October 24, 2005
does this mean the blog is now officially mainstream media?
As you know, for the last few weeks I’ve been busy. Very busy. But it’s over now.
So… anyone fancy $10K?
The client is Budget, America’s third-largest car rental company.
Kudos to B.L. Ochman for coming up with the idea and getting me the cartoon gig, and to Komra Moriko for designing the site.
Blogads’ Henry Copeland calls it “a quantum leap forward for the medium”, and also says, “Budget has launched the first blue-chip marketing campaign created by a blogger, illustrated by a blogger, run on blog software, advertised exclusively on blogs and first reported by blogs.“
MarketingVox quotes Ochman: “There’s no press release for the game. It’s all blog, Baby.“
Steve Hall writes more about it here. Steve Rubel calls it “a big test for the medium.” And MediaBuyerPlanner says:
Ads are running on about 40 of the top blogs that cover the topics of lifestyle, music, and baseball, among others. “The point is to prove that traditional media does take the news from us these days,” said Ochman. With that in mind, Budget has not even prepared a press release about the campaign.
By the time we’re done with them, I want Budget “owning” two words:
“Road” and “Trip”.
We have some other ideas in the pipeline. Watch this space.
[NOTE TO SELF:] Does this mean the blog is now official mainstream media?
[Bonus Link:] The number of blogs Technorati is tracking just passed the 20 million mark. Wow. When I started blogging the number was less than 100K. Now that latter number is pretty much added to the pile every 24 hours or so.
"Hugh's Daily Cartoon" Newsletter.
A new cartoon sent out every weekday morning to your inbox [RSS version here.].
A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
Adage: U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs.
I wonder how many years workers waste on reading Adage?
A blog-based treasure hunt? Isn’t that just one of the “crazy stunts designed to generate word of mouth”?
Anyway, congrats on the new gig!
$10k Treasure Hunt in 16 Cities!
For what may be one of his biggest customers yet, Hugh McLeod seems to have momentarily shifted away from creating “global microbrands” and appears to have helped a big company, Budget Rent A Car, figure out how to use the web for lower cost, higher imp
It’s Step One in a much larger plan, Adrian
Already posted about it on our blog. We’ll definitely do our part to spread the word as this is VERY exciting stuff! Congrats Hugh, and why do I have the feeling you’ve got much bigger stuff coming up?
Budget Launches Blog-only Campaign
In a virtual roundup of who’s-who and does stuff in the blogosphere, car company Budget launched today an entirely blog-based ad campaign, Up your Budget. A four-week, 16 city treasure hunt offers up to $160,000 in prizes. Gamers must find
If You’re Thinking It Someone Else Is Doing It
I wrote this iota on October 4th. Because blogs are structured in reverse chronological order, they lend themselves to tracking a campaign through time. Imagine a promotional tour that stops in 16 cities over a 16-week stretch, where contestants show…
Hugh, thought you might find this interesting…
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/24/1322252&from=rss
You’ve probably heard of “splogs” before; this is my first time. Apparently the new watchword in spam is “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em …and break ‘em.” Bottom-rung advertisers trying desperately to game the system, or maybe just to prove that there’s no system they can’t corrupt.
I want to play — Budget Cars and Blogs
BL Ochman has been working on a new campaign for Budget Car rental,called Up Your Budget, using blogs to power the campaign — a Treasure Hunt across 4 weeks and 16 US cities. That’s US only — therefore I can’t…
I might be missing something, but is this blog/competition of any interest to those outside the USA? Indeed, is it of any remote interest to those unwilling to travel too far?
The prize is quite small (
Why people are taking this seriously is because its a revoluntary way to advertise and market a company’s product/service. If you think people are talking about this because of prizes being hid in 16 US cities, then you are totally missing the point, IMO. Others can likely make this point better than I, but I feel that the excitement about this campaign revolves around the fact that this is something that’s never been done before. For the first time, a campaign is launched on blogs, and supported by blogs. Since there won’t be any ‘traditional’ media exposure, it’s completely up to the viral tendencies of blogs and bloggers as to whether or not this campaign will work, or bust.
It could easily do either. Either way, there are going to be a TON of people paying VERY close attention to how well this campaign
goes.
Personally I think it’s exciting as hell, but that may just be me.
