to check it out. You could have the best one minute video in the world floating around online, but if nobody sees it or there’s no story to it then it won’t be passed around.

The Facebook and Twitter pages have their own organic growth through the network.

I update the Facebook page twice daily, with photos, links, content, and just general odd thoughts. This assists in also driving an instant audience to any new content that I post across other sites and pages. If the Fully Sick Rapper is featured online with any other media, then it is as simple as dropping a link on my Facebook Page, and there will be a string of comments and hits driven to the page in which the article or mention has appeared. Since this is also linked with Twitter, it is a very powerful and instant launching tool for any new content that I upload. At this stage, with the 19,000 fans I have on Facebook (which grows by about 500 people per week) I can receive 150,000 page impressions off any single posting within two days. That’s pretty cool.

I also strongly believe that when you can, having a personality rather than an object would make for far more effective use of social media for campaigns. It can be an entirely fictional character, but social media is essentially designed for, and most effective as, a platform for human to human communication, so it’s important that characters or personalities have entirely real human characteristics and traits. Who wants to be friends with a stick of toothpaste, or follow a packet of chewing gum?

Without sounding like I’ve lost it officially, I put on a different voice when I’m the Fully Sick Rapper, I write things I normally wouldn’t, I take on more social responsibility and I probably show way more skin than I would normally be comfortable in showing, and in many situations I react and interact differently than I normally would. But the Fully Sick Rapper is still a human being that interacts with everyone, just an animated version of me.

Perhaps social media is a great way for you to animate your brand, and breathe life into the unique brand attributes that you have worked so hard on building, developing and sustaining.

I should be on the books. Currently taking Fully Sick conference bookings!

Q: You seem to have built a captive audience, but you’re clearly very responsive to them. How are your fans interacting with your content, is it passive or are they providing you with inspiration?

A: It’s a completely two way process. I feed them with random pieces of information, vids, pics, and then react according to the reactions that I get back from them. They are involved in the new videos, because I read all of their comments and take in what they request for future content. On my Facebook page, I write back to every single note that my fans place on there. If someone says good morning, I thank them and say it back. If I go off on a tangent and notice that my interactions are dropping, then I change what I’m carrying on about and go back to something that keeps people interacting. Because I like having them there and I like to keep them interested!

Plus, it helps because I can lose it every now and then in my isolated environment and I need to remember what’s ‘funny’ crazy and what’s actually clinically insane.

Q: Obviously you’ve had some amazing support from the general public but you’ve also been interviewed for TV, blogs and you’re reporting for Campbell Live as we speak. How has this interest developed and built momentum?

A: Off the top of my head, the story of me being in hospital and creating these videos was picked up by 10 National News, The Weekend Today Show, The Morning Show, Today Tonight, Sky News, JJJ, 2GB, MMM, SBS Radio, Canadian Music TV, Canadian Morning TV, Canadian National News, Irish National News, US Local News, Israel National News, NZ National News, Brazilian National News, Al Jazeera, Fairfax, and countless digital news sources and websites online. If you googled “Fully Sick Rapper” or “Christiaan Van Vuuren” on the 8th December 2009 not one of those links would have appeared. Now they are in the hundreds of thousands.

There are definitely key moments where the story gathered fast momentum. A couple of these include when it was run as Todaysbigthing.com appearing on Collegehumour.com (where the videos have had a further 400,000 hits) and subsequently picked up for an interview by Mashable.com.

Q: What are the opportunities and also drawbacks from all this media?

A: I think that there is a fine line between maintaining an audience that understands you’ve got a story to tell and enjoys watching you pop up, and an audience that sees you as shamelessly promoting yourself for the purpose of capitalising on it.

I have not done any kind of capitalisation by way of media, because everything I’ve done I have done for free, and I’ve done both for the company (purely just enjoying having a chat), for the intention of raising awareness of TB and the dangers in MDR TB, and to have a good laugh about it! There have been countless times so far that I’ve been able to have a laugh in here on the phone to friends, who have told me that they are in their living rooms dancing around on their TV screens watching me with a bin on my head.

Q: You’ve just put together some tough competition for the Rosemount Fashion Week, what was the thinking behind this?

