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My favorite presentation at last night’s Social Media Club meeting was Hill Holliday’s P.J. Blands because it wasn’t a presentation. Mike Proulx turned his content into entertainment. I always like entertainment.
We enjoyed a behind-the-scenes look at their multi-pronged marketing strategy, including content for TV spots, online videos, photo albums, a website, and even a twitter account for P.J. Bland. They took an marketing idea and ran with it. So lets talk about it.
1. P.J. Bland had 1,291 as of 10:18 Friday morning. Ask yourself this, why would anyone want go get updates from a fictitious advertisement character whose entire premise it to be boring? Somehow, Hill Holliday created a celebrity tweeter who makes followers feel cool just by association. Well done.
2. Here is another discovery: Chili’s Restaurant does not have their own twitter account. Their foil character is transparently fake, and lets them have a twitter presence without forcing them to commit time and resources to maintaining a twitter account. Again, well done.
3. Foil characters in literature emphasize better characteristics in the hero. Think Spidey versus Harry Osborn, Hamlet versus Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Harry Potter versus Draco. They are part of a story- yes, I know you got that. But by creating a foil character for their marketing campaign, they created a story. They created mobile, changing characters who talk and speak and interact with people. That’s interesting, that’s engaging, and that’s good entertainment.
I think Hill Holliday did it right, and am hoping to hear other examples of marketing campaigns like this. How can web content and social media relations about things completely opposite to your products build your brand?
Tags: creative marketing, marketing campaign, marketing content, social media
