Thursday, October 9, 2008

Bland should be banned

Part of me wants to applaud a brand in a fairly dull category for doing something different. But Noble Rise's Blandaid campaign is what gives brand entertainment (and social media) a bad name. It's advertising masquerading as 'content'. And worse, it's not even funny.

It's a series of ads posted on Youtube. About which I'm not allowed to comment as the 'add comments' function has been disabled. If you don't want people playing with your idea, don't take on social media.

The brand makes a feeble attempt to recruit me in its efforts to 'take a stand against bland'; a movement which is basically meaningless and culturally irrelevant. Its ultimate failure is the refusal to let me get involved. What kind of cause is this? Blandaid ignores the concept of community inherent in a channel like Youtube. It breaks with the conversational nature of social media, effectively hijacking it with a one way message. I know this post is harsh but in the words of J'aime "no offence but it's true". And I for one, am taking a stand.

2 comments:

Julian Cole said...

Hey Kate this is a great find!

I think with something like this campaign, they know that it is not a long term effort and they are using the technology in the same way that they would approach TV, unfortunately they are not seeing the real value in social media and the power of community. I have emailed Paul Swain the guy who put the ads up on Bestadsontv, to see why they have censored the clips, I will let you know what the response is.

Kate Richardson said...

Hi Julian,

I agree. I also think they've tried to dip their toe in social media by setting up a channel based around a 'movement', rather than just posting their ads on youtube. Which would have been fine.