Bram Stoker: The original blogger

Tonight’s PBS retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula reminds me of a post I’ve been composing in my head for months but haven’t permitted myself to submit. I wanted to write about the storytelling (and marketing!) power of blogs. Thus my hesitation. I refuse to be a party to navel-gazing.

In the ten months I’ve been writing Digital Solid, I’ve encountered so many bloggers talking about blogging on their blogs. And who cares? Other bloggers, that’s who. Give me a break!

In this space I have talked about using technology to tell stories — and how storytelling is key to marketing. But there’s another fact you need to know: The blog is a unique medium for storytelling — one that is growing in relevance to marketers.

One friend recounted his Great Lakes sailing adventure in real time via his blog. Others have reported on their struggles to launch a product or a software upgrade. Their adventures have unfolded, one post at a time. And I’ve followed, loyal reader that I am.

Just as I followed exciting stories as a preteen, when I first read the groundbreaking novel of a humble Irish civil servant, Bram Stoker. His chilling book, Dracula, along with Edgar Allen Poe’s writings, ignited in me an enduring love of scary stories. But even then I realized that Stoker’s style was unusual. Most of Dracula was told as diary entries.

This evening I saw a (not very good) retelling of his story on television. What I am truly anticipating is the day when this story is presented as a faux-blog.

It would start with the postings of Jonathan Harker, the young clerk who shows the poor judgement of advancing his career in the mountains of Transylvania. Other characters would follow suit, just as they do in the pages of the novel.

A fiction blog (do you have a better name for it?) would have special demands. The novel takes place over the course of several weeks. I expect that the blog would compress the action considerably. Perhaps several action-packed entries would even be posted in quick succession on the same day.

But the point is, the Dracula blog would be wholly entertaining. And yes, it could be sponsored.

Now think of a more contemporary serial, presented by a brand wishing to show itself in the context of the story being told. And imagine devoted readers, who look forward to receiving the next installments via RSS. That day is not too remote, and in the words of one of Stoker’s characters, it will be cracking good fun.

It is happening today, by the way, on a cell phone near you. The Last Messages is a novel told exclusively through cell phone text messages. Finnish subscribers followed the story through over 1,000 messages sent to their phones.

Potential risks from homegrown Super Bowl ads rival the action on the field

It’s hard to believe it was eight years ago when Victoria’s Secret aired its first-ever Super Bowl commercial, announcing the live webcast of a Spring Fashion Show. Like yelling free beer in a crowded frat house, the ensuing stampede crashed the company’s servers. The injury!

More recently, GM invited consumers to create and post their own videos extolling the virtues of the Chevy Tahoe. The entries were not entirely what GM expected. The humiliation!

Online buzz surrounding this year’s Superbowl ads was about the various contests for the best user-generated ads. And America was watching, not so much to see which sponsors leave the event victorious, but to see what brands got carried off on stretchers.

Like the game these ads interrupt, this was a high-stakes and risky competition. Especially this year. What makes this particular Grand Guignol so riveting was that the rules are not fully written. Will sponsors trying to open up their ads to the masses be able to keep out the cheeky smart-alecs from the proceedings?

We knew they could control the ads that are shown on the actual telecast. But what about the real user-generated videos that will follow?

Dale Bachus, winner of Doritos Superbowl ad competitionDoritos tore a page from the new media playbook. They announced the challenge under a tight deadline — late last year — and opened the videos to American Idols-like voting, thus absolving themselves of responsibility for a bad choice. In an additional, shrewd move, they ran the winner early enough in the game to call it “world’s first fan-produced Superbowl ad.” The winning ad was only so-so in effectiveness — unless you consider the ad’s budget and production timeline (two digits and four days).

I’ll be adding updates to this post as I see what the true ROI is for the user-generated advertisers in this year’s Superbowl, especially Doritos. One possible help to this brand: Dale Bachus, the leader of the winning ad (shown here) has a delightful story to tell. One possible threat: Snarky video producers on free-rein sites like YouTube, deciding to do their own, unauthorized Doritos ads.

If any of them catch fire the way the Chevy Tahoe ads did, their stories will be the ones consumers remember.

Stay tuned.

Superbowl night postscript: My favorite user-generated ad was the NFL ad shown at the two-minute warning. But maybe it was because the pay-off was a cameo by Brett Favre, in a sly reference to his recent announcement of not yet retiring. What can I say? I’m a Wisconsinite.


Update: Sunday, Feb. 11, 2007

It’s been a week since this post first aired and sadly I saw none of the insurrection one would expect of the same people who savaged the Chevy Tahoe and lonelygirl15. What’s with people nowadays, when you can’t see some user-generated vitriole? Here’s what I did observe:

  • Cymfony.com did an excellent job of rating the ads, both before and after they appeared during the Superbowl. The Dorito’s ad did extraordinarily well in its consumer tests. The fact that it didn’t thoroughly excite anyone is expected. It offended nearly no one, according to Cymfony’s polling. (Here’s a demonstration of this phenomenon: Think of a dozen people you know and try to imagine of a restaurant they would all enjoy. Now try to think of one they’d all like that isn’t boring and “safe”).
  • Many advertisers tried to leverage their ads through online campaigns, but the most successful, I suspect, were CareerBuilder’s. Those who understand the power of the internet to drive web traffic (see the Victoria’s Sectet example at the beginning of this post) were the target of the following ad. It urged readers to post on CareerBuilder because the web traffic following the Super Bowl would be huge. This is a believable proposition, especially to those who remembered the inspired monkey ads from last year and the year before. I’m sure the web-based ads worked well, but according to Alexa (see the graphic below) the bump in traffic was nothing to write home about. This year’s CareerBuilder ads were underwhelming.

 The reach of CareerBuilder surrounding the game