A: I just wanted to start playing around with some other things. Play some different characters and stuff around a bit based on a current topic. Fashion Week just happened to be on, so I just decided to do a Zoolander’ish fashion piss-take and get it out there to celebrate fashion week.

Q: What’s next on the agenda for the Fully Sick Rapper?

A: I feel blessed to have stumbled across something that I really enjoy doing and which I would love to pursue. I am currently in the process of writing a series of webisodes with my brother Connor. As far as the series goes, “The Fully Sick Rapper and The Side Effect Project” is an epic unreality show, packed with crazy stunts and pop culture spoofing. These are stories of madness, brotherly love and rivalry.

Thanks to: Christiaan Van Vuuren
Posted by: Carmen Campbell

Gone are the days when sponsorship was just about exposure and awareness (and invariably a large component of a CEO’s passions!). Brands that currently invest in sponsorship but only go so far as to splash their logo across the event are missing out on the tangible opportunities.

Think about the last time you attended a sporting event or a music festival. How many logos were you exposed to? How many do you remember now? And most importantly, do you recall why they struck a chord with you?

Chances are, the brands you remember were the ones who reached out and engaged you on an emotional level and did something memorable. These are the brands that have been clever by investing budget to activate.

There is always an opportunity to engage emotionally with audiences and leverage sponsorships so that a brand’s activity will create a tangible memory.

Follow our simple tips on how to activate a sponsorship effectively:

Louise Walker,
Campaign Director,
Impact

(1) Leverage:
Brands who don’t invest the extra dollars effectively to activate their sponsorship and ensure maximum R.O.I aren’t spending smart. The industry rule of thumb is that for every dollar spent on sponsorship, spend another $1 to $3 to activate and promote it.

(2) Key questions:
A brand needs to ask itself several simple questions when choosing which property to sponsor:
• what are my customers interested in?
• what do I want to get out of this sponsorship?
• will I have enough budget left over (after paying sponsorship fees) to implement an effective sponsorship activation?

(3) Keep it simple:
After ensuring the sponsorship opportunity works for both the brand and your budget, the next step is working out the best way to activate at the event. The activation needs to enhance the consumer experience at the event, not hinder it.

Car parking can be one of the biggest time wasters for consumers when attending an event. As part of Ford’s sponsorship of Geelong football club, the first 100 Ford drivers to enter the car park at Skilled Stadium on match day parked for free.

(4) Keep it nice:
To further maximise opportunities at events, brands should build a close relationship with the event organisers to help ensure the best activation possible. You can maximize the opportunity by negotiating the best site, finding out about other brands involved to assess if cross promotional opportunities are available, as well as pushing the boundaries of what can be activated at the event.

(5) Connection:
Sponsorship should be all about consumer engagement. The events themselves provide a fantastic platform to engage consumers while they are in a relaxed and open state of mind and receptive to brands engaging with them.

Nokia kick-started conversations with an activation to trial its new 5300 handset. ‘Silence booths’ were installed at music festivals for consumers to shut themselves inside to make a free phone call. This allowed them to totally experience every aspect of the handset, making it a much better selling tool than picking up a dummy version inside a mobile phone store.

(6) Tap into the excitement:
Look at what the favourite components of the event are and see how a brand could become part of this.

For the masses that attend Australian Open every year, the best part is of course watching the tennis itself. Nintendo tapped into this, creating further excitement when legends of the game Pat Rafter and Henri Leconte played Wii tennis endorsing Nintendo’s sponsorship as Official Gaming Console of the Australian Open.

(7) Anticipate your consumer needs:
Consider what the worst components of the event could be and how your brand could lend a helping hand.

When Red Rooster sponsored ‘Moonlight Cinemas’, branded mini torches were included in a goodie bag for its VIP guests. This meant that the embarrassing mission mid-film to the toilet in the park, and in the dark, was made a little easier (and fewer feet were trodden on all round!).

(8) Tailor your activity to your audience:
It’s of vital importance to deliver an activation that is appropriate to and inspires your target audience, offering them an experience they want to get involved in.

Cricket fans are predominantly male, have a fierce love of the sport, their players, and of course a competitive streak, which is why 3 mobile’s activation at the cricket worked so well. Fans were invited to a branded zone to test their cricket skills by bowling at a cut-out of Gilly and attempting to get the ball to pass through a hole in his hand, with a range of prizes on offer.

