Yesterday, bored out of my mind, I posted this on Twitter:

This resulted in the very funny @Nightwyrm and I trying to one up one another, which got a little silly:

Yes, it was silly, but as the title said, we amuse ourselves.

EDIT: While I didn’t know when i first wrote this post, I am now aware that this campaign was the brainchild of Droga5’s Sydney arm. Now I do. Also, there’s a follow up post in the comments that’s probably worth checking out…

Life has an interesting way of bringing together disparate parts of my life. In this case it’s Sir Richard Branson (who I simply find fascinating, I’m not his illegitimate son or anything), my High School days and my active Twitter life. This actually concerns what I would classify as a terrible marketing campaign. To this end, I’ll be citing FAILS throughout this post.

It’s OK, I’ll explain.

While going through my recent new Twitter followers I realised I had been followed by an account called @4320LA.

FAIL No. 1 – Way to make an account that looks like spam, guys.

Well, it turns out that this is a promotion for V Australia (see, there’s Richard Branson) where they have sent three strapping young Aussie boys to LA for three days. The idea? They have a camera crew with them and they have to Tweet every minute they’re there.

FAIL No. 2 – Honestly, that’s just… just genius guys. Who doesn’t love people you don’t know, or yet care about, updating Twitter. Every. Single. Minute.

But oh, it’s so much better. They have at least set up a funky looking website, www.4320la.com, however it is let down by the fact that there is very little interesting going on. The photos don’t convey the story, the tweets are short and often unintelligible, and it’s all really just a sloppy mess.

FAIL No. 3 – So, you’re paying airfares and the drinks tab for guys who clearly have seemingly little experience with blogging, Twitter or broadcasting.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. As you’ll notice, there are three guys. One is called Matt. I went to school with him, was even in his year. Hell, during Summer School before Year 7 we were even friends before I found better geeks and he found better jocks.

This is nothing against Matt, I’m actually just declaring my connection. Before you ask, I actually have nothing against the guy. I didn’t vote for him for School Captain, but to be honest he’s an OK guy, and for getting someone to foot the bill for this trip I’ve got to tip my hat to him.

Only problem is, I’m looking at this from V Australia’s point of view, so let’s take a closer looks at Matt’s special account for this little project:

Compelling stuff, eh?

FAIL No. 4 – With no interaction between the account and its followers, and no clear way to actually tell what’s happening on the trip, this, and the other two accounts, are pure spam at worse, and boring crap at best.

FAIL No. 5 – Sorry, but I can’t let this go. I mean, look at the crap. Got a hashtag on every tweet, but no link to the corresponding pic? FAIL!

This is where it really starts to ‘grind my gears’ so to speak, and the above FAIL mentioning the hashtag is key to this. Firstly, the trip is already past halfway, and while a little digging turned up some promotion, the guy’s accounts only have a few hundred followers, while the @4320LA account only has 400 something, despite following over 500.

See, it’s not really about the tweets from the guys that are meant to push this idea, V Australia, or whoever came up with this concept for them, wanted to harness the power of Twitter’s Trending Topics. How do I know this? One, I have a Crystal Ball. Two, they said so themselves:

FAIL No. 6 – While I don’t support gaming stats, if you’re going to do I’m pretty sure it’s counter intuitive to mention that’s your intention. I mean, really. When they cheat on their taxes do these guys enclose a letter to the ATO about what they’ve done?

Furthermore, as you can see by the previous tweet that this was sent past the halfway mark - if nobody cares by now guys, nobody will.

So, shall we sum up? V Australia sent three guys overseas, trying to harness Twitter and create a viral campaign. The three chums no doubt have a good time (G’day Matt, throw one back for me), and according to @4320LA_Nathan, “remember as long as we get 4320 tweets, that’s 4320 minutes filled.” Should they reach their goal, the three guys win an around the world flight, so go them, eh? The rest of us are meant to be fascinated by this, which is really where it all breaks down.

So yes, congratulations V Australia, and whichever marketing/social media/Web 2.0 guru suggested/managed this campaign. It’s nothing personal, viral projects like this live or die on luck just as much as good ideas, but this was pretty flawed from the start.

Could it have been better? Yeah, sure. Perhaps if it had been a three day video stream, combined with tweeting regularly. Hell, it could have been better if the people behind it had realised most of the search functions require multiple people to use a hashtag or similar for it to be a Trending Topic – getting three guys to spam Twitter will have little to no affect. Furthermore, no one is going to follow these guys, it would just clog your timeline with useless crap.

So, all in all, FAIL.

V Australia picks up the bill, will most likely owe these three guys around the world trips, and all it got them was some very limited buzz, all, as I can tell, on the concept rather than the execution.

Some pointers for next time:

1. Learn how the services you’re using technically work.
2. Learn how people actually use those services.
3. Probably spend more time training your winners. (Spelling could also be improved, but that’s just a personal gripe of mine.)
4. Don’t admit your overall game plan publically.
5. Come up with something actually compelling if you want anyone to pay attention.
6. This last one is just a guess, but don’t listen to anyone who uses the term “web 2.0”

Should anyone at V Australia, or anyone else really, take umbridge at my views, feel free to contact me at Warlach at Gmail.com, or on Twitter at @Warlach.

Um, think it through.

And, like, be cool.

This is entirely for @Eskimosparky’s benefit, as seen here.

kthxbai.