So I said “Steve Rubel has lost his mind” and he has now mentioned it on his blog micropersuasion.com.
Let me be very clear about this . . . Steve Rubel is a PR mentor of mine (digitally) and his blog is a must read if you want to keep up with social media, but I felt like (as I said before) he gave way too much weight on the power of social media by suggesting that the agency.com video was lame when it has done nothing but be wildly successful. And as he pointed out, certain Ad blogs and ad forums were ripping on the video and agency.com, but they don’t get it either. This IS NOT negative for Subway.
For example, Adfreak says that agency.com keeps calling the video viral and says “there’s nothing viral about it.” Really? How do you figure it isn’t viral when you are personally making it viral by discussing it? Of course, you have adfreak followers here and here that blindly agreed because they don’t get it either. (some even said it shouldn’t be called viral, but it’s already obvious that was way off as they typed the words).
Look I’m not a hater, but who gives a rats rear what bloggers or ad critics are saying? What are customers doing? How many people willingly thought about Subway the last two days? How often do people willingly watch a 10-minute commercial about a restaurant and then spend hours discussing it online? Stop overanalyzing how much this will help or hurt the brand or whether asking people about their sandwich is a good idea. Subway is on the brain of hundreds of thousands of people now thanks to agency.com.
DEAR STEVE: keep doing the amazing job you do with micropersuasion! I get tons of value out of it.
2 comments ↓
Russell,
Thanks for the mention. Coupla things:
1) We woudn’t consider ourselves adfreak “followers,” if I understand your meaning, though we do enjoy reading the blog.
2) We don’t “blindly” agree to anything, especially when it comes to the biz.
Look, this whole thing is kinda fun, you have to admit. Unless, as one writer put it on one of these blogs, agency.com did a major “Verbal Kint” and just pulled some kind of existential fast-one on us — as they’d like us to believe over at whenwerollwerollbig.com — you just have to evaluate it on its own merits: getting people to talk is not my definition of effective. People are talking about Mel Gibson right now, too. I’m less interested in “viral” than I am effective; that’s my criterion.
Finally, as I wrote in my post at Fresh Glue, it’s never okay for an agency or advertiser to talk “me me me” when, if you’re the client, it should always be “you you you.” Go back and read my post — there’s no “blind” agreement there whatsoever. And I thank ye.
“I get tons of value out of it.” You marketing trash just can’t use normal English when there’s corporate gobbledygook available. Vile.
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