Thumbs down for American Express’ ‘Your live story’

American Express has teamed up with Mark Ronson and Channel 4 in an interactive campaign heavily relying on submissions from the community. 

The credit card company said the campaign will aim to “uncover the UK’s best music experiences – the memorable stories behind the shows, in celebration of American Express’ involvement in live music and its award-winning ‘Preferred Seating’ programme launched last year”.

The micro-site is hosted on a branded section of the Channel 4 website, and simply asks for people to submit their experiences with the rather weak incentive of the best being made into a short film with the soundtrack being produced by Mark Ronson.

To be honest I just don’t get it. What does American Express have to do with music, and live music at that?  Music is “sex, drugs and rock and roll”, and American Express just isn’t.  It is ‘business’ and it is ‘winning’. It is not hedonistic trips and sweaty mosh pits.

This is exactly the opposite of everything that Disney did well in their ‘Let the memories begin’ campaign.  Disney have earned the right to ask for contributions; they have chosen an area that they “own” in asking for memories from holidays at Disney’s Parks and Resorts.  It fits, it feels right.

Amex and music just doesn’t.  If they were to sponsor tours for a while, and then sponsor some music awards (Mastercard and the Brits) or festivals then they would be earning the right.  But at the moment they are just two random things coming together and as such, I predict little success.  And with 10 videos and 60 photos so far, compared to the millions of people that have undoubtedly viewed the competition, early results aren’t looking good.

The final nail in the coffin is that I have searched the website and have not found any mention of the preferred seating programme which this is apparently celebrating.

All in all, this is not a social media success in any way.  Sorry.

Thumbs up for Disney’s “Let the memories begin”

This week Disney have launched a platform that allows guests of their parks and resorts to share memories, photos and videos with the community.

The contributions are then owned by Disney, to be used in a variety of their promotional activities such as adverts, and even in their evening parades!

This is an interesting idea, and for Disney this is brilliant.  Why produce expensive adverts of actors enjoying themselves at Disney when it is much more believable if normal (unpaid) members of society will do it for you?

The first ‘share the memories’ advert (below) is fantastic, a perfect endorsement for Disney, and you can really see how these contributions will be used.

What took me longer to comprehend however, is what is in it for the community?  Why should they submit their photos, videos and anecdotes?
 
But then I realized that Disney had earned the right to this conversation, for this spirit of sharing.  They have earned it from almost 90 years of entertaining and living up to expectations.
 
Disney are an entertainment brand, and from that mission they have taken it to all domains; they have entertained in the home, in the cinema and in what anthropologists like to call the ‘third place’; on holiday.  They have taken this to the extreme in the form of a Disney town called Celebration, where people can live in a town built on Disney values.
 
Disney have slowly earned the good faith of their customers and because of this, the customers are happy to pay it back by interacting. Looking at some of the memories listed at ‘let the memories begin,’ you can see how important Disney is to peoples’ lives; indeed, people go back to their resorts a few times a year, and some people even propose and get married there!

For a lot of people Disney does represent some of the best memories of their lives, so why shouldn’t you share them? For the fans of Disney it is a privilege to take part in the parades, and it is an honour to appear in their adverts.
 
Disney have earned the right to have this kind of site and because of this I am certain it will be a success. There are many organisations that are trying to engage in this way that will fail because they simply have not earned the right for this level of intimacy with their customers.