Some stuff I’ve found on the web relating to my final major in a round about sort of way..
Links Between Prostitution and Sex Trafficking
Video debate on ’sex for sale’
Guardian Article on legalised brothels in Las Vegas
Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia
Attitudes towards Prostitution acceptance of Rape Myths
Renting an Organ for 10 minutes
Just for reference you know!
DYLAN
Youtube
Blendtec
The truth isn't sexy
Nine Inch Nails- Year Zero
NIN- Year Zero
Year Zero is two things a) an Alternative Reality Game about “the end of the world” with repeated references to “the future of things” and the United States Military and b) it’s a new Album released by the band Nine Inch Nails. The frontman Trent Reznor insists the ARG wasn’t a gimmick to boost CD sails but it’s undeniable that this went some way to boosting the sails of their most recent release.
The ARG employed a whole range of tactics including band t-shirts with links to a site kicking off the ARG, the ‘leaking’ of flash drives containing songs off the new album and with various images placed somehow within the track only viewable via the spectrogram of the track, phone numbers placed within the spectrogram of later leaked tracks which further involve the user in game. Throughout this the term “Art is resistence!” emerged which links to a site where you can access stickers/posters/flyers/desktop backgrounds/avatars to promote Year Zero. Apart from direct exposure via stuff like posters/t-shirts/flyers etc. this caused an enormous hub via the internet and a key part of the ARG was done via the internet which did a lot to promote the concept as well as the band and the most recent album. The aim was to blur the boundaries between the ARG and reality to get people to react but the idea is novel and something like this hasn’t been done to quite this extent before which has done a lot to make a name for Year Zero, being viral was key to its success.
SIGG
SIGG
SIGG is a Swiss company that manufacturers eco-friendly reusable water bottles. The high end aluminum bottles cost around $20 and come in a wide range of designs. They’re quite popular with the eco-friendly crowd, but SIGG was looking for a viral campaign that would engage users and drive interest in their Lifestlye line of water bottles. The Lifestyle line features eye catching designs and had already generated quite a bit of interest from customers.
They manufactured and spread the word about a viral contest which allowed the consumer to submit their own designs for the water bottles. This meant they attracted a niche audience admittedly but this is something customers had been wanting to do for ages and proved to be hugely successful. The campaign drew more than 12,000 visits from roughly 8,000 consumers. The average visit length was 17 minutes which smashes the U.S. average of 49 seconds. Before the contest ended, more than 170 bottle designs had been submitted by consumers so in this sense it was immensely successful!
Subservient Chicken
Subservient Chicken
Was a campaign by Burger King to advertise a new product, the TenderCrisp chicken sandwich. The tagline is “Chicken the way you want it” or “Have it your way” and the result is a programme where you can effectively get a man in a chicken suit to do what you want which is exactly the tagline Burger King wanted developed by this campaign. This plays on humour and the idea “is it a programme or really a guy in a chicken suit?” which generates discussion and the conveyance of the idea amongst it’s target audience whilst subconsciously implanting the brand in the mind of the consumer.
That was the intention at least, whilst is was a very clever concept it’s questionable as to how successful the campaign really was. Their was not much to keep a consumer on the page for long and after a few commands the experience quickly wears thin and can seem quite transparent. People did send the link on and it did cause conversation, but about the chicken.. not Burger King. It wasn’t obvious and to be honest I couldn’t remember what it was advertising at first all I could put together was “fast food+chicken=KFC”. Since I don’t eat fast food in the first place this advert provided a few cheap thrills but didn’t really win me over to be honest.
Simpsonize Me
Simpsonize Me
Deadly Viper Character Assassins
Deadly Viper
The Deadly Viper Character Assassins is an infectious brand created by the non-profit organisation ethur to promote their most recent initiative targeted at people in leadership positions aiming at talking and raising awareness of the reality’s of things like grace and integrity. It was promoted heavily through networking and has relied heavily on the effort of it’s own initial release and the combined blogging of three individuals on various topics aimed at breaking taboo’s and getting people to share experiences.
