If you are looking for evidence that brands are losing a bit of their coyness when it comes to social media check out who is now using controversial video dating/exhibitionism site Chatroulette.
In case you missed the hype Chatroulette started at the end of last year and it randomly connects users from around the world, enabling them to communicate using webcam, text and images. Much of the time though users share webcam footage with each other and much of it is, (our research team reckons about 10%) shall we say, of a slightly raucous nature.
That hasn’t put off French Connection. Once famous for their edgy (at the time anyhow) FCUK campaign, they are using the site to run a competition where men are being asked to set up a real date with a girl on the site. The bloke not only gets a date but also £250 worth of French Connection vouchers.
The competition is part of French Connection’s The Man, The Woman campaign launched in February, which aims to draw more attention to its men’s range of clothing. You can find more about it, and the competition on the blog here.
I think we are going to see lot more of this type of social media bandwagon hopping. Brands who want to perceived as edgy will soon be competing with each other to harness the hot new thing in social media.
I think this is probably more about the company and its agency, Poke, wanting to shown how much social media credibility they have than actually wanting to engage with an audience. Nevertheless I will be keeping my eye on Chatroulette/brand tie ups. Now how do you get your brand on to Farmville…
Damn. I launched my OWN chatroulette campaign this afternoon. I’ve got 100 virtual Linux boxes running video streams on Amazon EC2 at about $0.20 per hour. I’m selling video ads on all of them — pretty standard “digital outdoor” executions right now, but I reckon the agencies I’m working with will begin to create channel-specific content when this takes off.
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