Weekly wrapup: 'Puppy love' FTW, hashtag sale fail

FTW or fail

Each week we select one campaign or piece of work that we agree is 'FTW' (for the win) and one that...isn't.

For this week's FTW, we'll give honourable mentions to this clever bit of street art, this fun campaign we covered today, for Steinlager by DDB New Zealand and this impressive bit of film craft, also from DDB New Zealand, this time for Sky TV.

This week's official FTW is so good we'll ask you to watch it before we say anything else.

That's 'Puppy love' from the Breast Cancer Welfare Association of Malaysia, which encourages viewers to share the video with their friends because it "might just help save their lives". The organisation also posted a second video, entitled 'Horror'. We haven't tracked down whether there was an agency involved, so if anyone knows, please clue us in.

This week's fail is so bad that it's been expunged from the internet, so we'll have to settle for describing it. Last week, Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake gave the world the video below, which hilariously answered the question, what would happen if people talked like they tweet, complete with hashtags?

This week, North American retailer JC Penney decided to hold a hashtag sale that asked people to actually say "hashtag offer" at checkout to receive a discount. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the now-removed video the brand posted on its official YouTube channel to promote the idea. The clip looked like it was shot in five minutes in a dingy room using a phone camera. More importantly it was basically the same joke as the Fallon/Timberlake video, only criminally unfunny.

It's one thing to keep your social-media efforts spontaneous and casual, and quite another to let them look like they're being executed without any concern whatsoever for seeming professional or brand-appropriate. It's also important to note that if you're not adding anything to the joke or advancing the story, you're just repeating it, and no one likes that. We regret not saving a copy of the video because it was a great example of how not to do it.

 

Top stories

The most-read stories on CampaignAsia.com for the week of 27 September - 3 October.

1. McCann and Leo Burnett awarded local and international Petronas account

2. Ogilvy’s Mahesh Neelakantan joins Advocacy as Malaysia lead, Kenny Loh heading Geometry

3. Philips launches fresh crowdsourcing-based brand campaign across Asia

4. Singapore employment policy to exacerbate talent struggle

5. Samsung Asia sees restructuring in marketing team, "small number" of layoffs

6. Landmark seeks to calibrate shoppers to 4-in-1 luxury retail proposition

7. Starcom wins AB InBev in China from MediaCom

8. Inside Weber Shandwick’s new content marketing arm, Mediaco

9. What’s plaguing social media strategies in SEA?

10. Mobile adspend in APAC to hit $13 billion in 2017: Research

 

Top distractions

Semi-work-related things that crossed our glowing screens this week:

1. From All India Bakchod, "India's edgiest, funniest comedy collective", comes this amazingly biting piece of satire. Here's hoping it enlightens some people. 

 

2. In the absence of any strategy, it’s good to know that some things are fail-safe. Two of those things are scantily-clad women and shaving foam, especially when combined. In its new ad for the Japanese market, Schick gives an intrepid cosmonaut the tough task of being lathered by two pretty girls in zero-gravity. Oddly though, he ends up shaving himself. We can only assume having the girls go the full distance would have been too risqué.  

 

3. If you haven't seen it, first read the backstory and then feel the spirit of Filipino pride in this crowdsourced music video created by P&G and Campaigns & Grey.

 

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