Deadly Viper after finishing it’s branding compiled a book looking at the themes of grace and integrity which they then published in house and gave away free at a leadership conference. They encouraged people to talk about it with other people who read the book and to just be open and honest about the struggles of people in position of responsibility, so rather than a defined product the aim was to create discussion on integrity and grace and the pitfalls people can stumble into which thanks to the extensive and successful branding could be talked about in relatively easy terms by addressing them as various “character assassins”. The creator Mike Foster simply felt that he loved the idea of Ninja’s and worked this into the branding and Ninja’s are a fairly safe and for some reason popular notion to talk about, it’s a lot easier to say “Hey, want to talk about Ninja’s?” rather than “Hey, want to talk about your integrity as a leader?”. They’ve since released a free audio-book of the original Deadly Viper book and have generated massive traffic to the Deadly Viper blog/website purely off the back of the brand, initial release and word of mouth. This has since been sustained by giving the brand a presence on various social networks and other websites such as twitter and flickr which suggests a look at trying to reach people increasingly where they are rather than simply trying to draw people directly to the site.
To write love on her arms/ TWLOHA
TWOLHA
TWLOHA started out on myspace as a way raising funds for a friend of the creators’ treatment to help get out addiction and self-harming, they did this by selling T-shirts with the phrase “to write love on her arms” which very quickly became a brand. The creators were friends with a couple of bands and got the bands to endorse the T-shirts to raise awareness, the fans of the bands then got into the product because of the endorsement which started getting other people talking or sharing their experiences over the issues of depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. All the while TWLOHA continued to make sales and increase brand awareness which they then turned into an initiative in encouraging and getting people to seek help and be open about they’re struggles and feelings.
TWOLHA you could say exploited a niche by appealing to a particular subculture within music which seemed to resonate with various issues common amongst young people found within that subculture. However many people’s first experience with the brand will be a T-shirt worn by a friend or someone in a band and eventually this will cause someone to ask what that’s all about which is an effective example of viral media. TWOLHA found it’s base in utilising existing networks of new media for a low cost means of starting up their campaign, they’ve since taken to new media to better communicate their intentions to people who might of heard of the brand but not met anyone directly involved as much of the brand awareness is done by people who buy into the brand with a t-shirt.
Junky Car Club
Junky Car Club
Junky Car Club was another initiative set up by the non-profit group ethur. The basic idea was to challenge peoples understanding of the big car culture in the US and to instead teach to “live with less so we can give more.” As a movement it was quite exclusive as you could only join the Junky Car Club effectively if you were driving what they classified as a ‘Junker’. The whole aim behind this was to raise money for Compassion International a children’s charity for kids living in poverty around the world, Junky Car Club used social networks but also the cars themselves, extensive print branding in the form of stickers and calendars, membership schemes, membership cards and junky car conventions to raise awareness. They also then got special deals for people involved in other ethur initiatives like exclusive VIP parking at a leadership conference the deadly viper character assassins were featuring at.
In an interview with Mike Foster (the creator) he said they invested $1,000 dollars into Junky Car Club which has in turn raised over $20,000 dollars for Compassion International. Junky Car Club perhaps has the least web presence of all ethur initiatives yet is perhaps one of the best examples of getting the most out of ‘audience participation’ especially since a concept of the Car in America is so tightly wound up with issues like; consumerism, materialism and social identity it helps not only the drivers but their passengers think more about the alternatives to such a culture.
Social Vibe
Social Vibe
Is a brand new social networking site with a difference. Social Vibe is free to join and upon joining users are asked to pick a ‘sponsor’ which is mandatory to membership, they are then asked likewise to pick a ‘cause’ (which is mandatory) to support. They can then ‘advertise’ themselves by placing social vibe applications on other existing social networks where a user has membership or just by getting people to see their advertisements raises money for the cause of their choice. This not only virally promotes the brand and charity selected but also Social Vibe as a network in of itself which carries a feel good factor of not only online narcissism but an undercurrent of the fact that you too can change the world just by being part of the website.
Social Vibe as a social network has taken a different approach to exploiting an increasingly crowded market of social networks by making it possible to integrate itself within and alongside existing social networks. Social Vibe is all about getting brands into networks of friends and by using the idea of raising money for charity in return for opening people up to the steady constant advertisement or brand presence of a well to do corporation, the network plays on individuals who want to be seen to be socially conscious or aware to their friends and likewise people who see their friends with a social vibe application on their profile will want to get in on that too to show that they and their friends are similar in an increasingly number of ways.
