Incredible, awesome, amazing and fantastic!

Someone has managed to unlock the code behind the Apple marketing juggernaut. The ‘secret sauce’ has finally been revealed: Hyperbole – incredible, unbelievable, sensational hyperbole. And repetition. Lots and lots and lots and lots of repetition.

To be fair to Apple and Steve Jobs you could likely take any video presentation and edit it down to make a presenter look silly, given enough free time to do these things. Is the best pitch man in the business guilty of a little exaggeration, a little too much hype – sure he is. But that ceaseless cheer-leading, optimism and excitement (often referred to as ‘the reality shield’ within the walls of Cupertino) has also led the company to stunning (Steve would have liked that one) market success. What makes Jobs so great is that you know he really, really, really believes what he is saying and he truly wants to build great products and he wants everyone to understand how great these products are. It’s a little manic, a bit (maybe a lot) over the top, but it’s genuine.

I hope Steve remains healthy enough to continue leading one of the most successful companies on the planet.

This video presents some impressive and thought provoking stats on the prevalence and influence of social media. Are the numbers true? Hard to know but the overall thrust of the video is clear – Social media – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. is changing how companies communicate with their constituents and the rate of that change is accelerating.

Follow this Socialnomics link for more detail and discussion around the topic.

Video is a powerful media. A couple of idiots employed by Domino’s Pizza will probably cost the fast food company millions in lost revenue as a result of the ‘prank’ video they placed on YouTube showing themselves performing a number of disgusting acts to the food they were preparing prior to it being send out. It is unclear whether the food they were defiling actually made it out the door – they claim it did not. (They have since been fired and a federal warrant has been issued for their arrest.)

Unfortunately the damage is done and Domino’s now has to deal with a public relations nightmare. Domino’s has fired back with a YouTube video of their own with a very tired looking President (Patrick Doyle) outlining the steps the fast food chain will take to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

Responding with a video on YouTube makes sense and I assume they will employ other media as well in an effort to restore public confidence. The video is measured and in two minutes Patrick Doyle covers most of what needed to be said. The video looks like it was put together quickly which, under the circumstances is understandable. Doyle doesn’t make eye contact with the camera – which is unfortunate as he seems to be reading cue cards up and to the left of the camera. Renting a teleprompter, or better yet, delivering an unscripted speech to the camera would have served the company better.

This is a teribble thing for a company to go through and an example of why firms hire PR agencies to help them with disaster planning. Unfortunately the ubiquity of video devices and ease of transmission will guarantee that this could happen again - to any company. Video will play an important role in responding to these crises.

 
The Linux Foundation is tapping the open source community and the collaborative masses to submit entries into it’s “We’re Linux” (true, it isn’t exactly ‘I’m a Linux’) video commercial contest.  The above entry is one of close to a hundred videos developed over the last three months. As you might expect many of the videos are silly, bad parodies or just plain strange,  but that’s not really the point. Linux is community driven and this contest is a great way to get the developer  and creative communities to rally around the Linux project.

The Linux Foundation doesn’t have Apple’s or Microsoft’s financial muscle but it does have a worldwide community of enthusiasts and promoters and this video is a great way to energize these groups. That said, I would have liked to see a different approach than employing Apple’s “I’m a {name here}” format. Microsoft was so threatened by the “I’m Mac” that they felt they had to respond with “I’m a PC”.  I don’t think it helps Microsoft or Linux to allow Apple to set the promotional agenda. There are plenty of parody and professional “I’m a Linux” ads (Novell created a good series of these a while back) already.  ”How Linux is changing the world” or “Linux where you least expect it”  or something that highlights why Linux is important could have served them better.

It’s hard not to root for the underdog – I hope this promotion does well for them.

The prize is an all expenses paid trip to Japan!