P&G's Social Media Experiment [Tide Loads of Hope]

[UPDATE:  Read David Armano's inside account; AdAge's report]

A funny thing happened last night.  P&G - as part of a private digital night in Cincinnati - turned to some of the most well-known names in social media to accomplish a few things [all but #1 are speculation only]:

  1. Raise money for their charity, Tide Loads of Hope [clean clothes to families in need of support after natural disasters]

  2. Demonstrate the power of social media to senior executives
  3. Self-promotion
  4. Ingratiate themselves with the social media who's-who [a proactive insurance policy]

What did they do?
For a few hours, several teams - led by different cewebrities hunkered down at P&G headquarters - bombarded Digg, blogs, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and more with links to Tide's web site where you could buy vintage looking Tide t-shirts.  Twitter was particularly insane, with #pgdigital appearing non-stop.


How did they do?

  1. According to one participant, $50K in four hours, with P&G matching $50K.  I don't care how deep P&G's coffers are, they should be commended for the match.  Bravo!

  2. I'm sure this experiment went a long way towards changing some old school minds within the organization.
  3. Tide's name was all over the Internet last night, and I'm sure it will be written about a lot today.  The thing to watch for today is backlash, which you saw starting last night and I'm sure Tide knew was inevitable. 
  4. All the usual social media suspects were virtually tripping over themselves to help promote this.  But come on, who doesn't want to be in P&G's good graces [and help raise money]?


Questions

Did you participate [disclosure: I purchased a shirt]?  Either way, what do you think of the excercise?

Did you think the external agency participants at P&G last night went far enough to disclose their relationship with the company?  I saw a video from Ian Schafer of Deep Focus (@ischafer) who was very clear to state his agency did not work for P&G.  But I didn't see that same transparency from others.  Maybe I missed it in the frenzy?

Do you think, as Brian Morrissey, Digital Editor at Adweek seems to based on his tweets below, that we were all played?

Picture 1

Final Update [Promise]: GE Plug Into The Smart Grid: Digital Hologram

Given the huge spike in traffic to this blog since I first posted about the GE Plug Into The Smart Grid hologram [well, relatively huge compared to normal] I feel compelled to pass along this final hologram nugget, courtesy of PSFK.

Basically, same premise as two previous posts, only this time it's your Twitter status that appears via 3D hologram.  I am still blown away by all this. 

PaperTweet3d: Augmented Reality T-shirts from squidder on Vimeo.

GE Plug Into The Smart Grid: Digital Hologram

Thanks to my colleague @johnstauffer and the rest of the Ogilvy PR 360 Digital Influence team for showing me one of the most mind-blowing things ever - an interactive digital hologram courtesy of GE and their ecoimagination initiative. 

It's hard to explain, so just click the links below.  You might think it's some kind of trickery, but I did it myself last night and it is 100% real. 

Was throwing around ideas with people about how to use this as a marketing tool ... Can you imagine debuting a music video or new television show this way?

Watch it, then go here.  Have your webcam and printer all ready to go.  Mind-blowing.

Finally, here's a link to some information on the source code.

Solution-Based Thinking

CarbusbikeA great visual on Marc Schiller's Hyperempowered.  According to Marc, "The image above is from a poster done by the planning office of Meunster, Germany to illustrate the amount of space that is taken up by, cars, a bus, and bicycles used by the exact same number of people."

I think it's a great example of solution-based thinking.  Rather than just bemoan the problem of too many cars, someone was clever enough to clearly illustrate viable alternatives.

Jack Bauer Goes Green?

Interesting nugget today from the Washington Post (full article here) about Fox's Cool Change initiative, and how it will affect season 7 of the show "24" ...

"... the seventh season of "24" will take steps to reduce and offset the carbon emissions from the show's production, with the goal of having the season finale be entirely carbon-neutral.

The show's electricity bills will go toward renewable-energy credits that will bring a share of wind, solar and water power to Los Angeles's grid. A diesel-powered soundstage will be converted to electricity, thus lessening the show's contribution to the local air pollution problem, and the show's five location scouts will be given Priuses to drive. Scripts, schedules and memos -- which used to be hand-delivered by car -- will be sent via e-mail."

LOVES the environment, HATES bad guys and bureaucrats!

Bauer