Will McGinness, Creative Director of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners got the last spot at 16.50 at Click.  After a long day, I didn’t envy him (and annoyingly people kept leaving during his presentation which was a bit rude).  However, he kept most of us glued to our (uncomfortable) seats as he talked about the new Rolling Rock campaign.  Most of you will already know about it, but basically Rolling Rock had been recently taken over by Anheuser Busch and there was concern that this would upset the core base of drinkers who respected the quirky independence of the brand.  Of course A-H didn’t buy RR to just sit on it, so they needed to get out and re-launch the brand.  The brief was to "harness RR’s mystery and protect its independence, but do it in a way that started conversations with new and existing customers alike".  That’s a mother of a difficult brief.  The trouble with digital word of mouth campaigns is that you have to physically be there to see them evolve, otherwise you don’t get a true feel for how a campaign played out, but basically they invented a RR executive called Ron Stablehorn, VP Marketing for Rolling Rock.  He was the front person for the battle between the new owners and the core fan base.  Ron was seen aplogising for the crap new TV ad that he’d commissioned - a commercial which featured a dancing ape and lots of stereo-typed bits of advertising naffness.  No-one saw the commercial (Ron had pulled it before it aired) but word of mouth was fueled by the release of more and more apologies and complaints.  The commercial finally broke on YouTube and it received 1.5m hits in just a few days.  Although it ruins the whole set-up, here it is. 

Of course, when the crap ad broke, people loved it because it was SO bad.  So what did I take out of all this?  The first thing is that ideas for the digital age are very complex to explain.  Forget the simple, single-minded thought.  Digital word of mouth campaigns are described more by ‘narrative premises’ or ‘broad themes’.  Second, these broad themes are not all perfectly choreographed and worked out in advance.  The ideas evolve depending on the reaction of consumers and the degree to which digital consumers start to play with and ‘co-create’ the idea . That requires a bit of a step into the unknown for brands. Third, consumers were automatically visiting YouTube, without prompting, to see the film.  They just assumed it would be there which underlines the power of YouTube as the default source of video stuff.  Anyway, hope you enjoy the commercial even though I’ve ruined the punchline…

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

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