(9) Promote loyalty:
Sponsorship activations also work brilliantly for brands that want to reward loyal customers.

When ANZ sponsored the FINA World Swimming Championships, it offered VIP entry for ANZ card holders to beat the queues. ANZ customers were able to walk straight in through a special entry with ANZ branded promo staff directing them. All of the people stuck in the queue got to watch the special treatment the ANZ customers got from their bank. ‘Priceless’ as Mastercard would say.

(10) Face up to it:
It goes without saying that if your activation involves using promotional staff, use the most experienced and relevant personnel you can get your hands on. It’s vital to get this right as an activation can succeed or fail based on the quality of staff that deliver it.

So the next time you attend an event or festival make a mental note of which brands are ‘activating’ their sponsorship successfully by making an emotional connection with you.

A successful sponsorship should be measured by not only the value received from the investment (e.g. how many times the logo appears) but also by how the sponsorship is activated, the way the brand engages the senses and how it leaves a lasting impression on the consumer.

Thanks to: Louise Walker, Campaign Director, Impact, Ford, Nokia, Nintendo, Red Rooster, 3 mobile, ANZ.
Posted by: Louise Walker

You’d expect brands that choose both football and rugby World Cups as events to promote themselves will deliver pretty inventive media campaigns.

With FIFA this year and the Rugby World Cup next year, here’s two brands getting into the hype by building engagement with their audiences on YouTube, in two diverse ways.

Powerade

As a major sponsor of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, we’re not overly excited by Powerade’s campaign, but the concept is pretty smart. Highlighting the excitement of 20 international teams uniting on the pitch, its campaign incorporates 16 short films that join together seamlessly to create one long ad.

Allowing viewers to dip in and out, the multi dimensional layers increase the level of audience intrigue, not to mention time spent with the brand.

Taking you inside the players’ inner thoughts, the content is fast-moving and builds on the adrenalin and excitement. Just as you don’t want to finish the game, whether you’re a player or spectator, Powerade claims to keep you going for longer, so its use of YouTube means it can be played day and night.

This content has also allowed Powerade to extend its activity from the 30-second ad you get as part of the sponsorship deal.

But considering the clever nature of the idea and its role as official sponsor, personally I think the product placement is too obvious – lots of product placement and then content to suggest why Powerade is so great. Let’s hope its viral use provides word of mouth to increase its audience participation.

Carlsberg

Although of Danish heritage and present in 150 countries, Carlsberg has attached itself to the England team. Either the company sells most of its beer here or it’s forever hopeful for the England team this year!

Like Powerade, Carlsberg has used YouTube as its media channel, but the real difference here is the personality Carlsberg has injected into the brand. Its content brings the personality alive.

It’s also extremely motivational for its audience and living up to its slogan of ‘Probably the Best …’, as the 90 second ad features some of England’s most well-known faces including Clive Woodward, Steve Redgrave, Kelly Holmes and Ranulph Fiennes joining the hype and adding to the camaraderie.

In terms of interactivity, it invites viewers to join the brand with its behind-the-scenes clip, comedy clips and other Carlsberg favourites, including a competition to submit the best team talk in the world.

The use of YouTube as a specific media channel is the perfect platform for additional content. It encourages people to stay there for longer, extending the life of your campaign and allowing brands’ ideas to take on a life of their own.

As the frenzy for both World Cups heightens, we’ll see more of these type of campaigns. Most will be viral and the majority not official sponsors, just brands leveraging from the hype.

Thanks to: Powerade, Carlsberg
Posted by: Carmen Campbell

Linda McGregor is the Principal of All About Eve, a strategic marketing consultancy that specialises in communicating more effectively to females. The remainder of this popular series will be released on the All About Eve website, please click here to be updated of their release.

All About Eve’s Linda McGregor is back this issue with another insightful contribution on successful marketing to females. This month, Linda looks at why women always want more than you think, will scrutinise what’s on offer and provide tips on how your brand can satisfy this female characteristic.

Women wrote the book on wanting it all, often declaring to want everything men want, and then some. But it’s not surprising when you consider how a woman’s brain works – as a super-computer with more interconnectivity and storage capacity than the male brain by far.