An Internet Fed Mostly by Amateurs is Fascinating
I don’t want to read blogs by political extremists, listen to podcasts recorded by droning amateurs, or watch videos produced by talentless would-be directors — even though the Internet makes all that possible. I want to get my news from
Up Your Budget (Rent a Car)
Budget Car Rental has launched a new campaign with no promotional support other than blogs. The Up Your Budget promotion features a 16 city treasure hunt with $160,000 in prizes. Four $10,000 prizes hidden each week for a month.
I love Hugh and all his ideas. tip: Fix the typo on the west video clue, Journey not jorney.
To be sure, the idea has a degree of merit. For the most part I agree with Mr. Collier’s assessment. The success of this compaign doesn’t ride on the noteworthiness of the idea, but on the inevitable trajectory of the blogging phenomenon. However, there is something to be said for being first to capitalize on an opportunity, so I don’t begrudge them their fun. In fact, I am pleased to see bloggers experimenting with variable profit models.
Hahhaha, back-to-back contradictory posts. One says ‘word of mouth’ or ‘attention getting’ is wrong and not how you market. And then the VERY NEXT post is praising a whole bloggy-word-of-mouth campaign. Irony abounds.
And your ‘disruptive’ post, shows such a lack of basic economics that I am at a sheer loss as to where to even begin. Starbucks is about the SOCIAL, not the Wifi (as just a few miles outside of the Bay Area you hardly see any notebooks or giddy gadgets). Ford’s revolution was the assembly-line, which enabled massive consumer production (not a disrupter, rather an enabler). And Harley disrupted nothing, they are all about image, the originals. And you got the timeline wrong, the first bike Harley made was in 1903, with the company being incorporated in 1907. Jap bikes didn’t really become a force until post WW2. And Jap bikes certainly aren’t cheap, they just have a differing focus, streamlined, smooth and fast, high-tech which can be EXPENSIVE tech. Harley is All-American 1950s Diner feel-good Power Rock muscle. iPod didn’t disrupt paying for downloads, people have been paying for many downloaded things for years, iPod just made it cheap and easy and beat back the Industry naysayers. And the Boca guys from IBM actually themselves did more to “disrupt” the mainframe than Apple. But with Big Iron as strong as ever the key phrase is not ‘displace’ rather ‘in addition to’. And Linux didn’t disrupt the freeware idea, it made it more popular perhaps, but then look — the leading Linux versions, if used in Enterprise spaces still cost, of course, up front is cheaper. But it’s a grand gloss-over to assume Linux is ‘free’, as costs can be measured in many ways.
(PS — Lately this blog has entered the Rubel-Scoble-Searls [RSS] tech-utopia new-agey buzzworded twilight zone. Take two and call me in the morning).
“Lately this blog has entered the Rubel-Scoble-Searls [RSS] tech-utopia new-agey buzzworded twilight zone.“
Lately? I’d say I’ve been there for a while. Take two and call me in the morning
Onwards….
When I find myself (as I often do) dragging the brood down to visit the folks in Florida, not a trip goes by when I don’t visit the Budget Rental counter in Palm Beach Airport. Not for any other reason than they are the cheapest and tend to get …
Three quick bits
Three thoughts this morning, not necessarily related:
1) The new Google Base tool (screenshot, not yet released) looks like an excellent way to upload product attributes and other information — which Google will then incorporate in their Froogle lis…
Can you get the IT guys running the Budget thing to start paying attention to their email? Their registration is still broken for people with apostrophes in their names. I even sent a suggested fix with my reply to their “it’s fixed” message, which was wrong. I would very much like to enter – I have a sneaking suspicion that a city very near to me may appear at some point during this promotion.
Nice cartoons, though.
Wow, the company that employs staff that are willing to bad-mouth customers on their own blogs now runs a blog and hires blog types to give themselves a better image.
http://foo.ca/wp/2005/07/26/budget-post-the-third/
Maybe they’ve learned not to call people morons when they call in or comment on the blog…
Lost Your Budget?
How much fun are we having out here? Lots. Why? ‘Cause we’re really getting into the game. Huh? OK, the gamification of life is moving on at a pretty good clip at this point, right? World of Warcraft has millions
Love-hate relationships
I have a love-hate relationship with marketing. On the one hand I recognise it is necessary, on the other I find it hard to see how marketers justify their sometimes madcap ideas. Today, I hopped over to Hugh McLeod’s site (you’ve got to visit it at le…