P&G Digital Hack Night: Selling Tide T-shirts for Disaster Relief
03.11.2009
I’m at P&G’s Digital Hack Night, and the format is like a reality TV show: A contest among groups of digital marketing experts, Apprentice-style, in an effort to tap social media tools to sell Tide t-shirts for charity.
It’s amazing how competitive this group gets when you put them on teams!
Speaking of which, hook me up and help the cause. You can buy your t-shirt here. Sales through midnight eastern time will count.
Hey… My boss is there tonight too…Best of luck selling these t’s.
I found this by Googling for “P&G Digital Hack” after you or one of your colleagues decided to spam MetaFilter with this very dubious contest. (link: http://www.metafilter.com/79884/PampG-Digital-Hack-Contest#comment)
I’m gonna do you a solid, because I work in social media PR and it makes us all look like jackasses when people do shit like this. So here’s some free pointers.
#1. When you use social media to publicize your stuff, why not bother learning the rules of the communities you’re working with? Your friend obviously didn’t know anything about MetaFilter and hadn’t spent any time there beyond what was required to be authorized to make a front page post. Very tacky. That’s like making friends with someone just so you can sell them AmWay.
#2. If you’re going to ask people to get involved with a promotion, the consumer needs to get something out of it. Having a contest where the consumer’s reward is that they get to pay you for a T-shirt is beyond asinine.
#3. What the hell does “Digital Hack Night” mean? Where exactly is the “hack”? Don’t just slap buzzwords on things if you don’t understand them.
There was probably someone on your team who said, “Hey guys, this is a bad idea.” You need to promote that person.
1 please!
Hey, Anonymous–
FM has sold ad banners for Metafilter in the past, but I’m not sure who “spammed” the site regarding P&G’s Digital Hack Night and the Tide t-shirts for charity thingy. I don’t recognize the name of the person who posted that link.
Here’s how the charity event worked. People could buy a vintage Tide t-shirt from Tide’s website, and 100% of the profits went to disaster relief charities to help people affected by Katrina, etc. Among those that chose to buy a shirt, I assume, the “something they got out of it” was helping a charity. Nobody at Tide or any of the publishers or agencies in the room made money; it all went to charity.
No idea what “Digital Hack Night” means.
[...] Read the rest here: P&G Digital Hack Night: Selling Tide T-shirts for Disaster Relief [...]
Chas, while I certainly like the idea of a T-shirt with a brand on it. I’m baffled by the “loads of hope” thing. Horrible idea. It is very much like Pepsi using Obama’s logo. Horrible idea.
if it’s gotta be clean…
tide’s in…
Hey Anonymous,
How about having some balls and putting your name out there to stand behind your comments. The charity thing was actually a great idea. And the think that can suck about social media is when people hide behind their comments versus stepping forward.
Morgan–
As I understand it, Tide’s Loads of Hope charity — as in, loads of clean laundry — actually goes to disaster sites (where people lose electricity and water, and thus an ability to keep themselves in clean clothes) and offers mobile laundry services. The P&G folks played this promo video at the event yesterday, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgPWDC12jIs
That’s what I mean – they called it Tide’s Clean Start. That was the charity, that was the play. Somehow it became hope, and you don’t tie your brand to politics – you just don’t.
Find that guy and fire him.
[...] evening I blogged about P&G’s Digital Hack Night, an idea-sharing event that stole its format from reality [...]
Call me cynical but I’d love to see the list of names of the Tide t-shirt buyers and cross-refernce to determine how many buyers were related/friends/co-workers of the “Hackers” T-shirt sellers.
Trish–I think we’d find that a high percentage of t-shirt buyers are friends, relatives, co-workers or virtual friends of the t-shirt sellers. That’s not cynical, though, that’s sort of the idea. Friends (even virtual friends that you don’t know in person, but converse in Twitter or Facebook) are more likely to pay attention to each other than they are to pay attention to billboards alongside the freeway or TV commercials. (If the offer itself stinks, they pay attention and don’t take action; but paying attention is a necessary first step.) This is why Oprah is such a powerful media outlet for marketers. The show isn’t just “aggregating a demo,” it’s creating a virtual conversation among millions of viewers who feel they have something in common with Oprah and with their fellow viewers.
I liked the promotion, and yes, they are selling t-shirts, but they’re also doing it for a good cause, and it’s not like they’re holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to buy one. They created a cool product, they turned it into a game and got some of the best players to play, and they got the press that an original idea like that deserves. Overall, I think it was a win for Tide.
[...] A few weeks ago FM participated in P&G’s Digital Hack Night in which a group of social media geniuses were divided into teams and given the task of selling retro-style Tide t-shirts in support of the brand’s Loads of Hope program. See here and here. [...]
[...] for Disaster Relief – Everything Typepad: Get A Cool Shirt, Save The World – Chas Edwards: P&G Digital Hack Night: Selling Tide T-shirts for Disaster Relief – Bob Gilbreath: Helping Victims of Disasters—LIVE at P&G ‘Hack’ Night – Dave Knox: [...]
[...] for Disaster Relief – Everything Typepad: Get A Cool Shirt, Save The World – Chas Edwards: P&G Digital Hack Night: Selling Tide T-shirts for Disaster Relief – Bob Gilbreath: Helping Victims of Disasters—LIVE at P&G ‘Hack’ Night – Dave Knox: [...]
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[...] for Disaster Relief – Everything Typepad: Get A Cool Shirt, Save The World – Chas Edwards: P&G Digital Hack Night: Selling Tide T-shirts for Disaster Relief – Bob Gilbreath: Helping Victims of Disasters—LIVE at P&G ‘Hack’ Night – Dave Knox: [...]
[...] for Disaster Relief – Everything Typepad: Get A Cool Shirt, Save The World – Chas Edwards: P&G Digital Hack Night: Selling Tide T-shirts for Disaster Relief – Bob Gilbreath: Helping Victims of Disasters—LIVE at P&G ‘Hack’ Night – Dave Knox: [...]