New Zealand Online Marketing

This is a follow-up on my post about the Creative Freedom Foundation’s Campaign against Guilt Upon Accusation Laws in New Zealand. To try and fill you in quickly, the Creative Freedom Foundation are protesting against Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment Act that is due to come into law in New Zealand on February 28th. This ammendment to the law would mean that ISPs would be able to cut off internet access and web sites of anyone who is repeatedly accused of copyright infringment, based purely on accusation alone, without evidence or proof of guilt. It will be a three strikes and you’re out system. On the third copyright infringement the ISP will automatically cut off your internet connection, without being proven guilty in a court of law. Completely outrageous indeed. The same kind of legislation has been rejected in other countries such as Germany and the UK.

The campaign started out with the Creative Freedom Foundation asking people to protest by signing an online petition called Not In My Name. They also wanted people to spread the word about the campaign by either joining them on Facebook and MySpace, writing to a member of parliament or displaying an animated banner on your site.

Now the campaign has taken on a new phase calling for people to join the INTERNET BLACKOUT N.Z PROTEST from the 16th - 23rd February. They want people to BLACK OUT their Facebook, MySpace and Bebo avatars, your Twitter account and web sites.  It is proving to be a very powerful addition to the campaign as the protest has turned into a global viral, due mostly in part to celebrity actor, comedian and author Stephen Fry.

Day 1 of Campaign

• According to Mohawk Media, Juha Saarinen asks Stephen Fry to tweet about #blackout

• Stephen Fry shows support for the campaign by turning his avatar black, changing his Bio to: I’m blacked out: Stand up against “Guilt Upon Accusation” for New Zealand http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html and talks about the internet blackout campaign on Twitter. This helps push the campaign global.
• He also tells people to Digg this

By doing this Stephen Fry gains 15,000+ friends overnight and he comes in as No.3 on Twitterholic with just over 200,000 people following him. Twitterholic tells you who the most popular - Top 100 Twitter users are based on followers.

Day 2 of Campaign

• #blackout becomes the #1 search trend on Twitter, beating Heroes, 24 and Dollhouse
• The Internet Blackout campaign makes it into Wikipedia as a definition for Blackout
  
• People start blogging about the Internet Blackout protest including Richard McManus at ReadWriteWeb and Cory Dotorow at Boing Boing.
• A Guilt Upon Accusation anthem called the Copywrong Song is realeased under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License. A Copywrong Remix Challenge is issued calling for people to make the ultimate remix of the Copywrong song.

Day 3 of Campaign

• Chelfyn Baxter at Mohawk Media releases his ‘Kangaroo Court’ animation, a protest video for the campaign against Section 92 of the New Zealand Copyright Ammendment Act.

Day 4 of Campaign

• On Thursday 19th February, a public demonstration took place on the grounds of the New Zealand Parliament in Wellington with the ‘Not in my Name’ petition handed over. People were asked to come along in bright clothes and black placards.
• Stuff’s Blackout news story ‘Stephen Fry rails against NZ internet law‘ hits the front page of Digg.com

Day 5 of Campaign

• More web celebrities & supporters join the Blackout campaign including author Neil Gaimen, and Xeni from Boing Boing.

Day 6 of Campaign

• Cartoons start appearing about The Guilt Upon Accusation Law including Dylan Horrock’s and Mike Moreu’s.

Day 7 of Campaign

• Preparation and instructions go out on how to modify your web site for the final day of Internet Blackout protest.

Day 8 of Campaign

• New Zealand Political blogs and other web sites Blackout their sites including Public Address, Scoop, Kiwiblog, The Standard, No Right Turn, Frog Blog, Whale Oil, Not PC, No Minister, Just Left, The Hand Mirror, Roar Prawn, Policy Net, Kiwi Politico.
• Prime Minister John Key announces that Section 92A will be delayed until March 27th

Posted in Facebook, MySpace, Political, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Viral Tagged: Internet Blackout, NZ Copyright Law, Protest

Do you illegally download music, movies or software over the internet? If yes then watch out, because New Zealand government is set to bring in rediculous new legislation regarding copyright infringment on the 28th of February.

Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation. This means that ISPs will be able to cut off internet access and web sites of anyone who is repeatedly accused of copyright infringment, based purely on accusation alone, without evidence or proof of guilt. There is no penalty or punishment for false accusation either and could be wide open to abuse.

So, if you download anything that is copyrighted without paying for it (which alot of people do)  you could be affected. It will be a three strikes and you’re out system. On the third copyright infringement your ISP will automatically cut your internet connection off, without being proven guilty in a court of law.

On the 18th December 08, the Creative Freedom Foundation was launched. It was founded in response to Copyright law and it’s effect on creativity, the economy, and public rights. They advocate on behalf of artists whose creative freedom is affected by major Governmental decisions made in their name, and in the name of protecting creativity.

Even though the Creative Freedom Foundation represents the views of artists, they have launched a campaign against the Guilt Upon Accusation laws in New Zealand.

Part of the campaign has involved them setting up a petition called Not In My Name.  Artists and non artists alike can sign it. Just over 4300 people have signed the petition at the time of writing this post.

They also want you to spread the word about the campaign by either:

• writing to a member of Parliament
• joining them on Facebook and MySpace
• using the below animated banner ad on your web site or emails

Please do take the time to have a read of the Creative Freedom Foundation site and sign the petition. It might just save your internet connection being cut off.

An online auction for a Jesus Christ Pita Bread on Trade Me came to an end yesterday. The winning bid was $215 and it had a reserve of $1. Reading through the hoards of Question and Answers on the auction, it emerged that the seller wanted to donate a portion of the money from the sale of the pita to an animal charity. Funnily enough the auction generated quite a bit of media buzz and attention around the world.

Even though this auction is not a commercial marketing campaign as such, there is apparently a marketing lesson to be learnt from these kind of auctions. Over at the Herd and Servant of Chaos they both say something similar along the lines that the Jesus Christ Pita Bread auction is a reminder that marketing is based entirely on emotion and we make decisions not based on what we know but on what we feel. That the auction seller engages his audience into a feeling about the item through the auctions Question and Answer section.

As you can see from the image below, other related products also began to pop up…

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…including a set of Jesus Christ Pita Bread holders.

And it also looks like there will be more to come according to the sellers last comment below.

Tourism New Zealand have recently launched a second phase of an online marketing iniative here in New Zealand. The Pure New Zealand ‘Have your Say’ studio is the second phase of the ‘What Do You Say UK?’ campaign that was launched in London. They want people to use social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook to spread the word about New Zealand as a holiday destination.

How this will work is a mobile recording studio will be touring around the country collecting tourist stories of their time in New Zealand, in the form of a video diary. They will be able to edit it with their own photos and video footage, then post it on to social networking sites.

YouTube Channel - PureNZ  ‘Have Your Say’

The videos are being published into unpaid media channels, including a YouTube PureNZ ‘Have Your Say’ channel which will be fed on to Tourism New Zealand’s consumer web site. Their goal is to record about 3,500 video diary clips during the tour around New Zealand.

In their press release they say “If every clip is viewed by 10 friends and family back home, and if 3000 clips are filmed that’s thirty thousand messages about New Zealand sent to our key markets – a very cost-effective form of marketing.”

John Key’s video message removed?

To help promote this New Zealand’s Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism, John Key recorded his own video message. Unfortunately John Key’s video (which had over 3000 views when I last saw it) came across as kinda cheesy and the 20 text comments in response to his message hadn’t exactly been very nice either.

