Sunday, November 9, 2008

Tooheys and its six beers of separation

Check out the hyper produced super slick website for Tooheys Extra Dry's new 6 Beers of Separation campaign. Nice hey.

It borrows from the six degrees idea. Essentially they're looking for four new reality TV guinea pigs. To enter, you nominate your hero, and the five people that will get you there 'within six degrees'. If you win, you go off travelling about the place, meeting each of your chosen ones (over a beer of course). They'll send a crew with you and hey presto...there's your TV show.

TICKS
Feels kinda loose. To take a leaf out of
Clay Shirky's blog, maybe that's a good thing
It's a topical play on a social convention
Nice fit with the brand
Six degrees is a social media marketer's wet dream (whooh Tooheys)
Content is in the hands of consumers (go Tooheys)
Hey they're doing something in brand entertainment. That's a tick.

CROSSES
They've been doing a bit of forum spamming (oh no Tooheys)
Entirely talent dependent. Could go either way. But I kinda like that.
When asking people to really get involved, it helps to demonstrate what you're asking them to do
Where's the social media bit? (oh woe Tooheys)


Tell me there's a social media bit.

4 comments:

Adam Ferrier said...

This is a really interesting campaign - great idea that ladders straight back to the product. Only issue is that each participant should be given two 6 packs - what are they going to do when they meet the people - give them a beer and watch them drink it? They need one for themselves.

If seems the BMF / TED's guys are on a lets get inspiration from beer packaging theme as this follows the 696 project with braown paper bags. Dont know how ownabale these ideas are - but they are certainly cool.

Tim Buesing said...

Hi Kate, thanks for writing about our site and the overall campaign. You definitely hit an important point: how do you propagate a campaign without seemingly 'spamming forums'. To some people simply being a brand or agency makes you a spammer by default.
And good point from Adam on the practicalities of one versus two 6packs. :-)
'2x6Beers' or 'A Carton of Separation' simply wouldn't have sounded very catchy.

Kate Richardson said...

@Tim
You're right, it's tricky. That's why social media marketing is emerging as a specialist discipline. At the end of the day you want consumers talking about your idea to other consumers, rather than brand to agency to consumer.

Looking forward to seeing it unfold so keep us posted!

jyesmith said...

I think we'll always be asking for more beer.