Don't sneer at green beer

Here's the thing. I have no idea who Karlson NaKryshi is. I won't know next week. I didn't know last week. That won't bother him one iota. He's just developed an annoying (to me) Green Beer application for Facebook that's just been used by 1.4 million Facebookers. He truly doesn't care who I am because wherever he is right now, he's on a green beer high. Here's what they say about his topical little application:

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day by sending your friends a Green Beer. Get the most beers, and win $50 towards the purchase of your favorite 12 pack or anything else you want! Tell your friends and have fun! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

How many of your clients would've liked to reach a million and a half fb profiles with their brand? Did you think of telling them they could? There are a ton of people RIGHT NOW, on Twitter and in Ireland, who are developing smart, meaningful apps - and stupid, fun ones like Green Beer - and who can work with you to intuitively develop brand extensions for your clients. People like Contrast, who annoyingly even look cool. They're well known because of a piece of software they developed to let you know who just stopped following you on Twitter. Yeah, I know, why would anyone want to know who hates them- sorry, did you just ask me what this Twitter thing is?

Oh dear. This is gonna be a long night.

New marketing: Facebook, fast food and faster times

There is none.

You know all about BK's mega-success for the Whopper on facebook, right? The Johnny Depps of adland, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, demonstrate in a textbook case how one can develop a social media application for a client ('one' means Dublin ad agencies too, btw) that cuts straight through the bullshit, gets tons of recall, brand association and all that other guff, and sells a few burgers too.

Not a banner ad, not a viral, but an application that makes for genuine, thought-provoking cut-through. Don't know nuthin' about making up applications? Me neither, but I know people who do. Crispin Porter in this instance worked with Refresh Partners from Toronto. But you don't have to go that far. You could try any major Irish town first.

This is the new creativity, and we need to think this way. Factually (and not unimportantly), it also represents an economic reality for lower spending clients.

Facebook users were asked to delete ten 'friends' from their list in return for a free Whopper. Enough of them did, in the US market alone, to make it extremely worthwhile. Yum yum for Burger King. Facebook has had to redefine the application somewhat, (or shut it down, pretty much) so successful has it been, citing privacy issues (and presumably slightly concerned by the fact that 250,000 'friends' have been axed by other good 'friends'). The Arches must be looking slightly yellow over just how much cyberprint this one has amassed.

Poke away, if you want to lose an eye, but there's more to it, as I've said before. Facebook is encouraging corporates more and more in the direction of maximising their presence, in lots of ways. Posts like How Major Retailers Can Improve the Effectiveness of Their Facebook Pages say it clearly, and To Fuck with the Lower Case recession.

But life in these straitened times is not without its encouragement, dear readers. I know of at least one revered Dublin agency this week that is benefitting from an in-house training course on the many uses of facebook. I hope they use their newfound knowledge to benefit their clients and the Dublin ad scene by extension. I'm just saying.

And connectedly, the LA Times is just saying that what they now make from online ad revenue is enough to pay for the costs of online, ALL the editorial and what's that other thing? Oh yes, the printing of the old version.

Train a' runnin, down that digi track, train a' runnin, she ain't turnin' back etc. At which point I am thrown from the boxcar. Laters.

A Guardian repost via Cybercom.

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Congratulations btw to Language and KDNINE, who are stepping up with their recent joint win of the Halifax account. As reported by Siobhán O'Connell in the IT.

Mick's Garage and Facebook

I've been cagey about social network ads, and the only place I'd ever heard of micksgarage was facebook.

I've always thought it was a ridiculous fit. I mean come on, a grotty little garage, probably with a grimy Buffalo Bill Silence of the Lambs pit in the floor? On beautifully, geometrically clean, blue, Alaskan pine-scented facebook? Car-razy. Those people don't drive! They Twitter on the DART and hold cappucino carryouts from Barstucks while they read their Marian Keyeses and John Connollys on the 46A. They wear post-ironic tee-shirts and rollerblade into wifi-enabled lifts up to the sixth floor creative space, n'est pas?

Eh, well, no. N'est pas du tout du tout, Nuala. Unlike Bebo, over 75% of fb profiles in Ireland are over legal driver age, and there's now more than 400,000 of them, so I should shut up and do more research.

And like that, along comes Sorcha Corcoran, writing in Silicon Republic, to tell me that

at a time when things look shaky for tech start-ups, e-commerce retailer of car parts and accessories MicksGarage has managed to secure €560,000 in funding to drive expansion. The investment... will help micksgarage to accelerate its activities in the UK and expand operations in Ireland, said managing director Ciaran Crean.

Drive expansion! Accelerate activities! We're sucking diesel now, Sorcha, what?

That aside, the fact that micksgarage was named Best Retail Website at the (electric-on-the-eyeballs website alert!) eircom awards the year before last is a clue that they know more about social network advertising than I do. They have 80,000 visitors monthly, and they can't be all cybertyre kickers. And now in the UK too? They're doing something right. Naturally, they're savvy enough to have a blog too.

To summarise, I'll keep an opener mind now about ads on facebook ás seo amach. Now all I need is a way to work in this gag about a couple of greased-up guys in overalls handling their parts con gusto and I'm outta here. Vroom. Etc.