Linda McGregor,
Principal,
All About Eve

The female is all about attention to detail and depth, so she:
• looks at more options
• is less content with decisions that are a compromise
• is far more likely to pick up inconsistencies in her cross-referencing

Some major brands have been caught out by inconsistencies between various aspects of the
marketing program:

UK chocolate brand for men, Yorkie

Since 1976, Yorkie had unashamedly marketed itself as the chocolate bar for men, with the famous ‘Trucker’ ads. In 2002 even more macho positioning saw an ad campaign with slogans such as ‘Don’t feed the birds’, ‘Not available in pink’ and ‘Save your money for driving lessons’ and featuring the ‘Not for girls’ tagline.

Fast forward to 2006, the brand was experiencing declining sales in a female dominated category. So a new strategy was to target women with a pink version of the Yorkie. Saying ‘VERY LIMITED EDITION’, the chocolate bar was the same, but with pink packaging and ‘Female language’ such as ‘GET YOUR LIPS AROUND THIS’! Do I even need to talk about the brand offer inconsistency?

Walking the talk
So you need consistency of message, the offer, the communication and the action. Women more than men are looking for consistency between words in an advertising campaign, its claims and then the actual delivery of the product or service.

Here are two examples of brands walking the talk:

Below is a more recent example that further demonstrates the brand’s consistency of message in communications.

Jodie McGregor Flowers
Sydney florist, Jodie McGregor, with tagline ‘Fabulous flowers for fabulous people’ has won awards year after year. Why? Because the brand lives up to its tagline. Apart from the flowers themselves being of a superior quality, the service is exceptional, delivering flowers with cards explaining what’s in the bouquet (offering husbands a hint for the future!) delighting regular customers with gifts on their birthdays, a flower addicts club and much more. With an informative, easily scannable website, the company is ultimately making the customer feel valuable.

Both these brands are putting words into action and explains why brands such as these gain loyalty with women in particular. It also offers an insight into why specialty stores, with their attention to detail, rate consistently higher on positive emotional drivers than supermarkets. And are consistently able to charge premium prices.

When wanting more isn’t always good – how your brand can help
Often women dislike their inbuilt need to review every option. Newsflash: she often just wants to make a quick decision! So be the good guy, the brand that makes it possible for her to do this and yet still feel she’s made the right decision. Add value with your solutions to her problems and you’ll be a hero.

Cancer Council girls’ night in
The Cancer Council gets it right, helping women to stop thinking and start doing, by providing them with the tools to get started with a ‘Girls Night In’ campaign for the charity. It advertises the idea online and in print, then makes it as easy as 1,2 3 to do.

Here are some broad principles to avoid, which will ultimately prevent her from making better, faster decisions:

• anything that aims to sell, rather than helps and informs. At best you’ll just confuse the process. At worst you’ll annoy her and she’ll ignore your brand.
• anything that tells her there’s only one right answer. This might seem helpful as one answer is simpler but it is likely to be rejected as, unless you have that relationship with her, it again comes across as just a sell. You’ve taken no account of her personal needs.

In a nutshell, she’ll always want more, do more and have more, and that, handled correctly and consistently, is your cue to sell more!

Linda

P.S. Don’t forget the remainder of this popular series will be released on the All About Eve website, please click here to be updated of their release.

Thanks to: Linda McGregor, All About Eve, Yorkie, Dove, Jodie McGregor Florist, Cancer Council.
Posted by: Carmen Campbell

We haven’t looked at any creative examples for a while but these two should be on your ‘must watch’ list. Two totally different ads, offering completely different things, yet using similar methods to get there.

Plus, they’re my two current favourites …

Both ads successfully tap in to our need to feel a sense of belonging and both use music as a way to evoke an emotional response.

WWF & Ben Lee
A beautiful and powerful collaboration between singer songwriter Ben Lee, the World Wildlife Fund and Leo Burnett sees an adorable monkey return to earth after 60 something years. But just as the monkey had to wait 60 years, you need to give this ad over 4 minutes …

John Lewis
The insight behind this isn’t so original - a pull on the heart strings of the female’s journey through life. For me it’s the music that separates it from a number of ads we’ve seen playing out the same story. But it’s working – after spending a sizeable GBP 6 million on its creation John Lewis is now claiming sales are up 39% as a result. Who said brand ads don’t work?

