A mate of mine sent me a mail about the new iPint campaign from Carling. If you haven't seen it, iPint is a v.cool iPhone app which basically pours you a virtual pint of Carling. It's one of those great ideas that is naturally viral - with people naturally talking about it + mailing each other about it. Congratulations Carling and Beattie McGuinness Bungay - the agency that created it.
Congratulations to a point. Although the creative concept is great, Carling and BMB just don't seem to understand how to execute and manage viral campaigns. Two main things annoy me about the execution of this campaign:
1) The content isn't as shareable as it should be: for example, the video demo of iPint is embeded in the Carling.com website without any easy way to share it, and embed it in blogs etc. as it uses an old school proprietary video player and not a video sharing platform like YouTube.
2) Carling are stopping users from sharing their content: I only know this as when I Googled "iPint" and it came up with a clip on YouTube with the following description: " iPint game for iPod touch showing the accelerometer to simulate a pint of beer!Keeps my daughter entertained!". Of course I thought this was pure viral gold-dust for the brand, so immediately clicked the link to then only find out that it had been pulled down from YouTube by Carling for being copyrighted material.
It was at this point that my opinion of Carling and BMB turned from viral geniuses to viral dumbasses. Why on earth would Carling want to stop brand advocates from sharing their branded viral content with friends on YouTube?
Carling and BMB got so close to creating viral nirvana, but seem to have shot themselves in the foot at the last hurdle. So near, yet so far . . .
Am I right in saying congratulations are in order for Hottrix? The earlier release of ‘iBeer’ suggests to me that they are the idea’s original source. I am also tickled by their release of ‘iMilk’ for those who don’t drink lager – how considerate.
BMB must have thought it was not worth buying the patent for this and in fairness credit is due to the additional preliminary game for ‘iPint’ but I can’t help feeling they have missed out on some crucial below the line activity. YouTube is in fact full of videos of all three but Carling may have just realised your crucial point.
However when it comes down to it; ‘iPint’ is a free download and therefore far more accessible than ‘iBeer’ (as it rather embarrassingly points out on the latter's comment box). It could be suggested that Carling should have cut out the middle man and made a sponsorship deal with Hottrix or they may find ‘iBeer’ only acts as a further promotion for ‘iPint’. Of course as always, the real winners are apple – long may they live.
Thanks for this Harry - I didn't realise the Hottrix angle. Indeed - congratulations to Hottrix instead!
Though, I still can't understand why people (I assume Carline) were pulling YouTube clips on copyright grounds . . .
Chris Quigley
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