This is a brief look at what makes a good piece of viral media. Viral media is something which after it’s creation is then placed or baited on particular sites or means which enable it to be passed from one consumer to the next.. ie; e-mail chains or youtube videos. Youtube videos are perhaps the best example so I’ll use these as examples. For those who know I’m looking at creating a viral for non-profit, grassroots initiative dealing with prostitution and people trafficking in Bournemouth and Poole where I live. I’ve got a few friends on the side lines who put me onto this and help me run with it.. but as far as work goes at the moment it’s all me.. the trick with what I’ve noticed is with an issue with people trafficking and prostitution is it’s still a largely taboo subject.. and even then the vast majority of people suffer from apathy so how do you reach past that?
Successful virals are always one of a number of things..
Funny
This is the most obvious example people would recognise and I’m sure most of us have been involved in something like this even if we can’t remember the company behind it. If something makes us laugh we’ll probably want to pass that on to our friends. Why? I guess because it gives us some form of pleasure I guess. Better examples will perhaps feature a product within the viral linking the product in with the concept.. but since what I’m trying to promote is ideological and on a simpler level a click through onto the website suggested.. their isn’t at the moment a product to feature I wouldn’t think.
Given the subject in question (prostitution and people trafficking) it’d be a challenge how I could bring out humour from the subject.
Shock
Aside from Funny creating a sense of pleasure, some media use a shock factor to reach people or to even motivate a sense of fear in the participant.
Obvious the aim isn’t really to cause anyone to be happy, but the advert leaves an impression.. and in that sense works.. in the case of the first two videos there isn’t a product but a warning or a service. If mine isn’t offering a service (which isn’t neccisarily the case) this could be something to think about since the reason prostitution and people trafficking are largely taboo subjects is mostly because they are often associated with a moral viewpoint or take.. some sort of definition of right and wrong.. and that it’s generally uncomfortable and doesn’t directly connect to you and me. Obviously I want to make people realise it does affect them.. so there is the potential for this to be exploited if delivered properly.
Empathy
Videos which pull on the heartstrings of the audience tend to be the least effective of videos, these are ones which try to get users to ‘rethink their life’ because quite often people don’t want to.. to be honest. However this does work to some extent and can reach some audiences more than others it seems. An example of this is the ‘real beauty’ campaign which has gone some way to increasing the sale of Dove products or atleast raising brand awareness.
Innovation/Creativity/Wonder
‘New Language’
Of course the aim is to get the viewer to remember the product, raise brand awareness and eventually consumer and get others to consume aswell. With an issue like People trafficking and Prostitution at a glance the best response in terms of viral media is to use a mix of shock and empathetic approaches to drawing in an audience. An alternative approach is to use something potentially going with the same concept as the Sony Bravia TV adverts (or Honda/Levi) which instead just have a sense of creativity and playfulness.. and almost suggest a ‘can you guess what it is yet’ attitude which engages the audience i think to a greater extent.
Examples of existing video media on a similiar theme.
Do you think these videos are successful? If we couple this with a face, a locality.. to say “this is going on now” I think this would encourage people to perhaps respond and get involved. The videos all work on a shock basis as evident, they also then exploit an emphasis on creativity and elements of empathy showing that the sex industry is connected to more than just two people doing something. If we can place this instead of somewhere like germany, america.. romania but say.. in boscombe or even winton i think this would raise awareness and inspire people to act on it and raise awareness of the initiative. I think then if you could get local faces, or people who might be known locally to comment on this in camera you could then do something.
I think the real thing I’ve just realised is that the artefact can’t come first or things can’t wait for a website but that things need to be organised and awareness raised which the artefact as a medium can convey.. I need to work with people in order to build a community or network under this which i can then broadcast…? People who could do research.. do filming.. do interviews.. do events.. do gigs… do art.. do music.. do petitions.. do filming.. do drama.. do stuff.. namely because i need this to be grassroots to work.
Sex/Slavery Initiatives
Call and Response Website- http://www.callandresponse.com/
Stop the Traffik- http://www.stopthetraffik.org/
Love 146- http://www.jfci.org/pages/page.asp?page_id=21460
Open Source Activism- http://www.opensourceactivism.com/
Loose Chains to Loosen Chains- http://www.lc2lc.org/
Not for Sale- http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/
Polaris Project- http://actioncenter.polarisproject.org/