Thanks to: John Lewis, Adam & Eve, WWF, Ben Lee and Leo Burnett
Posted by: Carmen Campbell

Last time I discussed the need to communicate to women differently, with the emphasis on demonstrating a genuine understanding of her world and creating a real relationship, rather than using outdated stereotyping.
Click here to read the last issue.

But should we shout loudly that we’re singling out women, or is this likely to offend? How obvious or subtle is the right approach to women? The answer - both can work but choose the one appropriate for your offer.

Let’s look at both ends of the spectrum:

1. Overt: your aim here is to make it obvious you’re targeting her because she is female, so use recognised, obvious gender cues such as the colour pink.
   
   The tricky bit is judging when cues are acceptable to her, versus lazy or misinformed stereotype shortcuts e.g. all women love to be shown you care, versus showing you care = give flowers.

Linda McGregor,
Principal,
All About Eve

2. Covert: you focus on her needs, not her sex e.g. she’s busy and looking for ways to do more with less time. Often this approach means you hit a male need too, because it’s about need, not gender. This is standard good marketing practice.
   
   However, the covert part comes in the way you then communicate that need and link it to your brand. Think of it as talking her talk, as a friend would – right style, relevant content and language e.g. use a more invitational style to build trust with her and tell stories to bring a human factor into play that she will more easily relate to.

When overt works well
This approach is useful when there is a genuine value or benefit to be gained by her from purchasing the tailored female version of the product. This could be connected to functional delivery, safety, fit and so on. It is based on clear and apparently intuitive insight into her different needs because she is female.

Successful ‘overt’ approaches:

Breast Cancer pink
What started as a clever use of a coloured ribbon to show support for a female focused disease, has become the most successful marketing use of pink. By using a stereotype - women and pink - this cause has harnessed a highly acceptable, positive way to broadcast that you’re supporting women.

Bürgen
With its healthy bread range, Bürgen has clearly acknowledged that women have different health needs. Its Soy-Lin bread openly addresses the specific nutrients that female bodies require.

But this is KEY with overt campaigns - without a strong purpose for targeting a female directly, obvious ‘for women’ labelling is risky as it often points to superficial or created reasons for purchase. The early days of female razors was a point in case:

Gillette
The price of the ‘for women’ item is higher, yet the only adaptation to the product is colour, pink rather than blue. Marketed as tailored to female needs, it seems to imply she’s concerned enough about looks rather than functionality to drive her to pay for a colour premium.

When covert works best
On most occasions. Outside of where it’s accepted that men and women want different things, most women won’t thank you for singling them out for ’special treatment’. Why? Because often there’s a subtle social history that has meant women were considered inferior consumers e.g. owning cars, mechanical or technical gear or, operating in lower status categories e.g. housework versus business. Make the same ‘sell’ as you would to a man but change how you sell it.

This communication approach does require more understanding of the subconscious of what makes the female audience tick. Think of it as two step marketing:

1. Get the offer and message right
2. Get the communication of it right

While it may be more work, boy can it deliver because you build a stronger connection.

Successful ‘covert’ approaches:

Clarks Bad Feet Kids
A great example of effective targeting to mums. No reams of copy about importance of right shoes for growing kids, responsibility of a mum, medical testimonials or biology lessons, all stuff she’s heard before. Just a clear picture painted of the key relevant fact – kids with bad feet. Clarks has understood how to talk her language and make her care about fitting and quality in shoes that last only months thanks to those growing feet.

To sum up
We use the phrase ‘Don’t think pink’ because it’s a label used to describe the fatally bad campaigns that have used over-obvious and inappropriate female stereotypes in ways that simply offend the very women we aim to attract.

But, as with all things feminine, it’s never quite that simple – and sometimes pink is gold!

Linda

(For a full explanation of the key Fundamental Four™ differences between the sexes and how it impacts marketing, see our previous interview)

Thanks to: Linda McGregor at All About Eve, Bürgen, Gillette, Nestle, Clarks, National Breast Cancer Foundation.
Posted by: Carmen Campbell