And low and behold, I was just about to embed John Key’s video into this blog post, when suddenly the video isn’t available anymore. The video has been removed? My guess is that they may have removed it due to the unflattering text comments people have left. If you want an example of the type of comments people have been posting in response to John Key’s message, then check out the responses at the Spare Room.  You’ll be able to relate to it more if you actually saw the video, but the comments are spot on, wet your pants funny, with people taking the piss out of John Key.

Is it a case of  ‘Have Your Say’, but no actually you can’t have your say if you ain’t got anything nice to say about John Key or New Zealand for that matter?  I’m sure everyone would love to hear from Tourism New Zealand as to why they decided to take down John Key’s message!

Tourism New Zealand have also launched a 100% Pure New Zealand Facebook page and a 100% Pure New Zealand group on Flickr around the same time as this campaign.  But after corresponding with Tourism New Zealand, they confirmed that actually neither of these were part of the ‘Have Your Say’ Campaign.

On the 12th November, I received an email newsletter update from Greenpeace. In this email they were urging people to record a message to John Key about climate change via web camera, video camera or mobile phone. Then upload the video as a response to John Keys victory speech on YouTube and add the tag ‘dearjohnkey’. The last step was to send the Greenpeace email message to friends and family.

Follow-up email
Two days later, I received a follow-up email from Greenpeace letting me know that there had been some video contributions uploaded to YouTube already. This email also said that if you can’t manage sending a video, then send an email to John Key: john.key@parliament.govt.nz.

YouTube video responses
Searching on YouTube for the ‘John Key victory speech’ turns up 2 listings under those keywords. The correct John Key victory speech listing to add your video response to has had 672 views. So far there have been 7 video responses uploaded and 17 text comments (at the time of writing).

So it’s been 2.5 weeks since I received that first email and only 7 videos have been uploaded. It’s not a huge response, but it’s good that they are trying to get people involved and participate through web 2.0 intiatives. A video response is getting people to commit to being responsive in real time. Plus you get to see the real people behind the messages, a private conversation being made public. And this is what social media is all about trying to engage people meaningfully through the use of social media.

The New Zealand vodka, 42Below have decided to create a web based movement to celebrate people who live by their own rules and those who follow their own dreams. They wanted a platform to unite the free thinkers, the independent spirits, the creators and the artists of the world, so have set up the site Because We Can.

To capture the spirit they asked like minded people to create an endeavour that had the potential to delight and surprise, but most of all create something that meant something to them. To unify the contributors, they got them to use white coverall suits in their creation. The reasoning behind the wearing of the suits is to have viewers focus on their endeavour rather than on the people behind it. To be anonymous, universal and generic. Here’s one of the videos called: The cycle of power.

Monthly video competition
To get you involved and get your creativity flowing, there is a monthly competition where they want you to create and submit your own videos to show the ‘Because We Can’ spirit. Entries for this month have to be in by 12.00GMT time on 30 November, and for your effort you could win $USD4200.

My initial thoughts on this movement is, where is this movement heading, where is it taking you in the long run? What happens after you’ve created a few videos and it’s six months down the line, then what? It’s a big call though, trying to create a movement. My thoughts are, if you’re creating a movement then I would tend to expect big things. We’ll just have to wait and see what eventuates.

Pretty average web design
The other thing I’m going to comment about is the web design. It’s a pretty basic site - design wise. One thing I don’t like is the spaced out U P P E R C A S E type that is used for the intro paragraph on the main page (as seen below) and the headings. The Reason being is simple, it’s because I find it visually hard to read.

You are able to follow them on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Delicious.

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand turned their ‘Vote for me’ political billboard advertisement into a viral for the recent election. You can create your own ‘Vote for me’ billboard on www.voteforus.co.nz. All you have to do is upload an image and then send it to your friends via email. What a good idea this is. Simple but highly effective. It’s nice to see a viral thats not video.

This is Pete Fountain’s video release for the song ‘Caroline’ off his debut album ‘Will’. According to his MySpace blog it should be airing on TV now.  And guess what?….my brother and sister-in-law are in the video!