Once again, the ad industry seems to have caught SBS, or Shiny Bauble Syndrome. If you follow the trendmakers and the the industry buzz, you've undoubtedly heard of Chatroulette. If you haven't, it's pretty simple. You go to the site where you are randomly connected to other users using their web cameras and you can choose to speak to that person or hit next and connected to another user. It's all the rage right now, with lots of discussions about how brands can use this new tool to enhance their brand messaging.
Full disclosure, I haven't tried it yet. I need to, just so I can talk from experience, but I'll need to do it with my wife when I do it. Why? Well, by almost every account I've seen, the majority of users of Chatroulette are men looking for a little "entertainment." As a very happily married man, I'm not looking for any of the entertainment that's being provided.
Go ahead, poke around on the Chatroulette map. That I did. Look at the pictures people are posting to identify themselves. I see less naked guys at the gym. And I didn't see one naked woman, BTW.
So, the question is, what brands would this fit? I thought maybe someone like Durex, but since I'm not sure anyone's even using their product during their Chatroulette escapade, didn't see that one working.
But who else? Guess there's a few edgy brands out there that could make this work. Maybe Axe? Their edgy and they certainly talk about the art of the hook-up. So maybe they could make it work. And there's probably a few other in the Axe camp who like this kind of edginess.
But Ford? P&G? McDonald's? The folks at Crispin wish it would work for Burger King. But if they tried it, it would be another example of something that gets the industry all hot & bothered while delivering nothing to the client.
If any of the telcos tried it, well people would just make fun of the fact that they can connect people through Chatroulette but not through their own products.
Of course we all know that Chatroulette is just the latest in the long line of cool toys that create the SBS. We've seen SBS before. Remember when everyone was going to live in Second Life?
What's funny about SBS is that even when we know this is the shiny bauble du jour, we still get all excited by it. So now you have people actually discussing how brands can use Chatroulette like it's an important, new communications tool!
But, in the next few weeks, the next shiny bauble will come along and the industry will get infected by another round of SBS. Every now and then, one of these baubles stays around for a little while, but basically they almost all follow the same pattern. Like solar flares, they can burn hot & brite, but they usually don't burn long.
And there's plenty of folks out there who like to fan the SBS fires. But that's because it's much easy to jump from bauble to bauble then it is for us to tell clients they need to make good products and treat their employees and customers well.
Full disclosure, I haven't tried it yet. I need to, just so I can talk from experience, but I'll need to do it with my wife when I do it. Why? Well, by almost every account I've seen, the majority of users of Chatroulette are men looking for a little "entertainment." As a very happily married man, I'm not looking for any of the entertainment that's being provided.
Go ahead, poke around on the Chatroulette map. That I did. Look at the pictures people are posting to identify themselves. I see less naked guys at the gym. And I didn't see one naked woman, BTW.
So, the question is, what brands would this fit? I thought maybe someone like Durex, but since I'm not sure anyone's even using their product during their Chatroulette escapade, didn't see that one working.
But who else? Guess there's a few edgy brands out there that could make this work. Maybe Axe? Their edgy and they certainly talk about the art of the hook-up. So maybe they could make it work. And there's probably a few other in the Axe camp who like this kind of edginess.
But Ford? P&G? McDonald's? The folks at Crispin wish it would work for Burger King. But if they tried it, it would be another example of something that gets the industry all hot & bothered while delivering nothing to the client.
If any of the telcos tried it, well people would just make fun of the fact that they can connect people through Chatroulette but not through their own products.
Of course we all know that Chatroulette is just the latest in the long line of cool toys that create the SBS. We've seen SBS before. Remember when everyone was going to live in Second Life?
What's funny about SBS is that even when we know this is the shiny bauble du jour, we still get all excited by it. So now you have people actually discussing how brands can use Chatroulette like it's an important, new communications tool!
But, in the next few weeks, the next shiny bauble will come along and the industry will get infected by another round of SBS. Every now and then, one of these baubles stays around for a little while, but basically they almost all follow the same pattern. Like solar flares, they can burn hot & brite, but they usually don't burn long.
And there's plenty of folks out there who like to fan the SBS fires. But that's because it's much easy to jump from bauble to bauble then it is for us to tell clients they need to make good products and treat their employees and customers well.